He spent some months teaching English at a secondary school around the time Dr Feelgood formed, but fell foul of the headteacher because of his long-haired, student-like appearance. His conversation, which involved much gesticulation and dramatic facial expressions, would often be punctuated by quotes from Blake or Langland’s Piers Plowman, and he taught himself Old Icelandic in order to read the Icelandic Sagas. He wrote his own poetry and aimed to write novels, though he observed that his appreciation of great literature meant that “the presumption of trying it myself is inhibiting”. He attended Westcliff high school for boys (his mother “used to scrub floors at the gas company to pay for our grammar school uniforms”) and went to Newcastle University to study English. Wilko nurtured academic ambitions alongside musical ones. Speedy, slashing rhythms became his stock-in-trade. Wilko Johnson on stage with Dr Feelgood at the Marquee Club, London, in the 1970s. When he found that playing right-handed meant he could not hold a plectrum, he perfected a way of flicking his fingernails across the strings, which helped him to play the speedy, slashing rhythms that became his stock-in-trade. Wilko instinctively began to play left-handed, but forced himself to switch to right-handed. Green’s knack for mixing up lead and rhythm guitar parts had a clear influence on Johnson’s technique. He first began playing the guitar after watching the Shadows on television, then later was inspired by Mick Green, guitarist with Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Johnson and his contemporaries dubbed the area the Thames Delta, in homage to the Mississippi Delta, which spawned the blues musicians they admired. 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. His father, a gas-fitter, was “a stupid and uneducated and violent person”, according to his son, and died when Wilko was a teenager. One of his earliest memories was of the 1953 floods, which hit low-lying Canvey badly and caused many deaths. He was born John Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex. “I look back on Dr Feelgood sometimes and I would do a lot of things differently,” Johnson said in 2012. Sneakin’ Suspicion reached No 10 on the album chart, and in 1979 the group enjoyed a top 10 singles hit with Milk and Alcohol, but the whirlwind arrival of punk had made them look outmoded. Johnson’s erratic and moody behaviour while on tour had already caused friction, and he left Dr Feelgood in April 1977. In particular, Brilleaux objected to Johnson’s song Paradise, in which the songwriter, who had married Irene Knight when they were both teenagers, admitted that “I love two girls, I ain’t ashamed”. However, the album Sneakin’ Suspicion (1977) proved to be Johnson’s swansong with the band, following acrimonious arguments during its recording. To their own amazement, Dr Feelgood had become one of the biggest bands in Britain. Johnson was adamant that the recording should sound raw and live and should not be tarted up in post- production, a stance that paid off when it rocketed to No 1. Stupidity (1976) was a mixture of their own songs and cover versions, not least Leiber & Stoller’s Riot in Cell Block No 9, which had become the vehicle for a trick by Johnson of mock-machine-gunning the audience with his guitar. Since the stage was the natural home for the hard-gigging Feelgoods, it made sense for the next album to be a live recording. Wilko Johnson in 2012 on Canvey Island, in the Thames estuary in Essex, where he grew up. The album gave Dr Feelgood their first chart position (No 17), and proved influential on New York musicians such as Richard Hell, the Ramones and Blondie. One of Johnson’s was their third single, Back in the Night, a perennial favourite in live shows. They followed it later that year with Malpractice, which featured several blues and R&B non-originals alongside another batch of Johnson’s tunes. 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 got into the charts. It was a refreshing antidote to the somnolent progressive rock of the era.
It was their partnership that drove the band to huge success in Britain just before the arrival of punk.ĭr Feelgood launched themselves on the back of the “pub rock” vogue, a back-to-basics mix of sweaty rock and rhythm & blues typified by the likes of Ducks Deluxe and Ian Dury’s band Kilburn and the High Roads. Johnson said he “felt like a lot of the power I had in whatever I was doing was radiating from him”. 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.
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