I was one of those guys in the late '80s who discovered troubled Daniel Johnston and sent away for those homemade cassette tapes that he recorded himself on a boombox. Johnston had moved to Austin at this point and caught the attention of MTV and all the hipsters of the alt-music era, most notably Kurt Cobain, who would make Johnston's "Hi, How Are You" T-shirt famous on the music video channel. Johnston died on September 11th at age 58. He was a contemporary and a touchstone.
Johnston suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His songs sprang from his pain and anguish, but they burst free with joy, even the melancholy songs that seemed to have been liberated from his anxious soul. He sang in a fragile child-like voice, his songs inspired by a kid's cartoon heroes and space aliens (he was an outsider artist, too), somehow simple yet Lennonesque. He was silly and soulful. The sound of his chord organ was ridiculously amateurish yet he dabbled in the profound. The recordings were so crude you could hear him hitting the "record" and "stop" buttons on his tape player. He drew the art for the covers and xeroxed and pasted them onto the cassette case before popping them into the padded envelope that they would arrive in. It was the '80s, and we were so artfully underground.
I saw him perform once at a record store in Chicago, perhaps around the turn of the millennium. He seemed frightened to be the center of attention. I felt guilty for wanting him to entertain me, to expect him to just ignore his challenges and play the role of rock star. I wanted to call a halt to the proceedings and chastise his handlers. Who knows. Maybe in his head he was slaying the crowd at Madison Square garden.
Watching his more recent performances is difficult -- his physical and mental deterioration was evident, and he still looked incredibly awkward. One of his biggest songs was "True Love Will Find You in the End." Maybe peace of mind does too.
BONUS TRACKS
Johnston's "hit," "Walking the Cow":
The cinematic "Desperate Man Blues":
Johnston's haunting cover of "I Saw Her Standing There":
The trailer for the powerful documentary, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston":
Around the turn of the millennium, I knew that our generation had taken over pop culture when Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycles" was borrowed for a Target commercial:
The Reivers put a polish on "Walking the Cow" (as would Mike Watt with Firehose):
And the MTV performance that launched his superstardom:
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