Track Listing

1. Try Me
2. Talk Dirty
3. Love Bird
4. Sleeping Man
5. I'm Coming Back
6. Dancing Master
7. Fallen Angel
8. Love Is a Heart Attack
9. Too Late the Hero

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #422862 in Music
• Released on: 1997-06-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Import, Original recording remastered

Customer Reviews

80s' Music that doesn't Suck
The 80s gave us more than its share of truely awful music. As this wave of crap started to wash over us, John Entwistle released Too Late the Hero. It is clearly a product of it's time, but unlike the rest of the music of the time, John's music snaps and pops with sharp lyrics and great playing. Joe Walsh handles guitars and shows why he is among the best in the business with tight, business like playing. An enjoyable treat is the bass/guitar duel in Dancin' Master. The title track again shows that John was a few steps ahead of his contemporaries. The song sounds as if Genesis should have recorded it, minus the Genesis suck factor. There's the sadly prophetic Love is a Heart Attack that has rif that Tool would proudly call their own. The album isn't a stand out like Smash Your Head Against a Wall or Whistle Rymes, but a good and throughly enjoyable listen.

John on Fine Performance, but Material not His Best
John Entwistle was on fine form in the recording of this piece, but the material itself seems a little generic compared to his 1975 offering, which had a little more of his characteristic humor.

I think the lag comes from (perhaps) Entwistle trying to invent for himself a musical concept not dependant upon his relationship with the Who.

If you have a warm place for Entwistle (or, for that matter, Joe Walsh or Joe Vitale), this piece seems worth the money.

The proper end to John's solo career...
...yeah, sure, "The Rock" and "Vanpires" came after this album, but I prefer to see this as the proper end to John's solo career. In fact, it sounds quite fitting as a tasteful swan song, after the questionable nature of his two previous solo albums (Rigor Mortis, The Ox) and compared with the seriously-uneven territory of the upcoming two JEB albums (The Rock and Vanpires). Somewhat sadly, though, "Too Late the Hero" also sounds like a fitting end due to the retro-morbidity of the entire affair; despite the fact that the album is far less doused in black humor than, say, "The Ox," the specific nature of some of the songs sounds somewhat odd in the light of John's untimely death.

So what do we have here? Well, we're definitely into eighties territory, but surprisingly enough, the production isn't too terribly sterile (although the opening "Try Me" telegraphs its eighties-ness a bit much in its first minute) and the material is surprisingly inspired. This is John's "Cloud Nine," where he realized that coasting simply wasn't working; consequently, one feels a real sense of effort here, even in some of the less successful experiments.

The material? I think it's almost uniformly excellent. "Try Me" is a goofy sendup of eighties romance songs (the idea seems to be "Try me! I'm better than cocaine!"...see what I mean about the hindsight morbidity?), "Talk Dirty" is a...well, I'm not sure what sort of genre I can pin on it, but it's damn catchy. "Lovebird" marks a surprising detour into sincerity, which makes the Cloud 9 comparison even more fitting; there's a *very* Harrison-esque slide part on it. "Sleeping Man" and "I'm Coming Back" are excellent songs, but are in my opinion the closest the album gets to real filler.

"Dancing Master" is absolutely fantastic, though. It's a disco song, to be sure, but part of what made disco so truly irritating was its lack of self-awareness (i.e. it didn't know how absurd it is), and "Dancing Master" has self-awareness in spades. It's catchy, it's immaculately recorded, and it has an utterly jaw-dropping bass solo in the middle. *Yes*. "Fallen Angel" is great as well.

"Love is a Heart Attack" brings us back to hindsight morbidity territory, but screw it, I really like the song (an opinion not universally shared, apparently). It's a catchy, reggae-esque bit of wonderment. That is all.

"Too Late the Hero" is, of course, the big track from the album, and is on both of his hits comps, and is really, really touching...god, I wish John's voice hadn't be so shot near the end of his life, as he had a hard time sounding like this from this point on. That said, despite the fact that parts of it sound like a cooldown from a Jane Fonda workout tape (the eighties striking again, y'see) it's an utterly great song, and a wondrous way to conclude the album.

The verdict? In my opinion, "Smash," "Whistle" and "Too Late the Hero" make up the essential body of John's solo work; there're tracks I like on Mad Dog and Rigor Mortis, but in my opinion those two can't quite measure up. If you enjoy Smash and Whistle--and, generally, like John's songwriting--this is an excellent addition to your collection.