Parade Of Great Guitarists: Wilko Johnson (1947-2022)

Continuing our examination of the canon of non-standard six string heroes, we look at the recently fallen king of angry robot r&b.

Dr. Feelgood was unlike anything British pop had seen when they came tearing out of their native Canvey Island in 1975. For that matter, they were alien to American pop, or the pop scene of any territory other than Mars. True, they were nominally an “r&b band,” placing them on a timeline with virtually all the country’s best bands from the previous decade – The Rolling Stones obviously, The Pretty Things, The Yardbirds, and a few hundred more outfits slashing and burning their way through the Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley catalogs for fun and profit. But they wielded those flatted fifths like they were a stiletto, playing this music from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago’s South Side with a wired menace that rendered it thoroughly modern. In their rumpled suits, they looked less like a rock ‘n’ roll band than the villains from UK police procedural The Sweeney after heisting a musical instrument retailer. Much of the blame can be laid at the winklepicker’ed toes of guitarist Wilko Johnson, who died Nov. 21st at his home at Westcliff-On-Sea, England, at age 75.

“Wilko Johnson was a precursor of punk,” Billy Bragg informed his Twitter followers the day Wilko died. “His guitar playing was angry and angular, but his presence — twitchy, confrontational, out of control — was something we’d never beheld before in U.K. pop.” Indeed, in his black suit and jaggedly-cut pudding bowl haircut, scything at his trademark black Telecaster with his bare fingertips in a violent approximation of Mother Maybelle’s “Carter scratch” technique, he looked like an angry robot from Westworld just gone rogue and about to jump in the audience and begin rampaging. Bragg added that Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer, and The Jam’s Paul Weller “learned a lot from his edgy demeanor.”

Billy Bragg @billybragg

Wilko Johnson was a precursor of punk. His guitar playing was angry and angular, but his presence - twitchy, confrontational, out of control - was something we'd never beheld before in UK pop. Rotten, Strummer and Weller learned a lot from his edgy demeanour. He does it right RIP

“My first inspiration was the blues, but I realized I couldn’t write about freight trains and chain gangs,” Johnson remarked in a 2013 Uncut magazine interview. “There weren’t any in Canvey. So I tried to keep it all in Essex, to get the landscape, the oil refineries, into (our) songs.”

He was born John Peter Wilkinson on July 12, 1947, a Canvey Island native. He went from suffering at the hands of an abusive father who toiled as a gas fitter to scrubbing guitar in teenage rock ‘n’ roll bands to studying English at Newcastle University. He specialized in medieval literature, even teaching himself Old Icelandic to read that nation’s ancient sagas. The hippie trail took him to India and back, but upon his return to Canvey, he reversed his name to eradicate his father’s legacy. With fellow r&b enthusiasts Lee Brilleaux on vocals and harp, drummer John “The Big Figure” Martin and bassist John Sparks, he formed Dr. Feelgood in 1971, harkening back to the excitement of his favorite band, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. The latter’s tough, stripped down, American rhythm and blues attack stood in complete opposition to the rock operas and concept album rock of the day, as would the short-haired, cheap-suited Feelgoods’. Pirates guitarist Mick Green’s burly, muscular simultaneous rhythm/lead approach especially appealed to Wilko, who figured out his own, more aggressive version.

The undistilled danger at the heart of the Feelgoods was heroic to a generation looking for something new, something their own. Though they toiled on Britannia’s pub circuit, their viciousness stood out from the good-time bar rock of their peers. Sure, they played 12-bars like everyone else, but they were thermonuclear 12-bars. This appealed to new rock ‘n’ roll generations on both sides of the Atlantic, not just nascent punk rockers in the homeland. A famed story has Blondie drummer Clem Burke walking into a party at bandmates Debbie Harry and Chris Stein’s house, upon returning from visiting London. Among the guests: Members of The Heartbreakers, Ramones and some of the Talking Heads. Under Burke’s arm: Dr. Feelgood’s second album Malpractice, practically overproduced next to their 1975 debut Down By The Jetty, a stark, black & white affair recorded in mono like some ancient ‘50s rockabilly album.

“We put that on and played it repeatedly,” Stein told the New York Times. “Everyone was transfixed. It was so simple and raw. I remember people saying, ‘This is what the Ramones are going to sound like when they make a record.’”

A large part of that had to do with Wilko’s manic hacking at his beaten-to-shit black Tele, stabbing at chords with his bare fingers, as the rest of his left hand added brief bursts of lead between chords, like a call-and-response on guitar. Then there was his embrace of transistorized HH guitar amps – no tube warmth for him. This created a cold, clipped, immediate tone that leaped at you with an unhealed urgency. If it was possible for an electric guitar to sound like someone had taken a cheese grater to your face until all your nerve endings dangled in midair, this was it. Add to that his pissed-off cyborg dance, which grew scarier as he got older and shaved his head to deal with a receding hairline. 

Wilko’s anti-guitar science became one of the key inspirations to first-wave UK punk/post-punk guitarists, just as his anti-showmanship influenced frontmen like Strummer and Rotten. Cue up “Roxette,” then anything from Gang Of Four. Even Keith Levine sounds like he’s channeling Wilko on Public Image Ltd.’s “Analisa.” Weller especially flashes his Wilko-ness on “The Modern World.” Unfortunately, Wilko shot himself in his own foot, blowing out of the Feelgoods mid-’77, after three of their four albums crashed the Top Ten and they toured America a few times. Both Wilko solo and his former band continued, and he even getting in a stint in fellow UK protopunk Ian Dury’s Blockheads. And his music remained wired and vital, even if the greater world seemed oblivious. In the end he was better known to the modern world for beating cancer a few years back, as well as a recurring role as Ser Ilyn Payne on Game Of Thrones. But, dammit! Wilko Johnson was one of the greatest guitar players this planet has seen! Instantly recognizable in a few notes’ time! That’s what ultimately counts. ‘Nuff said.

The Senders’ All Killer No Filler (1977-2001), featuring Tim Stegall liner notes, out now

The Senders, who may have been the closest America got to a homegrown Dr. Feelgood, just had a comprehensive two-record retrospective, All Killer No Filler (1977-2001), issued by Left For Dead Records. For those just tuning in, they were one of early NYC punk’s finest bands, with a swagger like The Heartbreakers emphasizing their r&b and rockabilly roots far more, whilst slicking back their hair and dressing in the finest vintage suits the Lower East Side’s thrift stores had to offer. They were Johnny Thunders’ favorite band, and he frequently scrubbed guest guitar with them. Among the goodies on All Killer – besides the entire contents of their two ‘70s-era seven-inchers and highlights from later LPs – includes an unreleased live set featuring Thunders, cut at Max’s Kansas City in 1978. I was honored to have liner notes commissioned for the project, alongside ones bythe formidable James “The Hound” Marshall, and some fabulous cover art by Punk magazine’s Bruce Carleton. The only way you’ll get better educated by this amazing-yet-underrated band is to read frontman Phil Marcade’s Punk Avenue, the best insider memoir of first-wave NYC punk life ever written. 

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