Wesley Willis 1963-2003

it was four or five years ago that i was first introduced to the music of Wesley Willis. my brother played the song "they threw me out of church" for me and when i first heard it, stupid would not have begun to describe my opinion of it. i told my brother that he owed me for the three minutes of my life spent listening to that song. if you're famiiar with Willis' work, you probably have a good idea about why i felt that way and you can skip the next couple of sentences describing it. Willis suffered from chronic schizophrenia and said he made music to escape from the voices in his head, voices that he said tormented him. the entire song was done on a technics keyboard, the kind you can get at wal-mart. a mere three chords made up the musical arrangement, and the lyrics consisted mostly of willis repeating "they threw me out of church, they threw me out of church" in a voice that seemed to carry a wail more than it did a tune. the song ended, as i found out all of his songs do, with him calmly saying "rock over london, rock on chicago."

before simply dismissing it, he urged me to listen to the song again, i did and was more than slightly amused, it had grown on me a little bit. i won't say that a love affair with Wesley Willis' music started there, i enjoyed it, to be sure, but it didn't. and though I enjoyed that song, and went on to hear many more of his songs, i always felt a bit weird listening to his music, like he was a sort of sideshow because of his schizophrenia, or that i was even somehow patronizing him by listening to his music and seeing humor in it, being amused by it. i equated laughing at his music, which was hilarious, with laughing at him. when i realized that i was listening to someone who truly, not just enjoyed, but loved what he did, i didn't feel so bad. i felt like i was sharing in his joy.

we live in a culture where so much of what is produced for our entertainment has this nice glossy sheen to it. a lot of work goes into giving public figures, musicians especially, these images that are fit for public consumption. handlers go to painstaking lengths to project only the image that they want us as fans to be aware of. Willis, on the other hand, oozed authenticity. he was simple, he sang about what he liked, said what he felt and did so within his ability. there was nothing fancy about him; he didn't try to do anything he couldn't, or be something he wasn't, no team of people working to proffer a caricature of him to the public.

in an industry where something like avril lavigne's handlers hiding the fact that she's dating her bass player from the public because it would detract from the image they try to produce for her is the rule, as opposed to the exception, Wesley Willis brought something that most of the rest of us could never have even dreamed of. he was truly a breath of fresh air. Wesley Willis decided and managed to be himself in an industry and even a culture where doing so is largely not allowed.

Wesley Willis died monday night, just before nine in his hometown of chicago. Wills, with his mental health struggles, was not what many would consider a talented or intelligent individual by any stretch, obviously never seriously critically acclaimed, or anything like that. i didn't know Wesley Willis or anything like that, he had bigger fans than me so i won't pretend that this is particularly sad news for me personally or anything like that, but i'm appreciative of the originality, honesty and total lack of pretense that Willis brought to what he did, i wish more people would do the same.

rock over london, rock on chicago.