"You’ve got to remember this is forty years ago, one has to file back…” warns Dr. Feelgood manager Chris ‘Whitey’ Fenwick as I prepare to pick his brain about the band’s debut album, Down By The Jetty, that raw, sharp slice of R&B that came spinning out of the Thames Delta in January 1975 like a freshly flung chakram. But Fenwick has had the album on the turntable again in preparation for our conversation and, “it’s been fun to revisit it. It’s brought back the excitement of the early gigging period – we were gaining altitude by the month… This album’s been a very strong part of my life. Forty years…” he muses. “It’s got bloody long legs.”
The definitive line-up of Dr. Feelgood consisted of guitarist Wilko Johnson, the much-missed Lee Brilleaux on vocals/ harmonica (Lee died from cancer in 1994), bassist Sparko (John B Sparkes) and drummer John ‘The Big Figure’ Martin.
Nicknames were necessary as all of the Feelgoods, with the exception of Brilleaux, were called John. Lee’s middle name was John, however, and when Wilko – real name John Wilkinson – left in 1977, his replacement was Gypie Mayo, whose real first name was – you guessed it – John.
Here were four tough Canvey Island boys with style, attitude and an obsession with rhythm and blues, to the extent that, as Howlin’ Wolf fanatic Lee Brilleaux told Sounds journalist Jonh Ingham shortly after the release of Down By The Jetty, “There’s nothing white that I draw off at all. Everything’s black.”
Lee Brilleaux’s real name was Lee Collinson. The name ‘Brilleaux’ arose when, one day, he felt his hair had taken on the look of a Brillo pad. After playing around with announcing himself as ‘Lee Brillo’, he decided to make the name a permanent feature, changing the spelling in an attempt to sound more like a Louisiana bluesman than the sort of thing one might find under the sink.
A self-confessed music snob from a relatively early age, Lee was not initially interested in rock’n’roll, with the exception of the Rolling Stones. “To me, it was the stuff the generation before me were into. I used to half send it up. My uncle was into Elvis, he had a silly haircut… Fucking rubbish.”
It was when Lee and his childhood friends Whitey and Sparko stumbled across a jug band playing on the streets of Canvey Island, a tall, charismatic older teenager on guitar, that Lee’s love of the blues was really ignited. It would also be the first fateful meeting between Lee, Sparko, Whitey and Wilko Johnson. It was Lee who made the strongest impression on Wilko: “I remember walking back home with my brother Malcolm, going, ‘Fucking hell, that kid’s a bit sharp! He was vivid. He radiated.”
The now well-documented story of how Dr. Feelgood first came together as a band can be summarised thus. After going to University in Newcastle and following the hippie trail across India, the long-haired Wilko returned home to find a rather more grown-up Lee Collinson, now working as a solicitor’s clerk, stalking the streets of Canvey in a pin-striped suit (“Man, he looked so mean!” exclaims Wilko, still gasping at the memory).
Lee, inspired by Wilko, had initially started a jug band of his own with Whitey, Sparko and schoolfriends Phil ‘Harry’ Ashcroft and Rico Daniels, but, as the years had progressed, the band had developed into a rock group. Lee, not exactly lacking in formidable presence himself, was overawed by Wilko and left it to Sparko to invite Canvey’s prodigal son to join on guitar; the answer to which was an unequivocal ‘yes’. Wilko eventually brought Figure, his old schoolfriend, sometime bandmate and already
