[ad_1]
Photo of Todd V. Wolfson
Daniel Johnston, influential singer-songwriter and visual artist who painted Austin's famous mural "Hi, how are you", died at home on Tuesday night, September 10th, as a result an alleged heart attack at 58 years old. confirmed Wednesday by his former manager Jeff Tartakov.
Johnston's physical health has deteriorated considerably in recent times. Last year, his sister Margy Johnston declared to the the Chronicle that Daniel had recently undergone a tough stage that included a fall, a hospitalization and frequent adjustments of his medications. In January, while fans such as Flaming Lips and Bob Mold were covering his songs at ACL Live at the Moody Theater for the second annual Hi, How Are You Day, Daniel again landed at the hospital.
Johnston, who grew up in West Virginia and settled in Austin in the early 80s, has 17 full-length albums of original music, including an incredible trio of tapes recorded at home from 1983 onwards. : More songs of pain, Yip / Jump Music, and Hi how are you. He has at least three other original music records that have not been released yet.
"I'm working on a new album with [Austin’s] Brian Beattie for years, and I hope this will come out very soon, "said Johnston at the the Chronicle in 2018.
His songs have been taken up by Tom Waits and Yo La Tengo and defended by Kurt Cobain. His current trials on schizophrenia and manic depression have been explored in the 2005 documentary The devil and Daniel Johnston.
Beattie, intimate friends of the singer since the early 80s, and then of his producer, spoke with the the Chronicle yesterday about what made Johnston so inimitable.
"When we heard these tapes, Hi how are you and all those, there was no other music in my age group where she was so absolutely personal, "he certified. The things he was singing on were almost voyeuristic. So, he really opened the kind of emotions that you do not understand yet. He was all about these emotions. He understood not to understand them.
"For me, there was something in the way he was only himself and, at the same time, he was completely formed by the larger world, and yet he was so particularly deprived of that strange way that he was. he was there. "
Beattie says that the first day that her Glass Eye companion, Kathy McCarty, really spent time with Johnston, the singer brought them to his apartment and presented a copy. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
"He opened it and read to us" schizophrenia "and" depressed maniac "and he said:" If you want to take care of me, you will have to understand that kind of symptoms because that's how I am, "recalls Beattie. "I thought it was so cautious with him to do that."
Even when he was working at McDonald's on the Drag, Johnston had the ambition to be a rock star. Although he never finally achieved the rock star lifestyle – nor the romantic love he sought in his songs – he has become a musical legend.
"He's legendary, but he was first a legend in his mind, and then he became a true legend," says Brian Beattie.
"He's legendary, but he was first a legend in his mind, and then he became a true legend," Beattie says. "It was the only time I saw this happen, where someone said," I'm going to become famous "and he just got himself in. He was the least likely person to become popular on Earth and he did it.I am in awe of the power of the composition.
"He was the first person I met to use compositions like this."
In recent years, at the request of her friend, Beattie has finalized a wonderful new album by Daniel Johnston titled Yes. His producer campaigned for his release, but he did not get approval from Johnston's management. Beattie says that there are at least two albums of DJ material ever seen before of the same quality among the recordings they've made together, many of which have been followed at Johnston's family home in Waller.
In the fall of 2017, Johnston embarked on what was billed as his "last tour", although he did not think it would be the case at the time. The group of five North American artists, including Jeff Tweedy, leader of Wilco, Built to Spill, Preservation All-Stars, Districts and Modern Baseball, played a leading role. At the beginning of last year, Johnston appeared at the Mohawk in Austin for the inaugural Hi concert, How Are You Day, which he closed with a curtained rendition of his most iconic song: "True love will find you at the end".
This has turned out to be his last performance.
Daniel Johnston on his iconic fresco of Austin
From "Reading: Really, How are you?", January 19, 2018:
"People call him Jeremiah, like Jeremiah of the Bible, but it's not really the name of the frog," said Daniel Johnston about the sprawling-eyed amphibian famous in his 1983 Hello how are you? The unfinished album and the mural at Guadalupe & 21st Street. "I did not have a name like that for the frog, I always called it Innocent Frog.
"He was full of innocence as I was at the time.I remember that they paid me $ 70 to do it!" And I was happy . "
Today, most know the iconic image of his dominant phrase: "Hi, how are you?"
"When I was growing up, after the church, everyone was shaking hands and saying," Hello, how are you? " Says Johnston. "I've always heard it, even at the funeral home, when a dead person was dead." The funeral director told me, and I was only a little boy: & # 39; Hi, how are you? & # 39; s is how it started.
"Then, when I worked at AstroWorld, I found a container containing rubber frogs in the trash," he explains. "There was a picture of a frog on which it was written:" Hi. How are you? "Then I decided to name my album Hi how are you. "
Learn more about the project Hi, How Are You Project.
[ad_2]
Source link