At university he studied the Icelandic sagas and he still likes to read Anglo Saxon poetry. On the table in front of him are a chess set, a copy of Private Eye and a book on the Aztecs. On the roof of his house is a dome with a large periscope where he spends hours studying the stars. 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. Looking Back at Me also reveals the myriad cultural touchstones of a working-class rock'n'roller and deeply complex man. I always think that he really was the wellspring of Dr Feelgood." "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.
He admits to an emotional moment when watching Oil City Confidential, a recollection that makes him twiddle his fingers. Wilko now sings lead vocals with his band, and when he speaks of Brilleaux, it is with admiration. 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. "Lee took the knife off him without interrupting the show – which shows quite a bit of class, I think." 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. The audience understood that and, despite the aggression in songs such as "Riot In Cell Block #9", there was rarely trouble at Feelgood shows. 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!" "When you're kids playing cops and robbers you're using your fingers as your gun and you know you are just playing but. "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.
At the time there was a lot of stuff about hobgoblins, rubbish really, that had nothing to do with anything.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. We had a really strong connection to our audience because of the way we looked and also through the songs. You didn't have to dress up in a cape or a pair of tights to see Dr Feelgood. And in the excitement surrounding punk, we were forgotten. They weren't interested in this band splitting up because of some obscure row. People were more interested in the Pistols and The Clash. But by then it was all blowing up in our faces. If we'd stayed together, we'd have fitted in perfectly with punk. I see the bastard looking back at me every time I shave. And the worst of it is, I take after him. I listen to stuff he recorded when he was a bloody teenager that still gives me a thrill. It didn't last as long and it wasn't as profound as the hippy thing, but it was good while it lasted.
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