He’s Daniel Johnston, And He Was Gonna Be Famous
One of the best-loved songwriters in the alternative rock universe is a 44-year-old manic depressive who lives with his parents in Waller. Be careful what you wish for.
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The Story Of An Artist
Every day, Daniel sits in his parents’ dining room and draws his old friends: Captain America, Ratzoid, the Incredible Hulk. He colors them in assembly-line fashion—red, then green, then blue, spending half a minute on each one before moving on to the next. They aren’t as carefully shaded as the older ones, and a folder of 25 will be done in a couple of days. His father and brother give Daniel $10 for each drawing, which he uses for cigarettes, soda, candy, CDs, and DVDs; they sell them on the Internet for up to $150 each. That money goes into a savings account.
With a few exceptions, Daniel has been living and working at home since 1991, when the three Johnstons moved to Waller. Bill and Mabel wanted to be near their other children—a businessman and three schoolteachers—who were starting to give them grandchildren. Once in Texas, their youngest, the odd one, the bachelor artist, began receiving attention again. He had his first one-man art show in Zurich, and the French Lyon Opera Ballet toured Europe and New York with a show based on some of his songs. In 1992 Kurt Cobain, the biggest rock star on the planet, wore a “Hi, How Are You” T-shirt at the MTV Video Music Awards—and then wore it again and again at photo shoots for the remaining eighteen months of his life. Daniel was so hip that in 1993 Tartakov, then Daniel’s de facto manager, found himself in a bidding war between two major labels, Atlantic and Elektra, for the next album. Daniel, in and out of the Austin State Hospital at the time, turned down the better deal with Elektra, fired Tartakov, and signed with Atlantic. But he was in such bad shape that he could barely play anything in the studio, and the disjointed result, Fun, was anything but. It stiffed, and Atlantic dropped him.
For the rest of the nineties, Daniel’s doctors tried various combinations of drugs, seeking to right the chemical imbalance. Some worked, some didn’t, and some had terrible side effects. In stable periods, Daniel was able to perform again. Producer Brian Beattie released Rejected Unknown on his own label in 1999, and Daniel hit the road, accompanied by Bill, who had become his manager, touring the U.S., though he still had several bad episodes. Finally, in 2002, a new doctor tried a new medicine, Topamax. It worked. “Mentally,” says Bill, “the last two years are the best he’s had since 1979.”
With the stability came, well, stability. “I’m trying to be inspired,” Daniel told me. “I just don’t want to suffer to be inspired.” What, I asked, inspires him? “Girls. That inspires me—to have a girlfriend. Marilyn Monroe. Comic books and movies and records and CDs and DVDs.” On the dining room wall is a drawing of Captain America, Casper, Joe the Boxer, Sassy Fras the Cat, and a couple of other characters from Daniel’s life. “I drew that in the mental hospital,” says the artist. “Some say my art was better when I was crazy. Well, I don’t miss being depressed at all. The depression would be so severe it was just like pain in my brain. Constant pain and depression. It was horrible. It would go away and then I’d be manic—out-of-my-brains happy.” Daniel doesn’t blame the devil much anymore. In fact, Daniel doesn’t even like to talk about him. He blames the drugs and the manic depression for all the trouble: “It was just a chemical imbalance in my brain. But the new medicine has really helped a lot. They finally figured out how to stabilize me, and I just behave myself.” The devil doesn’t have Texas anymore, he insists. “I love Texas. It is God’s country.” Daniel’s faith runs deep; he reads the Bible and goes to church with his parents. And so does his fear of Satan. He’s still fascinated with the dark side of the world, especially the Beast in the book of Revelation: “I’ve always believed the Beast was real.” I asked him how Casper would do in a showdown with the Beast. “I don’t think Casper would stand a chance against the Beast. Nothing can stop the Beast.”
It’s hard to tell if he’s happy; his moods have certainly been leavened by medication, his physical needs met. He depends on his parents for almost everything, even as he bristles at their control—but he’s always done that. He’s lonely—but he’s always been lonely. Daniel talked about his parents’ plans to build him a house on their property, which everyone is excited about. Daniel would like some privacy. Mabel would like to have her dining room table back. And Bill, who does the lion’s share of taking care of Daniel, is just worn out. “It’s sapped our strength,” he told me. “We’re reaching our limit. We’re in our eighties now, and he doesn’t cooperate. Sometimes he acts like he’s ten years old.” Daniel spends too much money on candy and comics. He won’t take his medicine—fifteen pills a day, five with each meal, for manic depression as well as for his diabetes, gout, and a thyroid condition—unless Bill stands over him. “I have to hand them to him and watch him take them,” says Bill. “If I don’t, if he goes to get a glass of water, later I’ll find the pills on the counter.” The day before, Bill had tested Daniel and found his sugar level too high and gone into the studio to ferret out a couple of bags of candy. Bill has other things to worry about too: For some patients, drugs like Topamax lose their potency. “If it starts not to work,“ Bill said wearily, “he’ll have to go back to the hospital.”
But for now, Bill chooses to be upbeat about the documentary, which took three years to make, and about the upcoming rock opera and his son’s ability to cope with the inescapable attention. Daniel’s home now, and he’s medicated. “If it clicks,” Bill says of the next round of notoriety, “maybe we’ll get enough money in the bank so we can hire someone to take care of him. Because we won’t be around forever.”
True Love Will Find You In The End
I drove out to visit Daniel again in December and brought along David Thornberry, who now lives in Austin. Daniel doesn’t get many visitors who are not taking his picture or interviewing him (two weeks later a Dutch public television documentary crew would spend a weekend with him) and was obviously pleased to see his old friend. At lunch they talked about the days in the basement, and after a while Thornberry said, “You seem more like your old self than you ever have.” Daniel replied, “Having you around makes me feel like my old self.” We talked about some of my favorite songs of his. “True Love Will Find You in the End,” he said, was his attempt to write something like Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.” He said he wrote “Living Life” when his mother wouldn’t let him play the piano on his nineteenth birthday (“You must have been playing in the middle of the night,” said Thornberry). But my favorite is probably the whimsical “Walking the Cow,” with its carnival organ, descending melody, and inscrutable words, written right after he left home:
Try and point my finger
But the wind just blows me around
In circles, circles
Lucky stars in your eyes
I am walking the cow.
Over enchiladas and chips, I sang him the chorus and asked what the words meant. “That was from the little girl walking the cow on the Borden ice cream label,” Daniel explained. “Walking a responsibility is what it means. Everybody has to do it—walk your responsibility, your cow.” And the “lucky stars in your eyes”? “Everybody has that part of the day too. You’re dreaming and you’re feeling pretty good. If it lasted forever, you’d be bored by it. Somebody who dreamed all the time might become sort of, uh, satanic. They’d think they were superior. But a little bit of this and a little bit of that, it’s all right.”
I went home and listened to the song again; Daniel, singing in his little boy’s voice while he bangs on a toy chord organ and sounds like he’s careering down a cliff without brakes.
I really don’t know how I came here
I really don’t know why I’m staying here.
It’s one of those songs that makes you feel happy and sad at the same time.
“Broken Dreams” and “The Marching Guitars” written by Daniel Johnston. Published by Eternal Yip Eye Music (BMI)/Administered by Bug. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“See Satan Die” and “I Feel Like Lucifer Tonight” written by Daniel Johnston. “See Satan Die” published by Eternal Yip Eye Music (BMI)/Administered by Bug. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Walking the Cow” written by Daniel Johnston. Published by Eternal Yip Eye Music (BMI)/Administered by Bug. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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