In the summer following his graduation from high school he got a guitar but soon returned to the piano: “After high school, when I decided I wanted to be John Lennon, I talked my parents into getting me a $40 guitar, but I couldn’t play it because the strings cut my fingers. So I went back to the piano and just started banging on it and playing it by ear.”[1]
Daniel and Ron hung out a lot and often attend Carnegie Public Library in East Liverpool, OH. Ron remembered Daniel checking out stacks of heavy art books. On one occasion he remembered Daniel having to make more than one trip to the car to carry them all. (This is not the school library where he will be told “you can’t buy no respect” but it is the local library/librarian mentioned in “Going Down.”)[2]
Ron noted and David agreed that, apart from Kurt Vonnegut, whom Daniel read extensively, he did not check out books to read; rather, he checked out books to look at, mostly art books. This is consistent with multiple chronicles of daily activities he kept in notebooks. When referring to comic books, he never said “read comic books.” Instead he always said, “looked at comic books.” Likewise, the books at his home in Waller seem to be mostly books with lots of pictures.
Daniel was preparing to attend Abilene Christian University (ACU) like each of his siblings before him. After attending a baseball game together in Pittsburgh, and getting caught in heavy traffic after, as they slowly passed through the Fort Bitt Bridge, they each expressed fear about their impending moves and what might come next. Ron was nervous but Daniel’s anxiety was stronger. He confessed to Ron that he desperately didn’t want to leave home for Abilene, but that he just had to, as that’s what the kids in his family were all expected to do.[3]
On three occasions (on the eve of moving to Abilene, on the eve of moving to Houston, and on the eve of his return to Austin in 1986 after his truncated visit to WV) Daniel avoided goodbyes with Ron, and deflected from them by instead giving Ron a task to complete for him. In this case, Daniel asked Ron to come by the house after he’d gone and return a very large stack of art books to the local library. On all occasions, Ron dutifully fulfilled his friend’s request. In each case, they did not say goodbye.
From the summer of 1979 until he moved to Houston in 1983, Daniel spray-painted graffiti all over town in out-of-the-way places like underneath bridges. Tom Gruda accompanied him on early trips; David Thornberry was his usual companion on later ones. But really any of his friends from those times might have accompanied him on such trips.
Daniel attended Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming” concert, which he later cited as highly influential. A concert by an artist he loved, singing and preaching the Word of God, must have been a welcome combination.
Daniel described attending lots of concerts with Ron Harris, including The Clash, The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, and Bruce Springsteen. In a 2009 interview, when asked about a [possible] urban legend that Daniel had hitchhiked to see Neil Young and give him one of his tapes, Daniel said that it actually did happen. It’s difficult to say whether he was joking or not but in the interview, he said that this did in fact occur.[4]
[1] 9:15, DT005_0 Sept 6 1983 Letter to Dave (San Marcus)
[2] Unrecorded Ron Harris interviews
[3] Unrecorded Ron Harris interviews
[4] 12:15, WS330050 Dan WVa Friday