WILKO JOHNSON: 1947-2022

The beloved Dr Feelgood guitarist left us on 21 November 2022. We salute the livewire stage presence and piston-pump guitar style that lit the fuse of punk

- Henry Yates

Jaw clenched and eyes bulging. Skittering across the stage, bolt-upright and belligerent. Shouldering s black and red'62 Tele in the style of a machine gun to mock-strafe the crowd. The sight of Wilko Johnson in full flight - a spectacle so visceral that only the antics of Pete Townshend come close - would have been electrifying at any point in rock 'n' roll history. In the early 70s, when the presiding guitarists of prog stood statue-still and studious, nobody could take their eyes off the late Dr Feelgood guitarist.

"His playing was angry and angular," wrote Billy Bragg after the news broke of Johnson's death on 21 November. "But his presence - twitchy, confrontational, out of control - was something we'd never beheld before in UK pop."

Born John Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex, Johnson quickly rejected the path of his gas-fitter father ("a stupid, uneducated and violent person," he said). The imported blues vinyl of Chicago's Chess Records signposted another way - "When I first heard Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley," Johnson told this writer, "it was just so exciting and mysterious" - as did the defining guitar influence of Johnny Kidd And The Pirates' Mick Green.