Wilko Johnson is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter and occasional actor from Canvey Island, Essex. Born John Peter Wilkinson in 1947 and active until his death in 2022, he is best known for his work in pub rock and rhythm and blues.

Career

Johnson plays with a distinctive guitar style built around fingerstyle rather than a pick. He uses this approach to combine rhythm parts and riffs or solos at the same time, creating a highly percussive sound.

He is a member of Dr. Feelgood in the 1970s, where he becomes associated with pub rock and rhythm and blues. He leaves the band in April 1977 after disagreements over the tracks included on Sneakin’ Suspicion. He maintains that he is dismissed, while the other members say he leaves voluntarily.

Other bands and projects

In 1977, Johnson is a founding member of Solid Senders, alongside keyboardist John Potter, bassist Steve Lewins and drummer Alan Platt. In 1980, he joins Ian Dury’s band, The Blockheads.

Around 1984, he re-forms The Wilko Johnson Band with Blockhead bassist Norman Watt-Roy and Italian-born drummer Salvatore Ramundo. Ramundo leaves in June 1999 and is replaced by Steve Monti, who later plays with Curve and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Johnson is also a member of Celia & the Mutations and The Wilko Johnson and Lew Lewis Band.

Recordings

His second solo album, Ice on the Motorway, is released in 1981. An EP, Bottle Up and Go!, follows in 1983 with Lew Lewis. Over the following decade, several albums appear on European labels. The studio album Red Hot Rocking Blues is released in 2005.

The Wilko Johnson Band appears at the Front Row Festival at the Hope and Anchor in Islington in late 1977, a three-week event featuring many early punk acts. Two tracks by the band, “Dr. Feelgood” and “Twenty Yards Behind”, are included on the compilation album from the festival, which reaches number 28 in the UK Albums Chart in March 1978.

Live work and later appearances

Johnson performs an unannounced hour-long set with Norman Watt-Roy and Dylan Howe at the Village Green Festival in Westcliff-on-Sea in 2013. He also plays informal unannounced sets at the Railway Hotel in Southend. He performs at Wickham Festival in Hampshire in August 2013 and appears on several UK dates in 2014 as support to the “Frantic Four” line-up of Status Quo.

He performs “All Through the City” and “Going Back Home” with his duckwalk on Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny for New Year TV in 2014–15.