When I was making the album with Roger, I really thought I was at the end’ … Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey live in London in February 2014. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex He developed a tight stage rapport with the Feelgoods’ vocalist Lee Brilleaux, who was helpfully signposted by his contrasting white – or once white, at least – suit. Johnson said he “felt like a lot of the power I had in whatever I was doing was radiating from him”. It was their partnership that drove the band to huge success in Britain just before the arrival of punk. He was born John Peter Wilkinson on July 12 1947 on Canvey Island, Essex. He grew up in this below-sea-level community – at that time remote and rural – in the Thames Estuary. He went to Westcliff High School – while playing in local bands – then studied English at Newcastle University. I didn’t plan to feel that way about death,” he says. “That’s the way it got me. 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 dunno, if that communicated something positive for people, that’s marvellous, but I didn’t intend to.” Sometimes the insights and ecstasies and whatever were so intense, I’d think, ‘Man, this is almost worth it!’ There’s a woman at the heart of this tale too: Johnson’s wife, Irene, who died in 2004. She’s the glue that holds this story together – the title an obvious nod to his grief – and she sounds a remarkable person, tolerating as she did her husband’s myriad indiscretions. Johnson and Lemmy had “trouble over a woman” in the mid-1970s, he says, in a fine section full of punk’s great and good, including John Lydon, but there’s no sign of any marital guilt. The section where Irene dies, however, is full of raw, affecting sentiment, especially when Johnson watches his sons “sat together under the trees… I wondered what they were feeling”. Here, he throws his hands up, showing all of his flaws.

Despite, or in spite of Johnson’s significant influence as a guitarist and songwriter, he is paradoxically now most well known due to his diagnosis with terminal cancer and his subsequent recovery from same. Johnson writes about this particular part of his life with honesty and it’s a particularly troubling but ultimately uplifting section of the book to read.It’s a fascinating and engaging story which Johnson writes well and in a manner that feels both very honest and unpretentious. He was born John Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex. One of his earliest memories was of the 1953 floods, which hit low-lying Canvey badly and caused many deaths. His father, a gas-fitter, was “a stupid and uneducated and violent person”, according to his son, and died when Wilko was a teenager. Canvey became a romantic place in Johnson’s mind, with its lonely views of the Thames estuary overshadowed by the towers and blazing fires of the nearby Shell Haven oil refinery. Johnson and his contemporaries dubbed the area the Thames Delta, in homage to the Mississippi Delta, which spawned the blues musicians they admired. He confessed that he thought it would be “the last thing I ever did”, but then later that year his story took a dramatic twist. Further tests revealed that he was suffering from a less virulent form of cancer than previously believed, and doctors were confident it could be operated on successfully. He underwent a complex nine-hour procedure that included the removal of a tumour weighing 3kg, and after a long convalescence was declared cancer-free. I saw Wilko at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and, despite seeing over 30 events, he stole the show without a doubt. So full of life, funny and frank, it was just an absolute delight to delve into his musical history, life and miraculous story in the last few years in particular. The following year however, Johnson underwent an operation and declared himself cancer free, revealing later that he was told he only had 10 months to live and remarking: “I shouldn’t be here at all.”

Playing on the now and then quality of the title, Zoë Howe’s selected melange of ‘œthe man’ and ‘the life’ from astronomy, to literature, to guns, captures the enormity of his experience and the diversity of a life lived and the power of the Dr Feelgood era: a short by intensely influential time. Wilko today is reflective, with a pragmatic manner of talking about the big incidents of his life, and the future. The news of Johnson’s death was confirmed via a post on his official social media accounts, revealing that he died at home on Monday (November 21).In 2015, a new documentary titled The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson was released, focusing on Johnson’s cancer scare and featuring only two voices – Johnson’s and that of The Who’s Roger Daltrey. Shortly afterwards, he began to focus on the Wilko Johnson Band, his longest-running musical project, with whom he would go on to release seven albums over the next three decades, including the 1981 debut Ice on the Motorway, 1988’s Barbed Wire Blues and, most recently, 2018’s Blow Your Mind. In the meantime, he is focused on trying to maintain a resolution he made while recovering from his operation. He was in pain and protesting that he wanted to go home, when he had a revelation: “I suddenly realised there were all these people, that I never even saw, looking down microscopes and all that, doing all this for me. And I kind of gave myself a good talking to.” He resolved never to complain about anything ever again: to be, as he puts it, “less of a twat”. Zoe: “It’s all a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character isn’t it? They all drank a lot apart from Wilko – the drinking culture in the Feelgoods is one of the first things people think about. But I always think that if you are drinking that much and you are still a nice guy then you’re alright. The Jekyll and Hyde was more on-stage versus off-stage.”

As a huge fan of Dr Feelgood, it was great to read about their inception and eventual dissolution - obviously this is from Johnson’s perspective and there’s always two sides to every story. I’m not sure where or whether the other Feelgoods have given their thoughts publicly or in print in the past?I often say to journalists there is a bridge between the old times and the punk times. That bridge is exclusively the Feelgoods, it allowed us to go from one thing to another. That’s the connection, the DNA.” What emerges from this book is a passionate, private, intelligent, funny, eloquent and warm human being. When I heard ‘Down By The Jetty’ by Dr Feelgood I thought, those cunts! That’s what I’d been trying to arrive at. A brilliant re-interpretation of primal music coupled with words that were pertinent to me.” I’m sad to hear today of the passing of Wilko Johnson, the Dr Feelgood guitarist and singer/songwriter.