![]() ![]() One of the ways I dealt with it was to absolutely accept it, and think, 'Right, they've told me this thing is inoperable – if I've got 10 months to live, I just want to do it, I don't want to spend 10 months running around after second opinions or false hopes.' In a way, it was a kind of comfort zone, accepting that I was going to die and all the questions of mortality had been sorted out for me. "I didn't plan to feel that way about death," he said to The Guardianin 2015. ![]() That year, he underwent a successful 11-hour operation, though he often spoke about how his experience shaped his attitude toward the eventual end of his life. He was told by doctors in 2014 that his cancer had been misdiagnosed and was more treatable than first assumed. "I thought that was going to be the last thing I ever did," Johnson told the BBC at the time. In 2014, he teamed up with the Who's Roger Daltrey for 2014's Going Back Home, which featured re-recorded versions of Dr. He embarked on a "farewell tour" that same year. In early 2013, Johnson was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, at which time he revealed he had roughly 10 months to live and that he had elected not to undergo chemotherapy. Johnson also acted, appearing in the first and second seasons of Game of Thrones. Over the years, Johnson performed and recorded with various bands, including Solid Senders, Ian Dury's Blockheads and the Wilko Johnson Band. His most recent album, Blow Your Mind, was released in 2018. Johnson stayed on for one more album, 1977's Sneakin' Suspicion, and then left following band disagreements. Their first two albums, Down by the Jetty and Malpractice (both released in 1975), were well received, but their breakthrough arrived with 1976's Stupidity, a live album that reached No. Within two years, they were mainstays of London's pub-rock circuit. Sparks, with drummer John Martin joining shortly afterward. The initial lineup included singer Lee Brilleaux and bassist John B. After spending some time traveling abroad in India, he returned to Essex, where he joined a group called the Pigboy Charlie Band, which eventually turned into Dr. While he is living life this fully, and with such bristling bravado, long may he feel mortified.Born in Canvey Island, Essex, England, Johnson attended the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and graduated with his BA in English Language and Literature. After cracking through the Who's I Can't Explain, he holds his microphone to Wilko's stomach as if the disease itself might sing a verse, while Johnson mock-dies. Dad-dancing, forgetting lyrics and muddling his lyric sheets like a doddery rock champion, Daltrey sweeps all sense of finality, tribute or po-faced reverence from the evening and lifts it towards a tearless celebration, a lock-in at the last chance saloon. When a besuited Daltrey emerges to run through their last-minute collaboration album of Wilko and Feelgood numbers Going Back Home, and add epic rock pomp to their cover of Dylan's carnival wife-stealing ditty Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window, the party cranks up. ![]() The East End Trotterisms of Feelgood's The More I Give – a signpost to Johnson's later stint in Ian Dury's Blockheads – finds him staring down the crowd with all the menace of his Game of Thrones executioner. These are 12-bar rock'n'roll, reggae and rhythm-and-blues songs of rampant teenage exploits, adventurous seafaring and cruel women such as Roxette, vividly alive indeed. Besides a snapped "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone", during Wilko's wired initial set with his own band, there's no lingering on the inevitable tonight. ![]()
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