Some thoughts on Wilko Johnson

 RIP WILKO JOHNSON

12 July 1947 – 21 November 2022

 

One Sunday night in 1975, the DJ who presented a juke box jury type programme on Radio 5, South Africa’s national music station, introduced “Back in the Night” by Dr Feelgood, a band I’d never hear of before and it was the same for the members of the jury, called to judge a slate of mostly current pop records that sounded nothing like “Back in the Night.” 

 

I was hooked at the very moment the tinny, angular shuffle rhythm of Wilko’s rhythm guitar part and Lee Brilleaux’s basic, insistent slide guitar riff emerged from the old tub driven radio I was listening to. I can’t claim that the sound roared from the radio, because the single speaker couldn’t roar if its life depended on it and the song itself, as tough as the rhythm was, hardly had the full bodied Les Paul roar of the kind of hard rock I was accustomed to then. “Back in the Night” not only sounded nothing like the other tunes the juke box jury were called on to judge, it also sounded like nothing else on Radio and like nothing I’d ever heard before.

 

I must admit that my record collection was pretty sparse at the time, comprising of probably only The Beatles 1962 – 1966, and Neil Diamond’s Gold and Taproot Manuscript albums, and that my overall exposure to rock music was pretty basic: from the radio, from a couple of records I borrowed from the Municipal Library and from some records my mates had, but it was hardly eclectic and mostly standard commercial rock, much of what is now known as Classic Rock. I hadn’t yet begun learning anything about the blues much less listening to it or buying blues albums.

 

I was mostly ignorant of the broad details of rock’s history and completely ignorant of the wide variety of music out there. The term and concept of “pub rock” was thoroughly alien to me.

 

Dr Feelgood came as a shock to the system. Within a few days after first hearing “Back in the Night” I found the parent album, Malpractice (1975), the second Feelgoods’ album and immediately bought it and almost wore out the grooves over the next few years. In 1976 I bought the live album Stupidity (1976),  in 1977 the debut album, Down by the Jetty (1975) and then, released in the same year, the final Feelgoods album on which Wilko contributed songs, sung and played,  Sneakin’ Suspicion. 

 

Because I was fan of the band, I continued buying the albums with John Mayo up to A Case of the Shakes(1981) and then gave up. Without Wilko, Dr Feelgood had reverted to being a journeymen pub band, albeit with a bigger name and being able to play in larger venue. Mayo was a good guitarist and the band wrote songs that were okay enough but the spark of genius and eccentric quirkiness  that Wilko contributed was irrevocably gone.

 

Wilko brought this choppy, highly individualistic guitar style and intelligent song writing style to the band. Somehow, though, he never seemed to have enough material to provide, say, 12 songs per album and the band always inserted some covers. On Down by the Jetty, the two final tracks, “Oyeh!” and “Bonie Moronie/Tequila” are utter filler, especially the latter live track, and to this day I’m baffled why this performance was chosen

 

On Malpractice, even the covers are powerful and substantial and completely fit the template. That is not the case on Sneaking Suspicion where the Johnson songs are the only worthwhile ones and not one cover version is essential, never the controversial “Lucky Seven.” It also doesn’t help that Brilleaux seems to have lost the ability to sing and settled on the gruff bark he employed henceforth as his default style. the band would have been far better served by waiting until Wilko had more songs together, such as the tunes on Sneaking Suspicion and the songs released on Solid Senders (1978.)

 

Neither Dr Feelgood nor Johnson as solo artist, conquered the world, for that the music was too niche  and not necessarily radio friendly contemporary pop hits, but one will always wonder whether Dr Feelgood would’ve left a better legacy behind if Wilko had been with the band for a far longer stretch.

 

Wilko carried on, first with the short-lived Solid Senders group, where he was, seemingly, one amongst equals, and then a purely solo career backed by a drummer and bassist, continued working and writing, recording and releasing new material. On  much of the material one misses a proper vocalist.  Wilko is earnest and can carry a tune but his voice is tad thin and weedy for the genre.

 

I must confess that I’ve not followed Wilko’s solo career. Firstly, because I wasn’t aware of it to any great degree and the records, or CDs were not readily available in South African records stores (though I did buy Solid Senders) and now that I’ve listened to his post-Feelgoods  output, I can’t honestly say I’m sorry.  If the post-Wilko Feelgoods albums do not live up to much, neither does Wilko’s later records. They sound too lightweight.

 

Brilleaux died a long time ago, and now only the original Feelgoods rhythm section is alive, conserving the memories of those halcyon ‘70s heydays when Dr Feelgood emerged from the pubs, conquered the UK and were called the precursors of punk rock. 

 

Wilko’s angular, choppy guitar style is echoed in a great deal of post punk rhythm guitar and I suppose this would be his greatest contribution, musically. The punks and post punks were not into the blues; they just liked the fast paced, simple style of Dr Feelgood and, allegedly, the short-ish hair and more prosaic clothing. Dr Feelgood didn’t sound, look or dress like the dinosaur rock groups the punks wanted to eliminate.

 

For me, Wilko was a force in music, and will forever have a spot in the pantheon for his role, for a couple of years, from roughly 1973 to 1978 and then faded away into a low-key career path. His earlies work with Dr Feelgood will probably always be cited as highly influential and eternally powerful, but I can’t see that his subsequent career, when he was kind of coasting on the earlier reputation much like Dr Feelgood, will ever receive the attention or adulation of the breakthrough years. Most eulogies feature some story of the first time the writer saw or heard the band and it’s always, much like mine, about those years in the pubs or just as the band began moving out of the circuit, when Dr Feelgood was genuinely exciting because they were so different, so daring and so special. 

 

Wilko simply kept on doing what he did best for the rest of his life, and no doubt successfully so but he ceased being an innovator or an artist whose lates work one had to hear.

 

Having said that, he will always be revered. For me, he and Eric Clapton (while with Cream) were my top two guitarists of my teenage years and Dr Feelgood and Cream were the top two bands of that period of my life.  From 1977 my record collection expanded exponentially and quickly encompassed more rock bands, more blues artists, and reggae and funk, and I learnt much more about rock history and the important musicians to date, but however much I might have come to like Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley or Parliafunkadelicment Thang, Cream and Dr Feelgood remained at the centre and was the music I kept returning to, to this day. Malpractice and Disraeli Gears are definitely on my Desert Island Disc list. 

 

I will always be thankful that Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John Sparks, and John Martin got together to form a band and that between Wilko’s unique guitar style and engaging lyrics, Lee’s ominous onstage presence and tough voice and the supple and swinging rhythm section, they produced something that was indeed a whole far greater than the sum of the parts, and I’m thankful that Wilko’s genius for R & B was the motor that drove the band to the heights it achieved.