John Entwistle
Too Late The Hero

He lived his life under the overwhelming personalities of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and Keith Moon, and today he is remembered for being "the quiet one," the calm one, one of the greatest bassists in history: John Alec Entwistle. However, he was also a talented composer, very different from Townshend, and he proved this both with the Who and, especially, in his solo albums. This "Too Late The Hero" (1981) was considered by John himself his best solo album, and it's definitely a good album.

Just to set the bar for the album, the lineup is: our man on bass and vocals (by the way, a beautiful voice, very unique), Joe Walsh on guitar and Joe Vitale on drums. So, no small potatoes here.

It kicks off with a bang with one of the best tracks on the album, "Try Me", which after a short intro turns into a great rock song. The second track is "Talk Dirty", another great track, where John tells his girl to stop talking nonsense and to talk to him about certain little things... in other words, talk dirty.

I don't love the third track "Lovebird", I find it too sappy, but The Ox makes a great recovery with the following "Sleeping Man", which speaks of a friend of his who, unable to get used to the L.A. time zone (where the album was recorded), fell asleep everywhere. Everywhere. 

We then move on to "I'm Coming Back" which, if it weren't for the title track, would be the most beautiful song on the album. A scream-worthy rock song, with Walsh in great form. The first side of the vinyl ended here, and side b began with "Dancing Master" which was placed in this position on the tracklist because John didn't know where to put it, being quite different from the sound of the other tracks (which is, just to say, a rock with the first '80s strains, which don't bother at all). It's a track that, as Entwistle himself declared, was written as a vehicle for bass solos: an excellent vehicle. "Fallen Angel" is, using a seasoned critic's jargon, a minor episode: I don't really love it anyway. But John seems to know how to recover, indeed after that there's "Love Is A Heart Attack", a fantastic track, which however doesn't compare to the masterpiece of the album, the title track "Too Late The Hero". A beautiful text, not sophisticated or hard to interpret, but very impactful; superb music, among the best written by The Ox (the best?).

In short, listen to this damned record, it's really beautiful. R.I.P. The Ox.