In 10th grade, Daniel discovered The Beatles. He reported that he felt “saved” and that The Beatles “saved my soul.”[1]
An interesting note: before he discovered The Beatles, Daniel discovered Paul McCartney, through a single (“Hi Hi Hi/C-Moon”) he’d bought, blindly, at a rummage sale. He recalled being at a record store soon afterward, seeing a Beatles album, and thinking, “This is his old band. I wonder if they’re any good.”[2]
The entry below is only to give you guys a fuller picture and will be deleted after you’ve read it:
If only he’d kept significant notebooks or recordings during his depressive period, things would be a lot clearer. But it’s not surprising that he didn’t. People experiencing major depression often have trouble expressing themselves at all, and Daniel was no exception to that. Instead, he tended to write about depression after the fact. As I think we’ve discussed, everyone says that Daniel recorded everything, but he didn’t record anything when he was in a major depression. He also stopped tape when he had the nervous breakdown in San Marcos, during the recording of HHAY, that led up to him running away with the carnival. Understandably he never ran tape during psychotic episodes—the only recording I’ve heard of him in a psychotic state was made by Bill. And the only recordings I’ve seen of him in a severely schizophrenic state were made by Jeff Reese.
Though Daniel found comfort and happiness in art and music, his depression persisted, albeit to a less paralyzing degree. Importantly, there is ample evidence that Daniel kept his depression to himself and there is no indication that he told anyone about it before his junior or senior year of high school, when he would confess it to Ron Harris and to his high school English teacher. (Mabel’s letters to Dick in the relevant years lack any reference to a problem of any sort.)
It was when his depression lifted, sometime in his sophomore year of high school, that he began to draw the ‘dead dog’s eyeballs” everywhere he could. Further, he went about drawing caricatures of classmates and teachers, which he passed out liberally.[3]
[1] 1991 Harris Video Interviews, “Rock and Roll EGA,” many more
[2] 0:55, Daniel Johnston Studio SX 2009 Interview
[3] 17:00, CS0324_0 Devil Talk and Gospel with Steve April 5 88