If you know anything about Wesley Willis, you’re probably familiar with him as a quirky, hilarious and ultra-prolific songwriter performing as both a solo artist and with the punk-fueled Wesley Willis Fiasco. Willis, diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, gained a cult following in the 1990’s preforming songs like “I Wupped Batman’s Ass,” ”Kurt Cobain,” and, perhaps most famously, “Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonalds” to list just a few.
At a mere 77 minutes in length, Chris Bagley and Kim Shively’s Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides manages to do a solid job of encapsulating the life and energy of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s true originals.
I love Willis’s extraordinary punky odes to the ordinary and the most excellent blurtations that spin out of his brain and off his tongue like those wobbly tinfoil UFOs in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Willis was Antonin Artaud in a black Michelin Man suit. Had he lived in Paris in the 1920s he would have been embraced by Andre Breton and his posse of divinely intoxicated poets and dreamers. Instead he was born in Chicago in 1963 and in his forty years of travelling down the streets and through the canyons of the Windy City managed to leave an indelible mark on everyone who came in contact with him. He brought the magic and the madness and the mysterious space in between the two where music, art and poetry are compressed into star-like objects called words that rattle like rocks in the shoes of reality.
The good people at See Of Sound continue to offer stellar rock documentaries over on their Youtube channel and I’m pleased to be able to showcase them here at Dangerous Minds for your viewing pleasure.
Wesley Willis: The Daddy Of Rock ‘n’ Roll directed by Daniel Bitton is a sweet, non-exploitive documentary about the weirdly wonderful, tormented, talented and irascible Wesley Willis who died at the age of 40 in 2003.
God gave me this rock career to keep me busy. Back in 1991 I used to hit old people with folding chairs. Suddenly, I moved to the north side of Chicago, Illinois in 1992. It made a rock star out of me at last. I’m the daddy of rock n roll! I’m Wesley Willis, I’m 36 years old. I play music and do art. I have schizophrenia. I have chronic schizophrenia. Roger Lee Carpenter asked me for $600. He told me that if I dont give him $600, he was going to blow my brains out. Thats when I started hearing demons. I have three demons: Nervewrecker, Heartbreaker, and Meansucker….I yell, I scream, I holler at people on buses.”
Willis recorded several hundred songs that were like mini-explosions in a pop culture fireworks factory. Obscene, hilarious, poignant, surreal and angry, Willis had a unique take on the modern world and there will never be another like him.
