He remains one of the most incredible guys ever seen on guitar. A cross between the figure of the creepy undertaker who measures people before the Western duel and the prototype of the sharply dressed rebel, the yob in a tailor-made suit. Wilko Johnson pounded the black Telecaster guitar with fierce precision, hypnotizing people with his gaze from under the pudding-bowl hairline. And he moved like someone whose restlessness shot through his body like an electric shock.
dr feel good was the name of his band in the early ’70s, a bar band from Canvey Island, the petrochemical site on the eastern Thames Delta where Johnson was born John Peter Wilkinson in 1947. dr Feelgood played the blues as sloppy pub entertainment, and it was Johnson’s edgy, sometimes brutal energy that kicked open the crucial door – into punk, the movement that flared up over London when Dr. Feelgood celebrated their first number one album in 1976. Johnson was no longer there for the mega hit “Milk and Alcohol”, which Frank Zander sang in German. Willfulness, differences, the usual.
A character known for his wit and integrity, he’s popped in here and there through the years, releasing a critically acclaimed record with The Who singer Roger Daltrey as late as 2014. It was conceived as a farewell work: the pancreatic cancer that the doctors had diagnosed in him was considered fatal. In October 2014, Johnson announced that he had been discharged after undergoing surgery. A kind of rebirth, which he wrote about in the miracle confession “Don’t You Leave Me Here”. And he had also become a series star: In “Game Of Thrones” he played the bald, mute executioner Ilyn Payn.
Wilko Johnson died in Westcliff-on-Sea on November 21 at the age of 75. His family did not comment on the cause of death for the time being.