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Tuesday, 10 July 2012
THE INDEPENDENT
Wilko Johnson: 'Once, I'd have been whizzing – but not now 'He rocks, paints, writes, even acts.
So what's up with the former Dr Feelgood writer, wonders Ian Burrell
"One habit I've got, which I exercise all the time, is that I pace about. I walk about, see, I go like this ..." he says. "And it's always in an anti-clockwise direction, right? I've even checked this out in Australia, right? And I still go in an anti-clockwise direction, and so I think I must have one leg shorter than the other. I've tried pacing in a clockwise direction but as soon as my mind drifts, oh it's not right."
Wilko – the machine-gunning guitar hero who sent shockwaves of energy through the pretentious 1970s British rock scene and inspired a generation of punks – is demonstrating how he prepares for his inimitable live performances. "So, about half an hour before we go on stage, that starts and I start walking about."
It is 35 years since Wilko's falling out with his bandmates in Dr Feelgood signalled the end of the most intense and creatively rich period of his career, but he is suddenly back in the spotlight. Julien Temple's 2009 documentary Oil City Confidential told Dr Feelgood's story through the prism of the Shell Haven oil refinery that overshadows the band's hometown of Canvey Island. The film, which drew parallels between the mudflats of the "Thames Delta" and the Mississippi swamps of their musical roots, renewed interest in the original Feelgoods (Dr Feelgood still tour, though with none of the original members). EMI has released a box set of classic material and Wilko has produced an autobiography with writer Zoe Howe, Looking Back at Me. He has even popped up in the fantasy TV drama Game of Thrones.
During the summer he will take to the festival circuit with the Wilko Johnson band and, even though a bald pate has replaced the trademark pudding basin haircut, his performance retains the wild gesturing and frantic strumming, a feature he mimics repeatedly in conversation. He still doesn't use a plectrum and his hand bears a recent scar. "I did that somehow on an upstroke – the E-string cut through my thumb."
As ever, he's wearing a black shirt, black trousers and black ankle boots. At the end of the room is a guitar in the Wilko colours of red and black. "It's anarchy you see, the red and black flag of anarchy." On the way into his suburban Essex house I had noticed the anarchy symbol, a circled "A" painted on his garden wall alongside the slogan "Venceremos" ("We shall overcome"). "That's my bourgeois revolutionism, see? I have written my slogans on the wall, but nobody can see them, only me, because I've written them on the inside," he says, with a rapid-fire laugh.
In the classic Wilko pose on stage, his eyes are popping and he is pointing his Fender Telecaster at the audience like a Sten gun, gliding to and fro on the end of his red guitar lead. "The way you were looking at people, you were doing that because that was what people want," he says, making his hand into the shape of a gun. "When you're kids playing cops and robbers you're using your fingers as your gun and you know you are just playing but ... don't it feel like a gun? You really, really do it! And it's exactly the same on stage! It's no machine gun, man, it's a Telecaster!"
The audience understood that and, despite the aggression in songs such as "Riot In Cell Block #9", there was rarely trouble at Feelgood shows. Wilko mentions an exception when the band's late singer Lee Brilleaux jumped into the crowd to confront a man with a knife who had started a brawl. "Lee took the knife off him without interrupting the show – which shows quite a bit of class, I think."
It was a bitter personality clash between Brilleaux – who died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 41 – and Johnson that caused the break up of the original Dr Feelgood in 1977. Wilko now sings lead vocals with his band, and when he speaks of Brilleaux, it is with admiration. He admits to an emotional moment when watching Oil City Confidential, a recollection that makes him twiddle his fingers. "There was this sequence and it was just me and Lee Brilleaux on stage together and suddenly I got this powerful flash and I remembered what it was like to be on stage with him. It was fantastic. I always think that he really was the wellspring of Dr Feelgood."
Wilko was the band's songwriter, coming up with enduring classics such as "Roxette", "She Does it Right" and "Back in the Night". Brilleaux wanted to be like Howlin' Wolf, only in a dirty white suit, and fired up on a few drinks and a Canvey Island attitude. When Wilko wrote, it was with him in mind. "You're upsetting me now," he says, welling up a little.
After the split, Wilko was such a distinctive figure in rock that he had plenty of offers. "I was really hot – you would not believe the people that were pursuing me and offering me I don't know how many millions." But he didn't capitalise on that interest, and although he enjoyed some good times playing with Ian Dury and the Blockheads, his career meandered along "the line of least resistance".
The death of his wife and childhood sweetheart Irene, from cancer eight years ago, hit Wilko hard. The opportunity to gig gives him only partial respite from that sadness, so he looks on his latest successes with a certain detachment. "Once upon a time I would have been whizzing about, really pleased with everything, but now I don't have any hopes or ambitions – that's absurd," he says. "I take a benign and avuncular interest in it."
Looking Back at Me also reveals the myriad cultural touchstones of a working-class rock'n'roller and deeply complex man. Wilko once had ambitions to be a painter and a poet, and the publication of the book is the first time that his artwork has been seen outside his home. On the roof of his house is a dome with a large periscope where he spends hours studying the stars. On the table in front of him are a chess set, a copy of Private Eye and a book on the Aztecs. At university he studied the Icelandic sagas and he still likes to read Anglo Saxon poetry. As an answer to the Anglo Saxon text The Battle of Maldon, which records an ancient Viking victory, Wilko once wrote some verses on the great moment in Canvey history that was the Battle of Benfleet in AD894. "I thought 'This great victory needs a poem, so I will write it in alliterative verse style, pseudo Anglo Saxon'. Christ, how embarrassing."
But Johnson the poet is never far from the conversation. He is a mine of Shakespeare quotes (he was a schoolteacher before he joined Dr Feelgood), and, in his Estuary accent, draws on the Elizabethan Sir Philip Sydney when he talks about the way his fellow band members regard his torments as a song-writer: "They don't see all the 'Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,/ "Fool," said my muse to me," Look in thy heart and write" ...'."
What next for Wilko Johnson? More acting, perhaps – he played a mute executioner in Game of Thrones and so enjoyed the experience that he would love a belated career as an actor. "I have all this Shakespeare lodged with me and useless ... perhaps I could play Romeo?" he ponders, and judders out his machine-gun laugh.
Wilko Johnson's autobiography 'Looking Back at Me', co-written with Zoe Howe, is published by Cadiz Music tomorrow. He tours the UK from 11 Oct. Tickets: www.thegigcartel.com.
GUARDIAN ARTICLE
Coryton refinery closure brings to end love-hate relationship with plant
Many on Canvey Island opposed further installations in the 70s, but for some Coryton has been a source of inspiration
Original article by Dan Milmo
Coryton oil refinery influenced the songs of Wilko Johnson, who was a founder member and lead guitarist of Dr Feelgood. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Residents campaigned successfully against further petrochemical installations in the 1970s, but Coryton has employed thousands of people from Canvey and the surrounding area in south Essex since it was built in 1953.
For one of Canvey's most famous sons, it has been an inspiration. Wilko Johnson was a founding member and lead guitarist of Dr Feelgood, the blues-soaked rock trailblazer for the punk explosion three decades ago. He says he will miss the threatened refinery as he stares at Coryton across the water, yards from where the band posed for its first photoshoot against the imposingthe industrial backdrop.
"It is part of Canvey Island, even though it is across the creek. When you are trying to put the landscape into music, or lyrics, that refinery is what I am thinking of," says Johnson, who referenced Coryton in the opening line – "Stand and watch the towers burning at the break of day" – of All Through the City on Dr Feelgood's debut album, Down by the Jetty.
In one of the most memorable sections of Oil City Confidential, the Julien Temple documentary about Dr Feelgood, Johnson quotes Paradise Lost – "darkness visible" – as he attempts to describe the influence of Coryton on his songwriting, the captivating sight of the refinery at dawn.
In daylight it is less dramatic, looking every inch a piece of infrastructure that urgently needs a refit and, with no wealthy buyers forthcoming, will be wound down from this week with the potential loss of up to 850 jobs.
The 64-year-old Johnson, who left Dr Feelgood in the 70s and is now a solo artist, lives in nearby Southend. He says he will miss the plant if it shuts, though he fought against plans to build more refineries in the early 70s. "I would be sad. If it is going to be dismantled, whatever they put there they should bear in mind how marvellous that skyline is. If that goes, Canvey Island is going to lose its western horizon."
The greater impact, however, is economic, not cultural. Wayne Petty, a production operator at Coryton and an island resident, says his father and grandfather worked on the site. "I've lived on Canvey Island all my life, well and truly in the shadow of the refinery. It has in one way or another provided income to support my family at some point across three generations."
Colleagues have similar links. "Like myself, there are many children of past and present employees who depend on the refinery for their income." Local businesses such as sandwich shops also rely on Coryton for their livelihoods.
In a statement last week the Department for Energy and Climate Change attempted to put a positive gloss on Coryton's imminent collapse, announcing with jarring optimism that the workforce was "highly skilled and well-positioned to take advantage of new opportunities". A spokesman added that a Jobcentre Plus "rapid response" service would help employees.
"My job as an alkylation unit operator is extremely specialised, and there are many of my colleagues who have never done anything else," says Petty. "I think it's highly irresponsible of the government to ignore this fact and intimate that Coryton workers will easily find jobs elsewhere. There are certainly no other alkylation units in the area."
Some hope could be offered by the £1.5bn project taking shape behind Coryton, the London Gateway port and logistics park that will dominate the landscape when it opens next year, promising up to 12,000 jobs.
Coryton's administrator, Stephen Pearson of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is optimistic the refinery can be reborn as a storage terminal, but that will require far fewer jobs, and not the specialist roles filled by Petty and his colleagues.
Refining converts crude oil into marketable products, top of the list being petrol and diesel. Pearson says in the four months he has been running Coryton, margins have been "very poor", a reflection of a market that has been hammered by competition from Asia.
"One day the margins will be positive, and on another they will be negative," he says. "But throughout the period they have been lower on average than last year. And last year was a nadir."
The weekend brought speculation that another main refinery in the UK, Milford Haven in Wales, will also shut because of the forces assailing the industry.
Coryton's rivals are sympathetic to a business that has been brought low by the bankruptcy of its parent, Petroplus. Volker Schultz, the chief executive of Essar Oil UK, owner of Stanlow refinery on the Wirral, says Coryton has been hit by a perfect storm.
British drivers are using more fuel-efficient cars which has cut demand and there has been growing use of biofuels, which do not need refining. To compound this, big refineries being built in the Middle East and Asia – Essar is an Indian conglomerate – have created a glut in capacity.
Shultz says: "In the north Atlantic basin [east US, UK and northern Europe] alone, you hear that 10 to 20 Corytons would have to shut down to get the north Atlantic market into a balanced state. There is quite a considerable amount of overcapacity."
Johnson's music will be a timeless reminder of Coryton if, as expected, it goes. For the first time in more than 30 years, he drives up to the refinery gates – a long way from Canvey by road – and observes an installation that has dominated the area for half a century. "The closer you get, the uglier it gets," he says. "But just across the creek it is a thing of beauty … It pisses over the Pompidou centre."
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