Looking Back At Me

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Wilko Johnson in 2012 on Canvey Island, in the Thames estuary in Essex, where he grew up. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian Perhaps understandably, the only thing that seems to be wrong with Johnson today is an advanced case of bemusement. As anyone who has seen Julien Temple’s 2009 Dr Feelgood documentary, Oil City Confidential, knows, Johnson has quite a speaking voice, veering between a measured drawl and breathless tumble. But today, his speech comes peppered with long silences, during which he stares into the middle distance, as if trying to collect his thoughts, to work out exactly how he feels. Tensions that had always been present between Johnson and his hard-drinking bandmates began to stretch towards breaking point. The others were content to let the guitarist handle all the songwriting, and the relentless touring schedule denied the perfectionist Johnson the time he needed to come up with new material. Johnson was born John Peter Wilkinson in Canvey Island, Essex, in 1947. He began playing guitar as a teenager, but his career began in earnest in 1971, when he formed Dr Feelgood with singer Lee Brilleaux, bass player John B Sparks, and drummer John Martin. He developed a tight stage rapport with the Feelgoods’ vocalist Lee Brilleaux, who was helpfully signposted by his contrasting white – or once white, at least – suit. Johnson said he “felt like a lot of the power I had in whatever I was doing was radiating from him”. It was their partnership that drove the band to huge success in Britain just before the arrival of punk.

When I was making the album with Roger, I really thought I was at the end’ … Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey live in London in February 2014. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex When I heard ‘Down By The Jetty’ by Dr Feelgood I thought, those cunts! That’s what I’d been trying to arrive at. A brilliant re-interpretation of primal music coupled with words that were pertinent to me.” In 2015, a new documentary titled The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson was released, focusing on Johnson’s cancer scare and featuring only two voices – Johnson’s and that of The Who’s Roger Daltrey. Zoe: “‘You can’t procrastinate - you’ve gotta do it!’ And I was being sensitive, wondering was this alright, and it’s Lee, and they didn’t always get on and stuff, but y’know, as Wilko is often saying, those things don’t matter anymore - you’ve got to rise above it. When you’ve got a diagnosis like that it makes you look at things completely differently. He’s been brilliant. He’s dealing with it a lot better than the rest of us are, you know? I have to say. I remember going round there once and I was just flummoxed by it and he said “Well what do you think it’s like for me?!” I said “But you’re dealing with it amazingly! You’re not the one… left behind……” Wilko Johnson as the executioner Ser Ilyn Payne in the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, 2011. Photograph: HBOWhat emerges from this book is a passionate, private, intelligent, funny, eloquent and warm human being. Johnson was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2013, saying via a statement from his manager at the time that he did not want to receive treatment or chemotherapy.

The news of Johnson’s death was confirmed via a post on his official social media accounts, revealing that he died at home on Monday (November 21).

In his post-Feelgood career, Johnson formed a new band, the Solid Senders, which played at the Front Row festival at the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington, London, alongside many of the new punk acts. Johnson was surprised and gratified to discover that many punk luminaries, including Joe Strummer and John Lydon, were Feelgood fans who had seen them as an influence. He confessed that he thought it would be “the last thing I ever did”, but then later that year his story took a dramatic twist. Further tests revealed that he was suffering from a less virulent form of cancer than previously believed, and doctors were confident it could be operated on successfully. He underwent a complex nine-hour procedure that included the removal of a tumour weighing 3kg, and after a long convalescence was declared cancer-free. Zoë and Wilko will be in conversation on 3rd June at Stoke Newington Town Hall for the Stoke Newington Literary Festival; Wilko and his band will be performing. I saw Wilko at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and, despite seeing over 30 events, he stole the show without a doubt. So full of life, funny and frank, it was just an absolute delight to delve into his musical history, life and miraculous story in the last few years in particular. I didn’t plan to feel that way about death,” he says. “That’s the way it got me. One of the ways I dealt with it was to absolutely accept it, and think: ‘Right, they’ve told me this thing is inoperable – if I’ve got 10 months to live, I just want to do it, I don’t want to spend 10 months running around after second opinions or false hopes.’ In a way, it was a kind of comfort zone, accepting that I was going to die and all the questions of mortality had been sorted out for me. I dunno, if that communicated something positive for people, that’s marvellous, but I didn’t intend to.” Sometimes the insights and ecstasies and whatever were so intense, I’d think, ‘Man, this is almost worth it!’

Others to pay tribute included Sleaford Mods, who called Johnson “the unsung inventor of post Mod, Mod,” and The Stranglers.You can buy an advance copy of Roadrunner: The Story of Lee Brilleaux by Zoe Howe_ via Unbound at http://unbound.co.uk/books/roadrunner. All supporters get their name printed in every edition of the book. All pledges include immediate access to exclusive content._ Zoe: “It’s all a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character isn’t it? They all drank a lot apart from Wilko – the drinking culture in the Feelgoods is one of the first things people think about. But I always think that if you are drinking that much and you are still a nice guy then you’re alright. The Jekyll and Hyde was more on-stage versus off-stage.” Playing on the now and then quality of the title, Zoë Howe’s selected melange of ‘œthe man’ and ‘the life’ from astronomy, to literature, to guns, captures the enormity of his experience and the diversity of a life lived and the power of the Dr Feelgood era: a short by intensely influential time. Wilko today is reflective, with a pragmatic manner of talking about the big incidents of his life, and the future. His plectrum-free guitar technique, simultaneously playing rhythm with thumb and lead with fingers, produced a spasmodic, chopping accompaniment to Brilleaux’s growly vocals. It was a masterful display of menace and musicianship, and Johnson rode a wave of manic energy night after night. He was born John Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex. One of his earliest memories was of the 1953 floods, which hit low-lying Canvey badly and caused many deaths. His father, a gas-fitter, was “a stupid and uneducated and violent person”, according to his son, and died when Wilko was a teenager. Canvey became a romantic place in Johnson’s mind, with its lonely views of the Thames estuary overshadowed by the towers and blazing fires of the nearby Shell Haven oil refinery. Johnson and his contemporaries dubbed the area the Thames Delta, in homage to the Mississippi Delta, which spawned the blues musicians they admired.