Looking Back At Me

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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. 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. Despite, or in spite of Johnson’s significant influence as a guitarist and songwriter, he is paradoxically now most well known due to his diagnosis with terminal cancer and his subsequent recovery from same. Johnson writes about this particular part of his life with honesty and it’s a particularly troubling but ultimately uplifting section of the book to read. 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.

Shortly afterwards, he began to focus on the Wilko Johnson Band, his longest-running musical project, with whom he would go on to release seven albums over the next three decades, including the 1981 debut Ice on the Motorway, 1988’s Barbed Wire Blues and, most recently, 2018’s Blow Your Mind.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.”

Others to pay tribute included Sleaford Mods, who called Johnson “the unsung inventor of post Mod, Mod,” and The Stranglers.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 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. What emerges from this book is a passionate, private, intelligent, funny, eloquent and warm human being.

Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand was among those to pay tribute to Johnson. “His unique, wired playing and stage presence thrilled and inspired many guitarists, myself included,” he tweeted. “When I interviewed him a few years ago, he was bright, thoughtful and an astonishing story teller. His presence will be felt for many more years.” There’s also this really sweet story that Jools Holland told in the early days of Squeeze. Squeeze supported the Feelgoods in Southend-on-Sea and they were really nervous in the presence of their heroes when they came offstage. They’d just played a set and had been watching from the wings all drenched in sweat. After the show Lee Brilleaux came in the dressing room and said, ‘I don’t want to be an old mum, but if you don’t put a cardigan on you’re going to get a cold, ‘cos you’re all wet…’. Squeeze thought that was insane! Lee Brilleaux! This wolfish man onstage, just being really sweet.” 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.In the meantime, he is focused on trying to maintain a resolution he made while recovering from his operation. He was in pain and protesting that he wanted to go home, when he had a revelation: “I suddenly realised there were all these people, that I never even saw, looking down microscopes and all that, doing all this for me. And I kind of gave myself a good talking to.” He resolved never to complain about anything ever again: to be, as he puts it, “less of a twat”. They looked like three villains from The Sweeney who’d been forced to keep an eye on someone’s awkward nephew – Johnson, who, while the other members glowered, would fling himself around the stage, occasionally colliding with his bandmates, raising his guitar to his shoulder like a gun, his mouth perpetually open, his eyes bulging with the effects of amphetamines beneath a pudding-basin haircut: “Me and Lemmy always used to have this saying that the third day you’re up on speed is the best, because it feels like your skull is full of Rice Krispies and someone’s just poured milk into your thought processes – it’s great.” Always remember that all the music before punk was self indulgent and lifeless. God bless Wilko https://t.co/noA3e4wqfT

There’s a woman at the heart of this tale too: Johnson’s wife, Irene, who died in 2004. She’s the glue that holds this story together – the title an obvious nod to his grief – and she sounds a remarkable person, tolerating as she did her husband’s myriad indiscretions. Johnson and Lemmy had “trouble over a woman” in the mid-1970s, he says, in a fine section full of punk’s great and good, including John Lydon, but there’s no sign of any marital guilt. The section where Irene dies, however, is full of raw, affecting sentiment, especially when Johnson watches his sons “sat together under the trees… I wondered what they were feeling”. Here, he throws his hands up, showing all of his flaws. 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. As a huge fan of Dr Feelgood, it was great to read about their inception and eventual dissolution - obviously this is from Johnson’s perspective and there’s always two sides to every story. I’m not sure where or whether the other Feelgoods have given their thoughts publicly or in print in the past?

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. His economical songwriting, jerky guitar technique, clangorous sound and manic stage act stayed for the next 35 years exactly as they had been in his Dr Feelgood heyday. He remained resolutely out of style. A terrific read but also troubling. Here is a man who has been a factor in my life albeit from a distance for many years letting you into his head warts and all. Not sure I could write an autobiography with anything like the candour or frankness as this one. But then my life is a much less interesting one. As the infamous phrase goes to live in interesting times or some such. This man chose to tell us how he got started, how he lost his way several times, found it again, lost his nearest and dearest and then was faced with what most of us dread, an inoperable disease. Quite how he kept going is remarkable and you can read all about it between these covers.