![]() “And here we are watching the tide come in. Synopsis Tells the extraordinary story of legendary musician Wilko Johnson who, diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer and given a few months to live, managed to accept his fate with. “I’m supposed to be dead,” he muses, back on Canvey. Not quite such a mainstream slot as the recent Gilmour programme. But he’s trying to remember what he learned. This documentary, dealing with Wilkos illness, his response to it and his miraculous reprieve, is being shown on BBC1 on Tuesday 24 November, 10.35 pm - 12.10 am. ![]() Johnson in 2015 is no longer the condemned man, and his melancholy has crept back. Temple interviews him the day before and, massively weakened and emaciated, soon afterwards. A medical expert and Wilko fan at his London farewell gig, one Charlie Chan, finds his continued health bizarre one rediagnosis with a rare, slow cancer later, and Johnson is on the operating table, to have his three-kilo, water melon-sized tumour removed along with half his innards, with a 15% chance of survival. ![]() Temple’s usual collage-edits subtly bring out this contemplative, limbo condition with footage of David Niven’s RAF pilot in A Matter of Life and Death, Cocteau and Nosferatu, and he assumes the role of Bergman’s chess-playing Death with his sympathetically interviewed friend and star. Johnson finds himself experiencing “lesser shades of melancholy”, and the loneliness peculiar to a state no one around him inhabits. It wasn’t all ecstasies and glorious shows, though. the condemned man” in his local pub, or the “great showbiz” of the mutual waves and final farewells as he closes gigs with Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny”. Johnson is wittily aware of the brief advantages this gives him, whether as “a bit of a star. It was all concentrated into the moment." suddenly everything lifted off of me – present, future, past. As Johnson explains, his death sentence didn’t perturb him, instead making him feel vividly alive: “The very paving stones seem to be shivering. That strain of emotion also made Oil City very moving, but is largely absent here. It tells the extraordinary, yet universal story of legendary musician Wilko Johnson. The Wilko theartsdesk met in Canvey one long, snug-bar afternoon before Oil City’s release was hugely entertaining but profoundly melancholy, in deep, constant mourning for his wife Irene’s death from cancer five years before. ![]() Johnson in 2015 is no longer the condemned man, and his melancholy has crept back Where Oil City was greased with the brute force, wild sparks, Essex wit and character of the Feelgoods, the sequel is Temple’s most meditative work. On hearing his bad news, Temple asked to spend time with Johnson for a second, surely final film. Johnson was its undoubted star, a fierce, goggle-eyed performer, brilliantly personal and potent guitarist, and erudite, eccentric Canvey Island sage. Johnson, like his old band, was largely forgotten when Julien Temple sought him out for his great Dr Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential in 2009. ![]()
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