Offstage, Mr. Johnson gave the impression a very unlikely rock famous person — a former English instructor with a specialised background in medieval literature and the Icelandic sagas, an information that most probably served him neatly when he used to be solid in “Sport of Thrones.”
Within the HBO swordplay and delusion collection, Mr. Johnson portrayed Ser Ilyn Payne, a royal executioner rendered mute after his tongue used to be got rid of at the order of the Mad King. Even if Mr. Johnson had by no means acted sooner than, he stated he discovered the paintings to be simple.
“They stated they sought after someone truly sinister who went round taking a look daggers at other people sooner than killing them,” he instructed a British reporter. “Taking a look daggers at other people is what I do always, it’s like 2d nature to me.”
Certainly, his quartet, Dr. Feelgood, mastered a uncooked and uncompromising taste. Its tune — an amped-up, high-energy model of Chicago blues and early rock-and-roll fueled by means of Mr. Johnson’s hyperaggressive guitar paintings — expected the depth of such British punk bands because the Conflict and the Intercourse Pistols.
“The phrases got here at you prefer a blowtorched Chuck Berry,” the tune creator Nick Coleman as soon as quipped.
Onstage, Mr. Johnson cultivated an eccentric look, pacing from side to side in time to the tune with a robot-like precision. He wore ratty black Nehru jackets and at all times sported an unkempt pudding-bowl haircut.
His guitar methodology used to be putting — actually. He slashed on the guitar in an up-and-down movement with out choices, his proper hand — the strumming hand — situated just like the claw of a crab. Early in his occupation, the palms on that hand would bleed from bare flesh hitting the strings. A pink pickguard concealed the blood.
(Many years later, when his guitarist son Simon mimicked the way and completed the similar bloodied hand after enjoying, Mr. Johnson instructed a reporter, “I used to be proud to look him bleeding within the identify of rock ‘n’ roll.”)
With Dr. Feelgood, Mr. Johnson’s gripping presence used to be matched by means of that of Lee Brilleaux, the band’s singer and harmonica participant, who incessantly gave the impression primed to burst into violence onstage.
Mr. Johnson incessantly wrote for Brilleaux’s gruff-staccato voice, as with the hole phrases of “All Throughout the Town,” which describe a working-class business tableau of fires capturing from smokestacks: “Stand and watch the towers burning on the crack of dawn.”
Mr. Johnson and his bandmates grew up close to the oil and fuel terminals of Canvey Island, frequently referred to as “Oil Town,” an island within the Thames River estuary. They recorded their first album in 1975 and become a part of the mid-Nineteen Seventies British tune motion referred to as pub rock. Just like the punk scene to observe, the pub rockers saved their tune street-level, who prefer small golf equipment to live performance stadiums.
The band proved very talked-about in England with hits together with “Sneakin’ Suspicion,” “Roxette” and “All Throughout the Town.” Mr. Johnson wrote and co-wrote a number of of the songs and in addition created the band’s unique brand of a grinning guy in shades.
Behind the scenes, the gang used to be riven with stress. Mr. Johnson stated he used amphetamines however used to be a teetotaler, which alienated him from his hard-drinking bandmates. “And it were given to a scenario,” he instructed the Essex Chronicle, “the place I’m up in my room seeking to write songs and so they’re all within the bar having a drink.”
His bandmates fired him in 1977 all over the recording in their fourth album, and he stated he used to be “devastated” by means of being lower unfastened from other people he regarded as his circle of relatives. In the meantime, Dr. Feelgood used to be eclipsed by means of the punk scene it helped instigate. Brilleaux died in 1994 of lymphoma. Mr. Johnson’s function within the team used to be highlighted within the 2009 documentary “Oil Town Confidential,” a part of a trilogy of movies by means of director Julien Temple on British punk.
After leaving Dr. Feelgood, Mr. Johnson divided his time between main his personal trio and acting with Ian Dury and the Blockheads, which he joined in 1980. (Dury, recognized for blending cockney dialect humor with funk and reggae rhythms, died in 2000.)
In 2013, Mr. Johnson introduced that he had terminal pancreatic most cancers and {that a} imminent excursion can be his final. He then recorded the album “Going Again House” with Who singer Daltrey and did a 2d farewell excursion with him.
In live performance, Mr. Johnson would level to what he referred to as “the infant” — a big mass sticking out from his decrease stomach — whilst Daltrey held his microphone as much as the guitarist’s abdomen.
John Peter Wilkinson, whose father used to be a fuel more healthy, used to be born July 12, 1947, in Canvey Island. He graduated with an English literature level from the College of Newcastle upon Tyne and, in 1971, joined the Pigboy Charlie Band, a gaggle that developed into Dr. Feelgood. The brand new identify used to be taken from a 1962 soar blues hit by means of Piano Crimson.
His spouse, Irene Knight, died in 2004. Survivors come with two sons, Simon and Matthew, and a grandson.
After his most cancers analysis, Mr. Johnson described a newfound serenity.
“You’re strolling together with a unique awareness,” Mr. Johnson instructed the Observer, a British e-newsletter. “You take a look at people and assume they’re all dwelling underneath that horrible danger of mortality. For me despite the fact that, it’s taken care of out, and that units me aside.”
He added, “It’s not that i am going to come back out with a e-book of sayings, despite the fact that.”