I love your movies
I love you too
You are the best man that I have ever liked
You are my rich man
You are my big millionaire
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Wheaties, breakfast of champions
Wesley Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rock over London... Rock on Chicago...
Wesley Willis was a Chicago native who achieved cult status during a short but prolific recording career in the 1990′s. In 1989, Wesley began hearing voices and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He described his writing, performing and recording as a way to help subdue the voices in his head. His career began on the street, accompanied by a trusty Technics KN 2000 keyboard. He soon began opening slots for various local bands and later recorded songs in tribute to these performances for example, Mustard Plug, Foo Fighters and The New Bomb Turks. Standing 6’5″ tall and weighing 300 pounds, he enjoyed walking the streets of Chicago, riding buses and peddling his detailed ballpoint drawings of the city. It is also said he enjoyed greeting people with a head-butt.
Heartbreaker, nervewrecker, meansucker
Willis claimed to have “schizophrenia demons” in his head that took him away from his “harmony joy rides” and put him on “torture hell rides”. In 1992, he began writing songs and soon after formed the Wesley Willis Fiasco with guitarist Dale Meiners who took Willis to his studio to record. Willis had begun to build a small cult following with his bizarre three-chord rants about trivial everyday items, music and people he knew. In the early part of the 90′s several independently released tapes of his music appeared along with indie recordings of his albums. To date he has more than 1000 songs in circulation and was so prolific at one point recorded 4 albums in 36 days, having recorded more than 50 in total with each completely finished in 5 hours or less.
The excitement and honesty in mundane cultural phenomena from a city bus ride to McDonald’s as well as Wesley’s refreshing wit and sense of humour define his music as truly unique. His body of work is simultaneously disturbing, hilarious, blunt, and intoxicating. He has rubbed shoulders with everyone from Steve Albini to the Beastie Boys. His number one fan Jello Biafra (of the Dead Kennedys) has compiled two volumes of “Greatest Hits” for his Alternative Tentacles label and Willis has released two albums on American Recordings, one of which you can grab here. It’s hard these days to find honesty and lack of commercial or vainglorious motive in art. Willis took that idea and flipped it on its head – stuffing his art – both songs and drawings with so many advertisements and familiar names (of bands and brands) as to take the idea of “commercial” and turn it completely inside out. His songs may appear juvenile and offensive at first, but you can not help but be charmed by the songs he sung about things he loved and his friends.
Wesley said that he fought his demons every day, with names and personalities they would haunt him by mocking and persuading him to break things. He often mentioned that his demons were named “Heartbreaker”, “Nervewrecker”, and “Meansucker”. He called his psychotic episodes “hell rides”, and alternatively, he declared rock and roll to be “the joy ride music”. Wesley found a way to stay one step ahead of his demons by writing and recording thousands of songs and creating countless original drawings. The brutal honesty of his art, his constant drive to create and perform in order to hush those demons should be an inspiration to us all to dig to the deepest places of pure expression and to express oneself with unadulterated honesty.
You are so lovable to me in the long run
Wesley was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) at the end of 2002, and had to undergo emergency surgery on June 2nd to identify the source of, and to suppress internal bleeding. Wesley Willis passed away on, Thursday, August 21st, 2003. He will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most unique songwriters in history. His love of life, courage and unrelenting drive to succeed helped him overcome a horrifically poor background, child abuse, racism and chronic schizophrenia. He loved little things and big things, bus rides, watching trains. He loved writing songs about how much he loved his friends. He loved bands so much he would write songs to tell them so. He loved traveling to new towns to head-butt new friends. He has left a legacy of songs which will undoubtedly bring a smile to your face. For more information on Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, please visit Leukimia-Lymphoma.org.
So go on and download the Feel The Power album, listen good and check out our other outsider music features! Rock over London… Rock on Chicago…
Tags: Cancer, Chicago, Download, Outsider, Schizophrenia
