The publishers said, ‘You can’t just say that! You’ve got to explain a bit more.’ “Lemmy told me that his theory was speed freaks and drunks could never get on well together and that’s what I said. I just said, ‘Well, we had an argument and broke up.’ Feelgood as a great thing and I’ve never in my mind or otherwise indulged in recriminations or anything. “When that happened all those years ago I remember, at the time, it was a blow to me,” he admits, “but I resolved to walk away from it and never look badly on it.
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In fact, when he came to write the book, the band were a mere blip on the radar originally. Feelgood split up, Wilko didn’t look back and instead focused on what music would come next.
#Wilko johnson she does it right full#
With a life so full of stories to tell, it’s unsurprising that as he revisited his life, many stories that were long lost in the back of his memory started coming to life. The book is indeed a good result and one that takes you down the streets of Canvey Island, around the pubs of London, the stages and studios of the world. What the result was – whether it’s good or bad – I do not know.” “Anyway, I kind of pull myself together and carried on. I just opened the laptop and I’m just sitting there crying there and upset like a complete wimp. Oh dear, I was so upset and I couldn’t write. When you need to write a book, of course you’ve got to remember whole periods in a sequence, and you get to the sad bits and, aw, man, it all comes back on me as if it was yesterday. “Normally when we remember things, look back on them, we remember them in bits and pieces, we just remember one scene or one day or event or something like that. I found after I got into it, I started getting into some sad stuff, like when my wife died, and aw, man… “I’d open the ol’ laptop, tap away pretty good. Started thinking ‘Ayyy, man, I’m a writer!’, you know?” laughs Wilko.
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I didn’t have any method, so I just launched into it haphazardly. Today is, quite obviously, more than ten months later than when the news was broken, and now Wilko has written a book – Don’t You Leave Me Here – that takes you through his childhood, life spent with wife Irene, the iconic rise and fall of Dr Feelgood, and that last year of his life… but a few years on. He neverwent back to the drawing board, instead going full steam ahead: he played with a few more bands, including The Blockheads with Ian Dury, but it was The Wilko Johnson Band that stuck, and kept him travelling the world with his guitar in tow for the last several decades.Įach twist has been an unexpected adventure for Wilko, and that’s why, come January 2013, when he was told that he had terminal pancreatic cancer and just ten months to live, he embraced the news in a way that fit with his past seven decades. With belters ‘She Does It Right’ and ‘Roxette’ in their repertoire, it was all going well until tensions arose, and Wilko left, or was booted out, depending on who you ask. Feelgood and became a staple of the pub rock scene in London through the 1970s. From the humble beginnings in his home of Canvey Island, Wilko and the inimitable Lee Brilleaux and John B.