In the mid70s everybody from Hugh Cornwell to Joe Strummer to Elvis Costello jumped the pub rock movement for skinny ties and faster tracks (and, how you say, a lot less blackness) to make their way on the punk rock band wagon. But Dr. Feelgood, the best of the lot, didn’t join em.
Pub Rock was the first reaction to the bloat that as early 1970s rock and roll, played in pubs across the UK, working class white boys played rhythm and blues. When punk broke it swept them away if the practitioners didn’t change their evil ways fast. Dr. Feelgood didn’t bother and maintained a long lustrous, hard blues career. They are still around today though none of the original band are in it. Lead singer Lee Brilleaux is dead and lead guitarist Wilko Johnson is dying from terminal cancer.
With time running out on him, Wilko decided to take one last tour of the UK and at some point Roger Daltrey decided to join him. They slipped into the studio and recorded Going Back Home, a terrific hard rock and blues album. If they’d substituted “Turning 21” for “I Can’t Explain” it would be a definitive pub rock artifact, a masterpiece of raunch, roar and roll. Daltrey, who sucked last year with the Who, is incredible voice and dying seems to suit Wilko well.
Wilko is a Fender fan and his playing his like spraying glass shards across the bows of song after song. The chop and roll at war with Steve Weston’s harp on “I’ll Keep It To Myself” is proceeded by the best Dylan cover in a year that seemed to belong to Craig Finn. This is a steamroller of an album, half an hour of heads down no nonsense rhythm and scowl. Daltrey is amazing on a four song run to end the album and Wilko is a study in swift, clean guitar parts. Nothing wasted, nothing extra: it is powerhouse stuff, amazing gorgeous, and when an organ rolls in during “Keep It Out Of Sight” it feels like excess!!
Recorded in a week last Autumn, if this is Wilko’s last will and testament, it will do with me. Who says you can’t go home again?
Grade: A
