In the spring, it was discovered that his pancreatic cancer was a rare and considerably less aggressive variety that might indeed be treatable. Ten months came and went, and he wasn’t dead. Despite the presence of a soccer-ball-sized tumor in his gut, Wilko didn’t feel sick. Declining chemotherapy, he embarked on both a personal and musical farewell tour – gigging with his band, recording a final album (with Roger Daltrey on vocals), talking in interviews about how the diagnosis had lifted his life-long depression and made him feel “vividly alive.” Friends and fans counted down his days the media – besotted by Wilko since his charming, sagacious turn in Julien Temple’s 2009 Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential – pronounced him, in that most orotund of British honorifics, a national treasure.īut a funny thing happened on the way to Valhalla. Feelgood, was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and given some 10 months to live.

Early last year, Wilko Johnson, the charismatic guitarist and songwriter best known for his blazing work with influential ’70s pub rock band Dr.

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