Acclaimed musician Daniel Johnston has inspired everyone from Sonic Youth and Kurt Cobain to Tom Waits.
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One unseasonably chilly evening in August, I gathered alongside a small but committed cluster of fans underneath a bridge to shiver and sing Daniel Johnston covers as part of Calgary’s Choose Yer Own festival. It’s a testament to the continued cult appeal of the singer, songwriter and cartoonist that he has inspired similar devotion from the likes of Tom Waits, M. Ward, Sonic Youth and a score of other almost household names (at least among cooler households), all of whom have contributed their own Johnston interpretations to one of the seven tribute albums that have cropped up in recent years.
While he began recording his Beatles-inspired songs of love and pain with a boom box in the late 1970s, Johnston first gained national attention in 1985 after appearing on the MTV program The Cutting Edge in a segment on Austin’s “New Sincerity” music scene. After this brief flash of the spotlight, Kurt Cobain began sporting Johnston’s famed “Hi, How Are You” T-shirt and regularly mentioned him as an inspiration in interviews. However, it wasn’t until the 2006 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston that the lo-fi icon moved up from the underground, with a subsequent tour backed by members of Yo La Tengo, Sparklehorse and Teenage Fanclub, a bizarrely rejected Converse shoe design and now several upcoming albums to add to his mountain of more than 30 releases.
Several weeks after Choose Yer Own, I had the somewhat surreal experience of speaking to the 87-year-old Bill Johnston, Daniel’s father and manager, to set up an interview with his son. Since moving out of his parents’ house in 2006, Johnston has lived in the home next door in the modestly populated city of Waller, Texas. Now 48, Johnston remains in a shy and perpetually childlike state, responding most excitedly to questions about toys, cartoons or going on dates to the drive-in theatre.
When you first started out, did you think you’d inspire other people to sing your songs?
Daniel Johnston: Yeah, uh huh. It’s cool, but I wish they would somehow try to get a hit.
Ward’s cover of your song “Story of an Artist” was kind of a hit. I’ve heard that one played on the radio at least. What’s your favourite cover of one of your songs you’ve heard?
DJ: That one was great, and Mark Linkus (a.k.a. Sparklehorse) did one really well.
Do you have a dream artist that you’d like to cover one of your songs?
DJ: A dream artist? Well, I’ve had some pretty good people do covers. Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, not too bad....
I understand you have a grunge band called Danny and the Nightmares with some friends in Waller. How does that differ from your solo music?
DJ: It’s cool to finally have a band. We’ve been recording forever and we hope to release our new album very, very soon. The title is The Death of Satan and it’s got some great songs about that.
You also had a toy of one of your characters made last year. Did you play with toys as a kid?
DJ: That toy is really cool! I’ve always played with toys and I still collect them. These days, I mostly collect monsters. My sister put them all over my house and made it like a museum.
After a six-year hiatus, your new solo album Is and Always Was will be released this October. How would you describe the new batch of songs?
DJ: ‘Weird’ is another title I had for it. On the covers of my albums, there have been different creatures, like the frog and ghosts. The creature on the cover of this one is something I used to call ‘weirdy.’ It looks like a cartoon that’s suffered a lot and it has a lot of feeling.
I’ve read that your song “Mean Girls Give Pleasure” sometimes confuses people. What’s it about?
DJ: I didn’t really mean S&M. It’s about these girls who always come on tour and say “Kiss me on the cheek, Daniel,” but they won’t let me kiss them for real. But now, one of the girls agreed to go on a date with me to the drive-in theatre. You don’t see many of those anymore!
Speaking of movies, there’s also a new one about your life being made. Are you very involved in that project?
DJ: They’ve been here a few times to interview me, so I wish them good luck, but I didn’t really have much to do with it other than telling them a few stories. It’s probably going to be really funny.
Did you meet the actor who’s playing you?
DJ: Yeah. They all came out to visit. He was pretty cool.
If you could have anyone play you, who would you pick?
DJ: A young John Lennon!
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