![]() Wilko employs a finger-style, chop-chord strumming action (the ‘stab’, as he describes it). ![]() He himself idolised Mick Green from Johnny Kidd and The Pirates, but Wilko has his very own style. Many cite that band as the spark that lit the punk fire, and many hold Wilko up as a big influence on their own guitar playing. From their birth in 1971 to 1977, when he was sacked amid a bitter row with singer Lee Brilleaux. But I wanted to begin by going back to his days with the fabulous Canvey Island band, Dr Feelgood. Obviously, there is lots to ask him about his health, past and present and his brush with death. Then there’s the imminent UK tour in April and the headline show at The Royal Albert Hall in London in September, to celebrate 30 years of the Wilko Johnson Band and his 70th birthday in July. 25 songs recorded by Wilko between 20, including re-workings of Wilko-penned Dr Feelgood favourites such as “She Does It Right”, “Twenty Yards Behind”, “Sneaking Suspicion” and “Roxette”. Well, first of all, the “peg to hang” our chat on is the release – on 10 th March, of a two CD “Best Of” set, “ Keep It To Myself – The Best Of Wilko Johnson”, on the Chess label. His career is on a high but the man himself is still trying to come terms with the fact he is not dead! Speaking on the ‘phone from his Southend home on the day he was supposed to be back at the Cambridgeshire hospital to have a six monthly scan, he told me he had mixed up the dates and would now go “next week.” In 2017, Wilko is still very much with us, still rocking all over the world and still cancer-free. After a long period of convalesence, he was given the all clear on the cancer diagnosis and doctors are still amazed he is cancer-free. After surgery Wilko had to be treated for two life threatening tumours on his lung and liver. Radical surgery removed his spleen, pancreas, part of his stomach and part of his small and large intestine. He underwent a nine hour life-saving operation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridgeshire, to remove the seven pound and 11 ounce tumour from Wliko’s pancreas, in April 2014. ![]() A music photographer friend who is also a breast cancer surgeon, Charlie Chan, urged Wilko to seek a second opinion and set him up to see a friend of his, surgeon Emmanuel Huguet, who eventually told him he could save his life A man who refused treatment and resigned himself to his imminent fate, while still performing around the world to say goodbye to his loyal fans.īut a man who was still alive and kicking some 15 months after his diagnosis, astounding doctors. This is the man who was told by medics in late 2012, that he had less than a year to live, diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Looking for a “good angle” in the prep’ for an interview with Wilko Johnson really isn’t necessary. Feelgood’s heyday.Legendary guitarist Wilko Johnson talks candidly to Music Republic Magazine editor Simon Redley, about cheating death and trying to grasp the fact he is still alive – while making plans for a 30 th anniversary concert and his 70 th birthday. If more literal-minded viewers would happily trade a few variations on “I’m going to die so are we all” for some prosaic details about Johnson’s life, they can of course turn to Oil City Confidential, the 2009 doc Temple made about Dr. ![]() Steve Organ‘s digital cinematography isn’t always a match for the gorgeous vistas we see when Johnson ventures out to the Canvey Island seaside, but on the whole the visuals serve their purpose nicely. Temple piles on relevant film clips from Cocteau, Hamlet, Bunuel and others, and stages some of his interviews while projecting abstract images on Johnson’s face or carefully staging his environment. His calmness (spoiler ahead) is only slightly less impressive once we realize that much of this testimony was recorded after, having outlived his prognosis by many months, Johnson learned that his massive tumor might not be as inoperable as his first doctor thought. (He also converses, a la The Seventh Seal, with Death over a chess game the twist is that he plays the hooded reaper as well as himself.) He’s a remarkably charismatic subject, and his philosophical equanimity about the prospect of dying within 10 months comes across so naturally one wonders if more cancer patients might be able to achieve it. Much more erudite than your average rocker, Johnson studied literature at university and still revels in it, dropping lines from Milton and Chaucer into his conversation with the camera.
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