Episode Two

The Return Of Casper (2003)

Daniel Johnston
Jongleurs, London E3

The crowd sits and waits, 500 strong.

Daniel looks happy tonight. He’s been chugging back the beer by the pitcher. His dad is here, and some friends. He sits by the stage’s side, oblivious to the growing chatter and expectation in this cold, chair-filled club. There’s a microphone on stage, a stand for his scrawled lyrics, a piano – now that’s a rare treat! Daniel on acoustic guitar is almost unnerving, the pain too focused to bear, and his wavering voice as poignant as rejection itself. When he sings “Love Can Save You Now” repeatedly, the same four chords – as beloved by his beloved Beatles – he’s pleading with himself for some self-belief. Look at him: doesn’t this Texan cut a funny figure, Casper the Friendless Ghost, always putting himself down, his figure all bloated and shy. Don’t say that. This man has such grace, such beauty – listen to him on the piano, all those tumbling arpeggios and caressed chords, like a miniature Beethoven. The sound, even in the flesh, is almost unbearably echoed and melancholic, like a raw Howe Gelb or Disneyland the way forgotten children perceive it.

If you can’t believe in the healing power of love, listen to Daniel. It’s what’s sustained him all these years through the breakdowns. Kurt Cobain understood. He didn’t wear Daniel’s “How Hi Are You” T-shirt as a fashion statement. He wore it because Daniel has a naïve soul inside his torment that many of us would love to reclaim.

Daniel doesn’t play for long tonight, not on conventional terms. Maybe 25 minutes, including a very upbeat “Casper”. It’s easily long enough, the amount of himself he gives to us. He does seem happy, honest, his songs some distance from the traumatic, suicidal tone of last year’s “Rejected Unknown” album. He strums his guitar with concentration, never dragging, coping with rhythm changes with panache. His voice cracks a little, takes on fresh shades on the bluesy “I’m Drinking My Life Away”. Everyone laughs in the wrong bits, like an art house crowd watching “Happiness”. It doesn’t matter. Nothing can detract from Daniel’s triumph tonight. He has 500 people here, all quiet and attentive and giving his music the attention it always deserved, right from those early days when he’d jump up on stage in Austin, TX and shout “Hi, how are you?” and sell his home recorded cassettes on the street. “Rejected Unknown” is Daniel’s first album since 1994’s beautiful Atlantic Records outing “Fun”. The 90s didn’t treat Daniel well. Maybe the new century will go better…

Daniel plays “Pain In My Heart”, surely a hit for another age (it’s as much I can do not to sing lustily along) all sad momentarily. His voice is so pure, so sweet. “You’re a baby,” some wag yells. Daniel rolls his eyes, acts surprised and repeats the taunt as a question. “I’m a baby?” Everyone laughs, relieved. We already know the answer.

“I have one more song,” he says (it’s the perennial, “Running Water”). “Thank you for being a great audience.”

“I love England,” he tells us. “Home of the Beatles. You must be very proud.”

Not as proud as we are of you, Daniel.

Everett True