New Book “The Ox” Shares The Secret Life Of John Entwistle

John’s Son Christopher Admitted “My Father Wasn’t An Angel.”

British writer Paul Rees only began working on The Ox: The Authorized Biography of John Entwistle, when the late Who bassist’s son Christopher Entwistle gave him a locked box from John’s extensive archives. It contained notebooks and looseleaf pages of the autobiography that John started in 1990 but was never finished.

Rees told Rolling Stone, “There were four completed chapters from a word processor. The notebooks were full of handwritten stories from other periods in his life he didn’t want to type up. All of it was funny, knowing, and very descriptive. It gave me some small sense of being able to talk to him through it and hear his voice.”

What made Rees write about The Ox? The idea came to him when someone from a literary festival told him about Entwistle’s Victorian mansion in Gloucestershire, England. Rees said, “It made me realize he was one of the last great rock stars. He just embodied everything you imagine a Seventies rock star would be like, from the way he lived to the way he passed.”

The book wouldn’t just be about John’s massively successful career in The Who and his influence on countless musicians. It would also include sensitive topics like his drug and alcohol use, infidelity, and wild parties. Christopher apparently wanted it “to be an accurate profile.” He told Rees, “I’ll only ask you to change things I know are incorrect.”

Christopher further explained, “My father wasn’t an angel. But he was a lovely bloke, generally. I didn’t want it to be a fluff piece. I didn’t want it to be something that said, ‘Oh, gosh. How wonderful. Wonderful wonderful.’ I wanted it to be the story.”

No other details about the book have been provided yet.