Category: 1980s

This post is a little longer than usual, but this was a unique artist, to say the least. Many musicians like Jeff Tweedy, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Tom Waits, Beck, Lana Del Rey,  Eddie Vedder, and countless others were huge fans. Eddie Vedder spent some time with Chris Cornell listening to Johnston’s music. Eddie Vedder: “We listened for two hours straight, it turned into four hours, and then into six hours, until it was six in the morning, laughing and crying and then smiling so hard that tears were squeezed out of our eyes, and then looking at each other and going, I’ll never forget, we said, ‘He is better than both of us.’”

My friend Ron (Hanspostcard) grew up with this guy, as they met in high school. Ron and he hung out with each other and would visit, and Ron would listen to what Daniel recorded. Johnston was very socially awkward and not really connected to the world as much. He recorded on cassette tapes, very lo-fi. He was a musician and a very good painter as well. It was hard for him to perform in front of people. You can see it on his face when he did live performances. He suffered from different mental issues. 

 The most powerful songs don’t always come from stacks of amplifiers or a room full of seasoned players. This is one of those songs. At just over two minutes, it’s as unvarnished as a song can be and so vulnerable. It was recorded with the kind of lo-fi immediacy that feels more like he was confessing this to a person, and it wasn’t meant to be heard. It was on his 1984 cassette album Retired Boxer.  Underneath the out-of-tune singing and guitars, there are some pure gems. Most people compose songs self-consciously, hence why it is sometimes not very original or good. This guy writes songs so naively, like a child, that it sometimes creates incredibly beautiful songs

He was born in Sacramento in 1961 but raised in West Virginia. He didn’t look like your typical future rock icon. He sketched comic book heroes, taped Beatles songs off the TV, and played on a chord organ in his parents’ basement. When he later moved to Austin, Texas, he began recording homemade cassette tapes, cassette albums like Hi, How Are You, Songs of Pain, and Don’t Be Scared. These weren’t studio-polished records. These were hissing-filled songs, often off-key, but full of heart. He would dub them by hand and pass them out on the streets. Austin didn’t just shrug him off…they embraced him.

In the mid-1980s, Johnston was the local eccentric in the Austin music scene, passing out tapes at gigs and working at McDonald’s, where he’d draw cartoons for customers along with their fries. His break nationally came almost by accident: MTV aired a special on Austin’s underground in 1985, and there was Daniel playing a song called Walking The Cow. Suddenly, he wasn’t just the quirky guy on the street; he was a known musician.

Everything changed when Kurt Cobain started wearing a Hi, How Are You t-shirt in the early ’90s. At the height of Nirvana’s fame, Cobain’s endorsement turned Johnston into a name everyone knew, even if they hadn’t actually heard a single song. Labels arrived, and a bidding war began. But signing Daniel wasn’t like signing Pearl Jam. He was battling severe manic depression and schizophrenia, and his health often made recording and touring a near impossibility. He did sign with Atlantic Records briefly.

As the years went on, Johnston’s health declined, and he lived with his parents in Waller, Texas. He was the subject of the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which told his story.  Artists wore his shirts, fans tattooed his drawings, and a mural of his alien frog (“Hi, How Are You”) became a landmark in Austin.

When Daniel Johnston died in 2019 at age 58, the tributes poured in from artists all over the world. 

I would highly recommend this documentary. 

Here is Wilco doing this song. 

True Love Will Find You In The End

True love will find you in the end
You’ll find out just who was your friend
Don’t be sad, I know you will
But don’t give up until

True love will find you in the end
This is a promise with a catch
Only if you’re looking can it find you
‘Cause true love is searching too

But how can it recognize you
If you don’t step out into the light, the light
Don’t be sad I know you will
Don’t give up until
True love will find you in the end

…

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