We took a little tape player down and recorded it - it was like a field trip.' The beginning of With A Hip is actually a dredger in Bristol docks. Dry your eyes! On Zimbo I played a guitar with a pair of scissors, bowing it. Was Mac crying through A Promise? I dunno - was he? I probably upset him. This was what I call my "D period" - I was getting into that thing of having the D string droning, like on A Promise. I was using my new E-Bow on Over The Wall, and Les used it on bass on Broke My Neck. When I was making this album I wanted to sound like Tony McPhee from The Groundhogs, from listening to them when I was 12 - that meandering, echoey guitar. 'I was using my Tele and a Space Echo a lot. Even on this album, though, Over The Wall is the only track with actual synths on. Hugh was great at processing the sounds through all this studio swag - the AMS's and Eventide Harmonisers. I didn't like cymbals, so they were banned. We did explore different avenues - Pete was making odd sounds with little slit drums and things. It was recorded at Rockfield and produced by Hugh Jones, who spent hours with me, messing around with my sounds. It was mad we were all hallucinating by the end. We were rehearsing for an American tour, so we'd record 'til all hours, rehearsing in this pig shed and having no sleep. That's great, because it just shows how music keeps going forward.' Now I've discovered that he nicked it off Richard Thompson. I also loved the way Television's Tom Verlaine wobbled the string with his finger - I'd learned to do that. That was based on a Dr Feelgood idea - Wilko Johnson used to do that choppy, walking-up-and-down thing. I was just so into doing this dead fast riff. 'I remember standing on top of my amp when I was doing the track Crocodiles and my fingers were all cut to bits, blood everywhere. We used to use Fender Twin Reverbs because we liked that brittle, scratchy sound, being into the Velvets. We didn't use synthesisers at all at this point unless Balfe sneaked them on - we thought they weren't punk rock. I had all sorts of echo boxes, like the Space Echo, as well as a weird old Yamaha digital delay and a phaser. 'I had a Telecaster on HP from Rushworths in Liverpool and I got quite into effects. There's a bit in the middle of it where there's literally a big scream. I did a screaming solo on Happy Death Men because I was so wound up with all of them. 'It's always a bit intense like that - it was then, it still is. Nobody was going to his aid, put it that way. One day he put some shitty keyboard sound on or something, and Mac had him around the throat and on the deck. His presence on this planet will be felt for many more years.Will Sergeant: 'Our first album was produced by Ian Broudie from The Lightning Seeds, and Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe, who called themselves The Chameleons. When I interviewed him a few years ago, he was bright, thoughtful and an astonishing story teller, carving legend from life. RIP Wilko.”Īlex Kapranos, the frontman of Franz Ferdinand, said that “his unique, wired playing style and stage presence thrilled and inspired many guitarists, myself included. I really admired him and we’ll all miss him. But, thankfully, he continued performing and thrilling crowds until recently. This show was originally billed as his farewell tour. I saw Wilko perform at Koko in Camden in May 2013 and the atmosphere was electric. After undergoing surgery he was declared cancer-free later in the year.Īmong the musicians paying tribute to Johnson was Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who wrote, “I’m sad to hear today of the passing of Wilko Johnson, the Dr Feelgood guitarist and singer/songwriter. His “Game of Thrones” role was then shortened, and he went on a farewell tour and recorded a final album with the Who’s lead singer, Roger Daltrey, in 2014. In 2013, he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer, elected not to undergo chemotherapy and was given 10 months to live. Afterwards, the American director came up to me and said ‘Wilko, you don’t have to act scary. Looking daggers at people is what I do all the time, it’s like second nature to me… On the first day, I had to look evilly at this girl. “They said they wanted somebody really sinister who went around looking daggers at people before killing them,” Wilko said in a 2011 interview. He had his tongue cut out during the Mad King’s rule, making him the perfect, silent killer. On TV, Johnson’s lone role was as Payne in Seasons 1 and 2 of “Game of Thrones.” Known as the King’s Justice, Payn was the royal executioner who was ordered to kill the beloved Eddard “Ned” Stark (Sean Bean) near the end of Season 1.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |