Wesley Willis cuts a menacing figure.
At 6 feet 4 inches, 320 pounds, facially scarred, dressed in thrift-store rejects and with small, unkempt dreadlocks sprouting haphazardly from his head, Willis is intimidating on first impression.
But despite his overwhelming presence, the chronic schizophrenic is tame in person, downright gentle most of the time. In fact, Willis, 31, is constantly reaching out for friendly contact, be it through his habit of shaking your hand every few seconds or his trademark head-butt greeting where he presses his massive temple against yours and asks you to chant the word “Rah!” with him.
His neediness may be related to being the child of some of the Chicago Housing Authority’s most war-torn projects and reportedly the victim of lifelong episodes of violence, both random and domestic.
Meet one of the icons of Chicago’s rock ‘n’ roll underground.
“Do you wanna buy one of my CD’s?” asks Willis, his sales mantra aimed at a goateed hipster in Wicker Park’s Double Door club.
“Oh no, not again!” says the potential customer with affectionate surrender.
“Do you have any of them?” Willis asks, digging through his stock. “I’ve got “Radiohead,” “Mr. Magoo Goes to Jail,” “Prisonshake,” “Reverend Norb 1,” “Reverend Norb 2,” “Machine Gun Kelly” and “Double Door.”
Though you might not have heard of him, Willis is perhaps 1994’s most prolific local musical artist. In the span of just over a year, Willis has released seven full-length solo CDs, recorded seven more that are awaiting release at his discretion, released two cassettes and two compilation tracks with the rock band he fronts, the Wesley Willis Fiasco, played an impressive number of live shows and been the subject of no fewer than three documentary films.
Willis was born and raised on the South Side, living with his father, mother and nine siblings. Varying combinations of family members bounced from unit to unit within the CHA system because of what Willis says was his father’s physical abuse of his mother. His father eventually left, Willis says.
Willis attributes his schizophrenia to the day a friend of his mother’s allegedly put a gun to his mother’s head, and then to Willis’, demanding that he turn over his $100 life savings so he could buy cocaine or “he was gonna blow my damn brains out.”
That, Willis says, is the day the “mean voices” began.
“I’ve been hearing mean voices talking to me in my head for five years,” Willis says. The voices, he says, often cause him to act out and curse to himself.
Willis first came to public attention when he was peddling his drawings on the street, cityscapes done in felt-tipped pen, his primary source of income besides his monthly government disability-assistance check of $446. The drawings were painstakingly detailed, with minutiae such as license plate numbers and ads on CTA buses.
Among Willis’ favorite haunts was the Genesis Art Warehouse in Wicker Park, where he ingratiated himself among the store’s staff and regular customers, spending hours sketching on art pads and generally holding court. One of the store’s employees, rock guitarist Dale Meiners, began representing Willis, coordinating showings of his works.
“I did an art show for him in my loft,” recalls Meiners, “and it kind of initially established my respect for Wesley because there were 65 big drawings, the edges were touching, the entire place was covered with his art. And in art shows no one ever shows up or buys anything, you know? People were knocking on my door like three hours before it was officially supposed to start so they could get in there and sneak in and get the good ones, and he just almost sold out every drawing off the wall, and it was packed and people were going crazy.”
Just as Meiners was fascinated with Willis’ brand of outsider art, Willis immediately took to Meiners’ involvement in Chicago’s rock community. A veteran of a number of local bands, including an ill-fated group with future Smashing Pumpkins member Billy Corgan, Meiners owned and operated the Love Loft recording studio, where he produced a number of Chicago rockers. Willis began to stay at the loft, often overnight, rather than return to the violence of his South Side home. After a string of unsuccessful attempts to match Willis with a roommate, Meiners moved Willis in with him full time.
“Wesley wanted to hook up with the whole music thing,” Meiners says. “Once he started living with me there were musicians everywhere, and that was his entry into the music scene, I guess. And he (said), `I wanna rock too!’
“So I hooked up with some guys to play and played behind him, and he did thoroughly rock out and, thus, we had a killer band.”
The Fiasco is born
After a slew of lineup changes, the Wesley Willis Fiasco arrived at its current membership of Willis on vocals, Meiners and Pat Barnard on guitar, Dave Nooks on bass guitar and Brendan Murphy on drums. The quintet lays on sledgehammer heavy-metal riffs over which Willis projects his spoken-word verses and fervently chanted choruses. Meiners made 300 copies of a self-produced, five-song Fiasco tape for friends and it quickly became an underground sensation. People dubbed tapes for their own friends, and seventh-and eighth-generation tapes made the rounds across the U.S.
At a recent Fiasco practice session in Meiners’ West Side loft, Willis stood pigeon-toed at the mike, his T-shirt barely able to contain his considerable girth. As the band members tuned their instruments, Willis silently thumbed through one of his many dog-eared spiral notebooks, each containing volumes of his immaculately penned lyrics.
As the first chord was struck, Willis was entranced, clearly awed by the sounds his bandmates produced, and launched into “Drink That Whiskey.”
Through a series of head bobs and raised eyebrows from Meiners, Willis was wordlessly cued when to come in with his vocals. As the band paused to discuss some of the song’s musical intricacies, Willis patiently waited again, shifting his weight from foot to foot, seemingly accustomed to the tedium associated with fine-tuning a song.
“Usually Wes gets it right away and gets bored with having to go through it like 10 times while we figure it out,” Murphy says.
“He’ll get it and then he’ll leave the room, like when we were doing `Get on the Bus,’ ” Nooks says. “We sat there for like an hour learning the parts, and then we brought him back in.”
The basic structure of each song is uniform. Willis offers a spoken introduction (usually, “This is a rock ‘n’ roll song that I’m gonna do for you”); does the song; offers his trademark, “Rock over London, rock on Chicago!” line; recites one of hundreds of commercial slogans he has memorized (“Burger King, have it your way!” “Mail Boxes Etc. It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it!”); the band flails at one last power chord; and the song ends.
Going solo
Willis’ work with the Fiasco has spawned a more-abundant, but less-intricate, body of solo material. On each song of his seven self-released solo CDs, Willis uses the same preset rhythm (country rock 8) on his beloved Technics KN-2000 keyboard. Willis programs slight deviations in tempo and melody, but the songs pretty much remain the same. The consummate rock fan, Willis devotes most songs to adulation of live performances by his favorite bands, a practice with the potential for a lot of source material if every band is your favorite band, as he claims.
Willis is a one-man record label, made official since he tacked a homemade “Wesley Willis Enterprises” sign to his bedroom door. He writes his material, performs it, seeks out producers to record it and companies to master and press the discs, designs and creates cover art, and works out his own distribution, with most sales coming from his tenacity in approaching people on the street and from giving CDs to record stores on consignment. Profits are funneled back into the process.
But Willis’ strongest skill lies in his colorful self-promotion. In his best Muhammad Ali braggadocio, Willis announces: “I’m a big man. I’m a musician. I’m a rock ‘n’ roller. I’m a guitar rock ‘n’ roller. I’m a solo keyboard, and I’m a good rock singer. I sing just like a white boy, and I sing just like a blues guitarist singing to a lot of people. Praise the Lord when I rock ‘n’ roll just like a magic kiss. I get down like a magic kiss. Each time when I run my mouth and never shut up, that’s the way it is and the way it’s got to be.”
But Willis will soon have professional assistance in selling his work. Since a potential deal fell through with Grand Royale, the record label operated by the rappers Beastie Boys, Willis has been signed by San Francisco punk label Alternative Tentacles. A compliation of some of his solo recordings, culled from a pool of many hundreds, will be released in the spring, according to the label’s Jello Biafra.
Willis has been living with artist Carla Winterbottom, a former manager at Genesis, for two years. Equal parts roommate, mother and kindred spirit, Winterbottom is largely responsible for the improved quality of Willis’ life since he was adopted by Wicker Park.
“The first time I saw him, he just walked in (to Genesis) and I thought, `Who is this?’ ” Winterbottom says. “I was just about to catch the manager’s eye and say, `Hey, you’d better check this guy out.’ But he just walked in beaming, and I thought: `This guy must be drunk. How could anybody be so happy?’ “
Among other duties she has taken on, Winterbottom makes sure Willis takes his medication to control his schizophrenia on time and helps him with his finances.
“I’ve never had a better roommate, really,” she says. “There’s good days and bad days, of course. I remember one of the first days I realized how great it was when he started putting stuff away that he took down, everything got put back exactly how it was. I’ve never had a roommate except him who’s done that.
“If I want to nap or something, he’ll be totally quiet and we’ll have like our little quiet time, and he’ll respect that.
“He’s great company, you know? No one’s going to mess with me or my apartment with my big, bad roommate, so there’s benefits for both of us.”
To those who have have cried exploitation at seeing Willis thrust before nightclub audiences, photo sessions and film crews, drummer Murphy responds:
“The fact of the matter is that Wesley is doing all of this because he really wants to do it. It makes him happy. If he doesn’t want to do something, he just won’t do it.”
