Wilko Johnson died on November 21, 2022, aged 75. His family announced that he had died at home, as reported by Sky News. With Dr. Feelgood, he had developed a guitar sound built around abrupt chords and lead lines played in quick succession, giving one instrument the presence of two.
Johnson grew up on Canvey Island in Essex, studied English at Newcastle University and worked as a teacher before Dr. Feelgood took over his working life. He was part of the band's original lineup in 1971, alongside singer Lee Brilleaux. Onstage, he paired the clipped guitar parts with a fixed stare and sudden dashes, sometimes raising his guitar like a machine gun. In a 2016 Total Guitar interview later revisited by Guitar World, Johnson explained that he took his cue from Brilleaux's nervous energy.
He played without a pick, using his fingers to move between rhythm and lead in songs he also wrote. “Roxette” and “She Does It Right” appeared on the band's 1975 debut, Down by the Jetty, while Malpractice followed that same year.
The band's breakthrough on the UK album chart came with a live recording. Stupidity reached No. 1 in 1976, putting their stage performances at the center of their biggest chart success. Johnson's time with the group ended in 1977, the year of Sneakin' Suspicion, his final Dr. Feelgood album. He subsequently worked with Ian Dury's band The Blockheads and continued recording and performing with The Wilko Johnson Band.
His later collaboration with Roger Daltrey grew into another major recording chapter under circumstances that made its future uncertain. In 2013, Johnson publicly disclosed a cancer diagnosis that was initially considered terminal. He continued performing and made Going Back Home with The Who's singer, revisiting songs from his existing catalog. Released in 2014, it reached No. 3 on the UK album chart.
The record brought his songwriting into a different vocal partnership, but it didn't become the farewell he had anticipated. Following surgery in 2014, Johnson announced that he was cancer-free. He returned to performing, and the success of the Daltrey collaboration also opened the way for another album under his own name.
That record, Blow Your Mind, arrived in 2018 with bassist Norman Watt-Roy, drummer Dylan Howe and producer Dave Eringa, who had also worked on Going Back Home. Johnson told Rock Cellar's Jeff Slate in a 2018 interview that he and Daltrey hadn't wanted to repeat the previous project. The label was willing to back a Johnson album instead, giving him the opportunity to write new material with musicians he trusted.
Much of the writing happened under the pressure of the sessions. Johnson recalled making the album in 15 days, arriving with only a few songs already written and developing the rest as work progressed. “I wanted to do a really simple and straightforward thing, but I wanted to do my thing,” he told Slate. One song, “Marijuana,” drew directly on the period when he had sat at home expecting to die. It became part of a completed 12-song album made after his recovery.
