"Daniel Johnston has spent the last 14 or so years
exposing his heart rending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and
existential torment
to an ever-growing international cult audience. Initiates, including a
healthy number of discerning musicians and critics, have hailed him as an
American original in the style of bluesman Robert Johnson and country legend
Hank Williams. A number of artists -- among them the Dead Milkmen, Yo La
Tengo, the Velvet Underground. And he as collaborated with the likes
of Jad Fair (a founding member of Half Japanese, who've also done Daniel's
songs), the Butthole Surfers, Bongwater/Shimmydisc guru Kramer, and members
of Sonic Youth. Daniel gained his widest public exposure to date when, at
the 1992 MTV Music Awards, Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain (who constantly touted
Daniel in interviews) wore a Johnston T-shirt.
Surprisingly, the bulk of his
considerable acclaim snowballed from a series of homemade, lo-fi cassettes
which Daniel started recording and handing out to fans and friends alike in
the early 80s. Eventually, the independent label Homestead re-issued some of
these tapes on CD, and Johnston recorded a few new albums in almost-proper
studios.
Daniel was born in 1961 in
Sacramento, California, the youngest of five children in a Christian
fundamentalist household> He and his family soon moved to New Cumberland,
West Virginia, where his father, an engineer and World War II fighter pilot,
landed a job with Quaker State. Drawing for a long time before he took up
music, Daniel grew to appreciate such artists John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob
Dylan, David Bromberg, Queen, Neil Young, the Sex Pistols, and especially
the Beatles. "When I was 19, I wanted to be the Beatles. I was disappointed
when I found out I couldn't sing." That Liverpudlian quartet continues to
inspire Daniel today, who sings, "My heart looked to art and I found the
Beatles/Oh God I was and am a true disciple on Rock 'n' roll/EGA."
While it would be years before
Daniel committed his first songs to tape, he began composing at an early
age. "When I was a kid, probably nine, I used to bang around on the piano,
making up horror movie themes. When I got a bit older, I'd be mowing my lawn
and I'd make up songs and sing them. No one could hear
me 'cause of the lawn mower." As a teenager, Daniel and his friends began to
record their own tapes and trade them among themselves. After high school,
he attended an art program at a branch of Ken State near his family's home.
This was a prolific period of his life. Unemployed, and attending classes
sporadically, he began to spend most of his time in his family's cellar,
writing and recording. The tapes he made there included "Songs of Pain" and
"More Songs of Pain," which both centered around his unrequited love for a
woman named Laurie who ended up marrying an undertaker.
The aspiring cartoonist -- whose
playful, symbol-heavy sketches have graced the covers of may of his
releases, including "Fun" -- moved to Texas in 1983. FIrst he went to
Houston, living with his brother and working at Astro World, while also
recording the seminal tapes "Yip/Jump Music" and "Hi, How Are You?" on a
$59.00 Sanyo mono boombox. These recordings featured such classics as
"Speeding Motorcycle," "Sorry Entertainer," and odes to everyone from
"Casper the Friendly Ghost" and "King Kong" to "The Beatles." From there he
moved to San Marcos, TX, and even joined a traveling carnival show for a
spell, selling corndogs. "It was like a movie all the time. Everybody around
me was a great story that never stopped, and for the first time, I realized
how much freedom you have to do what you want."
Throughout his career, Daniel's
songs and drawings have been informed to some degree by his ongoing struggle
with manic depression -- lending an added poignancy to his soul-searching
times. His five-month stint with the carney left him in Austin, where he
decided to stay. In the midst of that city's mid-eighties music scene,
Johnston was a definite iconoclast. While he continued to hand out his tapes
for free, Austin record stores started selling them; in fact, the became
best-selling local releases. Soon, a camera crew from MTV's seminal "Cuttin
Edge" show came to town and all the Austin bands suggested they feature
Daniel.
His appearance on the show made
him a minor celebrity. Recognizing the quality of his songs and the purity
of his vision, the American underground began to embrace Daniel. The Dead
Milkmen recorded his song "Rocket Shop," and Sonic Youth and noted
Minutemen/FIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt made plans to record some of his
material, as did The Butthole Surfers and other Austin bands. The music
press both here and abroad began to weigh in with lofty pronouncements of
Daniel's artistry.
In the spring of 1992, the Lyon
Opera Ballet commissioned a piece from New York-based choreographer Bill T.
Jones. He delivered "Love Defined" - a 25-minute piece set to six songs from
Johnston's Yip/Jump Music. In October of that same year, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane combo performed "Love Defined" at New York's Joyce Theatre. The reviews
in the New York Times and the Village Voice each cited Johnston's songs
favorably. Over the years, Daniel's paintings and drawings have been
exhibited in Los Angeles, Zurich, and Berlin. The cover of a recent edition
of music writer Richard Meltzer's "The Aesthetics of Rock" was drawn by
Johnston."