![]() Within a few months, he was cancer-free, having undergone major invasive surgery to remove not only a tumour weighing 3kg, but also his pancreas, spleen, small and large intestines, and part of his stomach, as well as the removal and reconstruction of blood vessels connecting his liver.īorn in 1947 and raised on Canvey Island (a tract of land in the Thames Estuary that was made habitable from reclaimed marshland built by Dutch engineers in the 17th century), Johnson went through the hippie years (backpacking it to Afghanistan and India through swirls of pungent dope smoke), only to cut his musical teeth back home in the early 1970s in the proto-punk R&B act Dr Feelgood. ![]() Following a chance encounter with a music fan who was also a cancer specialist, a second diagnosis in early 2014 revealed that Johnson actually had a less virulent and more treatable form of the disease. Looking at what he presumed was impending death in the face, destiny decreed otherwise. Being the rock’n’roll trouper, living up to the loose philosophy that the show must go on, Johnson set about arranging a farewell tour and a farewell album. There are some people who prefer to tell bad news only to their close friends and family, but, in January 2013, UK blues/rock guitarist Wilko Johnson – who had just been diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer and who had chosen not to undergo treatment by chemotherapy – informed the BBC that he had less than 12 months to live. None of it expected, all of it seen through the perspective of imminent death.” After years without a record deal to have made an album with Roger Daltrey, and that album to have become a huge bestseller from saying ‘goodnight and goodbye’ at my final farewell gig to playing the Royal Albert Hall still alive and well from awards ceremonies where I would be greeted warmly by a music business that I thought had long forgotten me, to Elton John, Tokyo and Breakfast TV to being treated like a star again. ![]() ‘From a death sentence to international media celebrity, my story in all the newspapers.
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