by Zoe Howe
Writers Mick Farren (of Pink Fairies infamy) and Charles Shaar Murray were also early champions of the group, Farren seeing a stunning three-encore performance by the band at Dingwalls in Camden Town. Farren hailed their ‘compelling, sinister weirdness … Lee Brilleaux is a tall hoodlum figure … and the kind of harmonica player who’s not afraid to trade off with the guitarist.’ The fact that the band had recently raised merry hell with a gig for the prisoners languishing in Wandsworth nick only added to their general ne’er-do-well chic.
The publication of Farren’s NME review was delayed thanks to the printing strikes, but when it finally came out, while it was cause for celebration, Malcolm ‘saw trouble ahead’. It was a lengthy, positive article clearly written by someone who was fascinated by them, but … ‘The main focus was Wilko,’ remembers Malcolm. ‘He was a star, et cetera, et cetera … The fact was: Wilko played off Lee and Lee played off Wilko. They were much more together than they were apart. I could see that the unbalanced attention was in a way downplaying the role of Lee, and he was a great performer.’
As far as Wilko was concerned, ‘Lee was the leader. When we were onstage, I’m looking at him. He would gesticulate and send me off on a guitar solo, and then I’m back and looking at Lee. I was kind of an adjunct to what he was doing. The focus came from Lee, he was the star, it doesn’t matter what people say. People used to say when things went bad that it was something to do with this who’s-the-leader? thing, but for my part, and I do believe for Lee’s as well, that was never an issue. I’d say, “Lee’s the frontman and I’m like the lieutenant, and that’s why it works.”’
Both characters were hypnotic for very different reasons, and it didn’t go unnoticed to the sharp-eyed Fred Barker that there’d be a bit of ‘playing up’ onstage if Brilleaux seemed to be attracting more attention during the show than Johnson, or vice versa – basically you had two peacocks on full magnificent display, pulling focus in divergent directions.
‘It was my job to keep everything that they were breaking fixed, and if one of them was getting a bit of attention, the other one would break something so I would have to attend to him. I’ve got Wilko playing up and Lee giving it plenty – for the stage, they’d be interacting terribly aggressively. Then they’d come off and were wired up like mad. You’re going to get a bit of a hierarchy at the back end of it … I can’t knock Wilko for it. If you get that much adulation, you get head trips. Lee was the same but not so bad.’
Rivalry would often rear up between the pair when it came to women; Wilko on one occasion hooking up with a girl who Lee had apparently been planning to unleash his own charms on at an opportune moment. Wilko wrote in his diary that Lee appeared to be in something of a black mood on the way home from a show, the real reason dawning somewhat later.
Purported feather ruffling aside, these were the days when favourable reviews in the NME had the power to change things, and change they did. Lee had been cautious of allowing himself to become too excited about what was happening – he was nonchalant about the reality of trying to ‘make it’, admitting he initially didn’t think they would even transcend the local pubs. Within six months of their first foray in town, Dr Feelgood would not only have an increasingly full diary, but their London shows would be teeming with journalists, record executives and tastemakers.
‘Those pub gigs,’ remembers Fred Barker. ‘Sod the fire total, there’d be hundreds of people going absolutely mental, to the point that it was getting scary. Fortunately there weren’t any arseholes trying to get on stage, because Lee was up there, threatening them in this show that they didn’t want to get too involved in, but they were loving it.’
Of course, thanks to their menacing stage act, no one in the audience could have imagined what really went on behind the scenes. Malcolm remembers going for a walk with Lee before a show, lamenting a romance that was now over. Lee was listening and advising, every bit the sensitive confidant. As soon as they got back to the band room, however, they were greeted by Figure, who immediately demanded Lee show Malcolm his impression of ‘a Suffolk Punch lawnmower escaping from a shed’, much to Wilkinson the younger’s bafflement.
‘I really had no idea what to expect. Lee instantly transformed from a consoling friend into this hyper-performing, loose-limbed, eye-rolling person who appeared to be having some kind of fit. Figure was rolling on the floor with laughter. I, meanwhile, was just looking in shock at this transformation into something I’d never seen a hint of before.’ (Another memorable and inventive interpretation in the Brilleaux canon of characters would be ‘Larry the Self-Wanking Penis’. Your mental image of how this one plays out is probably correct.)
Haring back down the A13 to Canvey, still towelling sweat from their hair, the Feelgoods would generally be wheezing with laughter, and not just because of the presence of those soothing jazz cigarettes or lawnmower impersonations, but because they were incredulous at just how popular they had become. They knew they put on a strong show but they didn’t feel particularly entitled to their new status as the darlings of London’s live music scene. It was akin to charging into a bank, turning it over, smashing the place up, and striding back out, leaving any survivors stunned, changed, even grateful. ‘We thought it was all bollocks and we used to laugh ourselves sick about it on the way home,’ Lee said to Charles Shaar Murray some years later. ‘We’re still laughing. You can’t take yourself too seriously. Muddy Waters don’t take himself seriously.’
On paper, none of this should actually have worked at all. They were playing 1960s R&B in the 1970s, it wasn’t trendy (not enough time had really elapsed for this music to even be ready for a revival), but Dr Feelgood didn’t care about what was ‘current’. They were just doing what they wanted to do, and in turn, they were waking everybody up with violent immediacy. Rock’n’roll had been emasculated, the Feelgoods had just handed it its balls back, and now it appeared that everyone who encountered them had a hard-on.
Before long, the Feelgoods would be inviting smitten journalists from the major music papers over to Canvey Island, smoking weed with them, playing pool and getting drunk. Canvey, and the Feelgoods, had a certain alien appeal to the big-haired champions of the counterculture who were writing for the rock press at that time. So why did it take a comparatively long time for them to get a record deal? The Feelgoods wanted to cut a disc, Wilko was starting to write original material, and they were all keen to ‘go pro’, but few A&R executives were prepared to take a chance on them. Record companies were ‘rather conservative’, said Lee, one excuse being the so-called ‘vinyl crisis’.
‘That was the big excuse for not signing us up: shortage of vinyl apparently – they’re always coming up with something. We had lots of media attention, everything looked good, all the big companies expressed an interest but none of them made a concrete offer.’
It would take a maverick to take them on, someone with a bit of courage and foresight. The planets were aligning, and Nick Lowe, then vocalist/bassist in laid-back pub band Brinsley Schwarz (and veritable lucky charm for the Feelgoods throughout the coming years), would be the connection to that coveted recording contract.
One spring afternoon in 1974, the spindly, shock-haired Lowe headed into the West End, took the rackety lift up to the United Artists office, wandered in and sat down by A&R man Andrew Lauder’s desk. Unlike some of the larger record labels, the UA office was known as a place that signings, cool members of the press and various mates could hang out, check out the records on offer, smoke a joint …
Over coffee, Lauder told Lowe he was currently working on the release of a beat group compilation that would feature The Pirates, Johnny Kidd’s band, the group so beloved by Wilko Johnson. ‘Nick said, “Funny you should mention that. I just saw this group who reminded me of the Pirates. They’re called Dr Feelgood. You should go and see them, you’ll love them.” I went to see them as soon as I could, because any group that reminds Nick of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates has got to be worth a visit,’ said L
auder. To the Kensington he went, and promptly ‘fell in love. The Feelgoods made perfect sense to me. It was so totally against what was going on.’
For that reason, he knew he had to sign them, although that, in turn, was probably the very reason no one else would. But Lauder was prepared to take that chance, and a shared passion for blues and R&B only strengthened his intention. Lee’s reaction was that Andrew was ‘brave. [He stuck] his neck out and gave us a chance. You couldn’t ask for a better A&R man. He gave us free rein, much more so than we’d ever be allowed now, and [so we were] allowed henceforth to make our own mistakes. Best way to learn, isn’t it?’
United Artists might have been a relatively small label, but they were approachable and, most importantly, they were regarded as cool. This was largely thanks to Lauder, who had signed, among others, cosmic rock pioneers Hawkwind and, on the other and perhaps more relevant end of the scale, Brinsley Schwarz and the Flamin’ Groovies. German ‘Krautrock’ outfit Can were also on United Artists. ‘Basically all the hip groups who took all the drugs,’ explains Chris Salewicz.
Lee, Chris and the rest of the group could see that Lauder ‘got’ them, and wasn’t going to try and change them. United Artists had a good deal with the Feelgoods too – a Dr Feelgood album was never going to be a drawn-out, high-budget affair. The contract was signed ‘within a matter of days’, an excuse, not that the boys needed one, to have one of their infamous ‘jolly-ups’, no doubt kicking off at their beloved Admiral Jellicoe pub and culminating at 4 a.m. with a lawnmower15 race outside ‘Feelgood House’, a communal dwelling on Central Wall Road where the band and their cronies – Lew Lewis, Dave Higgs, Dean and Warren Kennedy to name a few – could hang out. You could say the place was known to the local constabulary.
On the subject of the then very young Dean Kennedy, he was on the scene at the tender age of fourteen because Lee and Chris, living at Feelgood House at that time, took him in after he left home. Found ‘sitting on the doorstep’, Chris took pity on the lad and ‘he and Lee became like my parents,’ Dean explains. ‘I was living at Feelgood House.’ Soon the teenager was not only partying with the Feelgoods and bunking off school to go to their gigs, he was roadie-ing for the band, learning the trade – and plenty besides – as he went.
‘Lee was funny,’ he remembers. ‘Your best mate. I learned more off him than I did at school. Lee always had these National Geographic magazines. He noticed I’d started reading them, so he got me a year’s subscription for my birthday. Generous person. I was looked after. And how many kids had a studio, a cellar full of drink, a bar, two Range Rovers, an E-Type Jag? Later, when I got married, Lee bought me a 1940s Austin Princess as a wedding present, like from The Ant Hill Mob. Massive, Rolls-Royce engine, like a gangster car. I was thinking, what?’
Lee and Figure in particular were, as you may have gathered, great car enthusiasts. In addition to the Jaguar, Lee would buy a Jeep, while Figure bought himself a big American Dodge Challenger. ‘Lee was really, really pleased to see that,’ said Figure. ‘Couldn’t wait to have his photograph taken up against it. He had an interest in cars himself. Together we would invent quite aggressive names for cars, like the “Datsun Destroyer”, things like that. It was just constant fun. Lee was a great guy to talk to, vicious sense of humour, very strong, how much more can I lay at his feet? He was fantastic.’
Meanwhile, back on the mainland, the ink on the Feelgoods’ contract was dry, and everyone in the United Artists office was now just as wild about the band as Andrew Lauder. ‘We went to as many gigs as possible because [we] just enjoyed it so much,’ said Lauder. ‘You wanted to take people and go, “You’ve got to see this group!” They were just unlike anything else.’ NME star writer Nick Kent recalls seeing them in 1974, noting that ‘the singer had all the physical grace of a homicidal plumber’, and he celebrated the fact the ‘spivs’ were finally here to boot aside the ‘fops’ – even though Kent was one of said fops himself, as he was quite happy to admit.
UA arranged for the Feelgoods to support Hawkwind on a short run of key shows, including the Glasgow Apollo and Manchester. The idea was to get the group used to playing on bigger stages and to bigger crowds, but putting Dr Feelgood alongside their acid-drenched hippy stablemates was an incongruous mix. In Manchester, Hawkwind’s fans conveyed their hostility towards the support by heckling and throwing coins onto the stage. Peace and love, man.
‘Thing is, we knew we were on our way,’ says Wilko. ‘We were just thinking, plebs. At one point this coin landed near Lee. He picked up this coin, bit it and threw it aside in contempt. I tell you what, it felt great. We just rose above everything after that.’
The deal with UA might have changed things on a fiscal level – new cars, for example (Lee’s Jaguar soon became a common sight around Southend), new duds and many celebratory rounds being bought at the Jellicoe – but the Feelgoods remained true to their working-class Canvey roots. They also continued to support their contemporaries and friends in up-and-coming Southend bands. Thanks to the phenomenal energy injected into the London ‘scene’ by Dr Feelgood – ‘hell’s own dance band’, as Mick Farren described them – the associated spotlight had lit up the grimy Thames Delta and, for a short time, Southend rock was in focus, and we’re not talking about the stripy stuff that rots your teeth.
In turn, the groups who were being discovered thanks to the Feelgoods’ growing success tipped their hat to them – soulful Southend icon Mickey Jupp, for example, would perform the song ‘Dr Feelgood’ in tribute to his mates from Canvey who were present that evening. This was a great compliment; Brilleaux always held ‘Juppy’ in very high regard. Southend gig-goer Hugh Cumberland attended this very show, and on spotting Lee, Sparko and Figure leaving the Cricketers music pub in Westcliff that evening, boldly decided to extend the Feelgood homage (possibly while in an advanced state of refreshment) in the middle of the road for them.
‘I treated them to my best Lee Brilleaux impersonation,’ recalls Hugh. ‘I was standing on the Zebra crossing, arm pumping, the works. Lee stood and watched, applauded at the end, and, as I made it back to the pavement, ruffled my hair and pressed a bunch of loose change into my hand, adding, “Don’t give up the day job”. He got in the Jag with the boys and roared off, totally pissed, I suspect.’
Another Southend nightspot was the Blue Boar on Victoria Avenue, and Lee would often be seen at the bar if Will Birch was playing with his soon-to-be hit band the Kursaal Flyers. As kind as he knew Lee was, Will was never sure whether his support was wholly altruistic. ‘Although we were no threat – we were good but we were playing completely different music – I always felt Lee was keeping an eye on us. Actually he wanted to help us. He and Chris got us our first show in London at the Kensington in July 1974. It was a reciprocal thing. This Southend scene was developing, with us, the Feelgoods, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Mickey Jupp, the NME would talk about the Thames Delta … There was a scene going on, and you need a scene. There was a bit of Lee keeping an eye on us though,’ Will adds wryly. ‘You know, “Don’t go too far …”’
Wilko Johnson
We had some defective loud speakers and they needed to go back to the factory in Ipswich. At that time, Sparko was doing Artex, wall-covering and all that. So our transport was ‘the Artex van’ – an A35 covered in Artex with all different swatches – so that’s what we were going to drive to Ipswich. Before we set off, we smoked this black Afghan dope, and we were smashed, man. Really smashed. We got to Ipswich OK and did what we did with the speakers, and as we were driving back, we see a sign for Flatford Mill. So we said, ‘Ooh, let’s go to Flatford Mill and see where Constable painted his painting.’ When we got there, there was a big van, kitted out like a caravan. Standing in the back door with a mug of cocoa was basically Tony Hancock in The Rebel. It was this artist and he was fucking painting Flatford Mill.
We were watching him and we started getting the giggles. We were saying, ‘Shall we ask him if he wants to come and have a smoke with us?
’ And then we were saying, ‘We can’t, because once we get there we’ll start laughing, and he’ll think we’re yobbos taking the piss.’
We were looking at him, and he looked so tragic with his double-coat and his boots and his mug. We decided we’d better just go, we were pretty stoned. So we’re driving along behind this car, and there’s this little dog in the back, a Chihuahua or something, and he’s running up the back seat, running onto the back left of the car, down onto the back seat, over the driver’s shoulder and just going round and round in circles. We were pissing ourselves laughing at this dog.
Then the Artex van broke down. Our expert on cars was Figure, so we phoned him and said, ‘What are we going to do?’ Because it had stopped … I don’t know … something or other. Anyway, Figure told us we could get the thing to Canvey if we got it going one time and did not stop. We were not allowed to stop.
We were still up near Flatford Mill, and we were driving away. ‘Fuck, it’s a traffic light!’ And we’d swerve off down another road, go around the block and get back on. ‘Ah! A green light!’ And we did it, we got to Canvey Island without stopping.
And that’s the kind of guys we were.
Home-made, hand-typed business cards still waiting to be chopped up and distributed.
The denim had been ditched and Lee Brilleaux was now in suit-jacket-and-skinny-tie mode. Simultaneously sharp and scruffy, this was a somewhat radical look for the time. He was turning a conservative look on its head and taking it rather further than the Mods had done before him.
6.THE CASE OF THE ROCKFIELD STUDIO IRREGULARS
I’m not a fucking artist. These suckers in the record companies don’t understand. ‘Oh, you’re a real musician …’ I can’t even play guitar properly. Rock is an expression of what you feel in the moment. There is room for everyone, there is no real competition.
