He was punk before punk existed and now he’s alive when he was supposed to be dead and buried. Former Dr Feelgood guitarist and national treasure Wilko Johnson talks to Steve Tucker.
Guitar genius Wilko Johnson is in bullish mood, and why not? The guy has had the best comeback since Lazarus. Johnson, who brings his band to Cardiff’s Tramshed this month, was given 10 months to live due to pancreatic cancer six years ago, but the wily old gunslinger pulled himself back from the brink and has far weightier things on his mind than mere life and death.
“Wilko, you gotta tell us, did Dr Feelgood invent punk?”
It’s a valid question. Before the Ramones were surgically encased in drainpipe trousers or the Sex Pistols terrorised the Home Counties, Canvey Island’s finest had effectively begun the movement, in the UK at least, the seismic shocks of which still reverberate through music today. With Roxette and She Does It Right as cases in point, fronted by the late, great Lee Brilleaux and driven by Wilko’s oft-imitated, never-matched staccato guitar, in the early 1970s the ‘Feelies’ effectively were punk before the term even existed.
Johnson considers the question at length: “Hmm, did Dr Feelgood invent punk?” before roaring with laughter: “Of course we bloody did!”
Don’t take my word for it, or Wilko’s for that matter. The Stranglers have doffed their caps, Johnny Rotten nicked his act and there was even contemporary validation from one of punk’s high priests himself, as Johnson recalls.
“Not long after I got chucked out of Dr Feelgood, I was walking along Oxford Street and this bunch of young blokes came up to me and one of them goes, ‘Wilko, how are you? You don’t know me, but I’m a big fan.’ And I said, “I know who you are, son, you’re Joe Strummer. I’ve seen you in the newspapers.’”
Johnson was well aware of the effect Dr Feelgood were having at the time, too. “As soon as we started playing in London, we noticed a lot of young kids in the crowd and they were going off and forming bands of their own. I suppose that was where punk started. But we were bloody great, to be honest. No-one could touch us.”
Fast forward to early 2013, when the guitarist was given the news that the swelling in his belly was a tumour and that he would be dead within 10 months. What happened next, though, is worthy of a TV series all of its own with Johnson – also known to Game Of Thrones fans for his role as an executioner in the first two series – playing himself. Reeling from the devastating news, he decided to die with his boots on and embarked on a ‘farewell’ tour.
“The day I was told I was dying I was calm, I guess I was in shock. I walked out of the hospital and suddenly the sky was bluer, the clouds more beautiful, the birds were singing just that little bit louder. I just wanted to keep playing, it’s all I know, I wanted to keep going until I was too sick to go on stage.”
It was whilst playing a festival that what only be described as a miracle occurred. A man Johnson thought was a press photographer came back stage and told him, that for a dying man, he looked pretty well and urged him to visit a doctor friend of his. The upshot was a reappraisal of Johnson’s condition and an 11-hour operation which saw the tumour removed and the patient back in good health, with the cancer now seemingly beaten.
He is phlegmatic now about his second bite at life, commenting: “I appreciate things more now. I think more deeply. You could say I’m more philosophical now.”
You don’t need the wisdom of Socrates to know you should get down to the Tramshed and worship the altar of Wilko Johnson. After all, he’s 71 now and probably only has another 100 years left in him.
The Wilko Johnson Band, Tramshed, Cardiff. Fri 26 Apr. Tickets: £28.50. Info: 029 2023 5555 / tramshedcardiff.com