It evolved from a failed attempt to copy Mick Green of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, a guitarist whom Johnson greatly admired. This enabled him to play rhythm guitar and riffs or solos at the same time creating a highly percussive guitar sound. He achieved his playing style by not using a pick but instead relying on fingerstyle. Johnson developed his own image, coupling jerky movements on stage (his so-called "duck walk") with a choppy guitar style, occasionally raising his guitar to his shoulder like a gun, and a novel dress sense (he favoured a black suit and a pudding bowl haircut). Originally of sunburst-coloured body with white pickguard, Johnson later refinished it in black and added a red pickguard. He still plays a vintage 1962 Fender Telecaster with rosewood fingerboard which he bought in 1974, shortly after Dr. In 1965 Johnson bought his first Fender Telecaster from a shop in Southend, Essex for £90 (equivalent to £1,854 as of 2021). After returning from Goa, Johnson worked in 1972, for less than a year, as an English teacher. Feelgood – a mainstay of the 1970s pub rock movement. Īfter graduating, he travelled overland to India, before returning to Essex to play with the Pigboy Charlie Band. His undergraduate course included Anglo-Saxon and ancient Icelandic sagas. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.Born in Canvey Island, Essex, Johnson went to Westcliff High School for Boys and played in several local groups, before attending the University of Newcastle upon Tyne to study for a BA in English Language and Literature. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. This article originally appeared in VG ‘s June ’14 issue. Going Back Home is both a serviceable Wilko Johnson primer and a must-have for longtime fans. Wilko’s distinctive duck walk, thousand-yard stare, and pudding-basin haircut all succumbed to middle age, but his chops have lost none of the freneticism that helped make him a missing link between ’60s British R&B and ’70s punk. Hardcore Wilko fans will appreciate the first proper release of the ballad “Turned 21.” The only oddity is also the album’s lone non-Wilko track, a take on the 1965 Dylan single “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window.” Then again, perhaps the line “How can you say he will haunt you” is intended to convey Johnson’s gallows humor. For his part, Daltrey turns in a stellar performance, often times seeming to channel late Feelgoods front man Lee Brilleaux, especially on that band’s chestnut, “All Through The City.” The album features Johnson’s touring band Blockhead bassist Norman Watt-Roy and drummer Dylan Howe, with keys by Mick Talbot (exStyle Council and Dexy’s Midnight Runners).
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We watched his TV and we drank a little gin”). Nowhere on the album does the Green lineage and Johnson’s trademark “red-guard” Tele get more out front than on the workout of the ’80s-era Wilko solo track “Ice On The Motorway,” with its riff quoting the Pirates’ signature song, “Shakin’ All Over.” There’s also the title track (perhaps the album’s standout), a chugging Feelgoods rave-up from ’75 co-written with Green (i.e., “Old Johnny Green, he asked me in. Johnson has explained in the past that his singular technique was the result of a failed attempt to emulate the Pirates’ Mick Green. Going Back Home had its genesis at a 2010 awards show, where Johnson and Daltrey bonded over their mutual admiration of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. Given 10 months to live, Johnson refused treatment, telling BBC Radio 4 that the circumstances actually made him feel “vividly alive.” Wilko fans should be grateful for the inexactitude of the medical profession: Not only is Johnson still of this realm (as of this writing), but he’s also teamed with Roger Daltrey for this new release mostly comprising fresh takes on tracks from throughout Wilko’s canon. Then in January 2013 came the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
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In 2011 he began appearing as a mute executioner in the cable series “Game of Thrones.” In 2012, he released his autobiography Looking Back at Me, followed by Fender’s launch of a Europe-exclusive Wilko Johnson Signature Telecaster.
In 2009 he stole the show in Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple’s acclaimed rock doc about Johnson’s old band, Dr.
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