Wilko Has Exited The Stage

A tip of the hat and a wave goodbye to Wilko Johnson, born John Wilkinson, 12th July 1947 to 21st November 2022.

 

There will be many, many tributes to Wilko out there, focusing on his work with Dr. Feelgood, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, his solo career, his incredible guitar skills and his undeniable influence, not least on punk. 

 

Wilko was also an energetic interpreter of other people's songs and in 2010 had a crack at The Beatles' One After 909. It's a pretty faithful cover version with spiky guitar stabs and well suited to Wilko's vocals. I love it.

This YouTube clip is probably popping up everywhere, Wilko appearing at David's Book Shop in Letchworth, Hertfordshire on 9th July 2012 to promote his autobiography Looking Back At Me. Wilko talks about his approach to the guitar and performs Going Back Home, co-written with Mick Green, who Wilko cites as his influence and inspiration. It's a wonderful, heartwarming five minutes.

 

It's well documented that Wilko was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer nearly a decade ago and was expecting to bow out not long after. This amazingly, brilliantly turned out not to be the case and the story is a testament to Wilko's determination not to give up, to go out fighting but also the cliché of the "medical second opinion". No-one tells the story better than Wilko, in an emotional acceptance of the Q Icon Award in 2014.

 

Whilst the news of Wilko's passing immediately resonated with those of us of a certain age and interest in music - or, it has to be said, the Game Of Thrones fanbase - not everyone got it. Journalist Robert Peston's intentionally cryptic tribute Tweet got a lot of people into a frenzy, thinking that high street retailer Wilkinson's had gone under.

 

I've never watched Games Of Thrones and I've no idea if Wilko's acting skills came anywhere close to his guitar work, but it's easy to see why he would have been a good fit visually speaking. From his mop-topped days with Dr. Feelgood to his latter years as a close shaven solo artist, Wilko was an arresting sight. The chronology is all out of whack, but Wilko always struck me as the personification of a comic character by the legendary Jack Kirby, whose art I adore.

 

I don't have much in the way of Wilko Johnson's music in my collection, certainly not enough to pull together a half-way decent selection at short notice, so I trawled YouTube for another video to close this post and came across this blistering performance from 1991, accompanied by fellow Blockhead Norman Watt-Roy on bass.

It's completely and utterly brilliant.

 

Bye bye, Johnny. Be seeing you, Wilko.