Hi, How Are You? - Daniel Johnston

If I had to choose one moment in my recent history that pushed me to write the way I have been, it would be when I first heard of Daniel Johnston. It was under very unfortunate circumstances as he had just passed away. This was on the 11th September 2019. The following day I heard the news through somebody posting a cover of his song ‘Walking the Cow’ on Reddit.

I honestly listened to ‘Walking the Cow’ and thought it was awful. I didn’t get it at all. I’m still not a huge fan of that particular song even now, but I understand the context and can appreciate it for what it is. It was only when I heard songs like ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ and ‘Life in Vain’ that I truly enjoyed his music and understood why people loved him so much. His lyrics are so open and honest, often described as childlike. I have been able to relate to many of his lyrics and I don’t think I had really realised how open you could be in a song until I heard his music. Prior to hearing Daniel’s music, I had been listening to a lot of IDLES, Joe Talbot, the front man of IDLES is also very literal in his lyrics and I think that had started to influence me.

Photo source: https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Daniel-Johnston-3.jpg

I recently heard Daniel’s song ‘Peak-a-boo’ and it brought me to tears. The version I heard was a cover by Phoebe Bridgers (https://youtu.be/ea1trsU3riU). The line ‘Please hear my cry for help and save me from myself’ really hit home. The original is just as impactful.

The back catalogue is vast, and I am not going to pretend that I have listened to everything. A couple of highlights for me so far though have been the albums Fun and Space Ducks.

Fun was released in 1994 and contains the song Life in Vein. The lyrics to this are something I heavily relate to, especially ‘It’s so tough just to be alive when I feel like the living dead’ I have had more days than I wish to remember where even the simplest task feels like such a chore because you feel awful both mentally and physically, it really is incredibly draining. There are many songs on the album that are much more upbeat and silly. Daniel’s music wasn’t entirely defined by his mental health struggles. The opener Love Wheel being a great example of this and one of my favorites on the album.

Space Ducks was a much later release, coming out in 2013. This album had an accompanying comic book and also has songs from other artists including Jake Bugg. The opener is the Space Ducks theme tune, clearly not taking itself too seriously, I could imagine this accompanying a 90’s cartoon. Much of the album is upbeat. The song Mean Girls Give Pleasure has a line that makes me laugh ‘You think it’s soup and that it’s your friend when it’s already gone and poop in the end’. The big attraction to this album really is that it is fun and I love the art style. It still has moments of sadness and struggle, but they are not prominent.

Looking into the history of Daniel Johnston a bit over the last few months I have come to find that he has a lot fans in “high places”. Kurt Cobain being on of the most notable. There is a famous image of Kurt wearing a ‘Hi, how are you?’ t-shirt. A fair bit of credit is given to this for the rise in popularity of Daniel’s music.

There is a short film about Daniel Johnston that was released in 2015 and is a fascinating watch. It covers the creation of Jeremiah the frog character from the front of the ‘Hi, how are you album’ along with the life of Daniel. It is clear to see that he suffered a lot with health issues in later life. In many of his later performances he can be seen shaking and often just sung whilst being backed up by a band or guitarist. The other day I started listening to the latest release which is a live recording from 2017 in Chicago. I had to turn it off because I was almost in tears, you can clearly hear how much of affect his health had on him.

You can watch the short film here: https://youtu.be/_UdezNmtPPY

If you found this interesting at all I highly recommend looking into Daniel in more detail. He made music in spite of his mental and physical health issue, not because of them.

This is the artwork for Daniel's 6th album, a cassette tape that he copied and distributed himself, the character on the front is Jeremiah. Kurt Cobain famously wore a t-shirt with this artwork on it which did a lot to bring more notice to Daniel's music.

Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi,_How_Are_You