![]() And there he is in the centre of it all: talking ten to the dozen, scratching his great bald dome and reflecting on a life well lived, and a death well cheated. Refreshingly made for a mass audience rather than the Feelgood fanbase, Temple’s film is almost entirely free of archive footage, preferring clips from movies by Michael Powell and Andrei Tarkovsky, an odd couple that somehow perfectly illustrate the extreme opposites in Wilko’s personality. At which point Julian Temple’s affectionate documentary – part biopic, part arty collage film, part scenic ramble through Wilko’s synaptic labyrinth – transforms from a tribute to an only-just-living legend into a real-life tale of victory against the odds. Only it turns out that the cosmic joke has an unexpected punchline, in the form of an expert physician called Charlie Chan and a last-minute trip to surgery. He’s even growing physically, as the massive tumour swells in his formerly wiry gut. Whatever the opposite of a shadow of your former self is, Wilko has become it: he’s loving life, playing to adoring crowds, recording a new album and preparing to go out with a bang. It was a blow that led him to continual feelings of depression that he only managed to shake off when playing live. the documentary The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson, a film which explored Wilkos. Johnsons wife Irene, a former childhood sweetheart, died of cancer in 2004. The erstwhile schoolteacher, astronomer, professional eccentric, Doctor Feelgood guitarist and Coolest Man in the World (1974 edition) is dying of inoperable pancreatic cancer – an experience which has left him, as the film’s title suggests, bizarrely elated. Legendary guitarist Wilko Johnson talks candidly to Music Republic Magazine. And he’s not a bad guitar player, either.‘The cosmic joke is actually very funny,’ grins Wilko Johnson, perched on the sea-wall overlooking the Thames Estuary and his beloved Canvey Island. It’s perhaps not the best treatment, but it’s a treat to spend an hour and half with such a man. While The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson sometimes threatens to muffle words, the man’s voice rings through. Timothy Leary.” The dry wit, the storied life, the literary elegance and the expressive embrace of existence are all evident in a single sentence. The film's director, Julien Temple (a long-standing friend and admirer of Wilko's work in Doctor Feelgood), aptly chooses a passage from the English mystic Thomas Traherne's 'Centuries of Meditation' to express this newfound joy at the many manifestations of the incarnate world. “Look at Blake,” he says at one point, “he was seeing trees full of angels in Peckham long before Dr. Fortunately, Johnson himself is more than enough compensation. On other occasions they are too on-the-nose or, in some instances, seem to run counter-intuitive to what is being said. ![]() Sometimes, the chosen visuals perfectly capture, or even enhance, the beauty of his musing. This is the case throughout the film which overlays various snippets of archive footage, or film sequences, on top of Johnson’s soliloquy. On it’s most basic level the allegory makes sense, but interrogated a little further – in the context of Johnson’s outlook and his wider beliefs – it doesn’t quite fit as well. The chess game in being played against Temple clad in a long black robe – although a few inserts suggest that Johnson is playing himself – in an obvious reference to Bergman’s Seventh Seal (1957). Which in part highlights one of the slightly jarring aspects of Temple’s film. There are darker melancholic days, he confides to Temple who sits across a chessboard from him on the Canvey Island beachfront.īut on the whole, his positivity is wondrous to behold – he seems to have been freed from the anxiety of mortality looming like a shadow, rather than consumed by it. And yet, he did not let that weigh him down. ![]() The profundity of life seemed to reveal itself to Johnson at the precise moment that the death knell sounded. He poetically describes the walk down the high street from the doctor’s surgery – it was like the very paving stones were shimmering. When he learned in 2012 that he only had ten months to live, the kinds of things running through his head transformed instantaneously. Quotes from the likes of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare pass his lips with no hint of pretension, merely a recollection of the best way he has at his disposal to express his thoughts. With Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson, John Martin, John B. His lived-in Essex drawl and intense gaze might seem more apt for the manic jerky energy of his on-stage persona, but off it he is an erudite and deeply contemplative man.
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