Georgina Fairbanks and Johnson Willis in Wilko: Love and Death and Rock’n’Roll. Picture: Nick Haeffner
JONATHAN Maitland’s biographical play with live music, Wilko: Love and Death and Rock’n’Roll, celebrates the extraordinary life of Dr Feelgood co-founder and punk-movement godfather Wilko Johnson, on tour at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow to Saturday.
Iconic guitarist Wilko – born John Andrew Wilkinson on Canvey Island, Essex on July 12 1947 – faced a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis in January 2013 with the expectation of only nine or ten months left to live.
Initially declining chemotherapy, Wilko chose to dedicate his remaining time to a meaningful farewell tour of the people and places that defined his life, only for an unexpected miracle to change the narrative entirely.
Here are the facts. In 2014, doctors decided the tumour was a less aggressive neuroendocrine type, whereupon Wilko underwent radical, life-saving surgery to remove a large tumour, together with his pancreas and spleen. Later he was declared cancer-free and went on to live until November 21 2022, dying at his home at Westcliff-on-Sea at the age of 75.
Playwright and former BBC journalist Jonathan Maitland already had written such plays as Dead Sheep (2015), An Audience With Jimmy Saville (2015), Deny, Deny, Deny (2016) and The Last Temptation Of Boris Johnson ( 2019) when John’s remarkable renaissance story inspired Wilko: Love and Death and Rock’n’Roll.
“Wilko’s is one of the greatest rock‘n’roll stories ever told and his songs are some of the greatest rock‘n’roll ever recorded,” says Jonathan. “Even so, when I first read the play to him at his home in Southend five years ago, none of us could have imagined how much his story would go on to connect with audiences. My only regret is that he’s not around to see this tour happen but I know, for sure, that he would have been absolutely thrilled.”
Maitland’s play traces Wilko’s career as a guitarist with a trademark machine-gun style that spanned co-founding Dr Feelgood on Canvey Island in 1971, serving in Ian Dury and The Blockheads from 1980 to 1982, forming the Solid Senders with Blockheads’ bassist Norman Watt-Roy and recording Going Back Home with The Who lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, entering the charts at number three in March 2014. All this was complemented by occasional acting gigs, most notably playing mute executioner Ser Ilyn Payne in four episodes of Game Of Thrones in 2011 and 2012.
Integrating live music and storytelling with Wilko’s own words, Wilko: Love and Death and Rock’n’Roll’s “masterclass in living life to the fullest” was sent to Coventry to begin its 12-week tour on Monday. York Theatre Royal will be destination number two.
“The show is in its fourth iteration,” says Jonathan. “It broke box-office records at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, who wanted to put it on because it’s an Essex story about an Essex band; then the Southwark Playhouse in spring last year and a five-week West End run at Leicester Square Theatre – and now the tour.
“Wilko’s story is just incredible because he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer when his music career had hit a low point. He was playing what he called ‘s**t holes’ and had told his band he was thinking of giving up. He’d appeared in Game Of Thrones by then so the New York Times wrote ‘Game Of Thrones actor has cancer’.”
Jonathan continues: “They say the best thing you can do in rock’n’roll is die, and his transformation [post-diagnosis] became a real-life A Christmas Carol story, but in rock’n’roll where Wilko became a nicer person, like Scrooge.
“How it turned out there’d been a mix-up in his diagnosis seems incredible to me, but that’s why it’s such an amazing story with amazing music, making it a play that could have written itself.”
Wilko was given a 15 per cent chance of survival when he went through his 11-hour operation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge on April 30 2014. “His surgeon said to him, ‘we’re going to need a lunch break’!” says Jonathan.
“The doctor who saved his life is just fantastic. He’s called Charlie Chan, a cancer doctor who was a big fan of Wilko. He’d taken a photo of Wilko at his last ever Farewell Tour gig at Camden, and when he looked at the photo, he said, ‘for someone who’s supposed to be dying, you don’t look too bad’.”
As he will discuss in tomorrow’s post-show Q&A alongside Jonathan Maitland, Charlie’s subsequent second opinion on Wilko’s terminal diagnosis led to surgeon Emmanuel Huguet and his specialist medical team carrying out the operation.
“I’d been wanting to write a play about a guy in rock’n’roll who fakes his own death, and then Wilko did his own version of a ‘death’ story and so I thought I had to do a play about him,” says Jonathan. “When I asked him about it, he said, ‘it’s a play, plays tell stories, you can make it up. He changed only one thing , saying he was on speed, not coke!”
Wilko: Love and Death and Rock ‘N’ Roll, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, 7.30pm with post-show Q&A discussion with writer Jonathan Maitland and Charlie Chan, the doctor who saved Wilko’s life; Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm & 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guidance: 11 plus.