Wilko Johnson. Guitar Levitation.

The extraordinary, Wilko Johnson

Inspired by the new Foals record (check it out here), I found my way back through the wonder that is Spotify to rediscover Talking Heads this week.  Even my unimpressible thirteen year-old has been killing his eardrums under his Beats to the joy that is 'Slippery People' and 'Burning Down the House'.  Which got me thinking.  What did I listen to when I was an early teen?  Surely, something really cool and completely different to all the other kids?  Surely, I knew about REM or Echo and the Bunnymen way before anyone else?  I wasn't running round with a stripe of white across my nose, or cultivating a fringe like the bloke in A Flock of Seagulls.  I wasn't sat in the corner listening to Yes or Genesis (though I sagely did so in a big way, post-Acne).  No, I was led astray down a path towards the glory and guttural wonder that is the guitar.  And my first guitar hero was Wilko Johnson.  

I went to my first ever 'proper' gig at Bradford University to see Wilko.  The man in black was like some mysterious illusionist.  He could do the rock equivalent of levitation.  Wilko played rhythm and lead guitar.  So, big deal?  "No, you don't understand," I would plead, whilst disinterested mates tried to see who could spit the furthest.  "He plays rhythm and lead…AT THE SAME TIME!"  Wilko's playing transformed a tight three-piece RNB band into a thunderous gang of four.  Striding like some manic exile from the Ministry of Silly Walks, Wilko chopped chords, mixing rhythm with wah-wah and frenzied solos.  When he soloed it was like there was some force of nature simultaneously chop-chop-chopping through the bar chords.  Rock n' roll levitation.  

Wilko is playing his last ever gigs in March.  After decades of touring and making music, Wilko has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has refused chemotherapy.  In interviews, he has talked with a touching candidness and honesty about his situation. Told by doctors his cancer was inoperable, he said he felt "…vividly alive. You're looking at the trees and the sky and everything and it's just 'whoah'.  I am actually a miserable person. I've spent most of my life moping in depressions and things, but this has all lifted."  

No surprises.  It is impossible to get a ticket for the last ever shows.