They sounded like a product of the mid 1970s, as if some of the desperation and nihilism of the era of stagflation and pub bombings had seeped into the bones of the old songs they played. It was simple idea, but that was the point: to provide a stark alternative to the increasingly grandiose ambitions of progressive rock (music, Johnson dismissively suggested, that “sounded like birds twittering”), one that suggested something essential and potent had been lost along the way. “Stand and watch the towers burning, at the break of day,” ran the atmospheric opening line of All Through the City: a description of staring at the Shell Haven oil refinery while coming down from amphetamines. He also had a thing about lyrics that attempted to imbue his home town of Canvey Island with the kind of mythic aura the blues and rock’n’roll had conferred on the Mississippi delta. Johnson wrote original material in the same vein, as if all the musical developments that had taken place since the mid-60s hadn’t happened: Roxette, She Does It Right, Back in the Night.

They played the kind of rhythm and blues and rock’n’roll covers that Britain’s beat groups had played in the early 60s, before the advent of psychedelia had made pop a more complex and ostensibly intellectual business: Route 66, Bonie Moronie, I’m a Hog for You Baby, Riot in Cell Block Number 9. On one level, what Dr Feelgood did was very straightforward. Photograph: Estate of Keith Morris/Redferns More accurately, they looked like three villains from The Sweeney who had been forced to keep an eye on their boss’s unpredictable nephew: Johnson, who careered around the stage, mouth permanently open, eyes bulging with the effect of amphetamines beneath his pudding-basin haircut, raising his guitar to his shoulder as if it were a gun, occasionally colliding with his bandmates as they affected to ignore him and glowered at the audience.ĭr Feelgood in 1976 … (L-R) Lee Brilleaux, John B Sparks, John ‘The Big Figure’ Martin and Wilko Johnson. The oft-repeated line is that, with their cheap suits and air of menace, Dr Feelgood looked less like rock stars than villains from The Sweeney. Their late frontman Lee Brilleaux was a brilliant vocalist and performer, but Wilko Johnson was Dr Feelgood’s visual focus. When other musicians attested to the life-changing impact of seeing Dr Feelgood live in 1974 or 75 – and everyone from Paul Weller and Joe Strummer to Suggs from Madness and Bill Drummond of the KLF did – it was always Johnson they singled out. The astonishing story of Johnson’s diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2013, followed by his seemingly miraculous recovery after a doctor who happened to be in the audience at one of his farewell shows suggested he visit an oncologist for a second opinion, had made him more famous than he had ever been: a “100-1 shot for the title of Greatest Living Englishman”, as one critic put it, who had first wowed the general public with the calm, philosophical acceptance of imminent death he displayed in interviews after his diagnosis, then cheated death entirely.īut, really, there was no danger of anything overshadowing Johnson’s importance as a guitarist. W hen the Guardian interviewed Wilko Johnson in 2015, he expressed concern that he might now be viewed “as the Cancer Bloke rather than a guitar player”.

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