Down at the Doctors
A weekend in Canvey Island with Dr Feelgood
I have just returned from a weekend break by the seaside. It wasn’t intended as a romantic weekend: for a start, my room-mate is a friend of my brothers, who I don’t know very well. He’s ex-military and, for all I know, suffers from a serious digestive disorder. And we’re on the Essex Riviera, in Canvey Island – not so much a seaside resort as an industrialised mud flat.
Graham and I do have a few things in common, however: our wives have refused point blank to spend the weekend with us, and we are long-term fans of the band Dr Feelgood. And the truth is that for us, the chance to meet the band in their natural habitat, to breathe in their history, is about as romantic as it gets.
The Feelgood Factor
For those who don’t know (shame on you), Dr Feelgood is a four-piece British rhythm and blues band formed over 35 years ago, in Canvey Island. In the 1970s, they graduated rapidly from Canvey to a number one album and several hit singles, largely on the basis of a no-nonsense back-to basics live act. Not bad for ‘four men in cheap suits from Essex’.
The band is still touring – albeit with inevitable personnel changes over the years - and they’re still a great live act. It’s what they do. And what I’ve done on and off for the past 35 years or so is to go to the gigs (well, some of them – they play upwards of 150 a year) and buy the albums (vinyl, cassette, CD and now downloads). Now it’s payback time. We’re going to spend a few days hanging out with the band. They’ll have to buy us drinks, laugh at our jokes, perhaps even ask me to jam with them.*
No sleep till Canvey Island*
The Canvey Island connection is for real. It’s where the original band lived and it’s where long-term manager (and fifth Feelgood) Chris Fenwick has been based, right from the start. He co-owns the Oysterfleet Hotel - the location for this weekend- and until recently ran the Feelgood empire from an office over a bookies in the High Street. Fenwick is responsible for the ‘Dr Feelgood Weekend’ and our genial host for the duration, a role he performs with class and confidence. The longevity of Feelgood as a self-sufficient working band is clearly no accident: with Fenwick, as with the band, what you see is what you get, and what you get will be 100% as advertised. He’s likeable, good company and his training as an actor manifests itself in the talks he gives at various times throughout the weekend.
Canvey Island is a raw, bleak, untidy place situated below sea level on the Thames estuary. Apart from Dr Feelgood, it’s best known for the 1953 floods and the oil industry. All of this comes together in the recently-released film we are shown on Saturday afternoon - Oil City Confidential. Directed by Julian Temple, this skilfully weaves the history of Dr Feelgood with that of Canvey Island, combining documentary footage with dramatised episodes and excerpts from British black and white gangster films. The point being of course that man and nature are in some way in harmony here.
Above all, the film captures the excitement of the early Dr Feelgood. Like many, my reaction on first seeing them (Marquee, 1975, I think) was ‘I wasn’t expecting that’. It was raw and basic, with the added bonus of not one but two iconic band members – singer Lee Brilleaux and guitarist Wilko Johnson. Johnson left the band in the late seventies, while Brilleaux died in 1994. As the film makes clear, Brilleaux was a man to be respected in many ways. The footage of his wife and mother is particularly poignant – a quality shared by Fenwick in his speech before the film. ‘I’m proud to have been the manager of Dr Feelgood for 39 years. The best job in the world. Bar none’ was the gist of it.
The weekend starts here*
We arrive on Friday lunchtime intending to pay homage to Brilleaux (there is a blue plaque commemorating him over the hotel entrance) and anticipating a powerful live performance from the current band. And so, after an abortive tour of Canvey’s pubs looking for lunch (both beer and food are off, it seems. To us, anyway) we swerve into the car park. Graham was clearly trained by Bodie and Doyle. A handbrake turn later and we’re parked sideways in a cloud of dust, exhaust fumes and burning rubber. I sit in stunned silence for a few minutes before staggering from the car, white-faced and twitching.
What happens next sets the tone for the entire weekend. Reality bites. A large white van pulls up at reception. It’s the Feelgood tour bus and the driver is Phil Mitchell, Feelgood’s bass player. He’s happy to chat and have his photograph taken. This sets the tone: this is a no-frills business, run by decent, no-frills people like you and me. It’s not showbiz, it’s a job. But it’s more than that, too - it’s also a community: for example, former members meet every year to jam with the current band to raise money for charity at the Lee Brilleaux Memorial Concert. And for a while, it’s a community we’re part of.
The Oysterfleet proves to be not only the best pub in the area, but a well-run hotel and restaurant as well. It is beyond criticism and one can detect Fenwick’s influence as he patrols receptions, bars and restaurant. After a few pints of Abbott and some food, we go to our room to find various items of Feelgood merchandise and a printed itinerary. The goodies include a copy of the excellent book ‘Down by the Jetty – The Dr Feelgood story’, which has been signed by the band and Fenwick. We weren’t expecting that either.
That evening, we join the 80 or so other ‘Feelgood Weekend’ guests (that’s how many the hotel holds) in the bar. They’re a mixed bunch: middle-aged speccy men in sensible pullovers, lurking excitedly in the background; sixty-year old men with balding heads and beer guts, wearing old Feelgood memorabilia; tattooed bikers in Harley Tshirts, with their wives; Mick from Wolverhampton; Rob, a highly eccentric artist with waxed moustache and flute, who once spent a year naked in LA in the name of conceptual art; people from Ireland, Scotland, Holland, France and Germany; and the lead singer of the New Zealand band ‘Brilleaux’, who gets to perform on stage with the band (he’s good). A mixed bunch, but all know what we’ve got in common and that’s more important than any differences we might have.
More beers follow, then dinner with the band. There’s a seating plan and we’re on Phil’s table. As well as talking with us – and being the first person, ever, to immediately understand my left-handed guitar problems - he agrees to share our wine. A very drinkable Malbec at under £12 a bottle seems more than reasonable, so we have four bottles between the three of us. As a professional, Phil proves to be much better at pacing himself than we are. The food and service are good too.
What, no watts?
In the upstairs function room, we drink more beer and watch the band perform a rare ‘acoustic’ set. Again, not something you might have expected and all the more enjoyable for it. Afterwards, I talk to Chris Fenwick at the bar, whilst drinking more beer, and offer him the benefit of my extensive experience on the managing and marketing of Dr Feelgood, at some length. He listens without any outward signs of anger or violence, which is very much to his credit. Occasionally he manages to get a few words in and tells some great stories about Lee. By the time we get to bed, the prospect of a serious hangover is beyond doubt.
Down by the jetty
After a top-notch full English, we’re off on Chris’s walking tour of Canvey. If the breakfast doesn’t sort out the hangover, the walk will - it must be sub-zero on the sea wall. Chris provides an informative commentary on the history and geography of Feelgood and Canvey, with more general observations on the area.
He’s good. We start at the Lobster Smack pub – a surprisingly picturesque pub, close to where the cover shot for the ‘Down by the Jetty’ album was taken. We walk along the seawall, down by the jetty, and inspect the Labworth Café, a thirties seafront café designed and built by Ove Arup, who went on to design the Sydney Opera House. More importantly, it’s featured heavily in early band publicity shots and the film. The walk ends up at the Canvey Club – a small, insanitary wooden hut with a bar, which in any other town would have been condemned many years ago – which has its own place in the early Feelgood story. En route, Fenwick fishes out his mobile: ‘It’s Chris from the Feelgoods here. We’ll be there in five minutes. Pour us thirty pints of lager and we’ll sort the rest out later.’ Only on Canvey!
That evening, we get the full Feelgood rock set. It’s powerful and relentless, honed to perfection over many gigs, but still with that effort and energy that one expects from a Feelgood lineup. To call it highly professional feels like it would in some way be insulting. However, it is - for example, we are told that the band can’t join us for dinner as they have to eat at least three hours before a show. And the pint mugs on stage are filled with water – in contrast to the three pints of gin (with tonic top) that folklore tells us Lee Brilleaux would have had lined up. But if professional means playing so well, so often, and for so many years, then water it is.
A romantic weekend indeed and one that celebrated something uniquely and truly British, both band and place. It will be repeated next year – go if you can. And if you can’t, at the very least make sure that you see the film (Oil City Confidential). As if to confirm the smug superiority of the true believer, the very next day (Monday, March 8th) sees an article in the Daily Telegraph by Charles Spencer. Headed ‘In pursuit of a rock-and-roll legend’, Spencer asserts that the film is ‘destined to become a cult classic’ but bemoans the fact that it gets such poor distribution compared with the ‘inane blockbusters’ that clog up most cinema screens. For film, read band – a true British classic.
Mark Beasley
8th March 2010
Get in touch here
NOTES
1. Yes I did get to play with Dr Feelgood. When I said in the article that perhaps the band would jam with me, little did I know that at the same event in 2012, I would win the raffle on Friday (I reckon Chris fixed it, for which, thanks) to play a few songs with the band at the gig on Saturday night. Which I did, proving that playing a spare right-handed guitar upside down (I’m left-handed) is just as difficult as it sounds. It’s on YouTube – https://youtu.be/yxDWh_AjbQA
2. No Sleep Till Canvey Island is a book by Will Birch - the definitive history of pub rock. I recommend that you buy it.
3. 'The weekend starts here' was of course the ‘strapline’ for definitive 60s TV pop show, Ready Steady Go.
Read more! If you like this article, there is a much better one about the Lee Brilleaux Memorial event: click here.
A weekend in Canvey Island with Dr Feelgood
I have just returned from a weekend break by the seaside. It wasn’t intended as a romantic weekend: for a start, my room-mate is a friend of my brothers, who I don’t know very well. He’s ex-military and, for all I know, suffers from a serious digestive disorder. And we’re on the Essex Riviera, in Canvey Island – not so much a seaside resort as an industrialised mud flat.
Graham and I do have a few things in common, however: our wives have refused point blank to spend the weekend with us, and we are long-term fans of the band Dr Feelgood. And the truth is that for us, the chance to meet the band in their natural habitat, to breathe in their history, is about as romantic as it gets.
The Feelgood Factor
For those who don’t know (shame on you), Dr Feelgood is a four-piece British rhythm and blues band formed over 35 years ago, in Canvey Island. In the 1970s, they graduated rapidly from Canvey to a number one album and several hit singles, largely on the basis of a no-nonsense back-to basics live act. Not bad for ‘four men in cheap suits from Essex’.
The band is still touring – albeit with inevitable personnel changes over the years - and they’re still a great live act. It’s what they do. And what I’ve done on and off for the past 35 years or so is to go to the gigs (well, some of them – they play upwards of 150 a year) and buy the albums (vinyl, cassette, CD and now downloads). Now it’s payback time. We’re going to spend a few days hanging out with the band. They’ll have to buy us drinks, laugh at our jokes, perhaps even ask me to jam with them.*
No sleep till Canvey Island*
The Canvey Island connection is for real. It’s where the original band lived and it’s where long-term manager (and fifth Feelgood) Chris Fenwick has been based, right from the start. He co-owns the Oysterfleet Hotel - the location for this weekend- and until recently ran the Feelgood empire from an office over a bookies in the High Street. Fenwick is responsible for the ‘Dr Feelgood Weekend’ and our genial host for the duration, a role he performs with class and confidence. The longevity of Feelgood as a self-sufficient working band is clearly no accident: with Fenwick, as with the band, what you see is what you get, and what you get will be 100% as advertised. He’s likeable, good company and his training as an actor manifests itself in the talks he gives at various times throughout the weekend.
Canvey Island is a raw, bleak, untidy place situated below sea level on the Thames estuary. Apart from Dr Feelgood, it’s best known for the 1953 floods and the oil industry. All of this comes together in the recently-released film we are shown on Saturday afternoon - Oil City Confidential. Directed by Julian Temple, this skilfully weaves the history of Dr Feelgood with that of Canvey Island, combining documentary footage with dramatised episodes and excerpts from British black and white gangster films. The point being of course that man and nature are in some way in harmony here.
Above all, the film captures the excitement of the early Dr Feelgood. Like many, my reaction on first seeing them (Marquee, 1975, I think) was ‘I wasn’t expecting that’. It was raw and basic, with the added bonus of not one but two iconic band members – singer Lee Brilleaux and guitarist Wilko Johnson. Johnson left the band in the late seventies, while Brilleaux died in 1994. As the film makes clear, Brilleaux was a man to be respected in many ways. The footage of his wife and mother is particularly poignant – a quality shared by Fenwick in his speech before the film. ‘I’m proud to have been the manager of Dr Feelgood for 39 years. The best job in the world. Bar none’ was the gist of it.
The weekend starts here*
We arrive on Friday lunchtime intending to pay homage to Brilleaux (there is a blue plaque commemorating him over the hotel entrance) and anticipating a powerful live performance from the current band. And so, after an abortive tour of Canvey’s pubs looking for lunch (both beer and food are off, it seems. To us, anyway) we swerve into the car park. Graham was clearly trained by Bodie and Doyle. A handbrake turn later and we’re parked sideways in a cloud of dust, exhaust fumes and burning rubber. I sit in stunned silence for a few minutes before staggering from the car, white-faced and twitching.
What happens next sets the tone for the entire weekend. Reality bites. A large white van pulls up at reception. It’s the Feelgood tour bus and the driver is Phil Mitchell, Feelgood’s bass player. He’s happy to chat and have his photograph taken. This sets the tone: this is a no-frills business, run by decent, no-frills people like you and me. It’s not showbiz, it’s a job. But it’s more than that, too - it’s also a community: for example, former members meet every year to jam with the current band to raise money for charity at the Lee Brilleaux Memorial Concert. And for a while, it’s a community we’re part of.
The Oysterfleet proves to be not only the best pub in the area, but a well-run hotel and restaurant as well. It is beyond criticism and one can detect Fenwick’s influence as he patrols receptions, bars and restaurant. After a few pints of Abbott and some food, we go to our room to find various items of Feelgood merchandise and a printed itinerary. The goodies include a copy of the excellent book ‘Down by the Jetty – The Dr Feelgood story’, which has been signed by the band and Fenwick. We weren’t expecting that either.
That evening, we join the 80 or so other ‘Feelgood Weekend’ guests (that’s how many the hotel holds) in the bar. They’re a mixed bunch: middle-aged speccy men in sensible pullovers, lurking excitedly in the background; sixty-year old men with balding heads and beer guts, wearing old Feelgood memorabilia; tattooed bikers in Harley Tshirts, with their wives; Mick from Wolverhampton; Rob, a highly eccentric artist with waxed moustache and flute, who once spent a year naked in LA in the name of conceptual art; people from Ireland, Scotland, Holland, France and Germany; and the lead singer of the New Zealand band ‘Brilleaux’, who gets to perform on stage with the band (he’s good). A mixed bunch, but all know what we’ve got in common and that’s more important than any differences we might have.
More beers follow, then dinner with the band. There’s a seating plan and we’re on Phil’s table. As well as talking with us – and being the first person, ever, to immediately understand my left-handed guitar problems - he agrees to share our wine. A very drinkable Malbec at under £12 a bottle seems more than reasonable, so we have four bottles between the three of us. As a professional, Phil proves to be much better at pacing himself than we are. The food and service are good too.
What, no watts?
In the upstairs function room, we drink more beer and watch the band perform a rare ‘acoustic’ set. Again, not something you might have expected and all the more enjoyable for it. Afterwards, I talk to Chris Fenwick at the bar, whilst drinking more beer, and offer him the benefit of my extensive experience on the managing and marketing of Dr Feelgood, at some length. He listens without any outward signs of anger or violence, which is very much to his credit. Occasionally he manages to get a few words in and tells some great stories about Lee. By the time we get to bed, the prospect of a serious hangover is beyond doubt.
Down by the jetty
After a top-notch full English, we’re off on Chris’s walking tour of Canvey. If the breakfast doesn’t sort out the hangover, the walk will - it must be sub-zero on the sea wall. Chris provides an informative commentary on the history and geography of Feelgood and Canvey, with more general observations on the area.
He’s good. We start at the Lobster Smack pub – a surprisingly picturesque pub, close to where the cover shot for the ‘Down by the Jetty’ album was taken. We walk along the seawall, down by the jetty, and inspect the Labworth Café, a thirties seafront café designed and built by Ove Arup, who went on to design the Sydney Opera House. More importantly, it’s featured heavily in early band publicity shots and the film. The walk ends up at the Canvey Club – a small, insanitary wooden hut with a bar, which in any other town would have been condemned many years ago – which has its own place in the early Feelgood story. En route, Fenwick fishes out his mobile: ‘It’s Chris from the Feelgoods here. We’ll be there in five minutes. Pour us thirty pints of lager and we’ll sort the rest out later.’ Only on Canvey!
That evening, we get the full Feelgood rock set. It’s powerful and relentless, honed to perfection over many gigs, but still with that effort and energy that one expects from a Feelgood lineup. To call it highly professional feels like it would in some way be insulting. However, it is - for example, we are told that the band can’t join us for dinner as they have to eat at least three hours before a show. And the pint mugs on stage are filled with water – in contrast to the three pints of gin (with tonic top) that folklore tells us Lee Brilleaux would have had lined up. But if professional means playing so well, so often, and for so many years, then water it is.
A romantic weekend indeed and one that celebrated something uniquely and truly British, both band and place. It will be repeated next year – go if you can. And if you can’t, at the very least make sure that you see the film (Oil City Confidential). As if to confirm the smug superiority of the true believer, the very next day (Monday, March 8th) sees an article in the Daily Telegraph by Charles Spencer. Headed ‘In pursuit of a rock-and-roll legend’, Spencer asserts that the film is ‘destined to become a cult classic’ but bemoans the fact that it gets such poor distribution compared with the ‘inane blockbusters’ that clog up most cinema screens. For film, read band – a true British classic.
Mark Beasley
8th March 2010
Get in touch here
NOTES
1. Yes I did get to play with Dr Feelgood. When I said in the article that perhaps the band would jam with me, little did I know that at the same event in 2012, I would win the raffle on Friday (I reckon Chris fixed it, for which, thanks) to play a few songs with the band at the gig on Saturday night. Which I did, proving that playing a spare right-handed guitar upside down (I’m left-handed) is just as difficult as it sounds. It’s on YouTube – https://youtu.be/yxDWh_AjbQA
2. No Sleep Till Canvey Island is a book by Will Birch - the definitive history of pub rock. I recommend that you buy it.
3. 'The weekend starts here' was of course the ‘strapline’ for definitive 60s TV pop show, Ready Steady Go.
Read more! If you like this article, there is a much better one about the Lee Brilleaux Memorial event: click here.
