Several posts ago I wrote about Julien Temple’s “Requiem For Detroit?” I watched another cracker from him yesterday – his biopic of the greatest rock’n’roll band the UK ever produced – Dr Feelgood.
The film, Oil City Confidential, is available to UK viewers on BBC iPlayer for another week or so but will be out on DVD later in the year.
The film brought back mixed emotions and memories. The most prominent was the memory of dancing a lot to Back in the Night with one of the girls and the church group I used to go to. She had no time for me otherwise but for some reason we always danced to that record! The second was memories of Feelgood when they showed up on The Old Grey Whistle Test and Wilko came to national fame with his nervous strutting presence and angular, economical Telecaster playing.
It was good to see and hear Wilko in Oil City Confidential being by turns informative, confessional and funny. It was good too to see film of the late Lee Brilleaux looking every inch the genial solicitor’s clerk off stage and a manic, malevolent force on stage.
One of the key influences they had on me was the way Wilco thrashed out the main riff of (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 in a way I’ve never heard before or since. It wasn’t the riff itself, anyone can play that, it had a lot to do with his idiosyncratic right hand style and the lean precision of it – neither more nor less than required to drive the song along. I also liked how he rarely indulged in extended soloing and concentrated on stabbing out just the right notes to carry the instrumental passages along. Listen to their first album – Down By the Jetty – it’s on Spotify – and it’s all there from the first song, She Does it Right, with added Telecaster twang.
Recent Comments