Unfortunately, an overabundance of business at work cost me a day here, but rest assured, I will make sure Mr. Johnston gets his full, much deserved 5 songs here this week.
I am finding that the hardest part of this week’s theme is choosing the songs. I knew there were a lot of songs I would want to include, but the more I work on it, the more songs go onto the list as possible posts. I could do a Daniel Johnston song-a-month and still not even scratch the surface of his brilliance. With that being said, I’ve decided not to hold back and go with one of my absolute favorite recordings today, “Hey Joe” off of 1983’s Hi, How Are You album.
Daniel has several “Joe” songs. “Hey Joe”, “Keep On Punching Joe”, “No More Pushing Joe Around”, etc. All of these songs seem to be in reference to one of Daniel’s iconic art characters, Joe the Boxer. Joe appears frequently throughout Daniel’s art, always without the top of his head, and frequently locked in combat with one of Daniel’s many multi-eyed monsters in a never ending battle against evil. It is frequently thought that Joe is actually Daniel’s representation of himself.
The song starts off with a clear tribute to The Beatles, one of Daniels absolute favorite bands. The piano begins gently as Daniel’s childlike voice comes in.
“He Jude, come on Joe, Don’t make that sad song any sadder than it already is.”
His reference to this famous Beatles theme is far from plagerism, however. It is a tribute to his idols, embracing their words and using it as in inspiration to motivate the song’s protagonist. The rest of the song follows suit, a calm lullaby with lyrics that encourage Joe all along the way. It is a beautifully crafted and genuinely heartfelt track.
22. Daniel Johnston - Hey Joe
1 response so far ↓
1 Jeremy // Nov 3, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Thanks for the post. I just saw the Devil in Daniel Johnston, not having known anything about him before. It seems incredibly strange that I wasn’t familiar with him since I am familiar with bands who have covered him, and I have listened plenty to other tortured musicians – Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Roky Erickson, etc. Seeing the film brought certain things together. For example, Hey Joe was quite familiar to me in the Sparklehorse version. More strangely, that many eyed boxing creature looked familiar…I had to pull out something I saved from college to check…sure enough, in 1990 this girl gave me an artwork she created that was a little box of weird glued together glitter and tiny photos of eyes. The front of the box has Daniel Johnston’s boxing creature on it, which she colored in. I always thought she’d made that drawing herself. I’m happy to finally be listening to Daniel’s music and appreciating his art.
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