The Persistence of Wesley Willis

Wesley Willis showed up at my door one chilly afternoon, toting a bag full of poster-sized drawings and a wooden folding chair, surprising the hell out of me and my roommates. I had spoken to Willis over the phone several times since meeting him at Empty Bottle a month earlier and he knew that I wanted to write about him. He’d asked me if I was going to write about his keyboard, his Technics KN-2000.² I said, “Of course, I am, Wes.” We were supposed to meet one Friday afternoon at Empty Bottle but he didn’t show up. But there he finally was, at my door, folding chair in hand.

The phone tag between Willis and I had become legendary around the apartment; messages like “Wesley called and played me a song on his rock n’ roll keyboard” were a dime a dozen for a while. And our conversations always played out as if we were talking for the first time. I swear to this day, during any conversation he and I have, he asks my name at least twice. But Willis loves to talk on the phone with people, almost as much as he loves hanging out in clubs, selling his drawings and singing his “motherfucking ass off” in “hot ass rock and roll band.”

Selling his drawings and two full-length CDs of his rock and roll keyboard music is what Willis is most known for. He is also the lead singer in a rock and roll band called the Wesley Willis Fiasco. When I first saw the Fiasco, Willis lumbered up on stage in front of a jam-packed Empty Bottle, and I saw God; he “rocked the house like a motherfucker” as Willis himself often says. Some friends of Willis feel that a good portion of his audiences are just there to see the big black crazy dude freaking out, and some of the kids that pack his shows and sing along to his songs can’t even fathom the shit this man has gone through. “I have to wonder sometimes if people are laughing at Wesley or with him,” says Dale Meiners, longtime Willis pal and band mate. “Are they there for the music or the spectacle?” It’s a valid question to raise, I mean, I have to at least chuckle when he punctuates the end of each song with a commercial (short phrases such as “Diet Pepsi, you got the right one, baby, uh-huh,” or “Folger’s, good to the last drop” because it is pretty funny. “Be a Pepper. Drink Dr. Pepper.”

But upon learning more about Willis’ background, any notions of humor would be obscene. Wesley Willis was born on May 31, 1963 at Michael Reese Hospital on the south side of Chicago to Anne and Walter Willis. That makes him a Gemini. The Willis family rode the welfare system and were frequently moved and/ or separated due to his father’s abusiveness. Wesley has nine siblings, most of whom he has not seen or heard from at all since he was sent off to live with an uncle who has subsequently been arrested for the sexual abuse of a minor. During the mid-80s, Wesley moved back with his mother and new boyfriend. Willis is clinically schizophrenic, but he found solace in drawing. During his daily trips to Genesis Art Warehouse in Wicker Park, Willis made fast friends with area folk and made pretty quick cash, too, selling his free-hand drawings of CTA buses and Chicago skylines for $20 a pop.

His mother’s boyfriend, another “abusive bastard—the worst” according to Willis’ current roommate, Carla Winterbottom, used to torment Wesley and his younger brother Ricky with severe beatings and intimidation, and by forcing them to watch Annie Willis give him head. On October 15, 1989, the boyfriend hels a gun to Willis’ head and demanded the 600 bucks Willis had been saving to get his own pad. From that day on, “mean voices” have plagued Wesley Willis, and while some of his medication keeps them quiet, other times Willis will suddenly “curse [them] out…the mean, vulgar voices.” He can’t control it.

In 1991, Willis was cursing the voices while riding a bus. A bystander, thinking Willis was yelling at him, cut a nice-inch swath across the right side of Willis’ face with a box cutter. The attacker is the subject of “Doing Time in Jail,” an irresistible stomp-rock “hot ass heavy metal song” performed by Willis with his band. The Fiasco, consisting of guitarist/friend Dale Meiners and members of local rock group, Water, is one of Willis’ two musical projects—the other being the solo keyboard gig—that I hoped to find out more about in our meeting together.

“Do you have any cranberry juice?” Willis asked after I offered him a drink.

“No,” I replied.

“How ’bout a pop.”

“Sure. RC okay?”

“Yow,” he said as he began to pull out the drawings he had wrapped up in clear plastic. Willis didn’t seem too interested in answering questions. He was somewhat anxious and distant. And when I asked how he got involved in music he would say, “Do you have a copy of my CD? Let me see it.” He was referring to his two releases, Mr. Magoo Goes To Jail and Radiohead, available only from the man himself. I felt like such an asshole explaining that I had lent it to a friend. Then something broke up the whole conversation. Willis asked for a towel. I rummaged through my room and then handed him a brownish towel. Immediately he leaned forward and spit a big glob of saliva into the terrycloth. Well, what the fuck do you do at this point?

* * *

Music is probably the only medium through which to hear Willis speak, whether he’s fronting the Fiasco or singing over the auto beat and Casio-like chord changes of his KN-2000. He spews one violently disturbing yet hilarious story after another. Songs vary in content but never in style. Take “Jessie White” for instance, Willis’ ode to the semi-prominent tumbling troupe leader. The chorus to a Wesley Willis rock and roll song is almost always the same; a slightly off-key rendering of the song’s title, in this case, “Jess-seee White! Jess-seee Wh-i-te!” (Kiss does that, too. Every chorus either is the title or has the title in it. Check it out.)

Willis literally screams over the silly, doo-doot-doo-doo bass/keyboard line. During the verses, Willis’ deep and resonant voice plows through the room like Jesse Jackson behind the wheel of a tank as it bellows personal stories with the syntax and diction of a newspaper. Even over the phone, songs like “Shogun Assassin” are so vivid that they defy description, I mean, I’ll be holding the receiver about arm’s length from my ear, and his voice is still so fucking loud that I can make out every word. Up-close and in person, it’s way, way, way—Whoo-hoo-wee!—way out there.

And with the Fiasco, a strange new life appears in Willis as the band rips through prog-rock riffs and nifty interludes and he rocks out with reckless abandon and shameless bravado. Fiasco songs often feature brief snippets of other songs, such as the hook from “Tom Sawyer” in the middle of Willis’ “I Can’t Drive.” It’s a heavy metal Willis when he’s with the Fiasco, and to see him standing on stage—sweating like crazy, screaming in to the mic—is really, to see God.³

What’s most remarkable about Willis is his ability to convey pain, hurt and anger, without being threatening or sounding like a half-baked John Lydon. One can sense his rage when he describes the scene of “Doing Time in Jail,” but at the same time, one feels like an innocent bystander at a four-car pile-up.

And rock and roll aside, Willis is also a bona fide visual artist. His art is 3′ by 4′ freehand, Bic pen (read: Bic fucking pen), true to scale drawings of Chicago skylines with angles so pure and detail so true that Mies Van Her Rohe would fawn. He is, in layman’s terms, an idiot savant, except his specialty isn’t numbers or counting cards—it’s drawing. Not only is the raw quality of his work simply amazing considering work has been scooped up by a few Wicker Park collectors (going rate from Willis: 20-35 bucks). I have actually reserved a particularly colorful skyline for myself.

Dale Meiners met Willis at Genesis Art Warehouse (Meiners’ girlfriend managed the place for a while), and the two struck up a friendship that would eventually pair them as housemates for a spell. “I had a studio and he would hang out [while] I played with a bunch of bands,” said Meiners. “He wanted to check it out, so we decided to run with it. He just decided to sing his ass off.” Willis’ baptism into the rock and roll was thus begun. At its very beginnings, before Water solidified the line-up, the Fiasco was meant to be just for kicks, basically because Willis seemed to enjoy it, and the band went through a number of informal line-up changes.

But Meiners wanted to make very clear that “[The Fiasco] didn’t just jump on the Wesley bandwagon to make a buck.” Meiners and the other members of the Fiasco were responsible for moving Wesley out of the last project he lived in with his father. “What [the Fiasco] is afraid of, is that some major label is going to sign Wesley and say, ‘Well, screw those guys’ and replace us with studio musicians.”

Last summer, a demo tape was being circulated among the hands of rock industry movers and shakers, most notably Jello Biafra and Beastie Boy, Mike Diamond. Almost every major label had at least one copy floating around its A&R department. Empty Bottle owner Bruce Finkleman said, “It seemed like for a while there, no matter who you asked, they had a copy of the tape.” Seemingly overnight, Willis became the subject of the strangest music industry buzz this side of Veruca Salt.

Now here is where it gets tricky: the Fiasco promo kit says that several “major labels are seeking out the ever-elusive Fiasco…but as of yet, no dotted lines have been signed.” The thing is, Willis has signed at least one record deal—and as many as four, depending upon whom you ask—and Meiners said, “Nobody really knows what he’s doing…because he’s schizophrenic and on SSI, he can’t really sign anything.” Meiners said the Fiasco is currently unsigned but actively pursuing a deal.

All the attention Willis is receiving these days, however, goes beyond curiosity seekers, record companies, and art collectors. Wesley Willis is also the subject of a video documentary by Jeff Kilpatrick called Wesley Willis as Himself. [There are other documentaries about Wes, but this is the original.]

The documentary was featured at the Underground Film Fest. It tells the story of Willis’ journey from hard times in the projects to his current artistic and personal success. A lot of people refused to go on record when I asked them about Willis. One potential quotable said he felt discussing Willis or his dilemma would only hurt Willis himself. The few that did agree to talk did so with what seemed to be genuine concern for Willis’ well-being. Idful Music producer/engineer Brad Wood said, “I don’t think it’s out of control, but I am concerned about him.” Mike Diamond called Wood to specifically inquire about Willis. “[Mike D.] is about as cool a motherfucker as there is on the planet, so I mean, that’s why he asked so many questions,” said Wood. “I don’t think anybody wants to see Wesley get exploited.” Willis had been sitting in my living room for an hour sipping his soda pop and spitting into the brown towel, talking to me intermittently. I pulled my seat closer to him and he began punctuating the end of each sentence by reaching over and gently shaking my hand. “Do you like rock and roll music?” he asked.

“Of course I do, Wes.”

“Do you think I’m an asshole?”

“No Wes,” I answered, “you’re not an asshole.”

“The mean voices curse me with vulgar language and say my rock and roll is shit.”

“Fuck the voices, Wes.”

“Yow,” Wesley replied. “Fuck them.” After promising to write a song about my band, Wesley said he had to go, “Cuz I’m a busy man.” And with that, he collected his drawings and discs, folded up his chair and lumbered out the door before I could really get a chance to thank him for stopping by.