Daniel Johnston
Daniel Dale Johnston (b. January 22, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. Johnston was the subject of the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. He currently lives with his parents in Waller, Texas.
Johnston, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has been classified as an outsider musician. His songs are typically painfully direct, and often display a disturbing blend of childlike naïveté with darker, "spooky" themes. Johnston's singing voice is extremely high-pitched, and his performances often seem faltering or uncertain; one critic writes that Johnston's recordings range from "spotty to brilliant."
Johnston was born in Sacramento, California and grew up in the northern panhandle of Chester, West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Johnston began recording John Lennon- and Beatles-inspired music in the late 1970s on a $59 Sanyo monaural Boombox, singing and playing guitar, piano, and chord organ. He gave tapes of his music to anyone who would take them and created the comic book-inspired art that usually accompanied his recordings.
His early songs established a number of themes that would persist through Johnston's career: unrequited love, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and comic book superheroes, especially Captain America and Jack Kirby's other works. Many of Johnston's songs and art also contained themes of Christianity.
Johnston spent his first year away from home at Abilene Christian University, where his manic-depression became more evident and problematic. He then left West Texas and attended Kent State University, which was closer to his hometown. Many of Johnston's songs throughout the years have dealt with his unrequited love for "Laurie," a sweet-natured, wholesomely pretty girl. For Johnston, Laurie quickly assumed the role of the idealized female muse. When she married an undertaker, Johnston felt prompted to write lyrics in which the Laurie figure becomes strongly associated with the imagery of death in addition to her original role as a muse. For example, the song "Funeral Home" (musically based on Bruce Springsteen's "Cadillac Ranch") in which Johnston sings that he's "going to a funeral home" represents both the foreknowledge of death and Johnston's desire to be reunited with Laurie, who at the time worked at a funeral home. Laurie Allen has since divorced and filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig arranged a meeting between Allen and Johnston, which is documented in a special feature on the DVD of the Johnston documentary.
Johnston gained a cult following in Austin, Texas. Some regarded Johnston as little more than a quaint curiosity, but others regarded him as a genuine talent: Johnston has a knack for creating great, catchy melodies, while his lyrics are evocative and often use clever wordplay. His songs have been covered by a number of admirers.
A 1985 MTV special on Austin brought Johnston wider attention, and a number of record stores outside Texas began selling his cassettes.
In 1990, Johnston played at a music festival in Austin, Texas. On the way back to West Virginia on a small, private plane piloted by his father, Johnston became hypomanic and wrestled control of the plane away from his father. Daniel removed the key from the ignition and threw it out of the plane. His father managed to successfully crash-land the plane in a wooded area. Although the plane was destroyed, Johnston and his father emerged unharmed. As a result of this episode, Johnston was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
In 1991, Johnston was able to air his music on a radio show while being hospitalized at a West Virginia mental hospital. While hospitalized, Johnston sent requests to his manager to have Yoko Ono produce his music and to contact Mountain Dew about the possibility of becoming the soft drink's spokesman. Johnston wrote a song praising Mountain Dew during this hospitalisation, in which he claimed to have been locked up for being "crazy about Mountain Dew."
His music has been acclaimed by David Bowie, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Beck, Spiritualized, The Flaming Lips, and Matt Groening. Kurt Cobain praised Johnston's work, and often wore a t shirt with a Johnston illustration and a caption reading, "Hi How Are You?"
1994 saw the release of Fun on Atlantic Records, his only major-label release. The record was produced by Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers, a group that had long supported Johnston, even inviting him to open a number of concerts for them. The record sold a little over 12,000 copies and Johnston was later dropped by the label.
In 1995, Johnston contributed two songs to the soundtrack for Larry Clark's controversial film Kids, produced by Folk Implosion and Sebadoh's frontman, Lou Barlow.
Johnston covered Schoolhouse Rock!'s well-known "Unpack Your Adjectives" for a compilation of the popular education songs called Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks in 1996.
In 2005, Texas-based theater company Infernal Bridegroom Productions received a Multi-Arts Production/MAP Fund grant [1] to work with Johnston to create a rock opera based on his music, titled Speeding Motorcycle.
In 1993, Johnston painted a mural of the "Hi, How Are You?" frog, also known as Jeremiah the Innocent after the Three Dog Night song, on the side of the Austin Sound Exchange music store. The site was converted into a Baja Fresh franchise in 2004. Although initial plans called for the mural to be torn down, public outcry caused restaurant owner John Oudt to let the mural stay, at a price of $50,000 in additional costs and lost revenue. The Baja Fresh has since closed and the space has remained vacant for several months as of February 2006.
Johnston's drawings were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. His artwork is shown in galleries around the world, including exhibits in London's Aquarium Gallery (April 28-May 20, 2006) and New York's Clementine Gallery (March 16-April 15, 2006).
