Daniel Johnston finds a home
Accepted in Austin, and then by MTV's "Cutting Edge," primitive musician gains cult following
Glass Eye started bringing this nervous moptop up before they went on, to play three songs. Some in the audience laughed at his lack of vocal or instrumental ability. Others had tears. Thus began the other big music debate of the ‘80s: Daniel Johnston- “genius or gerbil?”
He handed his crude, homemade tapes, bought in bulk from Radio Shack, to every pretty girl or connected-looking guy on the Drag, so it wasn’t long until everyone on the scene knew about the sweet, crazy guy who thought he was the new Beatles.
Turns out that after you got over that childlike, off-key warbling and primitive guitar strumming, the songs were heartbreaking symphonies with rare depth. Zeitgeist started covering “Walking the Cow,” Yo La Tengo played “Speeding Motorcycle” live and Kurt Cobain wore a Daniel Johnston “Hi How Are You?” t-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone. Daniel became the Dylan of the Lo-Fi movement.
But when MTV’s Cutting Edge came to town in the summer of 1985 to devote an entire hour to the Austin scene, Daniel Johnston was not one of the acts considered for a live taping. The show’s focus was on the post-Murmur guitar bands, plus there was some punk, some roots and Timbuk3. Zeitgeist threw a barbecue for MTV cameras to get candid shots of bands hanging out and there was Daniel with his Hi How Are You aural business card, of course. “We’re having a conversation on MTV,” he said to the cameras. The director and crew fell in love with this sweet naïve.
Johnston was added to the big taping at Liberty Lunch and you really didn’t know if he would crumble under the pressure. Back then none of us knew the strength of his ambition, but he rose to the moment on “I Live My Broken Dreams,” with its great line equating a nervous breakdown with having a flat tire on Memory Lane. He couldn’t ignore the camera at the Lunch or stop the grin that knew it was all about to change.
Some Danielphiles would choose his triumphant appearance at 1990 Austin Music Awards as his most unforgettable set. Johnston had gone around the bend for good, it seemed, after taking mushrooms at Woodshock 1986, and the next few years were mentally tumultuous, even as Johnston’s name grew in fame. He was greeted ecstatically at the AMAs and as he basked in the adulation it seemed his comeback was on. But the next day, Johnston had an episode of delusion and paranoia on the family’s small plane causing his father, a former Air Force pilot, to crash. They walked away with minor injuries, but Daniel, who became the subject of the award-winning documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, was committed for a time.
Personally, I prefer the moment when his broken dreams started coming true. Here was an artist who sprouted in Austin’s warm embrace, and if there was ever a moment when we lived in the coolest music city in the universe, it was when Daniel Johnston stepped up to that mike in a jam-packed Liberty Lunch and nobody laughed.
I miss Dan so much. I will never forget hearing him for the first time. Of course he was going to be famous!
I’m a believer