Rocking like crazy

[AP 1996 ] Wesley Willis was a homeless street musician in Chicago in the early 1990s, before he caught the attention of some major bands and a record label.

By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001

Singer Wesley Willis delights fans with his unique antics and surreal lyrics. So, what's out of the ordinary about that? He's schizophrenic.

YBOR CITY -- The line to get inside the Orpheum stretches around the block. It's Tuesday night. Young people clutch record albums and CDs to their chests, hoping for an autograph. Inside, their hero, singer Wesley Willis, greets fans with his signature head-butts. Willis is ranting as fans egg him on.

"You're going to rock tonight, Wesley!"

"I'm going to rock!" Willis fires back. Again, and again, he says it. "Rock!"

"Rock!" fans scream back.

Then Willis gives them what they had hoped for, something unpredictable. He fidgets, then fires, "I'm going to whip a horse's ass!" He screams it again and again. Everyone laughs.

Look closely: Willis has a silver dollar-sized knot on his forehead from all the head-butting. The performer, 6-foot-5, 350 pounds, is schizophrenic.

He is everybody's pet crazy person.

Wesley Willis was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989. He says he hears voices in his head, "demons" that take him off his "harmony joy rides" and put him on "torture hell rides." His emergence as a rock music sideshow performer -- the darling of fans who revel in his sad, crazed antics -- is a story that takes some telling.

In the early 1990s, Willis was a homeless street musician in Chicago. Some of his songs were sweet and simple, revealing his childlike fragility: I'm Sorry I Got Fat; STP Conked Out My Engine. More often, the ditties have a nastier edge: F--- With Me and Find Out, Cut That Mullet, The Vultures Ate My Dead Ass Up, Kris Kringle Was a Car Thief.

It wasn't long before Chicago's music elite -- Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, the Frogs -- took notice of the burly, ranting singer with the Technics KN 2000 keyboard.

Soon he was opening for these acts and being championed by Nirvana and Pearl Jam. In 1996, Willis was signed to a major label, American Records.

Willis has now written more than 400 songs. He has recorded 20 albums. At one point, he recorded four albums in 36 days. He has been reviewed in Entertainment Weekly and featured on MTV.

Willis' style is unique. He doesn't sing. He shouts, woefully off-key, to music and drumbeats on his keyboard. Fans find a delicious, naive humor in his lyrics, such as:

'It's just funny as hell,' says Brian Morgan, 20, of Tampa, inside the Orpheum on Tuesday night. 'He don't care.'

Morgan is a huge Willis fan, having discovered him several years ago with friends. They would get drunk in high school, he says, and listen to tapes. Tonight is the second time Morgan has seen Willis perform. He waited more than an hour to get in.

"I told my friends I was going to jail if I didn't get in tonight," Morgan says. "I wouldn't miss Wesley for nothing. You never know what he's going to do onstage, bust out in different personalities and stuff. It's exciting. "It's like when the retarded kids at school become cool!"

There has never been a shortage of people in the arts with some form of mental illness. William Blake wrote poetry and painted while experiencing hallucinations. Artists Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh suffered from severe depression and delusions during the most prolific times of their careers. Modern writers Sylvia Plath and John Berryman were hospitalized for depression.

Rock stars, too, have suffered from mental illness. They include Beach Boy Brian Wilson, Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators, Kristen Hersh of Throwing Muses, singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose and Richie Edwards, guitarist for the British band Manic Street Preachers.

Is there a link between mental illness and creative ability? Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison explored the connection in Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, concluding that artists can be remarkably focused and productive while in a manic state. Artistic ability is also common in people with other forms of mental illness.

Elliott Steele, president of the National Association for the Mentally Ill Pinellas County chapter, says artists such as Willis encourage people to view those who suffer from schizophrenia as productive and creative members of society. As long as Willis' fans aren't pointing and laughing, but appreciating his talent, he sees no problem.

"People with mental illnesses enrich our lives," Steele says. Schizophrenia affects one out of 100 adults, with the onset usually between ages 16 and 25. It's a misconception that people with schizophrenia have multiple personalities, he says. The disease's symptoms include hallucinations, alternations in emotion, loss of motivation, apathy and social withdrawal. It is treated with medication.

Willis takes his. His buddy and tour manager, Tal Cook, makes sure of it.

Alternative Tentacles, Willis' current record label, was founded by Jello Biafra, the lead singer of the punk band Dead Kennedys. Uli Elser, the label's general manager, bristles at accusations that Alternative Tentacles is exploiting Willis.

"We've been hearing that for years," says Elser. "Those people can f--- off. We're really concerned about Wesley. We're like his family. Other people have tried to exploit him. We know that. We're here to protect him. We want this to be great for him."

Elser says he is concerned when he hears about college kids coming to Willis' show and making fun of him. That's why tour manager Cook looks after him. The label uses Willis' gigantic Magic Marker drawings, which he sells for $25 to $100, for his CD covers.

"It's very simple," Elser says. "Wesley hears demons in his head. This is a hell that you and I cannot relate to. What subsides those demons for him is to make great art and great music, and to also listen to music. We're giving him the tools to live, and we're happy about that."

Elser says Willis is one of the hardest-working artists on the label's roster. "It's only May, and he's toured three months this year."

Elser says Willis, who lives in government subsidized housing, lost his Social Security benefits because he is earning too much money from his recording career.

T-shirts are sold at Willis' performances. On the front is a picture of Willis sneering, looking maniacal.

Would Willis have a recording contract with the label if he were not schizophrenic?

"Wesley has a record deal with us because he has unique music," Elser says. "Nobody sounds like Wesley Willis."

At the Orpheum, Willis is shouting out the words to his "hit" Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's. More than 200 fans are dancing and shouting along. Some enthusiasts, on top of rafters and amplifiers, wildly shake their booties. After each song, the kids throw their fists in the air and scream Willis' name.

Only a handful of black people are at the Orpheum. The rest are white kids of high school and college age. Is this just a case of white kids coming out to make fun of the crazy, fat black guy?

Roger Peterson, 33, of St. Petersburg, watching Willis' performance with his wife, Mimi, 34, thinks race is a factor.

"If he were a crazy white guy, it wouldn't be as much of a different experience for these kids," Peterson says. "The fact that he's also a black guy makes him that much more different from the kids who listen to him. That adds to his appeal."

Others don't see it that way at all.

"This kind of music appeals to mostly young white kids," says Cameron Correa, 25, of Tampa. Correa says he attended an Orpheum show recently by Atom & His Package, another act that specializes in goofy, simple, keyboard-based music, and the audience was also mostly white.

Now Willis is onstage delighting fans with his in-between-song banter.

"I'm going to s--- on you!" Willis screams. The audience cheers. "Going to s--- on you!"

On the wall to the left of the stage hangs Wesley Willis merchandise. There are CDs for sale, and the sneering T-shirts.

The rapid beats and blips of Willis' keyboard begin again. This song sounds a lot like the previous one. Willis screams something about a monkey's rear end, then calls members of the audience a string of profanities before shouting his lyrics into the mike again.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. To contact Gina Vivinetto, e-mail gina@sptimes.com.

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