Feelgood era’s classics Sneakin’ Suspicious, Paradise and the above mentioned Going Back Home, Wilko’s mastery and charisma on the stage quickly gets the audience eating out of his hand (and of course, of his Tommy gun guitar). Feelgood Wilko Johnson delights the crowd with epic smash hits such as Going Back Home, Back In The Night, She Does It Right or Roxette.Īfter an electrifying warm-up including Dr. Histrionic and powerful as usual –not to mention its characteristic Tommy gun guitar and duck-walking dance-, he gives Manchester’s Ritz a flawless lesson of vital rock n’ roll, the kind of rock that is capable of beating even a cancer.Īccompanied by drummer Dylan Howe and bassist Norman Watt-Roy –who I must admit that vaguely reminds me of Breaking Bad character Don Hector “Tio” Salamanca, out of control, ex-Dr. And also talks about the great feeling of being alive. In Julian Temple’s new documentary The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson, he tells this painful as well as meaningful episode of his life. No one would say that the man on the stage, moving furiously and playing fast, has recently undergone the nightmare of a pancreatic cancer. The gig of his Still Kickin’ tour is short but pretty intense (it barely takes an hour and 15 minutes), like life itself.Ħ7-year-old Wilko Johnson seems more alive and kickin’ than ever. Wilko Johnson did mean those words in a recent interview, and we have some irrefutable evidence of this tonight. Johnson’s conclusion – “I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, so it’s all a bonus” – at least provides an uplifting coda to Temple’s film.“Man, there’s nothing like being told you’re dying to make you feel alive”.
The life-saving surgery leaves him a diabetic the mental impact of surviving is equally stressful, as he wrestles with loneliness and melancholia.
It seems, despite the circumstances, tremendous fun.īut although there is a happy ending – dear reader, he lives! – at the same time Johnson’s survival presents another set of problems. An album with Roger Daltrey is hastily convened and becomes a success: Johnson finds himself on the chat show circuit. It’s fantastic!” A final encore of “Johnny B Goode” assumes talismanic properties. Given his deadline, Johnson embarks on a farewell tour, beginning in Japan – “a great piece of showbusiness,” he observes approvingly. While some of the film inevitably overlaps with Oil City Confidential – in particular, the histories of Canvey and Johnson’s old band, Dr Feelgood – the focus is on Johnson and his own wide-ranging interests, including astronomy and Viking lore. “It takes eight and a half hours with a break for lunch to read Paradise Lost,” he mentions in passing. Footage from A Matter Of Life And Death, Hamlet At Elsinore, Nosferatu and Orphée offer complimentary views on death, meanwhile readings from Traherne, Marlowe, Blake and Milton underscore Johnson’s former career as an English teacher. Indeed, for much of the film, Johnson quite literally looks death in the face: in a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, Temple shoots Johnson on the jetty at his native Canvey Island, recounting his extraordinary story over a game of chess with a hooded opponent. Indeed, Temple’s follow-up to Oil City Confidential finds Johnson reflecting on his life and current circumstances with gleeful aplomb. Since being given 10 months to live in January 2013, Johnson admits he has never felt so good. As he explains, Johnson felt “vividly alive… everything was tingling… present, future, past, it was all concentrated down into that moment.” Julien Temple’s new film about Wilko Johnson takes its title from an unexpected state of euphoria the guitarist first experienced walking home after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
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