by Zoe Howe
But aside from the charisma and charm, the voice and the stance, the style, the wanderlust and the wisdom, almost everything Lee did was shot through with a profound love of people; he was fascinated by them, amused by them, he felt his raison d’être was to entertain them and he saw the value and importance of being able to give them a good time. ‘People of all ages, all different types, bourgeois, working class … as far as we’re concerned that’s all bollocks, people are people,’ said Lee. ‘And there’s nothing better than people. The rest don’t mean a thing.’
Lee Brilleaux. Old soul. Bright spark. And quite the gentleman, as it happens.
A giant Lee Brilleaux towers over Southend like an Estuarine Colossus, the Kursaal to his right. (‘The Triumph of De-Regeneration – Lee Brilleaux 1952–1994’, Scott King, 2012. Courtesy Herald St, London/Focal Point Gallery, Southend)
FINAL WORDS
Shirley Brilleaux
He was a really hard act to follow and I miss him very much.
Nicholas Brilleaux
I’m really lucky that there are so many fans and there’s so much stuff out there. It seems like every few months or a couple of times a year there’s a new clip of my dad that I’d never seen. The fact that I lost him when I was six years old, and I still get to experience him through these random videos or just meeting people, it’s wonderful. It’s certainly a blessing.
Dean Kennedy
When Lee died, to me, Dr Feelgood died. It took me ten years to get over it. I still haven’t really got over losing Lee.
Lew Lewis
Mostly I remember Lee as a good-times mate. He found – and had – a good time, and he took his friends there too.
Big Figure
His heart and soul was in black blues and rhythm and blues music, and I think he would like to be remembered for being able to further the cause of rhythm and blues and rock’n’roll.
Sid Griffin
Towards the end, Lee had been told by his doctor he was allowed one pint of Guinness per night, so Lee would have a pint of Guinness and nurse it. It was sad watching the great man hold the same pint for two hours … he couldn’t have a cigarette either. I was whining, ‘I don’t know why I do this, nothing’s really going to happen.’ This guy tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me around. It was Lee, and he was literally in my face. He said, and I mean loudly, ‘You don’t stop doing what you’re doing, you don’t complain about what you’re doing, you have talent, you have good songs and the fact you’re not making a million dollars is just too bad. But you don’t quit playing music.’ People are looking round. ‘That’s the life you’ve chosen.’ He really gave me a lecture for about a minute and a half. By the end of it, I had a lump in my throat. This skinny Ichabod Crane figure who’d been such a vibrant young man, prodding my shoulder as he spoke. He wasn’t just saying it to be a nice guy.
I wished I’d thanked him for that moment and that I’d told him how much I admired and just loved him. But I didn’t think like that then. He gave me the greatest speech ever and I’ve never forgotten it. When he died, he left me forty harmonicas. I pull them out and look at them the way a small boy fondles his marble collection.
On the Continuation of Dr Feelgood
‘With Brilleaux, his band died as well,’ came the official statement. ‘Dr Feelgood will be disbanded.’ Kevin Morris had also said, in an interview with Radio 1 shortly after Lee’s death, that that was the end of the band, but of course, this would not be the case. Lee had, on more than one occasion, insisted to the rest of the group that ‘no one is indispensable’, and when he was in hospital, he repeated the mantra. ‘He said, “You guys can’t stop just because of me. You guys have got families, you’ve got to carry on,”’ remembers Dave Bronze. ‘ The impact of that didn’t really make sense at the time. My remark at the time was that it would be like the Rolling Stones carrying on without Mick Jagger. It wouldn’t work. But it did work, they’re still working, that’s great.
‘I find it strange sometimes that we carried on without Lee,’ adds Kevin. ‘I didn’t think we’d be able to. Quite a few people in the business had said it was something that should be considered, plus some ex-members were asking Chris what was going to happen to the name. Chris said to me, “If anyone’s going to do anything with it, it’s got to be the guys who were with Lee at the end.” So I said, “All right, well, we’ll try it out.”’ The band reformed a year after Lee’s death with Kevin Morris, Steve Walwyn, Phil Mitchell and Pete Gage on vocals. Gage stepped down in 1999, replaced by Robert Kane. ‘And here we still are.’
Lee Brilleaux onstage in France, early 1990s.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author extends love and thanks to the following individuals: Dylan Howe, Sean and Jo Street for their incredible support and encouragement. Alison Rae and Polygon Books for taking on this project with such genuine enthusiasm. Everyone I spoke to for their faith, encouragement and fascinating contributions: very special thanks to the wonderful Shirley Brilleaux, Kelly Brilleaux, Nicholas Brilleaux – this book is for you. Wilko Johnson for being my first interview for this project and for being so generous with archive material, Chris Fenwick, John B Sparkes, John ‘Big Figure’ Martin, Phil ‘Harry’ Ashcroft (for also being extremely generous with archive material), Dean Kennedy, Larry Wallis, Steve Walwyn, Ann Adley, Geoff Shaw, Fred Barker, Kevin Morris, Dave Bronze, Gordon Russell, Jools Holland, Lew Lewis, Will Birch, John Denton, Hugh Cumberland, David Marx, Anthony Farrell, Jerome Martinez, Malcolm Wilkinson, Maggie Newman (RIP), Dave Robinson, Sid Griffin, Louder Than Words, Metal Culture, Steph Stevenson, Colette Bailey, Sean McLoughlin, Michaela Freeman and Idea13, Allan Jones, Every Record Tells A Story, Scott King, Richard Balls, Neil Biscoe, Pete Zear, Stephen Foster, Tim Hinkley, Patrick Higgins, Adrian Boot, Rob Beddington and Sarah Bates, Jo Kendall and Ed Mitchell at The Blues Magazine, Colin Crosby, Simon Benham and all at Unbound who helped effect a smooth transition, Richard England at Cadiz Music and Caroline Richards for allowing me to see Joan Collinson’s wonderful outtakes from Oil City Confidential. I would also like to thank Ruth Hazel and Focal Point Gallery, Jemma Street, Paul Lagden, Jonathan Maitland, Nick Owen, Lorraine Warren, Christopher Somerville, Steven Hastings, Daryl Easlea, Peter Knock, Bernard Fassone, Ian and Zoe Sanders, Al Johnson, Christoffer Frances, Gabi Schwanke, Billy Reeves, BBC London, BBC Essex, Steve Tolton, Al Reid, David Farren, Paul Forrester, Alan Joseph, David Bullock, Angela Smith, Keith Levene, Kathy Di Tondo, Nigel Roberts, Lee Watkins, Dave Burke, Zoe Randall, Clare Kimber, Mark Lancaster, Gavin Martin, Wayne Williams, Dave Collins, Ian Pile, Mark Beasley, Kelly Buckley, Southend Echo, Liz Vater, Graham Burnett, Pete Mann, everyone who helped, guided, connected or spread the word, and everyone who supported the project when it was originally to be published via Unbound. I am unable to access the names of those who pledged but please know your enthusiasm and support is much appreciated. You proved there was a real and actually quite overwhelming demand for a book about Lee Brilleaux. You are rock’n’roll gentlemen and ‘goddesses’, all.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SECONDARY SOURCE MATERIAL
Film
Oil City Confidential, directed by Julien Temple (Cadiz Music)
Books
Down by the Jetty, Tony Moon (Grand Records)
From Roxette to Ramona: Dr Feelgood and Wilko Johnson on Record, Roland Jost, Teppo Nättilä and Rauno Mäkinen
No Sleep till Canvey Island, Will Birch (Virgin Books)
Wilko Johnson: Looking Back at Me, Wilko Johnson and Zoë Howe (Cadiz Music)
Apathy for the Devil, Nick Kent (Da Capo Press)
Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story, Richard Balls (Soundcheck Books)
Articles
‘Dr Feelgood at Dingwalls’, live review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, December 1974
‘The Breeding of Dr Feelgood’, essay by Hugo Williams
‘Dr Feelgood, Kokomo, Chilli Willi: eat your heart out, Arthur Howes’, Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 18 January 1975
/> ‘Oil City meets the Riviera – and wins’, Tony Tyler, New Musical Express, 23 August 1975
‘The almost collected thoughts of Dr Feelgood’, interview with Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 18 October 1975
‘Everyday life in rural California’, Cal Worthington for ZigZag, July 1976
‘Brilleaux Agonistes’, Neil Spencer, New Musical Express, 14 June 1975
‘Dr Lee’, interview with Lee Brilleaux, Rock & Folk magazine, August 1975
‘Dr. Feelgood: Hammersmith Odeon, London’, review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 November 1975
‘Lee Brilleaux’, interview, Rock & Folk magazine, 1976
‘The goods on the Feelgoods: did Wilko fall or was he pushed?’, Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 4 June 1977
‘A day in the life of a bunch of Stiffs’, Allan Jones, Melody Maker, 6 August 1977
‘Life with too much salt on your chips’, Roy Carr, New Musical Express
Lee Brilleaux interview with Radio Forth, with thanks to Chris Frances
Lee Brilleaux interview with Radio Mafia, with thanks to Chris Frances
Lee Brilleaux interview with Radio Bellevue, Lyon, with thanks to Chris Frances
Lee Brilleaux interview with Paul Jones, BBC Radio 2, featured on Looking Back compilation box set
Lee Brilleaux interview with Johnnie Walker, BBC Radio 2
Lee Brilleaux interview with Stephen Foster, BBC Radio Suffolk, featured on Looking Back compilation box set
‘Private Practice’, Allan Jones, Melody Maker, June 1978
‘Friday Night MacFever’, Allan Jones, Melody Maker, October 1978
‘MUSIC OOR’, Martijn Stoffer, 1979
‘Jukebox’, Bruno Librati, 1980 (sourced from DrFeelgood.Fr)
‘New Feelgoods know the ropes’, Don Snowden, LA Times, December 1980
David Hepworth interview, Smash Hits, 21 February 1980
‘Up Scheitzstrasse with Dr Feelgood’, Paul Du Noyer, New Musical Express, 1981
Lee Brilleaux interview, South Bank Show, 1981 (exact date unknown)
Lee Brilleaux interview, Rock’s Backpages, Ian Ravendale, 1981
‘Meanwhile, back at the Feelgoods’, Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 January 1982
‘An officer and a gentleman’, Allan Jones, Melody Maker, 15 September 1984
‘Dr Feelgood and the Canvey Delta’, Christopher Somerville
Lee Brilleaux interview, Blues Bag Fanzine no. 3, March 1990
Lee Brilleaux interview, Rock Spirit, 1991, sourced from Dr Feelgood France Ian Fawkes, Feelin’ Good, newsletters 5 (October 1996) and 12 (July 1998)
‘Mecca!’, Will Birch, Mojo, November 1993
‘An officer and a gentleman: Will Birch remembers Lee Brilleaux’, Uncut, 1994
‘Joan’s Feelgood memories of her son Lee’, Joan Collinson interview, Thurrock Gazette, 22 November 2010
‘Down By The Jetty 40th anniversary feature’, Zoë Howe, The Blues Magazine
rocksbackpages.com
drfeelgood.org
drfeelgood.fr
drfeelgood.de (with thanks to Gabi Schwanke)
NOTES
Prologue
1.
Ealing was a great place for rhythm and blues – if he could just have hung on for a few more years, he’d have been old enough to take advantage of the Ealing Club (a haunt of The Who and The Rolling Stones) and the licentious blues hotspot that was Eel Pie Island. But this would not be the Island to feature in Brilleaux’s story. His destiny lay at the other end of the Thames.
Chapter 1
2.
Also attended by future pub rock cohort Brinsley Schwarz’s Ian Gomm.
3.
The use of clothes as a tool, as costume, armour, or just to create an effect, would serve him throughout his life. He would choose the character he wanted to inhabit onstage and ‘move into it … adopt a stance’, as he put it. One reason he loved wearing suits as an adult in everyday life was because he knew that, as his widow Shirley recalls him explaining, ‘People want to be rude but they think: better not, he’s wearing a suit.’
4.
Lee’s schoolboy ne’er-do-well-ism was a little more sophisticated. On a new school noticeboard in the playground, Lee wrote ‘PHALLUS’ in large letters, much to the amusement of his cohorts. ‘This uptight little teacher came over,’ remembers Phil. ‘He caught him, but Lee was denying it. The teacher said, “Do you do geography or biology?” We said, “Geography.” His line was that we couldn’t know this word unless we did biology. Still, we were given overalls and had to paint this noticeboard.’ The other side of Lee’s character, however, displayed an unusual level of empathy. ‘I remember him saying he found these balls of fluff under his mum’s bed,’ says Phil. ‘He said, “I felt sorry for them, so I put them in a little box.” There was a real contrast between this sensitive soul who felt sorry for the fluff under the bed, and this sarcastic wild man who could cut people dead with his words.’
Chapter 2
5.
Lee was the only youngster amid a close-knit clutch of adults, and he was spared little detail in subjects that were adult in nature; on asking his mother about his only-child status, Joan explained to Lee that she had had a miscarriage, and what that had entailed. ‘She told him in quite a lot of detail for a teenage son,’ remembers Phil. ‘She didn’t pull any punches.’
6.
Chris used the name ‘Fenwick’ as there was already a Chris White on Equity’s books.
7.
As Lee put it: ‘Group transport’s very important. Gives you an image when you turn up at a gig straight away, don’t it? Before you play a note.’ And no one can deny the Pigboy Charlie ambulance will have made an impression.
Chapter 3
8.
Putting one in mind of the Howlin’ Wolf song ‘Commit A Crime’.
9.
Lee’s driving skills came in handy for Wilko, who didn’t drive and still doesn’t to this day. Wilko and Lee spent a lot of time ‘driving around in shades posing’ and trying to pick up girls in Lee’s Ford Consul. Lee would also give Wilko, and others, lifts when required, although he had to put the kibosh on one situation that he felt was getting ‘a bit fucking Laurentian’ (à la DH ‘fucking’ Lawrence, needless to say); Lee would obligingly drive Wilko to meet a fellow schoolteacher with whom he was having a liaison, but one afternoon, as they approached the water tower in Benfleet where one of these clandestine meetings was to occur, a thunderstorm broke overhead, presenting something of a pathetic fallacy. Wilko was thrilled, but this was the last straw for Lee, who’d already gritted his teeth on one too many car journeys as Wilko expounded poetically upon his illicit romance in the passenger seat. ‘Jolly good,’ muses Wilko. ‘But yeah, Lee thought it was a bit too Laurentian. And he was exactly right!’
10.
Interestingly enough, Lee’s daughter Kelly Brilleaux is herself a lawyer, so there was obviously some legally inclined Collinson DNA that carried into the subsequent generation.
11.
Mickey Jupp, known by many as ‘the white Chuck Berry’, was already a local star, having fronted 1960s Southend group The Orioles and Legend. No home should be without Legend’s so-called Red Boot album.
12.
This happened to the Feelgoods quite a lot, although there is also a school of thought that Heinz was afraid of losing his job at the newspaper if he was seen to be moonlighting. Either way, his behaviour was rather furtive whenever they came round to rehearse or pick him up in the van.
13.
Also on the bill was Detroit proto-punk band MC5 – seeing MC5 was a life-changing experience for Wilko, and in homage he wanted to perform subsequent gigs with gold face paint, Wayne Kramer style, with the rest of the group wearing silver make-up. Lee and Sparko surprisingly played ball for a bit, but Figure flatly refused and the idea was soon abandoned.
Chapter 4
14.
Mojo being a powerful hoodoo
spell. Very New Orleans, ’eaux yes indeed.
Chapter 5
15.
Lawnmowers present something of a theme here when it comes to entertaining the Feelgoods.
Chapter 6
16.
During the interview with Joan Collinson for Oil City Confidential, the producer George Hencken made the interesting point that a skill for writing song lyrics often lies in being able to think in ‘slogans’ rather than the free prose style that came naturally to Lee.
17.
Lee listened to a lot of reggae, and especially loved the soulful voice of Toots Hibbert. ‘Once you’ve listened to [reggae],’ he said to skankin’ Neil Spencer (preaching to the converted), ‘your ideas about rhythm are never going to be the same.’
18.
Recorded live at Dingwalls, Camden Lock, recorded on the Pye Mobile Recording Unit, 8 July 1974. This track also features members of Brinsley Schwarz, with whom the Feelgoods performed on a number of occasions.
19.
Wilko Johnson explains the lack of a photographer credit on Down By The Jetty: ‘We agreed what he would get for it. Later, he decided he wanted ten times as much. Chris said, “Have your fucking money, but your name ain’t going on that sleeve.”’
