Wilko Johnson

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Dr Feelgood: Oil City Confidential Official Soundtrack Click here to pre order your copy today. When rock'n'roll was shaken from its pre-punk complacency by the emergence of Dr. Feelgood, it was their guitarist Wilko Johnson who excited most attention – not only for the startling violence of his stage performance (which was to inspire countless imitators and become one of the classic images of rock'n'roll) but also for his guitar style which combined the roles of lead and rhythm guitar in driving riffs and a stuttering machine gun frenzy which altered conceptions of 'guitar heroics'. As a songwriter too – from early Feelgood favourites like 'Back in the Night' to the power and poetry of 'Dr. Dupree' and 'Sneaking Suspicion' he has proved himself one of the best and most original exponents of rhythm'n'blues styles this side of the Atlantic. The list of '70s New Wave bands who acknowledge the influence of Wilko and the Feelgoods is extensive and includes The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Boomtown Rats, and across the Atlantic The Ramones and Blondie (who spent a whole night at a New York party wearing out their specially imported copy of the Feelgood's first album, 'Down by the Jetty'). After his abrupt departure from Dr. Feelgood in 1977 Wilko formed his own band, and over the next few years worked with several personnel of varying degrees of musical accomplishment and mixed moral character. In 1980, while continuing to work with his own 3-piece, Wilko entered the ranks of Ian Dury's brilliant Blockheads, co-writing writing several songs with Ian and featuring on the 'Laughter' album. Then in 1985 the Block's sensational and much loved bassist Norman Watt-Roy joined Wilko, and when Monti took over the drums in 1999, the classic Wilko Johnson Band had arrived. They have never been off the road since and have startled and blasted audiences from Helsinki to Madrid, Aberdeen to Istanbul, Toulouse to Tokyo. Monti's stool at the drums has recently been taken by the much revered Dylan Howe, also of the Blockheads, and this has raised the band to an even greater level of musical mastery and manic brilliance. In 2008 the highly acclaimed film director Julien Temple set out to make a documentary film about the birth and all too brief phenomenon of Dr. Feelgood ('Oil City Confidential', to be launched in October). He could not have imagined that in the course of filming he would meet 'one of the great English eccentrics' (his words) in the person of Wilko. So fascinated was he by this discovery that the project has gone way beyond completion date (and budget) in order to accommodate the many facets of this extraordinary character, the unexpected hero of the film. As a result of all this, there has recently been a renewed frenzy of interest in Wilko: watch out for some surprising developments in the near future