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Daniel Johnston has spent the last 20 or so years exposing
his heartrending 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's songs. 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 boom box. 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 "Cutting
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.
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