A new generation of guitar heretics and anti-heroes was paying attention. Nothing could have sounded further from the rock “god” theatrics of contemporaries like Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, and Brian May.
Cutting through their tight, barren rhythm section was Wilko’s Fender Telecaster, emitting elemental blues-based patterns via a simple tube amp. In that subtraction, the band added speed and unadorned rawness. Feelgoods stripped rock and R&B down to its bare bones, leaving only a skeletal sound that time and technology had seemingly bypassed. All Through The City is as urgent as any young R&B band, especially when Daltrey sputters out the chorus and Wilko lets loose a guitar break like hail on glass (and it’s sort of lovely that the words which end this album are ‘down by the jetty’).īy and large this is a record with more energy, excitement and passion than probably any other rock album you’ll hear this year.When Stupidity hit the top of the British album charts during punk’s breakout year, 1976, it was apparent that a new spirit was in the air, and it was out of step with the pop gloss of glam and the complexity of prog that then ruled Britannia’s rock waves. The Dylan cover contains all the sneer of young Bob in the disdain and experience of an older man. Turned 21 is a gorgeous, pained song, a side of Wilko’s songwriting we could always do with more of. Not like a blustery blues singer, though, or a rock god, but like the most powerful rhythm and blues singer in the world.Īs his recentish work with The Who has shown (check out Real Good Looking Boy and the Endless Wire album), Daltrey is possibly a better singer now than he was in the 60s, and he brings to these songs not the glorious fags’n’sleaze of Brilleaux or the matter-of-fact caw of Wilko himself, but the lion-with-several-million-thorns in its paw voice that only he can do. And Daltrey makes no attempt to change the meaning or content of the material, he just sings the backside off it. There are no extended solos, funky revamps or changes of tempo. His band play the songs as well as anyone can. (Green’s sound, via Wilko, extended into the post-punk guitar of Gang Of Four and beyond, and his influence was arguably much more important and exciting than that of Clapton, Page or any of the other blues boomers.) You won’t hear new tricks too often here, Wilko does what he’s been doing all his career, playing extraordinary rhythm and lead in the way that really only he can do.
Their later guitarist, Mick Green, was both a collaborator with and an influence on Wilko Johnson. That band’s earliest days, with Johnny Kidd, gave The Who Shakin’ All Over. The girder linking the two men is, of course, the greatest British rock’n’roll band of all time, The Pirates. And, finally, amazing because it’s a great record. Feelgood suggests he was never the meek kind of guitarist) and songwriting. Amazing because there aren’t many people who’d gel with Wilko’s history, personality (his time with the Dr. Amazing because Wilko should have had a singer as good as this years ago to complement his brilliant band. In a year that most of us would have spent… I don’t know, quietly at home, Wilko has toured, given interviews, taken drugs, toured, toured and now recorded an amazing album. Because, surely, if there’s anyone who wants to live the way he likes, it’s Wilko, a man whose reaction to the news of his (fortunately still delayed) imminent demise was to live his life utterly in the present. Now, being the second great singer to vocalise Wilko Johnson’s lyrics (you know who the first one is), he brings years of experience and sympathy to his role. Having spent years translating the neurotic rage and brandified existential doubt of Pete Townshend, Daltrey is expert in finding the emotion and power in someone else’s words.
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