wilko johnson -- r.i.p.

I don't generally make a habit of eulogizing celebrities in this blog, so it can be hard to recognize when I really need to do it.

But when a celebrity mattered enough to me that I named my cat after him -- well, that's a strong indicator. My cat Wilko is blissfully unaware that her namesake, Wilko Johnson, has passed away.

I remember when Wilko (the Johnson, not the cat) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was about ten years ago, and everyone thought his death was imminent. I remember talking to Wreckless Eric about it, and saying that I should write him a letter telling him how much his music meant to me. Eric thought it was a good idea, but I never followed through. I should have.

In the event, Wilko lasted an unexpected decade or so -- apparently he had a rare nonaggressive form of pancreatic his disease. So in that time he wrote a memoir, performed and recorded what was arguably the best music of his career.

But that's not really where I want to focus.

I became aware of Wilko because of  Dr. Feelgood, the band that shot him to prominence. In England, anyway. Fickle fate never really accorded Wilko much fame in the US. But I'll ignore that. Dr. Feelgood was (technically, still is) a British R&B band, and Wilko was their original guitarist. I bought Dr. Feelgood's first album, Down by the Jetty, at a used record store in Manhattan. This was at a time that I was first getting really interested in rock music, and had taken an interest in the British pub rock movement of the mid 1970s. I saw Dr. F's name mentioned in the liner notes on a Ducks Deluxe album. Back then, that was all that was necessary to get me to try a band. I loved the gritty quality. In some ways they were like Ducks Deluxe, who had become my favorite band -- my rock and roll ground zero if you will. But they were different. In some ways they were more disciplined. Crisper. I have heard them described as being like the early Rolling Stones, or the George Thorogood, or The Blues Brothers band. 

Dr. Feelgood was, at the time, organized around an axis of two charismatic frontmen -- Wilko Johnson and Lee Brilleaux. The two of them shared vocal duties. Instrumentally, Brilleaux played harmonica. He also played occasional slide guitar. But Wilko was the band's primary guitarist. He had developed an unusual playing style. It was very choppy, but he would play rhythm and lead at the same time -- in effect sounding like two guitarists.

Dr. Feelgood quickly became one of my favorite bands -- in no small part because of Wilko. He was writing the bulk of their original material.

Sadly, Wilko's role in Dr. Feelgood ended in 1977. He left the group while they were recording their fourth album (including one live effort). It has never been clear to me whether he quit or the rest of the guys kicked him out. The catalyst was a dispute over what songs to include, but of course that couldn't be the entire story. I think I saw in a documentary that the pressure of writing songs for the group was getting to Wilko. One can speculate about other causes, but the bottom line is that Wilko was out of the group.

There was a possibility of a reconciliation, but that was not to be, as Wilko explained.

At any rate, the band replaced Wilko and soldiered on. In fact, an iteration of the band is still around today, having released a new album earlier this month. But, by the end of 1982 Lee Brilleaux was the only original member left. And he died in 1994. I think Gypie Mayo, the guitarist who replaced Wilko, was technically a better musician. And the group was still great. But they lost Wilko's distinctive sound, and I think that was a huge loss.

Wilko continued with other bands -- as frontman for the Solid Senders, as a member of Ian Dury's Blockheads. And he recorded a bunch of solo albums. My favorite among them was Ice on the Motorway. I remember first coming across it in a record store. These were the days before the world wide web, and it was hard to keep track of who had albums coming out -- especially when we were talking about British acts whose albums weren't being released in the US.

I never did get to see Wilko (or Dr. Feelgood, for that matter) in concert. That's a function of my age and the fact that I live in the US, as opposed to Europe. But I have spent many hours listening to the music Wilko made -- through all the various incarnations of his career. And I am thankful that I knew his music.