DANIEL JOHNSTON
DANIEL JOHNSTON was born in 1961 in Sacramento, California.
The youngest of five children in a family of Christian fundamentalists, they soon moved to New Cumberland, West Virginia, where their father, an engineer and World War II fighter pilot, found work at Quaker State. Drawing for a long time before turning to music, Daniel learned to appreciate artists such as John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, Queen, Neil Young, the Sex Pistols, and especially the Beatles.
Throughout his career, Daniel’s songs and drawings were to some extent influenced by his ongoing struggle with manic depression, which lent greater poignancy to his soul-searching moments. His five-month stint with the carney left him in Austin, where he decided to stay. In the midst of that city’s music scene in the mid-1980s, Johnston was a true iconoclast. As he continued to distribute his cassettes for free, Austin record stores began selling them; in fact, they became the local best-seller. Before long, a crew from MTV’s seminal Cutting Edge program came to town and all the Austin bands suggested that Daniel be featured.
In 1992 he signed with Atlantic Records and released FUN, which sold 12,000 copies. But his mental stability and productivity did not produce another album until 1999 with the Brian Beatties-produced Rejected Unknown.
In January 2005, the feature-length documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and at film festivals around the world that same year.
In July 2017 Johnston announced his retirement from live performances and embarked on a final five-date tour in the fall.
On September 11, 2019, the lifeless body of Daniel Johnston was found in his home in Waller, Texas, likely suffering a heart attack during the night.
