We were going to see them in Morecambe in November, but the dates were cancelled because of his illness. With of course Norman Watt-Roy, of the Blockheads, on bass guitar. Next week I am going up to Glasgow, with my youngest daughter, to see Wilko one more (I don’t want to write ‘last’) time. BTW did I say the book is called Shakin’ All Over, after the Johnny Kidd and the Pirates song? See how Wilko resonates?). Here’s a video of Dury’s ‘I want to be straight’ (in my forthcoming book I call this Dury’s ‘paean to orthotics’. After all, I’ve spent the last five years writing about that band, in part with Wilko in it. Later (after the madly self-destructive move of splitting from Dr Feelgood) Wilko joined Ian Dury and the Blockheads-well, again, how could I not be impressed. Once they supported Wilko, at the Gala Ballroom, Norwich I was very jealous. My schoolmate Simon loved Wilko too, and had an R&B band in Norwich influenced by them, called Sneakin’ Suspicion. He’s back in the night, now, with his average slide playing. Nevermind Kurt Cobain there is a sad death in Lee Brilleaux, too young. Many, many years later there is one of those astral conjunctions or some shit of coincidence, when one punk-related singer dies and is internationally mourned, and another dies to a fading coda of short obits. At the time including the Feelgoods sounded like evidence of Marley’s ignorance about punk later, the lyric is more acute, accurate. Bob Marley singing on Punky reggae party, a song he recorded not with the Wailers but with heavy Brit dubbers Aswad: The Damned, the Jam, the Clash. Lee and Wilko, what a pair, a tight suit and a manic grin, blowed harp and chopped guitar. The only exception to sitting, the only attractive energy I can remember seeing in the entire pre-punk live music desert is Dr Feelgood, a downstylish British turn, who inflect American R&B with a salty Southend flavour and look. And when they’d come on we’d sit on the wooden floor in the dark and watch them, maybe uncrossing our legs and rising for the encore. We’d sit on the wooden floor surrounded by the stone columns and oil portraits of dead Norwich worthies waiting for our bands. Progressive rock, grammar school throwbacks. I’ve seen the likes of Hawkwind and Gentle Giant there (maybe GG was at UEA). Everyone moans about St Andrew’s Hall, a kind of church where sound bounces and columns blank the stage, but somehow it’s on the gig circuit, a last choice for tour organisers. Lee Brilleaux and Wilko Johnson, of Dr FeelgoodĪ rush, an epiphany I have before I even know there is such a thing is at a gig in April 1977 at St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, one of my early punk gigs, the one I know I am a punk at. I used to go and see Dr Feelgood-Wilko’s original band-and then the Pirates (informed and inspired by Wilko), and then the Gang of Four, all the time during my pre-punk and punk years.
A musical innovator and bridge too-between guitarist Mick Green of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll band the Pirates and 1970 early 1980s postpunk art/propaganda band the Gang of Four. A romantic, then, a poet, a lyricist and songwriter, and guitarist.
Here is an extract from an unpublished punk rock memoir, OR Boy (say it out loud, it’s about East Anglia), about the truly great English guitarist Wilko Johnson, who once I seem to remember played a benefit gig to raise money to keep some Wordsworth manuscripts in Britain. I left it all so far behind I never thought I could / Now I just can’t understand what made you look so good / Stand and watch the river flow, go back to my dreams / Away from all these people and their stupid little scenes.-’Down by the waterside’
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