Filmmaker Julien Temple has described musician Wilco Johnson, who has died aged 75, as “one of the great English eccentrics, a great national treasure waiting to be discovered”. Thanks in part to Temple’s 2009 documentary, Oil City Confidential, which traced the story of Canvey Island band Dr Feelgood and Johnson’s role in it, he enjoyed renewed recognition towards the end of his life.
Not that fans of Dr Feelgood in the band’s mid-’70s heyday needed reminding of Johnson’s achievements. He was never a guitar virtuoso in the vein of Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton, but he was one of the most distinctive British acts in rock ‘n’ roll history, having perfected his style of combining bright, percussive chords with sharp riffs. To this, Johnson added an unsettling stage presence. Invariably dressed in a black suit, his eyes fixed on the audience like spotlights, he stalked the stage with robotic ruthlessness.
He developed a close relationship on stage with Feelgoods frontman Lee Brilleaux, who was helpfully marked by his contrasting white – or at least once white – suit. Johnson said he “felt that a lot of the power I had in everything I did emanated from him.” It was their partnership that led the group to huge success in Britain just before the arrival of punk.
Dr Feelgood rose on the back of the ‘pub rock’ fad, a back-to-basics mix of sweaty rock and rhythm and blues typical of Ducks Deluxe and Ian Dury’s band Kilburn and the High Roads. It was a refreshing antidote to the drowsy progressive rock of the era. Dr Feelgood released their debut album Down By the Jetty in 1975, containing nine of Johnson’s songs, including the singles Roxette and She Does It Right, neither of which charted. They followed it up later that year with Malpractice, which featured several non-original blues and R&B songs along with another batch of Johnson songs. One of Johnson’s was their third single, Back in the Night, a perennial live favorite. The album gave Dr Feelgood their first chart position (No. 17) and influenced New York musicians such as Richard Hell, the Ramones and Blondie.
Wilco Johnson in 2012 on Canvey Island, in the Thames Estuary in Essex, where he grew up. Photo: Martin Argles/The Guardian
With the stage being the natural home for the hard-hitting Feelgoods, it made sense that the next album would be a live record. Stupidity (1976) was a mix of their own songs and covers, not least Leiber & Stoller’s Riot in Cell Block No 9, which became the vehicle for Johnson’s trick of fake-firing the audience with his guitar. Johnson was adamant that the record should sound raw and live and not be corrupted in post-production, a stance that paid off when it shot to No. 1. To their own astonishment, Dr Feelgood became one of the biggest groups in the UK.
However, the album Sneakin’ Suspicion (1977) proved to be Johnson’s swan song with the band, following heated arguments during recording. In particular, Brillo objected to Johnson’s song Paradise, in which the songwriter, who had married Irene Knight when they were both teenagers, admitted “I love two girls, I’m not ashamed”. Johnson’s erratic and brooding behavior on tour had already caused friction and he left Dr Feelgood in April 1977. Sneakin’ Suspicion reached number 10 in the album chart and in 1979 the band enjoyed top 10 singles with Milk and Alcohol, but the tumultuous arrival of punk had made them seem outdated. “Sometimes I go back to Dr Feelgood and I would have done a lot of things differently,” Johnson said in 2012. “Oh man, I was insufferable.”
He was born John Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex. One of his earliest memories is of the 1953 floods that hit poorly located Kanvi and caused many deaths. His father, a petrol fitter, was a “stupid, uneducated and cruel man”, 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 called the area the Thames Delta, in homage to the Mississippi Delta that gave birth to the blues musicians they admired.
He first started playing guitar after watching the Shadows on TV and was later inspired by Mick Green, guitarist for Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Green’s ability to blend lead and rhythm guitar parts had a clear influence on Johnson’s technique. Wilco instinctively started playing left-handed, but forced himself to switch to right-handed. When he discovered that playing right-handed meant he couldn’t hold a plectrum, he perfected the way he snapped his fingernails on the strings, which helped him play the fast, cutting rhythms that became his profession.
Wilco Johnson on stage with Dr Feelgood at the Marquee Club, London in the 1970s. Fast, cutting rhythms became his stock. Photo: Mick Gold/Redferns
Wilco nurtured academic ambitions alongside musical ones. He attended Westcliffe Boys’ High School (his mother “scrubbed floors at the gas company to pay for our high school uniforms”) and went to Newcastle University to study English. He writes his own poetry and aspires to write novels, although he notes that his appreciation of great literature means that “the presumption of trying for myself is a hindrance”. His conversation, involving much gesturing and dramatic facial expressions, was often interrupted by quotations from Blake or Langland’s Piers the Plowman, and he taught himself Old Icelandic to read the Icelandic sagas. He spent a few months as an English teacher at a high school around the time Dr Feelgood was based, but became angry with the principal because of his long-haired student-like appearance. Later in life he took a keen interest in astronomy and built an observatory on the roof of his home in Westcliff-on-Sea.
After university, he traveled overland to India (partly inspired by his father’s experiences in the army on the Northwest Frontier) and imbibed his fair share of opium and Eastern mysticism. Returning to Canvey, he played in a band with his brother and met Brilleaux (then using his real surname, Collinson), future Feelgoods bassist John “Sparko” Sparks and future band manager Chris Fenwick, who had formed his own kettle group. Brilleaux’s group became an electric R&B group, and they invited Wilko to join them on guitar. In 1971 Dr Feelgood was born.
In his post-Feelgood career, Johnson formed a new band, Solid Senders, which played the Front Row Festival at the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington, London, alongside many of the new punk acts. Johnson was surprised and pleased to discover that many punk luminaries, including Joe Strummer and John Lydon, were Feelgood fans who saw them as an influence.
The Solid Senders released an album for Virgin in 1978, but by 1980 Johnson had started working in Ian Dury’s Blockheads and then formed the Wilko Johnson Band. Over the next 25 years, the band would release eight albums and one EP, mostly on small European labels, although their main focus was playing live in Europe, the UK and Japan.
Wilco Johnson as the executioner Ser Ilyn Payne in the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, 2011. Photo: HBO
Temple’s 2009 documentary had a boosting effect on Johnson’s profile. He toured in support of the Stranglers in 2011 and played several sold-out gigs at the Rhythm and Roots festival in Kilkenny. In 2012, he published an autobiography, Looking Back on Me, co-authored with Zoe Howe. He was also recruited for the HBO television show Game of Thrones, appearing in four episodes as the royal executioner Ser Ilyn Payne. This made Johnson just look creepy and kill people, as Paine was tongue-tied and had no dialogue.
After being rushed to Southend Hospital for an unknown condition, Johnson was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in January 2013. He responded with remarkable stoicism. Given 10 months to live, but having refused chemotherapy which could have given him a few more weeks, he spoke candidly about his condition on Radio 4’s Front Row and organized a series of farewell concerts in March. His philosophical attitude was probably shaped by the fact that Irene died of cancer in 2004, and Johnson never came to terms with her loss (“the only time I don’t feel broken is when I’m playing,” he admitted).
After the tour dates, he teamed up with the Who’s Roger Daltrey to make the album Going Back Home (2014), which featured Johnson’s favorite songs from Dr Feelgood and his solo career. Both artists seemed to spur each other on, as Johnson’s guitar work was as cut and fiery as it’s ever been, while Daltrey threw himself into the songs without a care. Daltrey commented that Johnson was “one of those British guitarists that only British people do. Wilco is unique, it really is.” The album reached No. 3 in the UK, making it Johnson’s highest charting release outside of Dr Feelgood.
He admitted that he thought it would be “the last thing I did”, but later that year his story took a dramatic turn. Further tests revealed that he was suffering from a less dangerous form of cancer than previously thought, and doctors were confident that he could be operated on successfully. He underwent a complex nine-hour procedure involving the removal of a 3kg tumor and after a lengthy convalescence was declared cancer-free.
“It’s so strange and so strange that I have a hard time coming to terms with it,” he said. “Now I spend my time gradually coming to terms with the idea that my death is not . . .
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