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" I first encountered the power of the 1970s UK band Dr. Feelgood in a manner befitting their legend, in a London pub. On a trip to England many years ago I discovered there was a bit of a game in pub culture there to see who could put a song on the jukebox that would really get the party going. After a few tries \u2014 The Jam, The Clash, T.Rex \u2014 I was ready to try something different. Goaded by my new drinking buddies, I opted for Dr. Feelgood&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;All Through the City.&amp;quot; I knew the proto punks had been an inspiration to Paul Weller and countless others in the mid-&amp;#039;70s, but I wasn&amp;#039;t prepared for the reaction the song would get. Immediately the place shimmied and shook and the drinks were flowing even more rapidly. Before the song was over a fight had nearly broken out and I&amp;#039;d been bought a couple more pints for my prescient choice. &amp;quot;I love that story,&amp;quot; Wilko Johnson, Dr. Feelgood&amp;#039;s guitarist and principal songwriter, told me when we caught up by phone recently. &amp;quot;There was a moment when we were right there at the front of everything, right there at the origins of punk, and all those bands were influenced by us. There was a feeling that we had something to prove and sort of shake out the old. We had our fifteen minutes.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;What I noticed, immediately when I saw them, was this guy Wilko,&amp;quot; The Who&amp;#039;s Roger Daltrey, whose new collaboration with Johnson, the extraordinary Going Back Home, will likely hit number-one in the UK soon and is out in the U.S. on Tuesday, told me recently of his first memories of seeing Dr. Feelgood. &amp;quot;I thought the rest of the band were all right,&amp;quot; he continued, with a chuckle. &amp;quot;But you couldn&amp;#039;t turn your eyes off Wilko. I just thought, whatever it takes to be someone who is a rock star, and not just another rock person on stage, he had it in spades. He was mesmerizing. And he still is.&amp;quot;       Johnson is indeed an icon in the UK, and Dr. Feelgood are beloved. For anyone looking for a primer on the band, Julien Temple&amp;#039;s excellent Oil City Confidential documentary about the rise and fall of the band, and the recent live solo concert film Wilko Johnson: Live at Koko, and of course the band&amp;#039;s incendiary 1975 debut album Down by the Jetty, are each an excellent place to start. In early 2013, Johnson was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But rather than undergo months of debilitating treatment, Johnson hit the road. &amp;quot;I was supposed to be dead six months ago,&amp;quot; Johnson says, with a disarming chuckle. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s getting a bit embarrassing at this point.&amp;quot; Though the collaboration isn&amp;#039;t a new idea, Johnson&amp;#039;s diagnosis gave the pair the kick-start they&amp;#039;d needed to make it happen. Johnson had met The Who&amp;#039;s legendary frontman when Oil City Confidential and Dr. Feelgood received the 2010 Vision award from Mojo magazine.  &amp;quot;We talked about making an album then,&amp;quot; Johnson tells me. &amp;quot;But it just never came together. Then, when Roger heard about my diagnosis, he called me up and said, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;d better do this!&amp;#039; I told him we&amp;#039;d better do it quick!&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;We had no expectations,&amp;quot; Daltrey told me of the experience. &amp;quot;It was something we did because we wanted to do it, for no other reason but to make a record. We didn&amp;#039;t care if people liked it. We didn&amp;#039;t care about anything other than that let&amp;#039;s get down and make some music.&amp;quot; The two recorded the album in eight days in a studio in England&amp;#039;s Essex countryside near Daltrey&amp;#039;s house, with Johnson&amp;#039;s excellent touring band \u2014 Norman Watt-Roy on bass and Dylan Howe on drums \u2014 plus the Style Council&amp;#039;s Mick Talbot on keyboards and Steve Weston on harmonica.  &amp;quot;We owe a lot to the producer, Dave Eringa,&amp;quot; Johnson says, graciously. &amp;quot;He really pulled this all together. Please don&amp;#039;t forget him.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s true. While Johnson tells me he and Daltrey bonded over a shared love of the English R&amp;amp;amp;B band Johnny Kid and the Pirates, the album isn&amp;#039;t just an homage, or a cross between Dr. Feelgood and Daltrey&amp;#039;s long-ago debut from his day job, The Who Sings My Generation, though at its best moments it&amp;#039;s certainly a bit of that. Eringa has created a coherence in this fantastic, old-school rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; roll album that has brought out the best \u2014 and certainly the most exciting \u2014 work either Johnson or Daltrey has done on record in ages. &amp;quot;This whole year has been remarkable and weird,&amp;quot; Johnson says of the time since his diagnosis, and especially of collaborating with Daltrey. &amp;quot;I told Roger that this may be the last thing I do and so to do it with him, and to have it be so wonderful, is like a dream. You know, I was a Who fan as a teenager just like everybody else, and there I was sitting in the studio with Roger Daltrey making this great music. I felt like I should have been at his feet groveling!&amp;quot;  If you&amp;#039;re not familiar with Dr. Feelgood, or even with the early Who, imagine the sound of 1950s American blues and early rock, through the filter of 1960s English R&amp;amp;amp;B, supercharged and with some mileage under the hood. The ten songs from the Wilko Johnson songbook, plus Bob Dylan&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,&amp;quot; are intense and firey. Johnson&amp;#039;s playing is choppy and sharp and confident, and Daltrey sounds as fresh as he did on &amp;quot;Magic Bus,&amp;quot; especially on &amp;quot;Everybody&amp;#039;s Carrying a Gun.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve played with this band for a while and when we started this record we just were in the studio bashing away,&amp;quot; Johnson admits. &amp;quot;Then Roger came in, and he really took time to find his own way to do these songs. He truly had to make them his own. So even though the original versions with Lee [Brilleaux, Dr. Feelgood&amp;#039;s celebrated lead singer] are amazing, Roger&amp;#039;s approach was so intense that it&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re a listening to new songs.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Wilko just sent me songs and there was one I said, &amp;#039;I just don&amp;#039;t think I could get my brain around this,&amp;#039; because if you listen to the way Wilko sings and the way I sing it&amp;#039;s totally different,&amp;quot; Daltrey told me of the process the two employed in choosing the material. &amp;quot;My range is totally different \u2014 I can&amp;#039;t just sing words \u2014 they have to come from inside. And it&amp;#039;s not just what you&amp;#039;re singing about, it&amp;#039;s where it&amp;#039;s coming from in you. I&amp;#039;ve got a four-octave range so I can sing all the way down to a low D and I&amp;#039;m still hitting on this record \u2014 one of the notes is a high D \u2014 above a middle C, it&amp;#039;s ridiculous \u2014 but that gives you, the singer, a particular problem. Where do you pitch this? Do you use a smooth voice? A rough voice so you have to go eat it, put it down in your stomach, digest it, and let it come out? It comes out from inside. It&amp;#039;s the only way I can explain it. I cannot read a lyric and sing it at the same time and get anything out of it at all other than someone singing a melody.&amp;quot; Esquire is proud to premiere &amp;quot;Going Back Home,&amp;quot; the title track from the Wilko Johnson/Roger Daltrey album, out April 8 on UME. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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