The Dr Feelgood factor
Sunday, February 15th, 2009They paved the way for punk, but have been forgotten by history. A new film revisits the strange world from which Dr Feelgood came.
Nick Hasted The Independent 13 February 2009
Making a film about Dr Feelgood, it was a bit like Spinal Tap – like they never existed,” says Julien Temple. “There was this band that was the biggest in England for 18 months, that no one remembers.”
Temple’s hit, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007), confirmed his reputation as Britain’s best rock documentarian. But his follow-up, Oil City Confidential, seen exclusively in rough cut by The Independent, uncovers a less familiar, equally fascinating tale. Dr Feelgood are remembered in rock history, if at all, as John the Baptists to punk’s messiahs, ruling the short-lived pub-rock scene of the mid-1970s. But rare footage uncovered by Temple shows them to be one of the most exhilarating live bands Britain has ever produced. Their late singer Lee Brilleaux does press-ups mid-song, while guitarist Wilko Johnson stalks the stage, wild-eyed. Oil City Confidential also portrays the lost English world the band came from: fading pastel home-movies of bungalows and Biblical floods in post-war Canvey Island, Essex.
the full story here