It was just going to be a piece of merchandise, a book to sell along with the CDs and T-shirts at gigs. WJ: It was because this book initially came about and happened without my knowledge really. PB: You have described your new book, ‘Looking Back At Me’, as being “a fractured autobiography.” What do you mean by that? Pennyblackmusic spoke to Wilko Johnson about his years in Dr Feelgood, and ‘Looking Back At Me’. A Dr Feelgood box set, ‘All Through the City (With Wilko 1974-1977)’, comprising of all four of Johnson’s studio albums with them and a CD of previously unreleased material, is also imminent. Howe, who is the wife of Dylan Howe, is the author of two previous rock biographies, ‘Typical Girls: The Story of the Slits’(2009), which is about the 70’s female punk band, and ‘How’s Your Dad?: The Sons and Daughters of Rock Royalty’.
Johnson’s autobiography, ‘Looking Back At Me’, written in association with Zoe Howe, is being published to coincide with it. The Wilko Johnson Band will be playing a fifteen date UK tour in April.
The next few months will be especially busy for Johnson, who is now 64. In the time since the release of ‘Oil City Confidential’, the Wilko Johnson Band has been playing to increasingly large audiences. Since 1985, he has fronted his own trio, the Wilko Johnson Band, which also consists of the Blockheads rhythm section, bassist Norman Watt-Roy and drummer Dylan Howe. By the time the group’s fourth album, ‘Sneakin’ Suspicion’(1977) was released, Johnson, who had been sacked mid-session, was, however, already gone.īrilleaux would carry on with various different line-ups of Dr Feelgood until his death, and, although both Sparks and Martin left the band in 1982, the group, without any of its original members, continues to play and record to this day.Īfter leaving Dr Feelgood, Johnson spent three years fronting the Solid Senders, with whom he released an eponymous album, and then joined Ian Dury and the Blockheads as a guitarist for their third album, ‘Laughter’. A live album, ‘Stupidity’ (1976), caught the band’s enormous stage presence and spent eight weeks at number one in the UK album chart. The band’s debut album, ‘Down by the Jetty (1974)’, was recorded abruptly and live in the studio, and its follow-up, ‘Malpractice’ (also 1974), had a similar spiky, malevolent energy. Their music was similarly unique, combining Brilleaux’s rasping sneer of a vocal, Johnson’s trademark jerky guitar and the thunderous rhythm section into a huge, but primal and menacing sound. In the progressive rock era of the mid 1970s, they looked like nobody else, wearing short, brutally cut haircuts and cheap, hand-down suits. Sparks (bass) and John “The Big Figure” Martin. ‘Oil City Confidential’, which takes its name from the huge oil refinery towers that dominate the landscape of Canvey Island, through a mixture of new and old interviews, rarely seen live footage and documentary film of the era, captures Dr Feelgood’s rise and then its fall as vocalist Lee Brilleaux and Johnson fell out.Īs well as Brilleaux, who died of cancer at the age of 41 in 1994, and Johnson, Dr Feelgood also consisted of two other Canvey Island locals, John B.
He was the director of both the Sex Pistols films, ‘The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ (1979) and ‘The Filth and the Fury’ (2000), and had also made a documentary about Joe Strummer, ‘The Future is Unwritten’ (2007), as well as a comedy fantasy musical, ‘Earth Girls Are Easy’ (1988). Temple had also made several other music films. As punk took off, they found themselves relegated out of music history books.įilmmaker Julien Temple’s 2009 documentary film about Dr Feelgood, ‘Oil City Confidential’, has done much to restore the band’s reputation, and made an unlikely late star out of Johnson. Their early fans included both Joe Strummer and John Lydon, but their original line-up broke up at the height of their success in 1977 when their songwriter and guitarist Wilko Johnson was fired from the band. The group, who formed in the faded Essex holiday resort of Canvey Island in 1971, were the missing link between rhythm and blues and punk. Dr Feelgood’s influence was for thirty years largely forgotten.