Hello. Hello.
Hello, I am the ghost
of Daniel Johnston.
Many years ago
I lived in Austin, Texas,
and I worked at McDonald's.
It is an honor and a privilege
to speak to you today,
to tell you about my condition,
and the other world.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the best singer/songwriter
alive today,
Daniel Johnston.
We love you, Daniel!
♪ I've come this far
and I know I can make it
♪ I've got a broken heart
and you can't break a broken heart
♪ I come knocking
at your door
♪ you don't love me anymore
♪ but I just can't give up
♪ 'cause I don't know
what to do about it
♪ You must be wrong
if you think you don't love me
♪ You could smile down
and put a happy ending to my song
♪ I come knocking at your door
♪ You don't live there anymore
♪ Is it just a memory?
♪ Or am I a little crazy for you?
He was different.
I noticed that from the start
that Dan was different.
I had him on a crib
in our little bedroom
and I would go in
and talk to him, change his diaper,
and I would squeal at him
and he would squeal back at me.
That's a small baby
communicating, I thought.
Being six years younger
than his four brothers and sisters,
he was pampered by them.
And they nursed him along.
But we didn't notice
at that time
that there was any special talents
involved or anything.
When he went to school,
they tested the kids,
and Dan was put in the highest
group of the highest class.
His teacher was really mad at him
and it's understandable,
because Dan doesn't
follow directions.
You know,
when he was in junior high,
he suddenly lost
all his wonderful confidence
and I guess it was
the beginning of his illness.
He and his brother decided to make
their own movie.
And it was a collaborative effort
between the two brothers working together.
And Dan had to change clothes
and pretend to be his mother.
Because his mother and I
weren't in the movie actually.
Tell about it, mabel.
Dan is the director
and the actor
portraying himself in parts
and his horrible mother
in other parts.
I think he was
having fun teasing me.
What do you think, bill?
Yeah, he was doin' it for humor.
You are real lazy.
Wake up.
Dan's hard to deal
with sometimes.
He thought, "I'm artistic. I shouldn't
have to do those things."
Time to get up
and get ready for school.
Get up in there,
breakfast is ready.
He wanted to be comic all the time.
He just couldn't get over it.
Okay.
They were having
too good a time.
I don't think his relationship
with me was typical.
Do you suppose he really
pictured me that way?
This is ridiculous,
what they're showing.
I think it's popcorn
and green kool-aid.
He was a trial.
I was sort of the star art guy
at the high school.
Oak Glen high school.
And I started hearing rumors
of this new art guy, the new art star.
You know, the new kid in town,
I had to find out who this was.
A friend of mine told me,
"There's this kid, Dan Johnston,
he can really draw,
he's a musician or something."
So he kind of had one
up on me, he was a musician.
The guy is a natural,
an absolute natural.
He never even had
to learn to draw.
He just got better from great.
You know, I had to
hang out with this guy.
I had to be around this art.
So we just started hanging out
and doing art together, actually.
The eyeball thing was sort of like
his intro calling card.
Did it touch you emotionally?
It was his mysterious entry.
It's definitely different.
I'm speechless.
Everybody was,
"who's the eyeball guy?"
You know, he was painting
these eyeballs everywhere.
He would actually draw
on walls all over the high school.
I thought Dan's
was very imaginative.
Daniel, he just exudes art.
He can't stop making art.
He never sits and thinks,
"What am I gonna do?"
He just grabs something.
♪ Listen up and I'll tell a story
♪ about an artist growing old
♪ some would try for fame and glory
♪ others aren't so bold
♪ everyone,
and friends and family
♪ saying, "Hey! Get a job!
♪ Why do you only do that only?
♪ Why are you so odd?
♪ We don't really like what you do
♪ We don't think anyone ever will
♪ it's a problem that you have
♪ and this problem's made you ill"
♪ The artist walks alone
♪ Someone says behind his back
♪ "He's got his gall
to call himself that!
♪ He doesn't even know where he's at!"
He wasn't buyin' them
for comic books,
he was buying them for the artwork
that was involved on the comics.
And some of the artists
were his incentive
to try to be an artist himself.
They were
an inspiration to him.
Now talk about the cinema
of Daniel Johnston, then.
He doesn't have influences.
He doesn't sit down
and consciously watch Chaplin
and then learn, or this is my Keaton
period. It's not like that.
He doesn't even know
who these guys are.
You know, he gets a super 8
and he makes a movie.
Dan took himself seriously.
He, for some reason,
thought he was going to be
an artist because probably
of the attention he got.
The family room would sometimes
be almost full of kids
and one of them told me
that he's gonna be famous someday.
And I thought,
that silly stuff, you know?
He lived in the basement
of his parents' house.
They got this perfectly
normal ranch house out in the country
behind New Cumberland.
He's got this amazing lab,
like this amazing
factory downstairs.
He's turned a garage
and two sort of utility rooms
into a bedroom
and an art factory,
and he's just got
everywhere, magazines, tapes.
In fact, he's recreated it in waller,
where he lives today,
it's a duplicate of the same room.
♪ I was guilt stricken
♪ to go away
♪ she turned without saying
♪ I could not stay
♪ and all the while
♪ she was smiling at me
♪ like I was a show on her TV
They're sort of like this
Christian fundamentalist
glass family.
They're creative,
they're intellectual,
but there's this West Virginia,
kind of right-wing Christian thing.
Daniel wasn't havin' any of it.
Spiritually he was
separated from them,
socially, every other way
he was gone from them.
But at the same time
he was of them,
in the sense that he had certain
material to draw from.
Bill and I both thought he was
doing too much
concentrating on the art
and the music and he wasn't
having a well rounded life.
She would constantly try to get him,
"Go to church and save yourself,"
and he just
would have none of it.
He'd go to church, even,
but he wouldn't participate.
He'd go to church
so he could stare at the girls,
try to find a girlfriend.
Literally, all he cared about
was making art and being John Lennon,
and his parents' rules
were in the way of that.
All he wanted them
to do was just
keep the lights on,
keep the power on, so he could draw.
Dan was getting to be a problem.
And he wanted to do everything,
but he didn't want to
do any of his chores,
like help mow the lawn,
or wash the car,
or any of those things that
I thought he was lackin' in training,
and I had to settle that.
Every bit of the supposed persecution
that Daniel portrays
in early music was there,
but I'm not saying
it was without provocation.
He did it.
He brought it on himself.
He would cause it
to tape record, to film.
Many, many times, Mabel would
open the basement stairs door
and she used to call him
an unprofitable servant.
"You're an unprofitable
servant of the lord.
"You need to leave the house
and get a job."
He turned it, he used to call
himself an unserviceable prophet.
I really didn't like it when he put...
He taped me giving him what for.
I didn't think he would do that.
She would really harangue him
and he...
It was hard on him. It was.
But he's this sort of like,
coal burning in the basement,
you know,
and it's heating up
the whole house,
and they're just
going insane from it.
So the whole place is just going wild,
because he's just such a problem.
When the problem became apparent
was when he first
went to college,
at Abilene Christian college.
And he wasn't getting to his classes.
He was totally confused
and we thought, well,
this is home sickness, you know,
and they sent him
to the local doctor
to see if he was complaining
about pains in his arms,
which are symptoms
of manic depression.
He's going around in a daze, we said,
"Well, we'd better bring him home."
And immediately
he snapped out of it.
And then back to being
a normal person again.
And we thought,
"Well, everything's all right."
So we sent him
to a local college.
He goes
to art school at
Kent state university branch
in east liverpool, Ohio.
And I am attending
the same school.
We found all these kind
of lethargic professors
and sort of
half-talented students.
And, Daniel, of course,
he just scoops them up
and he just mixes them
into his art form.
Like everybody's his subject,
you know,
all of a sudden
he's interviewing people
with his little tape recorder
and then taking little phrases from them
and cutting them into his songs.
And he meets the love of his life.
He meets Laurie Allen.
I was alone in my life
with little to live for,
Trying my hand at art,
thinking that maybe
I could save myself,
but in my desperation
all my hope would fly away
until there was
nothing left of me,
nothing left to say.
And in this nightmare
there was a dream
of a girl
so beautiful beyond compare.
The girl of my dreams.
So wonderful.
So beautiful.
And I had her boots.
This was so long ago
in my idealistic dream
of so many songs.
Laurie.
Yes.
She inspired a thousand songs
and then I knew
I was an artist.
He wrote a lot of sweet songs
about Laurie.
And I remember something from listening
he wanted to play one for me.
I remember it
and he doesn't have it.
♪ Walking down the road
I'm feeling lonely
♪ But don't be sad
♪ be glad you're just one step
closer to the girl you're going to meet
He starts following her around
with a tape recorder
and his little super 8,
following her around, making
movies and tape recording her
and begging her,
begging Laurie to say,
"I love you, Dan,"
into the tape,
which she eventually does.
She has no idea.
He's massively
obsessed with her.
This is the kind
of love he needed to have.
He needed to have a love
that he couldn't really successfully
connect up with.
He had to have
the thing to chase.
He could never have
a thing he could catch.
So, when she married
someone else,
it was even better because
then he could really pine.
You know, she was gone.
And it's just God's little joke
that it happens to be an undertaker.
So he really liked that event
even though
it causes him great pain.
Well, when Dan got depressed,
he took to playing the piano,
but I didn't understand
the depression.
♪ I had lost my mind
♪ I lost my head for a while
♪ was off my rocker,
out of line, out of whack
♪ You see I had this
tiny crack in my head
♪ that slowly split open
and my brains oozed out
♪ it's lying on the sidewalk
and I didn't even know it
♪ I had lost my mind
♪ Why, I was sitting in the basement
when I first realized it was gone
♪ got in my car rushed right
over to the lost and found
♪ I said, "Pardon me but I seem
to have lost my mind"
♪ Ahe said, "Well,
can you identify it please?"
♪ I said, "Why sure,
it's a cute little bugger
♪ "about yea big a little
warped from the rain"
♪ Ahe said, "Well then, sir,
this must be your brain"
♪ I said, "Thank you, ma'am,
I'm always losing that dang thing"
♪ I had lost my mind
We felt that it was wasting time
to keep him in college
because he was never gonna
graduate the way he was goin'.
So we took him out of college
and sent him to
Houston to live with his brother.
Mom and dad were trying
to get him on the right track.
In all of our minds,
that meant a productive life.
A well rounded life.
Not a self-absorbed life.
A job is part of that.
And in an effort to help,
I said, "Let Dan come down
for the summer, work at Astroworld
and maybe this will get him
on his feet or something."
When he found out
that he had to go to Texas
and he would be
without his piano,
that put a wrench in his plans.
So he got ahold of this organ
and he takes it into my garage
and he turned my weight bench
into a recording studio.
How are you doing,
Dave? How's it going?
I'm working on the album now.
On the new release,
yip/jump music.
I sound like some kind
of MTV person, don't I?
I brought out the chord organ.
I just set it up.
I thought I'd play you one
of the songs I played on the album.
So, I'll turn on
the chord organ here.
I knew he was recording.
I could hear him singing.
But I had no perception
that he was,
you know, in his mind,
making this masterpiece.
I wanted to help Dan and I thought
I was giving great prophetic advice.
I said, "Dan, you know, someday
you're gonna be really good
at something
and very successful.
But it's not gonna be your art
and it's not gonna be your music."
We had to say, "Look, Dan,
you can't stay up all night.
You're gonna have to go to bed
at some kind of decent hour
and kind of live life
with the rest of us."
Margie kind of stepped in
and said that she could,
you know, see what
she could do to help him.
And we packed him up and off
he went into the distance.
I thought, well,
he needs a place to go
and I'm his sister,
and, well, he can come
and stay here.
So he came to live
with me in my duplex.
Now, I didn't have
extra furniture for him.
We got him a mattress
that was just on the floor.
But he seemed to thrive
in this atmosphere
because he was
allowed to make a mess.
I thought everything was fine.
Then one day I came home
and he wasn't there, which
I wasn't too worried 'cause we didn't tell
each other everywhere we were going.
but, when he wasn't there
in the morning when I got up,
and he hadn't come home all night,
that was not typical.
He made a decision
to buy a moped.
And he disappeared
on the moped, right, Bill?
Yes.
And he joined the carnival
and went with them.
We weren't able to contact him.
It's the saddest time
in my life,
not to know where your son is
and he might be needing help.
When I was with the carnival,
this little girl at the carnival,
her name was Tricia.
She's a carnival girl.
She's grown up with the carnival
and she's about three years old.
All the time she would come into
the corndog stand when we were open.
And it was slow, and we would
pretend it was a spaceship.
I would bang on this untuned guitar
and she started singing
this little song,
♪ "Pizza hut, Pizza hut,
merry-go-round"
Yeah, I do miss home.
I'm down here and I'm okay.
Because wherever I am,
I got music in my heart.
During that time,
I had a rock inside my chest.
I thought he might be
in a shallow grave someplace.
He left the first part of April
and I think it was
father's day when he called
and let us know where he was.
Collect call from Daniel Johnston, please.
♪ Speeding motorcycle
♪ of my heart
♪ pretty girls have
taken you for a ride
♪ hurt you deep inside
♪ the road is ours
the way Daniel ended up
in Austin is so incredible
that it really sounds
like an urban legend.
When the carnival came
to Austin,
he was going to the bathroom
in the porta-potty
and someone was upset
about how long he was taking
and they were
banging on the door.
And so when he came out, it turned
out it was like a big, tough carnie guy.
And he just hauled off
and like, socked him.
And really,
really hurt him bad.
And Daniel didn't know
what to do.
He just started looking
for a church of Christ.
And he wandered until he saw
the university church of Christ.
And he went in and he just
asked them to help him.
And they ended up taking him
to the doctor and everything
and leasing him an apartment.
He had heard the band I was in,
which was glass eye.
And we were just
getting popular locally.
And he saw
a poster for our show.
And he decided that this was
a really magical sign
and he really needed to go to it.
And he came to the show
and he gave me a copy of his cassette.
So the next time we played,
he came over to me and he was so excited.
You could tell he was like,
screwing up his nerve,
like, getting ready to, like,
ask me what I thought
of his music.
And he came over and he goes,
"What'd you think?"
And I looked at him
and I couldn't,
I just couldn't really let him know
how much of an assh*le I really was,
that I hadn't even listened to his music,
his most important thing
in his life. And I said,
"It was great.
I loved it. You can totally
open for us."
And so I went home
and I listened to it and I was
blown away at its incredible genius.
I met Daniel Johnston in kind
of the classic Daniel Johnston way.
It was a Saturday. I was working
at the Austin chronicle.
I was alone in the office
and I was sitting there writing,
and I heard something
at the door. Not a knock.
But somebody like,
shuffling at the door.
Finally I went over and I opened the door,
and Daniel was standing there.
And he was this skinny little kid
who looked fairly demented.
And he had a tape. And he said,
"I just wanted to give you my tape."
So I said, "Great. You know,
I'll give it to a music person.
"If they like it,
maybe we'll review it.
"But I'm not
promising you anything."
And Daniel goes, "you know,
I wasn't really giving you that to review.
"I just wanted you to listen to it,
not trying to get a review or anything."
So Daniel goes away.
And I put it on the tape player
and it just blew my mind.
I mean, it was one of those
where I got it right away.
♪ Get attached to a rolling stone
♪ and you're liable to get crushed
♪ you're better off to sit at home
♪ and watch the toilet flush
and so then he gives you
"Hi, how are you" and "Yip/jump music".
It's like, you know,
imagine meeting,
you know, Bob Dylan, and he gives
you his first six albums and saying,
"here's some stuff
I'm working on."
So it's this body of music
where you're suddenly hearing
twenty amazing songs
and they're out of nowhere
from this weird little guy.
I played it for a lot of music writers
and some musicians
and he was giving it
to other musicians,
and gradually over like
a period of weeks,
people began to talk a lot
about who this crazy kid was.
Daniel Johnston
and this really weird music.
♪ The picture
gets all blurred
♪ I see shadows
dancing on my walls
♪ thoughts scatter like birds
Daniel, of course,
loves the Beatles, worships them.
And I can see that "Hi, how are you"
could be like "Meet the Beatles!"
Come grab this and start
the new Daniel Johnston mania!
And in his head,
of course, it was there.
He was the Beatles.
And it was from
deep inside here.
Hi, how are you?
I'm Daniel Johnston,
and this is what scares me
and this is what I love,
and this is what terrifies me.
Ken: You just hear that and your mind
will turn around to his.
You start off hearing
this noise,
then eventually
you hear the Beatles.
You hear the whole symphony.
He actually didn't just record
a tape and mass produce it.
He sometimes couldn't duplicate,
so he had to sing the entire tape
from beginning to end
to hand you a copy.
Go back home. Start again.
Song by song. Fill up the tape.
Hand another person a copy.
Fill it up. Go. And finally
write another album.
Start the whole process
over again.
As far as I know his very first, like,
public show that he did
was done opening for glass eye.
And he was so nervous.
He literally was vibrating.
And he also had recently decided,
since coming to Austin,
that he wasn't gonna play piano anymore,
something he does rather well.
He decided that he was gonna play
guitar like the Austin guitar slingers.
And he really couldn't play.
That was scary for him, too.
All of a sudden it quieted down
like it was church or something.
Daniel comes on stage.
It was very unusual
because anyone playing
their first show, it's like you're lucky
to get anyone to pay attention.
But everyone was absolutely silent
and he looked so nervous,
he looked like he was
gonna vomit the whole time.
♪ Time is a matter of fact
♪ and it's gone
and it'll never come back
♪ and mine
♪ it's wasted all the time
♪ tears, stupid tears
♪ bring me down
So when you
saw him perform,
I mean, especially in the early days,
when he did the two or three song sets,
sometimes they were God-awful,
and sometimes they were
unbelievably brilliant.
I mean, sometimes
he just nailed it.
I mean, sometimes
it was so abstract.
I mean, some of it was
what wasn't there.
Sometimes there was
too much not there.
♪ Tie my brain
♪ into a knot
♪ those tears, stupid tears
♪ bring me down
people in the audience
tended to be like,
"What? Is this is a joke?
Is this guy supposed to be cool?"
And they would be looking around at each
other like, "How am I supposed to react?"
Because he was so raw and so real
that people couldn't take it.
He's got a full shift at McDonald's.
And as close as I can tell,
he can't do anything.
He can't cook.
He doesn't clean very well.
As in a lot of places, you know,
they'll give him work,
but then he migrates to
the job with the least skill,
which was cleaning tables.
Ken: It was amazing that
he could keep his job
because everybody was always
coming in there wanting to,
"Hey, Daniel. Hi, Daniel!"
And, well, they don't take well
to that at, you know, fast food joints.
But he was employed there
for a long time.
And you knew you could
find him there,
just in his little hat
and his little shirt there,
cleanin' up,
cleanin' up other people's
spills and stuff.
When I went to
visit him at McDonald's,
I think it was probably
the first time I recognized that
he was spacing out, you know.
That there was a disconnection
from reality or something going on.
1985 was just an enormous year
for Austin music.
It was like everything
was about to break,
and again, Daniel just came in
right at that time.
Mtv started sniffing around.
And they brought in Peter Zaremba
and the show they had,
the cutting edge.
They lined up all these bands
and they had a big old barbeque
and Daniel showed up
there with his tapes.
This is Daniel Johnston.
Local man about town. Musician.
Everyone knows who he is
but, say hi to everyone.
My name is Daniel Johnston,
and this is the name
of my tape and it's "Hi, how are you."
And I was having a nervous breakdown
when I recorded it.
He wasn't scheduled
to be on the show.
They had already
listened to tapes
and talked to people
at the Chronicle and the music critics
and they decided who was gonna be
on this special and everything.
But Daniel was unstoppable
at that point.
He was so full of confidence.
He always
presented himself like,
"I am a very incredible,
extraordinary human being
and you're gonna be really happy
you listened to this."
How you doing? We are having
a casual conversation on national TV.
Daniel is on MTV.
You know, out of nowhere,
from my point of view.
And he's on MTV and I actually do
get to see it.
And he says to me:
This is to David thornberry
from Daniel Johnston.
And, Dave, here I am on MTV,
holding up my tape, "Hi, how are you."
And they're recording me
tonight. I'm on MTV.
Remember when we used to
watch MTV back home?
Look, I'm on MTV, David.
And that was his dream.
I mean, literally, that's what he wanted
to do is be on MTV.
♪ When I was out in San marcos
♪ a year ago today
♪ they probably would've
put me in a home
♪ but I threw all my belongings
into a garbage bag
♪ and out into the worldness
I did roam
♪ my hopes lay shattered
like a mirror on the floor
♪ I see myself and I
looked really scattered
♪ but I lived
my broken dreams
He always knew
where to be at any given moment
and while this was being filmed,
it was MTV.
He knew MTV is here in town,
And by far he became one of the most
memorable things from the show
and he basically
just scammed his way into it.
♪ The wildest summer
♪ that I ever knew
♪ I had a flat tire
down memory Lane
♪ but I came back
♪ after five months and a half
♪ and now I'm just
trying to explain
♪ and now I'm here
♪ and here I stand
♪ with a sweet angel
♪ holding my hand
♪ I lived my broken dreams
Instantly McDonald's
expands his hours to, like,
20 or 30 hours a week.
They give him more shifts.
Not because he's doing anything,
but because he's become a star.
And whoever the manager is,
thinks this is entertaining.
And then the other weird thing
that begins happening is,
there's all this
interest in Daniel.
So you hear record companies
are calling McDonald's
'cause that's the only way you can call
Daniel. Daniel doesn't have a phone.
So spin is calling McDonald's
and music magazines.
So you get all these calls
And in the beginning I think
the McDonald's people
were really kind of
entertained by this.
But after a while, when you'd call
to talk to Daniel, they were not happy.
They had hamburgers to make.
And then in 1986, he wins a bunch
of awards in the Austin music awards.
He wins songwriter of the year
and best folk act,
which is very controversial
and, of course, it goes to Daniel's head
in new and different ways.
In a town with a lot of singer/songwriters
and a lot of folkies,
who can play guitar,
that might've not gone over
too well with some people.
♪ He was smiling through
his own personal hell
♪ dropped his last dime
in a wishing well
♪ but he was hoping to close
and then he fell
♪ now he's Casper
the friendly ghost
in the spring of 1986, um,
I started helping Daniel.
The first thing I did was set up
his publishing company with bug music.
I knew his music was great, but I felt
like for him to actually make a living,
he would be better off
if other, more well-known artists
were to cover his material.
♪ He was always polite
to the people who'd tell him
♪ that he was nothing
but a lazy bum
♪ but goodbye to them
he had to go
♪ now he's Casper
♪ the friendly ghost
I thought that he was
almost angelic.
And then I got to
know him better.
And we started being
really close friends.
And for a little while
I was his "girlfriend."
And because he was
very religious,
this was a very chaste
relationship.
But even within
the context of that,
it was undeniable
after maybe one or two weeks
that something was
dreadfully wrong with him.
Something that wasn't angelic
and pure and naive
and innocent and beautiful.
So I realized I can't let him keep
on thinking that I'm his girlfriend,
because his parents came
to visit him
and he introduced me
as his fiancée.
I realized that I was
going to have to say,
"Daniel, we're not
going out anymore, you know.
We're just friends."
And I essentially spent,
the entire summer reminding him.
We broke up.
- Now you're filming?
- Dan, this is so wild.
Daniel began hanging out
with his manager, Randy kemper.
And was smoking
a lot of marijuana.
And he would not perform live.
Everybody was bugging him to play live,
but he just didn't want to.
There were some changes
in his behavior
and we didn't really quite know
what was going on with him.
You know, when you do
stuff like that, you throw me off, Daniel.
I always kind of imagined Daniel
performing like Elton John
with costume changes
and rockettes
and a big grand piano. Just the kind
of show that's just ridiculous.
Almost like Andy Kaufman-esque
kind of thing.
But unfortunately,
he had his mental breakdown.
So he goes to a Butthole Surfers show
and somebody there
gives him a hit of acid.
And the trip really begins
to change everything.
Again, one of the classic
scenarios of Daniel's life
is whenever anything
starts getting really good,
you know something
really ugly is gonna happen.
The night in question
is September 11, 1986
on which Daniel
had a bad experience
and I guess he was
under the influence
of some sort of
psychoactive substance.
You know, I remember a little bit
about seeing Daniel that night.
I remember him being
sort of difficult to deal with.
And then we had
our thing going on and
everybody started saying,
"Daniel's freaked out.
Daniel's freaked out.
Daniel's freaked out."
I'm coming back
to tell you, man.
I'm serious like Billy Graham.
Nothing like Billy Graham.
Or nothing like that, or like nobody
you ever heard tell about nothing.
But I'm coming back and I'm telling you
there's a supernatural world.
There's a supernatural world
and Gibby, Gibby knows about it.
No. I didn't give
him any LSD.
I think at that point it was pretty much
known that he was not necessarily
"an" unstable character,
but slightly unstable "of" character.
So that's the kind of person
you really wouldn't want to engage
in the LSD experience.
Are you Daniel Johnston?
I used to be Daniel Johnston.
And who are you now?
You know, I don't know.
I don't know.
In December of 1986,
Daniel was taking a lot of acid
and was just not himself.
Was very, very delusional.
and there was one violent incident
with his manager in which he att*cked him
and put him in the hospital
with a concussion.
Dan was imagining
all kinds of things
and he thought of himself
as God's man
to straighten things up and so caused
a lot of trouble.
All the family met
together for Christmas.
Mom and dad couldn't come that year
and so we had decided,
since all of the siblings
were in Texas, that we would
get together
and have Christmas.
So we're all making these Christmas
ornaments and his Christmas ornament
is this black number nine.
We asked and said, "Dan, that's not
an appropriate Christmas symbol.
What does that mean?
And why are you doing black?
"That's not gonna look good
hanging on the tree."
I remember staring at him
while we were talking and saying,
"That doesn't even look like Dan."
His face doesn't look like Dan to me.
He was in some kind
of manic state.
We get up for a family portrait
and he would hang a Beatles album
on a Christmas tree.
Well, I went to take it down
off the tree and he came for me.
And he had super strength.
And in just a very brief struggle,
he broke my rib.
So they were rolling around
on the floor,
and it was just
not the way our Christmas gatherings
usually are.
He was talking in different voices
nd was accusing us of teaching
the children satanist practice.
And that whole night
we didn't wanna go to sleep
because if he believed
we were satanists,
he might try to do
something to harm us,
if he's the "hero of good"
or something.
He decided to make a dash
to go up to the attic space
where the kids were playing.
And at that point, Sally went
to the phone and called the police.
We had to call
for some assistance and
remove him from the house,
and my husband took him
to the bus station,
and then stayed and watched
to make sure he got on it,
so that we would all feel safe.
I remember
going upstairs with Margie
and laying down on the bed
and we just both wept
like he was dead, because
we didn't know who he was.
♪ Rudolph the red nosed reindeer
♪ you'll go down in history
♪ yeah!
I'm lying in bed.
I have pneumonia.
And the phone rings and I have
a 103 temperature and the phone rings
and somebody says,
"Do you know a Daniel Johnston?"
I go, "yeah, Daniel
and I are friends."
He goes, "Well, I think maybe
you should come here."
I go, "Well, I really don't think
I should. I'm sick."
"No. I really, really think
you should come here."
I get to campus. I have
a 103 degrees temperature.
It's 1986 and it's Christmas,
so there's nothing there.
There's no cars.
There's no people.
This campus is completely empty.
It's weird.
It's eerie. It's quiet.
These people I don't know are leading me
down and we start walking down
to go towards the river.
And we look over
and there's the water,
and there standing in the middle
of the water is Daniel,
and he's standing in the water,
he's about knee-deep,
splashing the water, and he's looking
at us, his eyes are like white.
At one point he looks up
and starts singing,
♪ Running water, running water
and then he's preaching.
And he's talking about baptism.
And he's talking about evil.
He's really whacked.
We're tryin' to talk him
into coming onto the shore.
It's going on and on and on,
and it's getting real weird.
All of a sudden,
we look over there.
A couple of police cars
have pulled up.
They forced me out,
they came.
People were afraid.
They were afraid
to come up to me.
They didn't want me
to splash them with water.
What was I doing down there?
What was going on?
I knew exactly
what was going on.
I wanted to take my life
only a few nights before.
I hit my best friend
over the head with a lead pipe.
I thought there was nowhere to go.
I thought the military takeover
was going to happen over Christmas time.
But it didn't.
You know what I mean?
I thought, I knew, I saw.
I knew, I saw.
I went inside the building of U.T.
I saw the things, the programming,
the confusion,
the coke, Coca-Cola,
the snickers, all the candy,
and everything being used as a drug,
the confusion, the mind control,
spiritualism,
the cultural upheaval, flip.
Man, yes, it's really happening.
They were really doing it, man.
I'm talking, if you don't know about it.
I'm talking like n*zi Germany.
All great artists are crazy,
but there's a difference between
the abstract great artist being crazy
and this person doing
damage to you or to himself,
and how involved do you wanna be?
We'd spent our whole lives,
we're those kind of people
who love the notion
of the crazy artist,
you know, Van Gogh
cutting off his ear.
And we've read those books
and we've collected the art
and we've seen the movies
and we really loved the crazy people
because they were
the pure people.
You know, they didn't have
any commercial sense.
And yet, he was
a real sick person.
And it was really,
"what are we gonna do?"
And so, we do the most pedestrian
thing possible, we commit him.
And you actually felt, I mean,
a certain amount of guilt.
I mean, it was like,
if I was around Van Gogh,
I've always had contempt
for those people
who didn't understand genius,
and here I am given my shot
and what I'm saying is,
"Please put him in the hospital 'cause
we don't wanna have to deal with him.
We don't know what to do."
When I went to see him
in the hospital,
they wanted to know what
my relationship with Daniel was.
And I had been working
informally as his publicist.
But I needed to tell them something
a little better than that.
And I assumed that Randy Kemper,
after having been beat
over the head with a lead pipe,
did not wanna continue
managing Daniel.
So I said I was his manager.
I helped get Daniel
out of the hospital
because I didn't fully understand
why he was there.
All I knew was he needed
to get out of there.
And as soon as I did get him out,
I began hearing from other people
asking me why did I do that.
But it seemed like he was
doing well enough.
He was back in his home.
And it seemed like everything was ok,
although it was very borderline.
It's like true in science fiction
and it's the new supernatural age,
you know, they spoke of in revelations.
And number nine, number nine,
the Beatles' song, number nine.
He was obsessed
with the devil and Satan.
Do not get that number, 6-6-6.
Do not get 6-6-6
imprinted on your hand.
I had never really heard him talk
about the devil before,
and he became so obsessed
that it was all he could talk about.
You must not give in to the devil,
ladies and gentlemen.
The world in confusion,
ladies and gentlemen.
Somebody is manufacturing these.
They're spreading those around.
They might be
mounting them up around.
Evil, ladies and gentlemen,
evil.
Over the next few days,
he began to throw literally
everything he owned away.
He threw all his drawings away.
He threw master tapes away.
And he was down to just
three of four possessions
the last time I went
to his apartment.
He still had his tape deck.
He still had his guitar and maybe
one or two other things.
And as soon as I saw this,
my immediate fear was that
he's gonna k*ll himself.
It's better to die,
ladies and gentlemen.
And live forever.
And that is
what I intend to do.
I went home that night,
not knowing what to do.
The world is
turning to hell.
I did not know very much
about his relationship with his family,
but I figured
they need to know this.
And I called his father
that night
and he was in Austin
within 24 hours.
He was thin as a rail
and losing weight
and all kinds of things.
His depression finally
caught up with him.
Evil!
Because he was losing it.
Number nine.
When Daniel's father
took him back to West Virginia,
Daniel announced his retirement
and instantly became
a living legend in Austin.
He pretty much spent the entire
year of 1987 on medication.
A little tired.
Haldol is a control drug,
and at times he was a vegetable.
And we finally talked
to the psychiatrist
and she said she would have
a psychiatrist examine him.
They wire your brain up and make sure
you got what your brain activity is,
and check if there is
any brain damage or anything.
And he checked out okay.
But we took him to the university
of Pittsburgh...
Psychiatric institute.
...and they had seven people
interview him for a whole day.
The reason...
They said he's
on the wrong medicine.
Yeah.
Every medicine
he reacted different to.
And we kept trying,
and we tried, and tried different ones.
He literally spent
the entire year in bed.
He calls it
his "lost year."
During this period, I was continuing
to work on building his relationships
with bands like Sonic Youth
and Jad fair of half Japanese.
I had become friends
with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth.
Steve turned a lot of people
on to Daniel's music.
And as Daniel finally started
to show some improvement,
Steve invited him
to New York City
to check out a recording studio,
just basically to hang out a little bit,
get to know each other
and have some fun.
We're on our way
to the studio.
One day he's scheduled to do
some recording at noise New York,
with Steve and Lee
from Sonic Youth.
And he's just as happy
as can be, joking around,
talking about making movies.
He says he's gonna make a movie someday
and all he has to do
is act naturally.
He's there to become famous.
That is his one and only goal in his mind.
How has New York been
for the last two days?
It's the greatest city
on the earth.
- This is day number 3 for you here.
- Yeah, it's happening for sure.
If I can make it here,
I can make it anywhere, right?
That's what they say.
There were two
primary goals of this trip.
One was to, uh, meet Kramer
and check out the Noise
New York recording studio,
with the possibility of recording
for Shimmy Disc.
And the other was to do
some recording with Moe Tucker,
the drummer for
The Velvet Underground.
This session was
put together by Jad Fair.
And this would allow Daniel
to meet Jad for the first time.
As Daniel's manager, I'm in touch
with Steve Shelley on a nightly basis.
And all of a sudden,
one night I get a call
that Daniel has been
arrested that day.
It seems that they decided
to take him to the statue of liberty.
And while Daniel was touring
the statue of liberty,
like any tourist would want to,
he apparently was drawing
graffiti inside the stairwell.
Christian fish. Hundreds of them,
from what I understand.
I guess it's the anti-Satan symbol.
A couple days after that,
there's a bizarre gig at Pier Platters.
I say bizarre because he's
proselytizing the audience.
Trying to force his religious beliefs
on the audience, basically.
Jesus Christ is number seven.
Satan is number six.
Number eight is eternal death.
And number nine, number nine,
number nine,
is the human number.
Remember these things and don't listen
to the lies that people will tell you.
Number seven is Jesus Christ.
When Daniel performed
at pier platters,
it was like the cream of the crop
of the New York underground music scene.
During the song "Funeral home,"
he actually gets the audience
to sing along with him.
So you've got everybody singing along
about going to the funeral home and dying.
♪ I'm going to the funeral
and I'm never coming back
Sing along with us, won't you?
♪ Funeral home
♪ Funeral home
Louder.
♪ Going to that funeral home
♪ Got me a coffin
♪ Shiny and black
♪ I'm going to the funeral
♪ and I'm never coming back
♪ Got me a coffin
♪ Shiny and black
♪ I'm going to the funeral
♪ and I'm never coming back
♪ Funeral home
♪ Funeral home
♪ Funeral home
It became more and more fanatically
religious as the show went on.
He has a bit of a breakdown,
starts crying at one point,
and is just obviously
right on the edge.
And it was my belief and the belief
of others around him
that things were getting
a little bit out of control.
♪ You'll be called
to meet your God
♪ Careless soul
♪ Oh, heed the warning
♪ for your life
♪ will soon be gone
The concert made
everyone feel very awkward.
And after the show,
walking back to Steve's place,
Daniel and Steve had
a bit of a falling out.
He told Kramer that if he
can't get anywhere,
he was gonna sleep in my hallway.
Yeah, but that's
just an idle threat.
When's the next train to...
I mean, I can't imagine him
staying in the bus station,
and actually getting
on the bus all by himself.
I know the members of Sonic Youth
were looking all over for Daniel.
He had been spotted
in various places,
and they just felt this responsibility
to his parents to get him home.
Keep an eye peeled for Daniel.
He might just be a...
If you see a wandering guy
in white.
Steve didn't really want
to deal with it.
So Lee and Thurston were driving
around, driving around.
They finally spotted him in a hotel
parking lot, I believe in Jersey.
- There he is.
- Really?
Yeah. He's walking over here.
Let's go get him.
- Steve is totally, totally pissed off.
- He's freaked out.
Yeah, he's freaked out
and he's not gonna...
He was gonna call my parents
and they will put me in a mental home.
Lee: The best thing to do at this point,
you have a bus ticket,
- I think you should use it.
- I'm not going home.
I'm on a mission from God and I have
two more weeks to spend in this town.
The situation here for you now is not
the best that it could be.
And we really don't know
what to do,
I mean, you're
a long way from home,
- and we don't...
- Listen, I called my manager
and I started to talk to him about it
and was I going to...
Yeah, I was going to warn him
not to say anything to my parents.
I was going to say,
"If you say anything to my parents,
I'm gonna fire you."
And I was saying,
"This is a warning and this is a threat."
And he says, "I don't wanna hear
any of your damn threats."
And he hung up on me.
My manager.
Now, don't you see the devil?
The devil Satan
is trying to stop me
from staying in this town?
Don't you see how clear that is?
He just would
not go home
and was determined
to stay in New York.
He ended up on the Bowery,
in a men's shelter,
where he was assaulted once or twice,
lost some possessions.
At this point, Daniel is homeless
and hungry and having the time of his life
while everybody else
is completely freaked out.
His parents, myself, his hosts.
We don't know what to do,
whereas Daniel doesn't even
realize there's a problem.
And a couple of friends made arrangements
to take him to the bus station,
to buy him a ticket
to go back home.
They thought they saw him
getting on the bus.
The next thing they know, two days later,
Daniel is spotted back in New York City.
He'd spent some time
in Bellevue, a day or two,
was released due to a clerical
error and actually opened for Firehose
at CBGB's that night.
After the CBGB's gig,
he did his two songs and left.
All anybody could think of was
we've got to get him home
before he either kills
somebody or gets k*lled.
His goal in New York
was to become famous.
And I think he accomplished
his goal by the time he left.
When Daniel returned
home from New York,
he was hospitalized almost immediately
and let out way too soon in my opinion.
Just a few weeks later he traveled
to Maryland to record with Jad fair.
Putting Jad and Daniel together
was...
I mean, I think they're both geniuses.
So if you put them together,
I don't see how that could miss.
I think you get like two,
you know, two giants together
and it's gigantic.
♪ If I'd only known
I could have said something sooner
♪ but I didn't, so I didn't
and now it's done
♪ the last thing I'd do
was the first thing you did
♪ what we once had
is all gone
David fair: He had
a white t-shirt on
or white painter pants
maybe or something, he has...
Actually, he was dressed all in white.
During that time period.
He thought it would be the Christian
thing to do, to dress in white.
David invited Daniel
and me to his home to have dinner.
Back then, the movie, my dinner
with Andre was very popular.
And we decided, well, let's have
my dinner with Daniel,
and film that. And we'll just be
talking during dinnertime.
So I went to college right across
the river from where the funeral home is.
There was this girl there,
and as soon as I saw her, you know,
I swear to God, it looked like
she was glowing, you know.
Daniel wanted to direct.
Stand right there, the cameraman,
and you sit in the chair.
He had very specific ideas
for everything.
You know, he would figure out sh*ts,
he'd change angles.
I mean, at the beginning of the evening
it was a film I had in mind.
Very soon it became,
you know, somebody else's film.
Film the chair, okay?
The highlight probably, though,
was when Daniel
started playing the songs.
I mean, at one point when he started
weeping, you know,
where are you gonna see
a performance like that?
♪ I saw my own heart laying
♪ black with blood
♪ don't play cards with Satan
♪ he'll deal you
♪ an awful hand
When we dropped him off
at the bus station,
I don't think anything
really seemed strange.
I don't think
he seemed different
from how he had been
all week long.
He had a ticket
to go to his parents' home,
in Chester, West Virginia,
which is only about a five-hour bus ride.
And we thought he'd be fine.
Just some great, great music and art
came out of this week.
But unfortunately,
he went off his meds again
and had problems when he left.
He took a bus back
to West Virginia,
got off a little too soon
and was completely delusional,
thought that everybody
was possessed by Satan.
It was very early in the morning,
maybe 6:00, 7:00 in the morning.
He was making noise
in the street.
An elderly woman came to her window,
asked him to be quiet,
and that set off
another major incident.
And the next thing she knew,
he was coming up the stairs
in the apartment building
and pounding on the door.
And whatever he was saying
and whatever his demeanor was,
was enough to terrify her
such that
she felt like the only thing she could do
was jump out of the second story window.
And, of course,
she broke both her ankles.
And she was an elderly woman,
from church.
The law pretty well takes over
when he gets into trouble.
The law stepped in and, uh,
took Dan away from us.
He was quite busy during this time
writing me audio letters
with all sorts of instructions.
Earth to Jeff Tartakov,
ten four come three.
This is a message from
Daniel Dale Johnston.
Here with a few ideas
I'd like to do.
First of all I wish that the Beatles
would reunite
and back me up as a band.
He continued to want me to get
in touch with people like Yoko Ono.
But he also had some additional ideas.
He wanted to be a spokesperson
for Mountain Dew.
This is Daniel Johnston speaking
from a mental hospital.
They tell me I'm crazy here,
because I love
the Mountain Dew so much.
I can't get enough
of the Mountain Dew.
♪ I was sinking deep in sin
♪ far from Mountain Dew
♪ I had problems out within
♪ nothing that I could do
♪ but the Mountain Dew came
to me and I drank it all up
♪ now I'm happy as can be,
oh Mountain Dew
♪ We drink Mountain Dew
♪ We drink Mountain Dew
♪ we have nothing better to do
but drink Mountain Dew
♪ We drink Mountain Dew
♪ We drink Mountain Dew
♪ no thing better to do
than to drink Mountain Dew
Yahoo! Mountain Dew.
It's the new sensation.
The best, the greatest,
the most fantastic.
The most sensational soda pop
in the cosmic universe.
Mountain Dew!
Out come the demons.
Demons, demons, demons,
drink the Mountain Dew.
I sent that off to
the Pepsi corporation,
but unfortunately
never got a response.
So it's 1990,
we hear Daniel's better.
We hear he's gotten...
Put on a lot of weight.
But we hear he's doing his meds,
he's under control.
So we invite him to play
the Austin music awards show.
And to come and play
"South by Southwest."
And everybody's
very excited about this.
Now his rep has really,
really grown.
Tartakov has really been
getting those tapes out there.
Tartakov's really working it.
Daniel sends me a comic,
about how Daniel's coming back
to Austin to play the music awards.
How he's gonna get laid.
How all the girls should be ready for him.
And the last page is this
whole thing about the devil
being really excited that Daniel's
coming back to Austin,
'cause of all the mayhem
he can cause.
Whenever Daniel was gonna perform,
starting around now, he went off his meds,
for a couple of weeks
before the performance,
because he knew the performance
would be better the crazier he was.
The more real he was, the better
the performance would be.
But nobody really knew this
at the time.
♪ I took my lucky break
and broke it
Try it again.
As a professional,
you know, performer,
I haven't performed,
you know, for two years.
I'm barely doing it now.
He flew to town
with his dad.
Did two in-store appearances
at record stores.
Hundreds and hundreds
of people turned out.
People were coming up
for autographs
and he would give them so much more
than just an autograph.
He would take a full sheet of paper
and draw a frog, an entire scene.
This was really the highlight
of my career, up until that point.
Because I was able to see an audience,
a large audience, respond to Daniel.
Palmer Auditorium had
3,000 people there that night.
♪ Never knowing where you go
♪ always running
♪ never stopping to see
where you're at
♪ never looking back
♪ nothing seems to
slow you down
♪ Running water
♪ running water
♪ what are you running from?
♪ you always seem to be
on the run
♪ you always seem to be
on the run
Daniel was scheduled
to play about a 15-minute set,
but he's not
a very good judge of time.
So he walked off the stage
after three songs.
Oh, my God.
Daniel.
Dad?
Yeah?
Man: You wanna do
another, Dan?
They want me to do
another song?
You wanna go back?
Okay.
When he finally
came out, it was as if
the rolling stones had
come back on stage.
♪ But if this really is love
♪ then let's get it on, on
During the song do you love me?
The chorus goes, "Do you love me now?"
And you could hear girls
in the audience screaming, "Yes!"
It was Daniel mania.
♪ Tell me now
♪ Do you really love me?
♪ Do you really love me?
♪ Do you really love me?
The audience was stomping
and screaming.
You could feel
the entire floor shaking.
♪ When they said that
love was dead
♪ they were just playing
with your head
♪ love is real
♪ that's the way that I feel
♪ I love you
♪ Do you really love me?
♪ Do you really love me?
♪ Do you really love me?
♪ tell me now
Thanks a lot.
He was the hit of that show.
He got standing ovations.
Nobody else did.
But then, he was feeling funny.
And right after his
last performance we left.
We passed up interviews
and we left.
Well.
It shouldn't have happened, but Dan
was secretly duckin' his medicine.
I was giving it to him,
but he was chuckin' it.
Captain America?
No, he thought he was Casper.
He was reading a Casper comic book.
There's a picture
on the front of the book,
of Casper and a parachute.
And Dan decided,
"Let's bail out.
"Let's jump out."
I said, "No. We can't do that.
We don't have any parachutes."
So his mind was gone.
Eventually, he took the key out,
turned the engine off,
and threw the key out the window.
How did you recover the flight?
Well, he grabbed the controls,
took the plane away from me.
He's stronger than me.
We were kind of going straight up
and then straight down.
But he kind of let go in time
for me to get it out of the spin.
Nothing down there, but trees.
But I'd had training
on ditching in trees,
so I didn't stall it in,
I flew it into the trees,
between two big ones.
And we got out safe.
But the plane was a total loss.
The family came
and got us, got me.
We put him in a hospital
and left him there for five months.
There's Dan.
He's had a good time,
because he thought that was great,
coming down in a spin.
He was all mixed-up.
He felt like he did something good
and he wanted us
to be proud of him.
There's Dan being rolled into
the emergency room.
They passed a church of Christ,
and to Bill and d*ck's amazement,
this sign was
on the church of Christ
bulletin board out front.
"God promises a safe landing,
but not a calm voyage."
♪ In the sky
♪ the number seven
♪ the devil defeated
♪ the new Jerusalem
The Johnstons moved
to Waller, Texas in late 1991
and I believe Daniel began having
some problems fairly immediately
and ended up back
in the Austin state hospital.
During this time his career continued
to reach for the stars.
Bands were covering his songs
left and right.
Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana
wore his t-shirt on MTV
at the MTV music awards show
which was seen
by millions of people.
He had had the shirt
for a few months.
Apparently, a writer
that I had given the shirt to,
a guy named Everett true,
had given it to Kurt.
And the next thing you know,
he's wearing it not only on national TV,
but everywhere he goes.
And over the next several months,
every single photo shot he did,
he was wearing this shirt.
And just a tremendous amount of
publicity came Daniel's way due to this.
Suddenly everybody knew
who Daniel was.
It was just incredible that a t-shirt
could fuel this kind of a frenzy.
The t-shirt had many, many
thousands of fans
that wanted to know
more about the t-shirt.
And wanted to hear the t-shirt,
and see the t-shirt
and get to know the t-shirt.
Meanwhile, Daniel's in a hospital
and has no idea who Nirvana even is.
And within a matter of days,
I get a call from a guy
named Terry Tolkin,
who's an a&r executive
for Elektra Records.
And we got into a long conversation
that ended with him saying,
"Well, I'd really like to sign Daniel."
Terry and I met for a couple of days,
hung out and discussed
everything that needed
to be discussed.
And then it was time to take him over
to the hospital, and meet with Daniel.
And we sat in the waiting room,
Daniel came out,
and we had a business meeting
for about 30, 45 minutes,
and it went as well as a meeting
can possibly go in a mental institution
between a vice president
of a record label and a patient.
We were trying to
structure a contract
that took his delicate situation
into consideration.
It's not every day that
a major label signs somebody
who's in a mental institution.
They were looking out
for Daniel's best interests.
There was a clause in there about his
mental health, about providing a doctor,
about how he would
never have to tour,
about how he could never be dropped
for failure to promote a record.
And they looked at it
as a long-term project.
It wouldn't be just one record,
it would be a career.
It was probably the most one-sided
contract in the favor of artists' rights
that had ever been drawn up,
up until that time.
We obviously had to get Daniel well
get him out of the hospital.
And over the next few months,
Daniel continued to improve,
but it was very slow.
We bided our time,
did what we could for him
and just kept waiting for the day
when he would be released.
Yves Beauvais of Atlantic Records
contacted me around that time,
wanting to know
what was Daniel's situation.
And I told him, "Well, we're fairly close
to signing with Elektra."
His boss, Danny Goldberg,
who was the head of Atlantic Records,
formerly worked with
Kurt cobain as their manager.
And he wasn't familiar
with Daniel's music,
but he certainly knew
who the guy in the t-shirt was.
And the next thing you know,
I've got a bidding w*r on my hands.
Daniel's in a mental hospital
and I've got two major labels
trying to outbid each other.
Suddenly, we're looking
at a $100,000 possibility.
Once Daniel was released
from the hospital,
I was trying to get help for him.
I was working with his parents, trying
to make doctor's appointments for him.
And Daniel thought he was fine.
He did not want to see the doctor.
And Elektra wanted him
to sign this contract
and Daniel was
paranoid about that.
He was afraid that Elektra was satanic.
They had a band on their roster
called Metallica.
He was concerned that they were
going to beat him and k*ll him.
And he could not be
convinced that he was safe.
His delusions would
just not go away.
He was convinced that Elektra
was evil, and that I was evil.
Elektra had to be evil
because they were tied to me.
And so the deal died.
And this was the deal I had been
working for seven years for.
This is the deal I had been working
for 30 something years for.
It was what I had been
building towards my whole life.
Jeffrey Tartakov is really a lot
like Broadway Danny Rose.
Have you ever seen that movie?
This guy loves his acts.
Never took a lesson.
He lives to
make them successful.
And that's the way Jeff
always was with Daniel.
Jeff literally was like that
old time kind of manager
you hear about, and you read about,
and people make movies about.
This sort of person who lived
for the good of his client.
The man would be
perfect for your room.
He literally devoted his life 100%
to Daniel Johnston,
for all the years
where nothing was happening.
And then right when
Daniel was poised
to get an international bidding w*r
on his career,
he just completely dropped him like
a hot potato for absolutely no reason.
- I gotta make a few changes.
- What kind of changes?
Like management.
What do you mean "management"?
What do you mean "management"?
I was fired so many times
over the years,
and over these months specifically,
that it's hard to tell
which one actually counted.
But I continued trying
to work things out,
until I received a call one day
from a guy named Tom Gimbel,
who informed me that he was
Daniel's new manager.
I felt like a failure at that time.
I felt like I was the biggest failure
and loser in the world.
♪ I love that girl so much
♪ I can't get enough
of her love
♪ crazy love
♪ she walks on down the street
Living with Dan in the same house
is something that is not easy
to get along with at times.
We have kind of worked out
a system that works a little bit for us.
It's past noon and Dan has been
asleep since we got up this morning.
We get up about 7:00
and he's still sleeping.
That gives us that
half of the day without Dan.
And we appreciate that as a relief
because the minute he gets up,
he'll want us to make him some tea,
he'll want something to eat,
he'll wanna go...
"Are we goin' shopping today?"
Every other day
he wants to go shopping.
We try to take him
somewhere every week.
And we take him to church with us
at least once a week.
And we take him to the mall
or to a local Wal-Mart once a week.
And then his friends come to see him,
and take him to practice.
The band that he's working with now
will practice once a week.
Yeah, I think.
You wanna do it one more time?
Turn the... Okay, that's good.
Testing! Okay.
♪ Imagine a world without rock 'n' roll
♪ there'd be no...
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
I can't hear my vocal.
We moved here from Ohio
about two and a half years ago
and then we were driving down
the road one day,
toward my grandma's house,
who lives here,
and we saw this guy
being att*cked by dogs.
And I told Bridget, "Man,
this looks like Daniel Johnston.
"I think this is Daniel Johnston."
And, she's like, "Oh, no.
That's not Daniel Johnston."
So what we did we stopped anyway,
to help the guy out.
And Bridget got out of the car
and she kicked the dog right in the face
and it ran off.
And then, Daniel was like,
"Hey, do you guys play guitar?"
♪ He's a man obsessed
♪ he couldn't be a lover
♪ so now he's a pest
♪ he played the game
♪ but he failed the test
♪ and now he's a pest
he's a pest
♪ he's a pest
he said, "Well, how about...
How about I come over
some time?"
And I said, "Yeah, yeah.
Are you Daniel Johnston?"
He's like, "Yeah. I'm Daniel Johnston.
You know who I am?"
And I thought, well, this is amazing, man.
Daniel Johnston in Waller.
I had no idea that he even lived here.
♪ The only way you could
get her to look at you is to die
♪ why don't you die?
We got his number
and we called him up the next week
and he came over to the house
and we recorded
four songs with him
in, like, one hour.
♪ He's a man obsessed
♪ he couldn't be a lover,
so now he's a pest
We were wondering why we moved
to Waller to begin with.
Now we know why
we moved to Waller.
You know, because it was heaven sent.
♪ He's a pest
♪ he's a pest
♪ man obsessed
Daniel started listening
to the Beach Boys
after we played "Pet Sounds"
for him, I think.
He said he never heard
"Pet Sounds" before,
but we played it
for him one night
and he was floored by it.
And so he went out and bought
every Beach boys record
you could possibly imagine.
I don't know if Brian Wilson
and Daniel are very much alike.
Every time I read something about
Daniel in a magazine or something,
it mentions Brian Wilson.
I honestly think Daniel is far
more brilliant than Brian Wilson is.
Of course the Beach Boys' music
is really far-out,
but it's not quite Daniel Johnston.
I read the story of Brian Wilson
that he wrote himself.
And he tells that his father
was not a fair manager.
Bill is a fair manager
and is not after
the money for himself.
He's after it for Dan.
Brian Wilson had a lot
of the similar characteristics
and infirmities that Dan has.
And he went through
the same stages of development
that Dan has gone through.
And reading his history,
it smacks a whole lot of exactly
what's happening to Dan.
We're learning from it. We don't want
to make the same mistakes.
He did well actually in the end.
And we'd like Dan to do well, too,
because he needs to.
His new songs for the movie?
It just depends on when
he's in the mood, he will.
Yeah, I don't
even know my old songs.
Now that's the thing.
He doesn't remember the tune
and he doesn't remember the words.
♪ I had a dream about you
♪ you were the queen
of quite a few
♪ and I was there
but you didn't care
♪ I didn't matter somehow
By the time glass eye
broke up in 1993,
Daniel was still
in the mental hospital.
And he'd been there for a long time
and I rather thought,
the possibility existed, sad as it was,
that he might never produce
anything again.
And a lot of the music
that he had recorded
was, to the general populous,
unlistenable.
And I felt like people would
maybe never get him
and he would just be like a flower
that bloomed in the desert,
you know, and was forgotten.
So I thought that I would do some
of his songs, some of my favorites.
And do them in such a way
that they kind of bloomed
and became from like
say a ballpoint and notepaper sketch,
they kind of came into
more of a full color painting.
So, I decided to
make the record.
And it was so fun working
with material that was so good.
And it's probably the best thing
I've ever done.
And, if I'm remembered for anything ever,
it will be for that record.
After the fun
and Kathy mccarty release,
Daniel and I did not talk
for four years.
I went into
such a deep depression
that I just wanted to have
nothing to do with the guy.
I really could not even
listen to his music.
But I still had this fascination
with his artwork.
I continued to compile my collection
purchasing drawings from other sources.
- How's it going?
- How you doing today?
- Pretty good.
. Seen Daniel lately?
Actually, he came by
a few months ago.
We're almost out
of what he brought us.
I'll take what I can get.
The black and white ones.
Oh, yeah, not bad at all.
I was occasionally contacted
by galleries around the world,
wanting to show his art,
and if it sounded like a good thing,
I would help them out.
We had shows in Berlin,
Eindhoven, Paris, Barcelona,
London, Manchester,
New York City,
Washington D.C.,
Los Angeles.
There were really more than I could
count, during these four years
that Daniel and I were
not even talking.
He was beginning to get
reviewed in art magazines
and his art was becoming
as well known as his music.
Zero one.
Do we know for sure what time
Daniel's actually gonna play?
I sort of said around 9.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, 9.
We're at the corner
of Melrose and LA brea.
He's here right now.
You wanna get some tape, don,
and we can get started?
The hardest thing to find in art
is somebody that comes up
with something new,
somebody completely original.
Don: No, it's double stick,
so you can put it on the back.
Oh.
I'm not looking for people that are
part of movements that much.
I'm more interested in people
who are their own movement,
or they're moving
beyond any movement.
Or, you know, are doing things
that no movement has thought of.
I think Daniel Johnston
is his own movement.
He's doing things
as original in his way
as Joseph Cornell did or Westerman,
or even going back
to Marcel Duchamp or Man ray
or somebody that just
comes up with stuff that,
you know,
who would've thought it?
Well, I think it's wrong to put him
in that outsider art thing.
He's as much as an inside
as any major artist.
He's just going in his own direction,
doing his own thing,
which more artists should do.
An unidentified collector
has just bought
98% of the show.
And the show has
not even started yet.
We've sold practically
every drawing that he brought,
except for four.
That's what happened so far.
And the show has just,
you know, we haven't...
Nobody's showed up yet.
You know, we're gonna have
to start taking orders, I guess.
I mean, last year his stuff sold
pretty fast, but not this fast.
Yeah, there are some themes.
You know, I mean, with the artwork.
I do some captain americas,
you know, some ducks.
I do a lot of ducks
and they're like my armies
and sometimes I use them
in my battles against Satan.
Daniel's art mirrors
his songwriting in many ways.
The same characters,
the same themes.
There are plenty of drawings
that refer to unrequited love.
You'll find the same characters
such as Casper the friendly ghost,
Captain America.
Frankenstein appears quite often.
You have Joe the boxer and the
eternal struggle, the eternal battle.
For two years, all Daniel drew
were fight scenes
of a boxer fighting
a creature in the ring.
The boxer clearly represented Daniel
while the creature was evil.
This was vile corrupt from
the "Hi, how are you" album.
The piece titled Daniel Johnston's
symbolical visions is in many ways
the Rosetta stone of Daniel's art.
It has all the figures and symbols
that appear in so many of his drawings.
From Kathy mccarty's glasses,
to a baby block,
to the man with the sawed-off head,
to torsos.
All of the familiar figures
are there,
666, eyes, the pyramid.
If you listen to all of Daniel's music
and know the songs
and then look at the drawings,
they have added meaning.
Sometimes it's very hard to fathom
what goes on his mind.
I can see what he's thinking
just day by day in his drawings.
He will put captions
on his drawings
that are coming
right from deep inside.
And by looking over his
shoulder every day,
I can get a little bit
of what goes on in his mind.
A friend of mine that saw his art
that's in the mental health field said,
"I know Daniel's going to heaven.
He's already been to hell."
She was lookin' at the artwork
and she said, "This is hellacious.
I mean, someone tortured,"
and I don't even see it that way.
A lot of his artwork I see
as very happy
and he really believes in love.
I think he looks for
that superhero idea
of someone's gonna rescue
or save and be the good guy.
It's not really a coincidence but
I did a tribute album
of Daniel's songs
and later I went on to marry
Daniel's best friend.
The very first time I went
to Daniel's apartment,
Daniel handed me a book of poetry
and said, "Oh, you might like this.
"These are my friend Dave's poems.
iWhy don't you read them?"
And I loved them.
He was instantly my favorite poet.
Two or three years after
"Dead Dog's Eyeball" came out,
Dave emailed me and said,
"Hi, this is Dave Thornberry.
Do you remember me?"
And I wrote him back like,
"Do I remember you?
I read your poems all the time, still."
And I went to visit him,
and as soon as we were together,
it was like, we have to
get married. And we did.
And it was very romantic. We got
married two days after we saw each other
for the first time in 13 years.
Daniel never really talked to me
directly about Laurie.
But, of course, I knew that
all the songs were about someone.
I mean, I knew that he had
loved and lost in his life.
And I don't think I even ever really
thought that all those songs
were about the same person.
But after we had broke up,
so to speak,
I began to know more about Laurie.
He talked more about Laurie.
And I began to know like,
how huge an obsession,
his obsession with Laurie was.
♪ Love could save me somehow
♪ but I just can't make it
Most of my songs are about her.
You know, because she does,
did, and hopefully will love me,
you know, it keeps me goin'.
I'm always thinking about another
angle about it when I'm writing a song.
I think art has always been
inspired by beauty.
I think there have been
many artists throughout history
who had a major inspiration,
whether it was a girl,
or even just a philosophy.
That's what I like
about life and about art.
Is that when you write a song,
it's just the way that you saw it
or just the way that it was.
I think art is
the greatest frame of mind
to express a certain feeling
and you'll always have that feeling.
It's always there.
♪ So magical
Laurie is his muse,
but in a completely passive way.
Laurie is the 17 syllables
of haiku
for him to hang his
creativity on.
That's what she is.
She's a structure for him to build on.
She's not the love of his life.
I mean, but she is.
When I first met Daniel in '85,
he was burning with her.
I mean, she was in his eyes
all the time.
I mean, when he talked about her
it was just intense.
And what's so weird about
Daniel is that went away
and it came back
more intense later on,
because he realized
it was a really good story.
♪ 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
♪ unless you step out
into the light?
♪ the light
♪ don't be sad,
I know you will
♪ but don't give up until
♪ true love will find you
in the end
For as much as Daniel has expanded
the myth of Laurie,
it really wasn't
that big of a deal,
except in Daniel's mind.
But what happened with Jeff
really was a big deal.
And as far as, like a story
that breaks your heart,
that's the story that breaks
my heart about Daniel's life.
Daniel told me that he was sorry
about the way he had treated me
and he admitted that
I had been unjustly fired,
and he told me that he was not
right mentally at that time.
And he really said all the things
you would hope to hear from somebody
who had behaved
the way he had behaved.
He was very sincere
and I believe he truly felt bad
about the way things went down
between the two of us.
Even though I wasn't his manager,
I still had the back catalog
and I couldn't just stop.
It just made no sense.
I didn't know what would happen
with this music.
It would have disappeared forever.
It wouldn't exist today if I stopped.
Stress Records is my baby.
It's a company I started
about 23 years ago
and today it exists
for the sole purpose
of spreading the word
of Daniel Johnston to the masses.
I do that by dubbing his cassettes
and distributing them myself.
I advertise them
over the Internet.
I take mail orders daily.
I work the telephones.
I send them out to people
I know. I do everything I can.
I do it because people
need to hear this music.
The music of Daniel Johnston
is something that I think
everybody needs to
at least be exposed to.
There's really nothing
to even to compare it to.
It goes way beyond Dylan's Basement
recordings or early Robert Johnson
or any other body of work
that I can think of.
Daniel's been so much better
these last few years.
It's a miracle.
It's even difficult for me
to grasp the fact
that he's playing
internationally and touring.
In Daniel's life,
everywhere he's gone,
he leaves this incredible wake
behind of creation and destruction.
He's done all kinds of things,
both bad and good,
but they're all mythic.
And they're all barely believable,
yet they're all true.
And the kinds of things
that he's done in his career,
are the kinds of things
someone would only do
if they were
so self-sabotaging
that it was
completely mystifying.
But in terms of creating a legend,
he's done
absolutely everything right.
♪ He was smiling through
his own personal hell
♪ dropped his last dime
down a wishing well
♪ but he was hoping too close
♪ and then he fell
♪ now he's Casper
the friendly ghost
♪ he was always polite
to the people who'd tell him
♪ that he was nothing
but a lazy bum
♪ but goodbye to them
he had to go
♪ now he's Casper
is Matt groening here tonight,
in the audience somewhere?
And somebody said,
"You gotta listen to this guy."
And I said,
"which tape should I get?"
And, uh, I was told,
"all of them.
"And it's right.
They are all fantastic."
There's more comics now
than there have ever been before
and the Simpsons comic
looks great. Thank you.
I love that. And the superhero,
the guy turns into a superhero.
There should be
a Daniel Johnston comic book.
Yeah, there should.
I wanna do, I wanna do comics.
That's what I'm sh**ting for.
Good to see you. I'll see you around.
I've got to go see your film.
Fantastic. Keep up the fantastic work.
- Call me.
- I wanna do some music for you.
- Okay.
- Okay.
Okay. It's a deal.
All right, then.
See you.
Bye-bye.
Good luck.
Matt: You, too.
Okay.
Yeah!
♪ And so the legend grew
♪ and all the people
that he knew
♪ go and spread the news
of Casper
♪ the friendly ghost
Thank you.
Good night.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Man: More! More!
More!
More! More!
I don't think Dan would have gotten
as far as he did without our help.
And he his own words was,
"I don't know
what will happen to me,
if you don't help me."
So we have, for years.
He does love us,
I can see that.
I guess I want the impossible,
I want Dan to be whole.
And be able to take care of himself.
And we're worried now,
we're running out of time.
♪ Oh my lord
♪ I am so bored
♪ Held the hand of Satan
♪ Oh, Laura
♪ What has happened to you?
♪ Held the hand of the devil
♪ I was on MTV
♪ Everybody was looking at me
♪ Held the hand of the devil
♪ Your picture
♪ Is still
♪ On my wall
♪ On my wall
♪ the colors
♪ are bright
♪ bright
♪ as ever
♪ The red is strong
♪ The blue is pure
♪ Some things
♪ Last a long time
♪ Some things
♪ Last a long time
♪ Your picture
♪ Is still
♪ On my wall
♪ On my wall
♪ I think
♪ About you
♪ Often
♪ Often
♪ I won't forget
♪ All the things we did
♪ Some things
♪ Last a long time
♪ Some things
♪ Last a long time
Bye-bye, Dave.
Bye.
Devil and Daniel Johnston, The (2005)
Moderator: Maskath3