We just fantasised about the place, and it was all wrapped up in the music. It wasn’t the musical influence of Canvey Island, it was the music’s influence on Canvey Island. We played locally around Southend and during that time we brought our thing together. It wasn’t very fashionable back then in the early seventies. Dr Feelgood were a typical local band, four mates into that style of music. There wasn’t much music going on on Canvey Island. What kind of influence did Canvey Island have on you and your music? Yes the first time I started hearing the great blues men - Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddly - when I first heard them, I knew I was always going to love this music. Is that what musically fired you up when you started out? It meant I began learning about the American R&B records that inspired them. Everything about them, they were just so anarchic. I also started learning more about music at that time. Then I got an opportunity to buy a Watkins Rapier, this was a right handed guitar I started learning, even if it was counter intuitive. Everybody at school could play better than me. I’m left handed and when I started playing, I did it backwards. It was the instrument itself rather than knowing anything about music. I was like ‘I want one of these things and I’ll be getting all the girls’. I didn’t know anything about music but was absolutely fascinated by the instrument. What inspired you to start making your own music? It was played on the radio and I went wild. The first record I bought was Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles. What were the first records you got into? We were lucky enough to quiz Wilko on his career, his songs and how he’s cheated death…
#WILKO JOHNSON WRITING AWARD FULL#
Now, not only is he enjoying life to the full but he’s arguably never been more successful with both his music, live gigs and even landing a role in Games of Thrones.
#WILKO JOHNSON WRITING AWARD SERIES#
Given only ten months to live, he threw himself into his music, playing a series of exhilarating gigs and making the top three album Going Back Home with The Who’s Roger Daltrey.ĭuring all this success, Wilko also received a operation, offering him a new lease of life despite all previous predictions. Then in early 2013, Wilko’s career took an unfortunate twist after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was his energised performances that paved the way for them and led him to enjoy success for more than 30 years with Feelgood, his solo band and even joining Ian Dury’s Blockheads. Without him, it’s unlikely that bands like the Jam and the Clash would have succeeded. Johnson, 65, will happily tell you that learning last month that the end of his life is probably less than a year away has not all been negative, with an almost “euphoric” feeling keeping some of his darker traits seem totally in check.Performer, charmer, music maker, raconteur - all these titles and more suit iconic songwriter and live wire artist Wilko Johnson.Īs a founding member of Canvey Island’s celebrated, ‘pub rockers’ Dr Feelgood, Wilko had a steering hand in influencing a whole generation of artists in thrall to the primal power of rhythm and blues. It is the kind of joke, accompanied by a devilish laugh, that makes death far easier to talk about than expected. “Why didn’t we think of this 20 years ago?” Johnson told Reuters, at home a few miles from his Canvey Island birthplace, near where the Thames estuary opens into the English Channel. One British newspaper has even affectionately dubbed him the country’s latest “national treasure”. The musician, songwriter and sometime actor has watched with amazement as a planned tour of farewell concerts sold out and interest has surged in almost anything he has touched, including the 2009 award-winning documentary “Oil City Confidential.”
The musician, songwriter and sometime actor has watched with amazement as a planned tour of farewell concerts sold out and interest has surged in almost anything he has touched, including the 2009 award-winning documentary "Oil City Confidential." Photograph taken on February 1, 2013. Johnson, cult guitarist from 1970s beat band Dr Feelgood and herald of English punk rock, is on a high - even though he is dying of pancreatic cancer. Musician Wilko Johnson poses for a photograph at his home in Westcliff - on- sea, Essex, southern England February 1, 2013.
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