Gwyn Thomas De Chroustchoff speaks to British proto-punk hero, Game Of Thrones hatchet man and cheater of death Wilko Johnson.
Sitting at his home in Southend, Wilko Johnson is coming to terms with everyday life. “I’m only really happy when I’m playing, the rest of the time I’m just sitting here,” he says. “I’m looking out at my garden now, it’s all overgrown like a jungle. Oh man, it’s so depressing.” Tiresome words from a privileged rock star, you might think. There’s much more to this story, though; three years ago, Johnson was ready to leave the mortal world forever.
As a guitarist, singer and songwriter, he has been an imposing figure in pop music since the mid-1970s, when his former band Dr Feelgood rejected the pretentious fanfare of prog rock in favour of face-to-face live shows and raw style. Johnson was the driving force behind their first four, incendiary albums, which inspired the punk movement: not only was his finger-slicing guitar style influential, but punk symbols like Joe Strummer and John Lydon have acknowledged the impact of his terrifying stage presence. After years touring and recording with Ian Dury & The Blockheads and his own Wilko Johnson Band, he found a late-blooming acting career, putting his fearsome grimace to use in Game Of Thrones as the mute executioner Ser Ilyn Payne. This should have been his swansong – he’d already written his autobiography, after all.
What happened next sounds like the fantasy of an overenthusiastic PR team. Rushed to hospital in 2012 and diagnosed with inoperable cancer, Johnson was given nine months to live. Instead of being struck down though, he was energized by a renewed passion for life and recorded the album Going Back Home with Roger Daltrey. While living – and touring – on borrowed time, a sudden breakthrough came. Johnson underwent radical surgery, leaving him officially cancer-free in 2014.
“Everything’s quite confused since then,” he says, in a sorrowful tone. Forget that notorious stare and scowl; offstage and off set, he’s unguarded and emotionally open, sometimes chuckling, sometimes revealing a deep melancholy. He howls with laughter at my suggestion that he’s thought about packing it in so he can focus on the unruly garden full-time; it’s obviously not over yet, and there’s even a new album on the cards.
It has a lot to live up to: the last one was recorded over eight days, and he didn’t think he’d be around by the time it was released. “If you’ve only got limited time to record something, there’s no time to bugger about and it’s always much better. If you’ve been told by a doctor, ‘you’re going to die,’ you’ve got got your deadline – literally.” Going Back Home was his most successful album since the 70s.“It’s ridiculous, man … I’m lying in a hospital bed, people bringing in silver discs and all that.”
He’s overwhelmed when he attempts to process the significance of his ordeal – it’s full of contradiction and chaos. The year he thought he was dying was among the best of his life, he says, giving him “a whole different way of looking at things”. But the combination of this extreme confrontation with mortality with a newfound fame and TV appearances “propelled it into a dream.” Then there was the long, post-operative “purgatory” in hospital, which he now looks back on warmly, due to the care shown by NHS staff. He’s even had to welcome the return of his depression – ironically, evidence that he’s back to normal. His autobiography, Don’t You Leave Me Here, was released last year and looks unflinchingly at his life both pre- and post-diagnosis.
He’s still a committed atheist, despite expressing a fondness for the Buddha: “I like the little smile, ‘cos he knows.” He does seem to have achieved a Zen-like satisfaction in some respects, though – having bought a telescope, he now gets his kicks from astrology, instead of amphetamine. Saturn sends him into a rapture: “God, it’s so beautiful. It’s like a little jewel… it’s perfect. You see the rings tilted; you see the shadow of the rings on the planet. Oh man, it’s great.” His voice is getting breathy. He’s very much alive.
Wilko Johnson, Tramshed, Cardiff, Sat 15 Apr. Tickets: £25. Info: 029 2023 5555 / www.tramshedcardiff.com