The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson imagine...

This programme contains some strong language

and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

When Wilko Johnson exploded onto the stage in the early 1970s,

in the punk, blues band Dr. Feelgood,

strutting and grimacing and wielding

his Telecaster guitar like a machinegun,

the world didn't know what had hit it.

# The way that you smile when you hold my hand... #

He inspired everyone from The Who's Roger Daltrey to Paul Weller

and The Jam.

This story goes way beyond rock and roll.

It's a film about a man confronting his mortality

and how the paradox of being told he was going to die

only made him feel more alive.

Tonight, Imagine celebrates the miracle

of Wilko Johnson in Julien Temple's remarkable film.

BELL TOLLS

"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls

"It tolls for thee."

It's Canvey Island,

it's springtime, it's 2014 and my life is coming to an end.

It's been the most extraordinary year.

# I've been searching all through the city

# See you in the morning down by the jetty

# I'll take you down to the jetty... #

CHEERING

CHEERING FADES

WIND WHISTLES

I had this lump in my stomach which I'd been treating by ignoring

and hoping it will go away.

And my son saw it one evening and said, "Come on, you're going

"into the A & E," and dragged me down there and tests began and...

they started saying to me, "Yes, you've got this mass

"in your stomach that seems to be emanating from your pancreas."

Yes, they told me I had cancer.

An inoperable cancer

and erm...

..perhaps ten months to live.

I was absolutely calm.

Not a flutter.

It was as if he was telling me something I'd known all my life.

I knew it meant that...

I was going to die.

I remember walking out of the hospital -

my house was quite near the hospital so I was going to walk home.

It was a beautiful winter's day,

looking at the trees against the sky

and suddenly I felt this...

elation.

It was almost an ecstatic feeling.

You're vividly alive.

Every little thing you see, every cold breeze against your face,

every brick in the road.

The very paving stones seemed to be shimmering.

Oh, man, it looked so good.

I mean, everything was tingling.

You know, looking around and everything

in the street, everything, I'm thinking,

"I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive."

Suddenly everything lifted off of me.

Present, future, past - it was all concentrated down into the moment.

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat

"Which never should be reaped

"Nor was ever sown

"I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting

"The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold

"The green trees when I saw them first transported and ravished me

"Their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap

"And almost mad with ecstasy

"They were such strange and wonderful things.

"The men and young men were glittering and sparkling angels

"And maids, strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty

"Boys and girls tumbling in the street and playing

"Were moving jewels

"I knew not that they were born or should die

"The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven

"The streets were mine

"The temple was mine

"The people were mine

"Their clothes and gold and silver were mine

"The skies were mine

"And so were the sun and moon and stars

"And all the world was mine

"And I the only spectator and enjoyer of it."

We're so wrapped up in what's going on in our everyday lives...

we don't think about... You exist.

You exist. You, you... look at all this.

You can see it and experience it.

See a world in a grain of sand.

Look at Blake.

He was seeing trees full of angels at Peckham

long before Dr Timothy Leary.

By the time I got home, I was...

almost euphoric.

JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

The idea that death is imminent

really makes you realise what a wonderful thing it is to be alive.

I never would've guessed that it would feel like this.

It seems to me that finding this out has somehow completed my life.

All of the things I would imagine one would feel, I don't feel.

I am a feather for each wind that blows, you know,

and the wind's blowing me this way now.

And naturally you sit and think,

"Why didn't I work out before that...?

"Man, just the moment you're in that matters."

Of course, we can't always be threatened with imminent death,

but it probably takes that to knock a bit of sense into our heads.

I did feel so high.

I was wondering first of all, "Is this shock?"

CROWD CHEERS

But in fact, this feeling has persisted.

CRACKLING

I remember somebody telling me there are several stages you're supposed to go through

about denial and anger and I haven't been through any of that.

I don't get angry about it. I mean, who's to get angry with?

I've got cancer cos I'm actually a human being

and human beings are prone to get cancer.

And why should I be any different?

So, no, I've never been through those things.

Just realised that, you know, that something's happened to me.

SINGING

Everybody's going to die and I've got the advantage of knowing that it's worked out for me.

In a way, you're free of the grip of mortality

and your destiny is settled.

Death is something that you always look at as the indefinite future.

And, me, it's going to be,

I don't know, a few months or something.

There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow

If it be now, 'tis not to come.

"If it be not to come, then 't'will be now."

If it be not now... yet it will come.

The readiness is all.

Since no man has aught of what he leaves,

what is to leave betimes?

Hamlet and he was right. And that's true for everybody.

It will come.

If you love certain lines, they're always in your mind.

I do love my conversation with the quotations from here and there.

It doesn't matter if whoever I'm talking to is not going to pick up on that either, you know?

Or if you're with a fellow literary type they'll pick up on what you're saying.

Just fun.

Reading is just something I've done as almost a reflex all my life.

You know, I'll sit there reading every word on the Cornflakes packet in the morning.

You know, I just do it.

I get uncomfortable if I haven't got something to read.

"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near

"And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity."

Andy Marvell. What a marvel.

Repeat. Are you wounded? Are you bailing out?

Yes, I'm bailing out, but there's a catch. I've got no parachute.

And I'd rather jump than fry.

WIND WHISTLES

After I received the verdict, they told me

I had about ten months to live.

And with chemotherapy, maybe a year.

Chemotherapy makes you very, very ill

and actually I feel fine right now.

And I would rather just have my last months

just feeling as good as I can.

"What cannot be cured must be endured."

I think the best thing to do,

rather than trying to fight it, is to accept it

and make the most of it.

The whole idea of running for a second opinion or something, you think you just,

you know, I don't want to spend my time doing that.

I've avoided any kind of false hope and didn't try

and bargain with it, because if you're struggling against something

and hoping for some miracle cure, it means it's on your mind.

If it's going to kill me, I don't want it to bore me.

So I just want it out of the way until it does its stuff.

It's not so much death that bothers me as much as dying.

Sooner or later, my health is going to break down

and I'm going to be horribly sick in bed,

and I just don't want to go through that.

I was asking them what's going to happen.

They told me that when the cancer comes on,

it will come on gradually, slowly.

And so naturally you think every little sniffle you get,

you think, "Whoa, it's beginning."

And then, then you're not so cocky.

HE CHUCKLES

Good Hamlet. All that lives must die.

Passing through nature to eternity.

The first thing I did was go to Japan,

which is a place I love very much.

If you want to seek tranquillity, it's a good place to go.

We went up to visit a monastery up in the hills in Kyoto.

We got there, this place was just so silent.

There was no-one there.

At one point, I was looking out across the temple roofs

and there was a fine snow falling

through these huge pine trees.

The sun was shining through and made the snow golden.

Normally, I would be looking at a scene like this and thinking,

"Wow, I must impress this memory on my mind

"so I can recollect it in future times."

But, of course, there will be no more future times for me.

I realised what I've got to do is just experience this now -

not try and commit it to memory.

I managed to do it. It's quite a hard thing to do actually.

But just looking at it and just contemplating that scene,

without reference to the future or the past or anything,

just that moment. The sublime moment.

Wordsworth had these daffodils right,

"Which flash upon that inward eye,"

which is the bliss of solitude.

And...

yes, it was something like that.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In Japan, I took the opportunity to do a couple of farewell gigs.

OK, listen. I'm never going to see you again.

CHEERING DROWNS OUT SPEECH

BLUES INTRO PLAYS

The last number we did was Chuck Berry's Bye Bye Johnny.

# So bye, bye-bye, bye... #

And I'm waving, I'm going, # Bye-bye, bye-bye... #

And all the crowd are going, "Bye."

Like we're all waving to each other going bye-bye...

# Bye, bye, bye... #

Hello, hello, hello.

# Bye-bye, Johnny

# Goodbye, Johnny Go home

# I said, bye, bye, bye-bye

# We'll go bye, bye, bye-bye

# Bye-bye, Johnny

# Goodbye, Johnny B Goode. #

CHEERING

Arigatou.

That was a buzz because it was just such a great piece of show-business.

You know, you're going, "Bye-bye." Everybody's crying

and that, it's fantastic.

Me, I didn't have a lump in my throat or anything.

I didn't feel at all upset.

-CHANTING:

-We want more, we want more, we want more.

Thank you, Wilko.

Wilko.

We want more, we want more, we want more.

I came back from Japan with a carrier bag full of letters

that people had given me.

Thank you, Wilko.

Full of these good feelings for me.

Often expressed in broken English, which makes them

all the more touching.

Wilko, see you again.

God, I love Japan.

But I love it here, too.

Anyone that grew up on Canvey Island

knows that Canvey Island's special.

It's Treasure Island.

SURF GUITAR PLAYS

CHILDREN SCREAM

People say, "Wow, what, you live in Canvey Island, right?

"It must be fantastic.

"It must be like being on holiday all the time."

"Yes, yes, it is."

Whoop!

# Come on, pretty baby

# Let's move it and a groove it... #

People used to come from the East End of London

to Canvey Island, right.

# It's a rhythm that gets into your heart and soul

# Let me tell you, baby It's called rock'n'roll

# They say it's gonna... #

SCREAMING

# They just don't know what's a goin' to replace it

# Ballads and calypso they've got nothing on real... #

On these summer days the traffic used to back up several miles.

When we were kids, we used to see all these people stuck,

fuming in this bloody traffic jam.

And we, we used to walk along going, "1,032...

"1,033."

SURF MUSIC PLAYS

It was funny.

I mean, you wonder, is this your idea of a good time?

You drive down here and you, you get on this shingle beach,

which gives way to a sort of mud of the river bottom.

There were a lot of magical things for me on Canvey Island.

I don't think that the beach is really one of them.

He was a founding member of the rock band Dr. Feelgood

and is known for his unique way of playing the guitar.

Picking and strumming at the same time.

BLUES MUSIC PLAYS

When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer,

Wilko Johnson decided to refuse treatment

and carry on doing what he does best.

He's now embarked on his farewell tour.

-Good morning, Wilko.

-Morning.

Bring us up to speed because some people won't know you've been ill, but you have.

You've been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

-Yeah.

-So, what, what's happening? How are you right now?

I'm feeling fit and fine at the moment.

I've got maybe six months,

I can expect to feel healthy before I start to, erm, crumble.

I get the distinct impression that because of what's happening to you, that you, you're just sort of,

absolutely embracing everything that's, you know, in front of you.

Is that what, is that what's going on?

You walk down the street, you'll, you'll look at

you'll look at a dustbin or a pussycat or something.

Wow, you know, it's almost tingling.

The world is almost tingling with life and it,

it just feels so good.

And to live in the moment you're in,

without any of that extraneous stuff,

it's, it's a euphoric feeling and I'm...

Yes, I'm pleased I've had it.

Dave has texted to say, "Wilko, you have brought pleasure to millions.

"You are a special man."

Olly Iron has quoted you, "Wilko Johnson, tingling with

"the euphoria of being alive after being given ten months to live."

And lots of people inspired by your attitude.

If other people can find some strength in anything I've said,

then good.

The great, great Wilko Johnson.

First time I've heard him play, I think, since 1975.

-Eh?

-Do stay with us.

Many people have told me they've found, you know,

whatever I've said about having a fatal illness, erm,

somehow inspiring. But I've, I've only...

spoken about the way I felt it, the way I've experienced it.

People come up to me in the street and so on and shake my hand and that,

perhaps thinking it's their last chance.

You've decided to go out in style, on stage, with a bang.

Not literally go out.

I mean, don't buy a ticket hoping you can see me keel over.

Right at the moment, thank you very much, I feel fit as a fiddle.

And yet I know that death is upon me.

I'm just hoping it spares me long enough to do these gigs,

then I'll be a happy man.

That's all right.

Norman's bass playing is one of the reasons I'm still going.

Norman Watt-Roy!

CHEERING

And now we've got Dylan Howe on the drums and they're just so good.

I just get such a kick off playing with these guys.

And it's a good band.

So many bands, so many musicians talk about their farewell tour

and then they're back again a few years later. But you've got no choice.

Well, I've got no choice about that at all, no.

You know, I can't go on for another five years.

When you're playing,

you realise that this might be the last one, this is the end.

# Bye, bye, bye... #

Oh, that sounds so sweet now!

# Bye, bye, bye, bye... #

# Bye-bye, Johnny Goodbye, Johnny B Goode. #

CHEERING

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Goodnight. And goodbye.

I think I'm a happier person

probably now than I have been for years and years.

I'm not suggesting I'm walking around

with a silly grin on my face all the time.

Obviously there are dark nights of the soul.

Like three o'clock in the morning and you're thinking about it.

And, erm...

..moods go up and down easily.

But I think my mood this year has been

better than it normally is.

There is no such thing as happiness -

only lesser shades of melancholy.

Generally through my life, I have been a fairly miserable so-and-so.

I'm someone who tends to shrink away from erm, people.

I don't know why.

I'm never the life and soul of the party, if you know what I mean.

I tend to be in the kitchen.

And subject to getting uptight about the tiniest thing

or something, and of course now I realise how foolish all that is.

You know, there's really, you know...

It just don't matter.

-# Tell me who's that writin'?

-John the Revelator

-# Who's that writin'?

-John the Revelator

-# Who's that writin'?

-John the Revelator

-# What's John writin'?

-Ask the Revelator

-# What's John writin'?

-Ask the Revelator

-# What's John writin'?

-Ask the Revelator

# The book of the seven seals...#

Death has no fear for me.

I'm not frightened of going to hell or anything like that.

I'm an atheist.

I absolutely do not believe in God.

I don't believe in any kind of survival after death.

I believe that death is oblivion.

I'm just going to return to the oblivion that I came from.

Time began 13-and-a-half billion years ago, and these

13-and-a-half billion years went by until 1947

when I popped out and thought, "Blimey, it's big, innit?"

And that's where I'm going back to.

That's where we're all going back to in the end.

Oblivion.

Death is our normal state.

For all of eternity, we exist for the briefest eye blink.

You've got your Anglo-Saxons and their famous image

of man's life being like a bird

that flies out of the darkness into the lighted hall and through

and then out into the darkness again.

Of course, if you study astronomy,

you begin to get some inkling of how vast eternity is.

Man, it's so big. It's light years.

Billions of stars and billions of galaxies.

Wilko, you love astrology and the stars and looking at...

-Astronomy.

-Astronomy. Apologies.

Astronomy. But you have lectured about the Moon as well, haven't you?

Oh, yeah. You know,

I'm a keen astronomer.

I've got a great, big, huge telescope on my roof in a dome.

What you've got up there is this marvellous huge clock,

turning and turning.

FAUSTUS: Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

The stars move still

Time runs, the clock will strike

The devil will come

And Faustus must be damn'd.

The constellation Orion, which is my, you know,

my favourite constellation,

is moving out of the sky now and I'll never see it again.

Also my very favourite thing in the sky is, of course, Saturn

and it comes up over the houses across the road.

Nice big star.

And if you look at it through a telescope, it's fantastic.

I said goodbye to that

and thought, "Well, I'll never look on that wonderful thing again".

It's weird, you know, you're saying farewell to...

It gives you some funny feelings.

"To die, to sleep.

"To sleep, perchance to dream.

"Aye, there's the rub.

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

"When we have shuffled off this mortal coil."

Funnily enough, in my dreams there is no cancer.

I've never dreamt about it. I've never had cancer in,

in, in my dreams. Er...

One reason I enjoy them so much, I think.

HE LAUGHS

COCKEREL CROWS

The first thing that happens when you wake up

is that you remember you've got cancer.

"O Rose thou art sick.

"The invisible worm

"That flies in the night

"In the howling storm:

"Has found out thy bed

"Of crimson joy:

"And his dark secret love

"Does thy life destroy."

Oooh.

My future self is quite close to me now.

I mean, I'm not going to get much older.

Now I'm going to die,

I find myself in a retrospective kind of mood.

It's the only one you can have, innit?

You know, it's all behind you, mate.

I was born here, I grew up here.

Erm... It's always had a certain magic for me.

And there's something magic about it still.

It's imprinted on me, I think, this.

I love it, I just love it. I love this.

I love this estuary. I love this...

..blessed plot.

One of my earliest memories, sort of, flood,

I can remember looking out the back and where there used to be,

er, fields, I could see, er, waves

and I knew that something was amiss.

And our house was ruined.

"Canute turned towards the ocean.

"Back!" he said, "thou foaming brine

"From the sacred shore of Canvey I command thee to retreat.

"Venture not thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's feet."

The wall broke down in the middle of the night and, of course,

many people lost their lives.

My dad was a gas fitter.

And, I mean, he remained here on Canvey during the flood.

They had to maintain the gas pipes...

..which meant he was wading around in icy water up to his chest

and stuff like that.

This did his chest in.

Pneumonia. He couldn't breathe.

Every year he got worse and worse until finally

I come home from school one day

and there was something funny about the house. It's quiet.

I look on the table and I see all these certificates

and I realised he's, he's gone. He's dead.

(And I thought, "Fuck, great".)

I was so pleased.

I didn't like my father.

I despised him.

He was violent and, er...

Yes, fuck him.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

My mother was an educated woman, actually.

She got this gig, er, scrubbing the floors

at the gas company in order to buy our grammar school uniforms.

And, er, what more can you say?

But I cannot ever remember...

kissing her.

All through our childhood when we were visiting relatives,

I was always aware that there was something shameful about us.

You could feel it.

Just something I grew up with. I thought, "Yeah, it's natural.

"Course, you come from Canvey Island you've every right to be ashamed".

After my mother had died, I was clearing up the house,

I suppose, and I found this envelope, big, brown envelope.

And I emptied it out and there's all these certificates

and forms in there.

And fuck...

What was it? It was my father's divorce.

I knew that he'd been married before.

It, it also contained my mother's discharge from the Army.

This is during the war, you see, and it...

-HE CHUCKLES

-On it it said,

"Reason for discharge," and it put "Family reasons".

He had obviously got her pregnant and...

Ah!

That's why, that's why we, that's why I was so ashamed.

Whenever we went to visit our relatives,

that's why I was so ashamed.

Because we were, we were...

..the prodigy of sin.

You fucking bastard.

It was heavy ...

and, er...

Yeah.

I've always, through my life, suffered from this misery...

I get.

I always had a world of my own, you know.

Rock and roll.

MUSIC: Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates

I saw Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry

and I saw Johnny Kidd & The Pirates a couple of times at a club here.

# That's when I get the shakes all over me

# Quivers down the backbone... #

They would come on stage wearing pirate outfits,

and Johnny Kidd had this, er, sword, right?

He would throw it, "thoomp!" into the stage.

# Shakin' all over... #

They looked so hard.

You know, they looked like fairground people

and they were putting down this fierce sound

and I became devoted to them.

# Quivers down the backbone

# Yeah, shakes in the knee bone... #

Now your Lobster Smack is, er...

I think it's actually the oldest building on the island.

Many tales and legends cling to it, right?

People think Captain Kidd used to go down there for a drink

but I don't think so.

Also people think that smugglers used to go there

and there's some kind of tunnel

leading all the way up to somewhere else, like, you know,

smugglers use these sort of things but I think that's a lie as well.

Dick, Dick, Dick used to stay away.

He wasn't hard enough to come down to Canvey Island, mate,

you know, like, Dick Turpin. He was up in,

up in Essex somewhere, you know...

Pip! Pip! Come back, Pip.

HE SCREAMS

Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat.

And no, Charles Dickens did not base Great Expectations

round Canvey Island.

I think it's over the other side of the river, really.

Kent, Canterbury.

Holy Blissful Martyr.

CHURCH BELLS RING

This used to be cheap, little caravans

and these houses that have sprouted up here

unfortunately obscuring the view of the oil tanks which I love as well.

HE LAUGHS

At night-time, the chimney stacks are all lit up.

You get the flames flickering underneath the clouds.

Very Miltonic.

"Yet from those flames.

2No light, but rather darkness visible:

"Served only to discover sights of woe."

I do like Milton.

I'm very fond of Milton, yeah. I like Paradise Lost.

I'm one of the few people that's read it all.

It takes eight and a half hours, with a break for lunch

-to read Paradise Lost.

-HE CHUCKLES

"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree

"whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe.

"With loss of Eden till one greater man restore us

"and regain the blissful seat.

"Sing, heav'nly muse."

It's a great poem. Everyone should read it.

Milton says he is writing to justify the ways of God to men.

Now, if I think there is no God,

there's no need for Milton to justify his ways to me,

but it's just the eloquence with which he does so.

And everybody knows that who is the hero of Paradise Lost?

It's Satan.

And Satan is the one who defies God and will not bow down to God.

He is the hero.

Because I love to read Paradise Lost does not mean that I have to

believe in life after death or Heaven and Hell or anything.

I can experience it in those lines.

The mind is its own place,

and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

I had an interest in literature,

you know, doing A Levels at school.

Particularly keen on medieval literature, poetry.

I particularly like Chaucer.

Hello, Geoffrey.

"The well of English undefiled.

"When that Aprill, with his shoures soote

"The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

"And bathed every veyne in swich licour

"Of which vertu engendered is the flour

"So priketh hem Nature in hir corages;

"And then desiren folk to goon on pilgrimages."

Constable painted this castle.

I used to climb up and sit in that window

and just imagine I was a medieval soldier.

You know, with the chainmail and a crossbow or something.

Look, there's a little boy having a piss.

That's fairly medieval, pissing against a wall.

When I went up to university, um,

I started reading more medieval stuff.

But one of these choices was, um, Old Icelandic,

and I thought, "I'm never, ever, ever going to read Old Icelandic

"unless I do it now."

I was the only one, right?

Me and Mr Frankus, used to teach me er, Old Icelandic.

HE SPEAKS OLD ICELANDIC

This is what's known as a Lewis chess set, is it not?

It looks pretty Nordic, doesn't it?

These chaps.

In the sagas, we find this laconic, humorous almost, er,

attitude towards death.

SCREAMING

I was reading Njall's saga just, just last night.

HE SPEAKS IN OLD ICELANDIC

There's a passage in there where the hero is being besieged

in his house and the guy comes up to the window

and the hero shoves his spear through him.

And the guy walks back to his friends and they ask him

if Gunnar is at home.

And he says, "I don't know if he's at home

"but his halberd certainly is," and just falls down dead.

Go with a joke.

Er... I'll...

I'll, I'll do that.

Down at The Railway Hotel in Southend,

when, um, I first got this diagnosis,

everybody was coming up and embracing you.

Makes you into a bit of a star, you know,

"here is the doomed man," you know, walking in and all that.

All right, Wilks? How's it going?

It's just day-by-day really.

It can hit me any moment.

-And apparently when it hits you...

-Yeah.

-..it hits you quick.

And so it gets to the stage where you start thinking,

"Man, I'm still doing OK."

It's starting to get a bit embarrassing to the extent

where French Henry, he's going to me,

"Man, you're not going to die, you're not going to die."

And I'm going, "Henry, I'm not going to see Christmas."

And I made the most stupid bet in the universe, right?

I bet Henry £100 that I wouldn't see Christmas,

and he bet me £100 that I would.

Now, of course, if I win, I'm dead.

If he wins, he gets £100.

After I'd got the verdict...

..I wrote several songs.

I noticed that a lot of them tended to be about death.

Stuff about clocks and stuff like that, you know.

And I thought, "Well, you've got to watch it, right?

"Cos I don't want this to be progressive music or anything."

I think there are some kind of references

to the inexorability of the Grim Reaper.

You will come with me.

I fell in love with, er, particularly cumulus clouds

because they're just sort of great backgrounds for hallucination.

Just seemed like an obvious thing to do one sunny day,

"Let's go and look at the clouds".

They're good things to look at.

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in the shape of a camel?

By th' mass, and tis like a camel indeed.

Methinks it's like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.

Or like a whale.

It's very like a whale.

Everybody knows you just stare at clouds

and you see the most wonderful pictures.

I love riding in an aeroplane for that reason.

I decided I wanted to be a...

a painter.

Maybe I could convey some of this imagery

that I've never seen anywhere else but...

You do get ecstasies with LSD.

But LSD is a whole...

..different place.

Wow.

MUSIC: Merrily We Roll Along

A lot of it is just visions that arise, you know,

it might be visions of, er...

..Babylon.

The primal swamp, you know.

DOLL SINGS

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

It makes you see everything in a different kind of way.

I think at one point I probably used to think life was the boring time

you spent in-between LSD trips.

And then you realise it's scrambling you a bit.

And, er, I didn't do it.

You never know what is enough

unless you know what is more than enough.

Good old William Blake.

You were, for a short period of time, a teacher, weren't you?

What were you supposed to be teaching?

Er, I was an English teacher.

I really enjoyed teaching.

I felt a mission to turn people on to literature

and I thought, "They ain't getting past me

"without seeing a bit of Shakespeare".

To be or not to be...

"That is the question.

"Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings

"and arrows of outrageous fortune

"or to take arms against a sea of troubles

"and by opposing, end them."

Alas, poor Yorick!

I knew him, Horatio.

If you got a bit of enthusiasm and you're willing to show people

what you can find in Shakespeare or literature,

one or two of 'em, at least, you're going to turn on

and you've given them a gift for life.

What do you read, my lord?

Hmm? Er, words.

Words.

Words.

Being in a rock and roll band

and being a teacher, very similar things.

I mean, what are you doing?

You're in a room making a fool of yourself

in front of a load of young people and trying to put something across.

MUSIC: I Can Tell by Dr. Feelgood

# I can tell cos it's plain to see, yeah

# I can tell the way you look at me

# The way that you smile when you hold my hand, yeah... #

You were the leaders in this style of music, weren't you?

-I do believe that's fair to say, yeah.

-Yeah.

-Canvey Island boys.

# I can tell

# I can tell

# I know you don't love me no more... #

Come on, Wil!

In Dr. Feelgood, he had attitude.

They're gritty as well, there is a bite to them.

MOSQUITO BUZZES

And Wilko was the stand-out to me.

The way he moved.

Whoops. Mosquito up the butt.

We had a sound and it was a sound reminiscent

of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates.

Exactly our influence.

Well, we supported Johnny Kidd & the Pirates on quite a few gigs.

Lee's white suit was actually quite famous.

It had been lived in, that suit.

I always went for a black suit.

This is 15 quid in Asda.

"Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother."

Great, isn't it? Yeah, look, I bought four of 'em.

I thought, "I can look smart all the time."

Throw it on the ground of an evening and put on a new one the next day.

# Cos I'm a hog for you, baby

# I can't enough of your love

# When I go to sleep at night

# You're the only thing I'm dreaming of... #

Gradually, Lee was building this kind of persona,

then the one I had kind of complimented it.

I was either his lieutenant...

GUNFIRE

..or his berserker.

Berserkers were very valued warriors

and when they went into battle

they became possessed with this fighting rage

and it was impossible to stop them.

You had to kind of cleave their head in two.

When it came to the guitar solo, then I would be the mad axeman.

And that is a berserker.

Tricky to be around.

HE LAUGHS

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

All this rock and roll business was a complete accident.

I... I never meant to do this.

I thought I was going to be a painter but, um...

..when it came to make your mind up time,

I chose the, er, Cadillac rather than the garret.

CROWD CLAP IN UNISON

What's he doing here?

Sir Ilyn?

He's here to defend us.

When the axes smash down those doors, you may be glad to have him.

My character in Game of Thrones was Ser Ilyn Payne, the executioner.

He's a violent psychopath.

He's, at some point in his career, had his tongue removed,

which, you see, I've never done any acting before and it's...

HE LAUGHS

It's really good to get a part where you don't have to learn any lines.

All you've got to do is give people dirty looks, and I can do that.

"I'm fucking having you."

Just thinking that in your mind and your face'll do the rest.

No, it was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately cancer intervened.

MUSIC: Cross Road Blues by Robert Johnson

You definitely step into a different kind of consciousness.

You look on everything differently so all of my past experience

and things like that, they're all in that other world.

You know, I call it BC.

Before Cancer.

I have found myself becoming more and more isolated.

Um, I'm living in a, in a, in a...

I don't know, a different place than most people.

# Standin' at the crossroads

# I tried to flag a ride

# Didn't nobody seem to know me

# Everybody pass me by... #

I look out on a crowded street and think,

"Look at all these people. They're all subject to mortality."

But I'm not because mine is, er, established and sorted out.

MUSIC: Stranger On The Shore by Acker Bilk

I've stopped reading newspapers.

I don't look at the news on the television.

I'm completely shut off from the ways of the world.

The feeling that I have no future

means that whatever's happening in the world,

you don't get to see what's going to happen.

So I won't concern myself with it.

It's a kind of limbo.

"Tis a strange place, this Limbo!

"Not a Place, yet name it so;

"Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands

"Barren and soundless as the measuring sands

" 'Not mark'd by flit of shades, unmeaning they...'

" '..as moonlight on the dial of the day.' "

It is as though there's this kind of barrier.

It can mean being very, very lonely...

..in a way that I've never known before.

This feeling of isolation can, you know, if you're a bit tired

or a bit down, it can turn into the most terrible loneliness

which you know nobody can save you from.

Who are you going to run to?

You can't run to your friends and go, "I'm lonely, I'm lonely".

"Of course you're lonely, cos you're on your own."

But you just have to go through these things.

The same as you might enjoy the ecstasy of existence,

you've also got to enjoy the, the kind of misery

of the reverse side of the coin.

BLUES GUITAR NOODLING

If you're not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

It's always bothered me that our generation have, er,

kind of lived a life of denial about death.

You know, we worry far too much about it, you know.

It's something that should be embraced.

# Mmm...

# Ah... #

Death is something that everybody, every single person,

has to face up to, and it's not just you've got to face up to it

at the end, it's with you all your life.

"Who would lose, though full of pain, this intellectual being?"

We've all got to face that.

# Ah...

# Ah, oh-oh...

# Oh-oh... #

I know the hardest thing is for my friends

and my family and that who are losing,

because I experienced this ten years ago

when my wife Irene died from cancer.

# It was a teenage wedding

# And the old folks wished them well. #

We'd been together for 40 years.

You know, I'm still in love with her

and still miss her tremendously.

And that was probably the hardest thing I've had to

accept in my whole life was that she's gone.

I know what it's like to sit there helpless...

while somebody you love is just taken away from you

by this horrible spectre.

A dreadful feeling.

LOUD DOOR SLAM

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."

# Goodnight, Irene

# Goodnight, Irene

# I'll kiss you in my dreams. #

I'm still prone to burst into tears thinking about her,

but I've never come anywhere near that thinking about myself.

# Irene, goodnight

# Irene, goodnight

# Goodnight, Irene

# Goodnight, Irene

# I'll kiss you in my dreams. #

It honestly doesn't seem to me to be tragic or sad or anything

that I'm going to die,

but I know what it's like for my people around me.

LOUD BANG

They can't make jokes about it.

-HE CHUCKLES

-It would be in very poor taste! But I can.

HE CHUCKLES

SOMBRE ORCHESTRAL MELODY

The ten months have gone by. I'm still on my feet.

But the tumour continues to grow.

When the disease will kick in and do its stuff, I don't know.

They told me I would be dead by now.

The first thing I did after October when they told me I would die

was to make this album with Roger Daltrey.

BLUESY ROCK MUSIC

This idea of doing an album together,

it came up a couple of years ago and nothing ever came of it.

Then when Roger heard that I'd got cancer,

he come back and said, "Well, you know, we'll do that album".

I'll sing any song he wants me to sing.

Let's just make a record, let's make the record for fun.

So I said, I said, "Yeah, yeah, but we'd better do it quick".

Which we did.

Eight days.

BLUESY ROCK GUITAR

-DALTREY:

-By this time, it is starting to affect him.

He had wobbly days.

He used to feel sick a lot and it was pushing in,

into other organs in his body.

We're thinking we're making an album with a man who's going to be

dead in, maybe next week. We might not

even get this thing finished.

No expectations of this record whatsoever.

Didn't even have a record deal.

And it's turned out to be very successful.

That's great! You know, I'm going to, I'm going to die.

# I want to live

# The way I like

# Sleep all the morning

# Go and get my fun at night

# Yeah, things ain't like that here

# Working just to keep my payments clear

# I bought a brand-new motor

# And I'm waiting on a loan

# So I can fill her up and start her

# And I'm going back home. #

TYRES SCREECH

When I listen to the album now, there is so much life.

There's so much energy in it. It made me want to go, "Yeah!

-"Yeah! Fuck it!"

-HE CHUCKLES

This is what music SHOULD be about.

Who would have thought that I would have an album

in the charts at the end of that year?

But there it was.

Roger Wilko and out.

It's good that we could think of those things

with his condition.

Even though we could see this tumour was now sticking out...

He looked pregnant.

He had names for it. I gave it a name.

-Henry.

-HE LAUGHS

I tried to get it to sing.

CROWD LAUGHS

'Couldn't get a word out of it.'

First of all it wasn't that obvious but now, now it's grown quite big.

It's now quite huge, to the extent that my guitar actually rocks on it.

If I'd lie on my back, in bed, it would be sticking up.

Beating - boom, boom, boom.

And you think, "Oh, man, it's an alien job!"

WEIRD MUSIC

"Is it going to come bursting out one night and strangle me?"

It's just as well to laugh at it, really.

It's important.

A sense of TUMOUR.

This year's GQ Man of the Year award goes to...

Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Elton John.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Wilko Johnson is a hero of mine.

I remember seeing Dr Feelgood so many times.

But for this man to take time out...

and we all know his personal story at the moment,

and the beauty of what he's going through and telling that he's

too busy living life to think about fucking dying.

If I could give you this award, I will. You can have that.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You're the fucking genius here.

I'm not bothered about

entering any hall of fame or anything like that.

I mean, I've had my fun and that's that.

I think rock'n'roll is a thing that is of the moment.

You know, it's not something to try and set in stone.

When I'm gone, I'm gone.

I mean, what's it going to matter to me?

One of the things that's made this so tolerable, if you like,

is I think I have just been so lucky.

I've had a splendid life and to demand more seems greedy, in a way.

I can't imagine it being...better.

People I've loved and things I've loved.

WHISTLING

# Dreamin' thing in my heart. #

I always used to have this thing, you know,

in my life from when I was younger,

that I thought one day, when I got old, that I would be wise.

-HE CHUCKLES

-I don't know what I imagined this as

but, anyway, I've got old

and I'm afraid I'm still not very wise, but I think

a little bit wiser than I was.

I imagined this kind of venerable figure by a mullioned window

with sunbeams slanting through it and the young folks will come

to me and I would say...

I would say incredibly wise things to them

and they'll think, "What a wise guy."

Time's nearly up.

AMPLIFIED TICKING

FLAMES ROAR

SINISTER LAUGHTER ECHOES

Maybe I would've liked to have

spent my life in the groves of academe and been studying books.

You just get one shot.

My one's worked out OK. Mm.

I've often seen the humorous side of all this.

I'm not trying to make some big tragedy of it.

You know, "I'm going to die". So are we all.

DISTORTED: Check...mate.

The cosmic joke is, in fact, very, very funny.

HE CHUCKLES

After all this time of believing that I was doomed...

..the last couple of weeks, doctors have determined that they can

in fact operate on this thing here.

And, er, on, on Wednesday, that's two days' time, they're,

they're going to, er, remove it.

Along with half of my viscera.

THUNDERCLAP

If they can succeed in doing this, suddenly I have got a future.

It came out of the blue, this new twist.

This guy Charlie Chan popped up, who's a photographer/cancer doctor.

Man has learned much who has learned how to die.

When I saw him in October at KOKO,

and I photographed him and I thought, "You look really good,"

and I thought, "This can't be what they say it is."

I was very mindful of the fact that he'd been very

accepting of what was going on.

And trying to challenge that was going to be quite difficult

because it was going to require a very sort of significant

psychological turnaround.

He was saying, if I had the normal pancreatic cancer

I should have been dead.

I shouldn't have been prancing around on stage.

I went through his medical records, examined him at home

and I said, "Well, look, you don't have to go and do something.

"Sleep on it and let me, you know, let me know what you want."

I arranged for Wilko to meet my friend

and colleague, Emmanuel Huguet, and his team at Addenbrooke's Hospital.

They ran all the tests on me again and thought,

"Hang on, maybe something can be done."

After 18 months of believing my life was at an end,

believing my death was inevitable,

to suddenly be told that, "Maybe you're not going to die just yet."

And at the moment I just can't grasp it. It just seems too good...

I mean, I thought I was ending, you know...

I'd done the album with Roger Daltrey.

It's been far more successful than anybody expected.

And thinking, "Wow, what a way to go out."

You know, go out with a bang, and I'm thinking...

-HE CHUCKLES

-..maybe I'm NOT going out.

What's to come is still unsure.

Things are going to come to a head in a couple of days' time

and I'm going to get an injection and...and enter oblivion.

And if I come out the other side and...

I've got to start rethinking things, you know.

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

yet shall I fear no evil.

An operation on something that size has never been tried before,

and the kind of word I got back there was a 15%

chance of surviving it.

Either they'll kill me or cure me.

If I don't wake up, it's a good way to go.

An atropine injection, sister?

Yes, 100.

Hello, Squadron Leader.

We're all ready for you.

I got this, er...

They opened me right up.

HE CHUCKLES

I certainly don't miss it.

-HE CHUCKLES

-It's gone.

Today is actually my birthday.

It's... It's the birthday I never thought I was going to have.

Um, and actually I am still feeling quite frail.

I'm recovering from the life-saving operation that was given to me

at Addenbrooke's Hospital.

They removed a 3kg tumour from my...from my stomach.

So I no longer have this cancer.

Apparently the normal pancreatic tumour, they cannot operate on

because if they operate on it, it just comes back.

This one, er...they, they thought they could do it and they did it.

It was a large tumour.

Literally the size of a watermelon.

Um, and by virtue of that size,

it had got itself stuck to a number of other organs.

The dangerous part of it, it had grown round the aorta -

the main artery from the heart.

So that was a percentage of chance of surviving it...

But, of course, typical Wilko again,

"All right. Let's have a go."

He had nothing to lose.

It was quite a lengthy operation. It took nine hours or so.

Potentially hazardous.

The first few hours were spent in extensive

dissection of most of the abdominal organs

and about halfway through the day we committed ourselves

and started doing irreversible things.

The next few hours were spent dissecting the tumour away,

also removal of the entire pancreas, um, the spleen,

er, parts of the stomach, part of the small intestine,

part of the large intestine.

And when it came to the aorta,

apparently it peeled away like an orange.

Just like an orange skin.

So that was the bit of luck.

Eventually the tumour came out at about 4.30 in the afternoon

and then the reconstruction took us to about 7.30 in the evening

when we finally finished.

We really do take these patients to the very limits of what

human beings can endure,

and I have to say Wilko dealt with it with great dignity and courage.

Congratulations.

An interesting case.

How long this tumour would've carried on before it killed me,

I don't know.

But it would've got me in the end.

Thank you, Charlie Chan.

In fact, it looked like I was going to make a very swift recovery.

I was in for about four weeks getting my guts to work again

and I'm now diabetic.

I was home for a few days and then the first infection hit me.

And I...I was shaking,

I was just shaking uncontrollably.

Like, it was frightening, you know.

Oooh! And, er, boom - went back to hospital.

I had an infection in my chest and on my liver.

And I was lying on that bed for weeks in hospital with all

tubes coming out of me and stuff like that.

And that was... God, it was terrible.

I would just be lying there in some kind of trance, really,

and time kind of stops.

MUSIC SLOWS DOWN

I was groggy a lot of the time, as well.

-Morphine, yes.

-HE CHUCKLES

# We have all the time in the world... #

I was a bit disappointed with the morphine, actually.

Don't go rushing out for it, folks.

At one point, I was really wimping out.

I was saying I wanted to go home.

You know, I didn't like lying there and all that.

And then I suddenly realised there's all these people, the surgeons

and pathologists and...and nurses.

You know, the girl bringing around the dinner.

All of these people working so hard to, to put you right,

you know, and I'm thinking, there's me

sitting in the middle of it, whining like a kid, "I want to go home."

You know, so I...I changed my tune about that

and decided to tolerate it.

But it took some tolerating.

They're coming round every sort of hour or so

taking your blood pressure

and pricking your finger and taking your blood sugar count.

And I looked forward to that.

You know, you're kinda holding your arm out and, er...

it was kind of human contact.

Save the NHS. It saved ME.

# Nothing more, nothing less

# Only love. #

I'm still very weak and not well.

Still going to be some months before I can leap about and say,

"Whoopee! I'm-I'm going to carry on."

The one thing that does worry me is,

if I can't get my strength back, which means that physically

I can't perform, and I don't like that idea.

I hope that doesn't happen.

I hope I can do it again.

And now it looks like I'm going to live, I just hope

I can carry some of these lessons I've learned along with me.

I just hope that I can have some gratitude

and I can have a little less selfishness

and bothering about stupid things that don't matter.

And I hope I'm properly worthy of having been given this.

# Happy Jack wasn't old but he was a man

# But they couldn't stop Jack or the waters lapping

# Lap, lap, lap, lap. #

Look at this, Canvey Island. I like it.

Look, there's a ship going. Look at that ship.

# Louie, Louie, oh, baby...#

Oh, wow, I'm getting one of those.

Feeling that kind of ecstasy.

Sometimes you get buzzes like that, you think, "Bloody hell, man,

"I could be...I'm supposed to be dead."

And here we are watching the tide come in.

# I wonder when I'm gonna make it home. #

It's so hard for me to actually...

..describe how I feel.

Christ, I was going to die.

It happens in an instant, right? It goes bang.

It goes, "You've got cancer."

Bang, your life changes, like that, with those three words.

But there's not another three words on the other side.

So you don't suddenly feel,

"Great, I'm back in the land of the living," you know.

You... You... And then you sort of go home and grad...

gradually get better.

And I'm still gradually getting better and better and better.

But there's no sudden - boom! - like that,

like there was when they told me I was going to die.

I'm slowly, slowly coming back to everyday life.

Yes, it's like parachuting back down into the real world.

I'm still not quite down to earth yet.

I'm finding it quite difficult to get my head round it, actually.

And I'm still in this limbo.

It's kind of hard for me to get used to the idea

that my death is not imminent.

TYRES SCREECH

I might step under a bus tomorrow, mightn't I?

I mean, we don't know.

Er, I'll get used to it.

I still don't read the newspapers,

cos I don't want 'em to bring me down.

# Don't bring me down Don't bring me down... #

I'm not sort of happy-clappy or anything,

but I think I'm more tolerant now and I think that's stayed with me.

I was...quite a twat, actually.

What's come back is my misery.

-HE CHUCKLES

-I mean, I'm spending a lot of time

sitting around moping about nothing at all.

You think, "Man, you must be cracked -

"you've been given your life again."

You know, you shouldn't even be...

and yet I can contrive to feel miserable.

What I'm about to do now is just see if

I can remember how to play this thing

cos it's actually the first time I've touched my guitar

since I went into hospital for the operation.

Shall I see if I can do it?

I'll see if I can do it.

JAGGED RIFF

Which is far and away the longest I've ever gone without playing.

Sometimes I was a... a bit frightened I'd lost my mojo.

HE FINISHES PLAYING

And my hands are freezing.

I still feel very, er...

..isolated

But, you know, let's hope I get better and better,

and I can start playing and that. It's all going to go away

-and I'll be laughing.

-HE CHUCKLES

WIND WHISTLES

CAR HORN BLARES

Tomorrow night I'm going to get up and have a twang with Norman.

If I can get up and do a couple of numbers

without keeling over, I'll know I'm on my way.

And when you actually walk on stage and you start to perform,

that's it, that's the universe.

You're just reduced down to that moment.

OK, listen. Er...

Boy, have we got a surprise tonight!

WHISTLING AND CHEERING

How's it feel?

Ave Maria. We're going in, yeah.

Look here, one of my dearest and favourite guys of all time.

The wonderful, the marvellous, the ma...

magical Wilko Johnson's here tonight.

Unbelievable.

CHEERING

'I wasn't supposed to be here at all,'

-so it's all, it's all a bonus.

-HE CHUCKLES

# Well, if there's something that I like

# It's the way that woman walks

# And if there's something I like better

# It's the way she baby talks

# She does it right

# She does it right

# She works hard every night She makes me feel all right

# Tells me not to worry

# Ain't a single trouble in sight... #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

'I'm a performer, really.'

That's what I do.

As I emerge back into the world, I just wonder what I'll be doing.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you!

Well, there it is. I'm not dead.

I'm actually on my roof

with my telescope and my guitar

and a few more years.

And, er, what more could you ask?

Maybe seeing Saturn again. Saturn!

Saturn, I'll see you again.

That year, when I thought I was going to die,

was one of the most significant years of my life.

I would say it was a marvellous year.

I found out what it was to be alive.

I've had so many insights into existence

that I'm almost glad this happened. You know, almost.

And...and I got away with it.

HE CHUCKLES

-A wretch like me.

-HE CHUCKLES

# Well, if there's something that I like

# It's the way that woman walks

# And if there's something I like better

# It's the way she baby talks

# She does it right

# She does it right

# She works hard every night just to make me feel all right

# Told me not to worry

# And there ain't a single trouble in sight