Without Dr. Feelgood, punk rock never happens.
The Ramones played fast, but they weren’t threatening. Neither were the dozens of British bands in the back-to-basics pub rock scene, where country rock and R&B provided good-time music for drinkers.
Dr. Feelgood was something beyond that. Hailing from Canvey, a dingy English seaside town, snarling front man Lee Brilleaux and demon-possessed guitarist Wilko Johnson radiated menace from the moment they took the stage.
While pub rockers dressed in denim, Brilleaux played every gig for years in the same no-longer-white suit jacket and rasped out nasty tunes like a lounge lizard with a venomous sting. Johnson wore black and stalked the stage like a psychopath, propelling the music with his choppy guitar style, playing rhythm and lead at the same time.
“We found aggressive, in-your-face playing worked,” Johnson said in a 2009 documentary about the band, “Oil City Confidential.” “You stare at people, realize you’re stirring them up, and do it all the more. It was full of violence. At first, people looked puzzled. Then you’d see them start to laugh. What you wanted was people to enjoy it.”
They did for a couple of years, but by 1976 the Feelgoods’ attitude had spread to younger, wilder and scarier bunch sporting chains, safety pins and liberty-spiked hair. The band started fading when Johnson in 1977, but never broke up, even after Brilleaux died of cancer in 1994. They still exist, though no original members remain.
This was Dr. Feelgood’s first single. It didn’t chart when it was released in 1974, but I’ll bet young Gordon Sumner heard it. A live version reached the lower reaches of the British charts two years later.
