On July 12th 2007 the legendary Daniel Johnston played live at London’s Union Chapel. I first discovered this man when an album of covers was released a few years ago. Bands such as Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, TV on the Radio, Tom Waits and Eels covered their favorite tracks, its well worth checking out. Then the wonderful film The Devil and Daniel Johnston played at The Duke of Yorks, and I learnt of Daniels mental illness, his lo-fi roots and most importantly his wonderful song writing skills, buried under often border line impenetrable and unlistenable quality recordings. I quickly became a fan, purchasing some of the CD’s listed below.

Daniel it would seem rarely plays live, when he does reports of 15 min sets and fleeing from the stage are in abundance. When I got my tickets to the London show, I didn’t know what to expect. Support came from Bright Eyes collaborator Jake Bellows of Neva Dinova and Scottish folk singer James Yorkston. Both were superb, and James was especially notable for his great sense of humour and giving away 2 tickets to the end of the road festival, always going to get at least 2 people on side! Daniel took to the stage at 9.10, and on the posters in the venue it said he would play from 9.05 - 9.20. The last 9 was then crossed out in pen and replaced with a 10. I wasn’t sure which of the 2 would be correct…certainly given the quality of the sound on the guitar for the first 3 songs, 10 mins might have been all we needed. Daniel can’t play guitar very well and sing at the same time, and although the songs still sounded great, he really sounded much better when he played the piano.

After these 4 songs Daniel played no more instruments for the rest of the evening. Perhaps this would explain the earlier short sets - he may not be able to cope with playing instruments and singer for sustained periods of time. He was next joined by James Yorkston and Adem, who seems to be at every gig I go to these days. Adem played his little red piano, which sounds just like the old keyboard Daniel used in his earlier recordings,James on guitar. Daniel amusingly introduced them as Elvis Costello and ‘that guy from Monty Python’, indeed he found accurate and very funny likenesses to other celebrities in all his backing bands over the course of the evening. James and Adem played very well, considering Daniel kept changing the speed and pace of each song. They looked faintly terrified at times and it felt like at any given moment the whole performance would fall apart, especially with Daniel shaking the microphone so much. Miraculously it all went beautifully, with some fantastic harmonys and outstanding singing from Daniel. Having the backing bands allowed the songs to flourish and fill out, often improving on the originals in some respects which as mentioned, are so lo-fi they take a lot of work to get into.

Adem and James were followed by a single guitarist who provided a mainstream sound to the proceedings, for a comparatively calm central section. The final guests were a 6 piece rock band, who provided an amazing final set with Daniel in the middle screaming and wailing like a true rock star. This to me was the highlight of the show, as if Daniel had finally achieved what he always wanted - to be as big the Beatles. Well, he may not be as well known, but he certainly beats that other unstable Beatles chaser Brian Wilson, and in this little corner of London for many it was almost like seeing The Beatles themselves…a performance people never thought they’d see, from someone who seemed like he had died a long time ago. Well..he’s back, he played for over 90 mins and was amazing. Not because of who he was, his status as a legend or that we have to say he’s good because its fashionable, no, this performance was a would have been this good if you’d stumbled across it by accident and knew nothing about the man. Bravo Daniel.

Footage from the Union Chapel gig

True love will find you in the end - one of the best songs ever written, with a montage introducing Daniel

A short film Daniel made recently in Belgium

Now go to Daniel’s website, and explore!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Gig Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.