WILKO JOHNSON and ROGER DALTREY at the SHEPHERD'S BUSH EMPIRE

Issue 38 of Shindig! is out in newsagents today, containing  - amongst many other things - welcome features on Nigel Waymouth, Mary Love and John Sinclair. It also includes my review of Wilko and Daltrey’s gig from last month. Their album, Going Back Home, was released on Monday and sounds exactly as it should.

I don’t know if Wilko Johnson created a bucket list but making a new album with Roger Daltrey for Chess Records would be an audacious dream for most yet for Wilko, he simply got on and did it without any fuss. Tick, job done.

Ahead of release they’re in Shepherd’s Bush showcasing Going Back Home – a collection of new recordings of Dr. Feelgood songs, Wilko solo songs and a Dylan cover - for the first time. Accompanied by Norman Watt-Roy on bass and Dylan Howe on drums, for thirty minutes Wilko juts from side to side, chops at his guitar strings with his open hand and machine-guns his audience, belying the doctor who gave him an expiry date of four months earlier. As engaging as ‘All Right’, ‘Barbed Wire Blues’ and a drawn out ‘Roxette’ are, it’s impossible not to feel the expectation hanging heavy in the air awaiting Daltrey’s appearance.

One street and fifty years from where Daltrey fronted a fiery British R&B band at the Goldhawk Road Social Club led by a uniquely styled song writing guitarist, he’s back doing it again. With the addition of Daltrey, the always welcome sight of Merton Mick Talbot on keys, and Steve Weston blowing a mean blues harp, the sextet breathe new life and power into Wilko’s songs.

It’s an ideal combination, Wilko does what he does best – cutting razor sharp shapes and sounds - and Daltrey, at last, gets to wrap his vocal chords around fresh material. Stripped from the security of The Who, his familiar moves, his microphone twirling, Daltrey is out of his comfort zone but gamely throws himself centre stage, dancing like a slightly awkward fella at a wedding. His voice is still strong and any ragged edges are far better suited here to the blues-based ‘Going Back Home’, ‘Some Kind Of Hero’, ‘Sneaking Suspicion’ and ‘Ice On The Motorway’ than anything the theatrical Townshend may now throw at him.

They make a natural pair, full of down the boozer geezerness and old rogue charm. If Daltrey fluffs some lyrics, then so what? “This is a lot of shit to remember at my age,” he jokes, “you fucking come up here and try to do it”. When Daltrey asks if they can slow down so he can catch his breath he nods towards Wilko and says “Fucking cancer, it speeds him up, gives him energy”.

Whatever gives Wilko energy – determination, bloody-mindedness, luck, the stars – it rubs off all around him, from the band to the squashed, over-capacity crowd. It’s an emotional night but the overriding emotion is joy, as shown in the huge grin worn on Wilko’s face throughout as he looks across his left shoulder to see his bandmate, that bloke from The ‘Oo, belting out his own songs and a pandemonium inducing version of ‘I Can’t Explain’.

An encore gives a second airing to the rip-roaring ‘I Keep It To Myself’ before, without any fuss or sentimentality, a quick wave and dignified exit. Tick, job done.  

FEBRUARY PLAYLIST

The February Playlist...

1.  The London Jazz Quartet – “Fishin’ The Blues” (1959)

The London Jazz Quartet were Tubby Hayes, Alan Branscombe, Tony Crombie and Jack Fallon whose recordings were originally conceived as background music for film and television. Every time I hear “Fishin’ The Blues” I imagine a cute early 60s animation with a little man taking his rod out to the lake. That’s not a euphemism.

2.  Curtis Knight – “Voodoo Woman” (1961)

Like monkeys and chickens, records about voodoo are normally worth a punt and Knight’s creepy bongo and snaky sax led 45 is no exception.

3.  Brenda Holloway – “After All That You’ve Done” (1965)

A new Kent edition of The Artistry of Brenda Holloway features no less than eight previously unreleased cuts from Motown’s vaults. Is there no end to the treasure? It seems not. This Smokey Robinson number is the pick of the bunch and delivered with all of Brenda’s usual class and sophistication although I was disappointed she went back to her cheating boyfriend after seemingly enjoying giving him the brush off for the two previous minutes.

4. Paul Bearer and the Hearsemen - "I've Been Thinking" (1966)

Goodness gracious me, what a blast! Garage-punk in extremis. Fuzzed and turned up to within a whisker of the unsuspecting recording equipment's life. Fantastic name these five lads from Oregon had too. Sadly their only release. 

5.  Duane Eddy – “It Ain’t Me Babe” (1966)

Best and most surprising find record find this month is Duane Eddy Does Bob Dylan, a 1966 LP produced by Lee Hazlewood and released in the UK on Colpix. To quote the liner notes: “Eddy’s guitar romps and soars through Dylan’s brain waves – translated in this album into notes which build and explode into bar lines of enjoyable melodies.” Twangtastic.

6.  The Peep Show – “Your Servant Stephen” (1967)

As pointed out by Pop Junkie, the enigmatic folk-psych Peep Show on more than one occasion sound both lyrically and musically like a template for The Smiths, best exemplified on this Polydor single.

7.  Stanley Unwin – “Goldylodders and the Three Bearloads” (1968)

Now, this also begins once a polly tie tode. If Unwin’s bonkers gobbledygook on Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake isn’t enough then his 1968 LP Rotatey Diskers With Unwin provides more deep joy of a songload in your eardrome. Unwin’s versions of fairy stories are hilarious but the Q&A with a room full of journalists where he regales them completely off the cuff is nothing sort of genius.

8.  John Cameron – “Front Titles” (1969)

From John Cameron's music for Kes. Listening to it away from the film really showcases what an achingly beautiful (and terribly sad) soundtrack he provided. "Front Titles" is possible to hear with fighting back the tears, not so some of the other pieces. 

9.  BB King – “Just Can’t Please You” (1972)

Jimmy Robins’ barnstorming version is the best fifteen quid one will ever spend on a Hard Northern 45 (I might’ve just invented a new genre there). King, as expected, takes it at a more leisurely pace. Still pretty cool though.

10.  Wilko Johnson/Roger Daltrey – “I Keep It To Myself” (2014)

Daltrey starts off like Vic Reeves' club singer but soon settles down and the pair blister through a track first found on Wilko's 1989 Barbed Wire Blues. British R&B doesn't get much more thrilling than this. 

WILKO JOHNSON at KOKO, CAMDEN

As Wilko Johnson darts across the stage and then pings back the other way on an invisible elastic band there’s nothing to give even the merest hint this is a farewell show in the very truest sense.

Declining treatment for pancreatic cancer he is not long for this world but here he is, fizzing with energy, wide eyes flashing, holding his guitar like sub-machine gun mowing down his audience, stabbing the strings with the back of his fingers to make a chopping crunching noise, giving a lesson in how to play the guitar. If I was starting a band now I’d want to play like this. Woody Guthrie famously labelled his guitar This Machine Kills Fascists, Wilko’s Telecaster did much the same to hippies in the mid-70s, helping lay some foundations for punk with Dr. Feelgood.

That said, I’m not particularly a fan of Dr. Feelgood or that pub rock scene but after watching Julien Temple’s excellent Oil City Confidential a year ago did come away with much more of an appreciation for what they did and seeing Wilko up close increases that further. His influence on the young Paul Weller is well documented but it hadn’t dawned on me how much Billy Childish has also absorbed. Any unease I felt attending my first Wilko gig at this time, and perhaps depriving a long term fan a ticket, was offset by him being the person Mrs Monkey most wanted to see since watching that film and at least we bought tickets in good faith rather than the hundreds snapped up by cold hearted blood sucking mercenaries out to profit via online touting.

Not having such a strong emotional connection did enable us to watch the gig and really enjoy it as a straight forward show, which to Wilko’s enormous credit was totally devoid of sentiment. He made no reference to his situation, no grand speech, no tear jerking thank you. He’d told Claudia Elliott in The Blues Magazine for people to leave their hankies at home and from where I stood I didn’t see anyone need one. It was only during the “bye bye Johnny, bye bye” section of “Johnny B Goode” when hundreds of hands cheerfully – yes, cheerfully - waved at him that the circumstances were even obliquely referenced. Truly inspiring.