‘Wilko Johnson vows to rock on with a new album in the works’ says Zoe Howe

Everywhere I looked there were smiles at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire on Tuesday, where Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey played together for a special one-off show to tie in with their new album.

Legends Roger Daltrey and Wilko Johnson are playing the blues with the energy of teenagers. There were smiles on the faces of thousands of fans, smiles from the security staff (no small thing), even a smile was seen dancing across the face of Bob Geldof, also in the audience, but the most radiant grins were backstage before the show began.

I have known Wilko for a few years but I have never seen him smiling as much as he did that night. The joy was infectious and the energy with which both Wilko and Roger performed (aka “Dr Who”, as some have dubbed them; a reference to their respective bands Dr Feelgood and The Who) belied their ages (Roger was 70 yesterday) and 66-year-old Wilko’s condition.

Wilko, suffering from terminal cancer, has vowed to rock until he can rock no more. Each day is taken as it comes and it is this intense sense of living in the present that touches his fans, some of whom have followed him since the beginning, some of whom discovered him latterly, all of whom feel boundless affection for this eccentric, exceptional man.

Time is limited and the atmosphere at recent shows is all the more potent but instead of mawkishness there is gallows humour; the tumour (which Wilko calls “Terry” on occasion) protruding from his pancreas has been jokingly referred to by Johnson as “the baby”.

On stage, Roger held his mic to Wilko’s stomach as the pair roared with laughter.

Questions as to why the shaven-headed guitarist shunned chemotherapy are dismissed with the quip, “I didn’t want to lose my hair.” He is not “fighting” cancer, he is ignoring it altogether.

What has struck people since Wilko was diagnosed is his positivity and perspective, how he is concentrating on how good it feels to be alive and to approach every-day life with fresh awareness and appreciation.

And this is no brave face. His response when he first received the news was, as he often says, “euphoria”.

Suddenly the things that had always irked him seemed understandably insignificant. “They just don’t matter. Nothing matters,” he insisted.

Simple, but these words had a profound effect on me. Everyone talks about “living in the moment” but for the first time I actually realised what that meant on a deeper level than just knowing it to be true.

When the time comes to look back, we do not want to regret the hours we wasted worrying when we could have been enjoying the precious lives that rush by so quickly, apparently when we are not looking.

It was no surprise to me that such an extraordinary person would react to a death sentence in an extraordinary way, with an enthusiastic sense of: “Right, what can I do in the time I’ve got left?”

Happily, Wilko has been granted more time than he expected. The memoir we had worked on together was released in 2012.

By the end of that year, Wilko had been told he would be lucky to see October 2013; it would certainly be his last Christmas.

Well, cancer, you did not realise who you were dealing with, did you? Wilko is still here, playing with incredible dynamism with his trio, which consists of the inimitable Norman Watt-Roy on bass and the powerhouse that is Dylan Howe on drums (all three also played in Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Norman remaining a Blockhead to this day, so to speak).

One month after Wilko was supposed to die, our hero was in the studio with Roger Daltrey recording Going Back Home, an album that bursts with enough energy to blow up the national grid.

We are all so thrilled that Wilko is still here that maybe we dare not question why, but I have a theory.

Since Wilko went public with his diagnosis, the tidal wave of love that followed was so powerful, it can only have made a positive difference to his health, whether from the many messages he has received or the sheer force of affection beaming directly to him at shows.

Also, to be able to do what you love for as long as possible and share that with others is a potent dose of escapism, for both artist and audience.

Rock ’n’ roll can save your soul but maybe it can stick an umbrella in the spokes of cancer too.

Certainly, having witnessed the warmth and magic of Wilko’s show with Roger the other night, there was a sense of the world outside stopping for a few hours while the people inside the Empire, onstage and off, were lifted by the healing forces of music.

Without wishing to sound trite, there is also the considerable power of simply having a damn good time and that kind of gives the name Dr Feelgood a new resonance, doesn’t it?

Zoe Howe is the co-author of Wilko Johnson’s book Looking Back At Me (Cadiz Music, £29.99).

Going Back Home by Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey is released on Chess Records on March 24.