Editor's Note: Jason Louv is Webmaster of the excellent site King Mob. Check out his Grant Morrison interview "Flick The Switch."

He sings like a little kid. A chain-smoking little kid.

Daniel Johnston, born in 1961, lives with his parents in Austin, Texas. He sits in his room and uses felt-tipped pens to draw pictures of Captain America and machine-gun wielding ducks killing Nazi hell-beasts. And he writes some of the most original and touching songs in American music.

Daniel came to national attention in 1985 when MTV interviewed him for a segment on the Austin scene, where he was well-known for the self-produced cassettes that he had been circulating through the town (by handing them to "pretty girls I saw on the street.") Previously, he had worked at Astro World and had travelled with a carnival selling corndogs, while continuing to write songs--something he had been inspired to start doing in his teens, after becoming enamored of The Beatles.

Now forty, Daniel is a respected--and very unlikely--rock star. He looks a bit like Casper the Friendly Ghost, another one of his personal deities. And now that he has a record deal, more and more fans are encountering, with awe, his songs of childhood memories, spurned love and the coming Great Tribulation where God and Satan's forces will clash, superheroes will walk the Earth, and The Beatles will return for a 10,000 year-long jam.

A manic-depressive, Daniel has struggled with mental illness for his entire life, and has shown incredible courage in sustaining a recording career longer and more prolific than most musicians, especially when his illness often limits his career options or threatens to end it altogether. His intensely committed fans are legion, and dozens of artists have collaborated with him or covered his tunes, including Yo La Tengo, Jad Fair, the Butthole Surfers, Bongwater, members of Sonic Youth, Dead Milkmen and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse; one of his most vocal fans was the late Kurt Cobain, who counted Daniel as a major influence and who did a great deal to bring him to the media's attention.

On tour for his new album, Rejected Unknown, he dropped in at the Café du Nord in San Francisco's Castro district on 2 March 2002 as part of the annual Noise Pop Festival. He performed a quick acoustic set, with supporting acts David Dondero, Azure Ray and Fields of Gaffney (the new project from the ex-Sebadoh songwriter Eric Gaffney).

I found him in the back room after the show, alone with a pitcher of beer. Well over two hundred pounds, he looks and dresses more like a trucker than a rock star and has the intense, goofy stare of one who's been awake at the wheel for four days. I asked him if an interview was cool--"Well, sure," he said in his trademarked squeak, "I'm just standing here, go ahead. You got any cigarettes?" Well, yeah, but they weren't tobacco, I told him, they were these funky Herbal Ecstasy ones . . .

"Are they cigarettes," he asked, squinting at me. "Here, I'll buy 'em off you . . ." he held out a fan of a dozen one-dollar bills. Starstruck, I handed him the remains of the pack for free. This was, of course, a Great Artist in front of me asking for my funky smokes, which he quickly began to burn through.

Jason Louv: Hi, how are you?

Daniel Johnston: Hi, how are you? You know, back home, where I lived in West Virginia, everybody used to say that--"Hi, how are you"--and I used to say it, and it was even in a song, one of the first songs I wrote, called "Grievances." I said "Hiiii, how are you." It's one of my favorite songs. But where I really got it from was when I did a tape called "Hi, How Are You." I'd found a box which sold rubber frogs when I was in Texas, working at Astro World, and it had a picture of a frog and a little balloon, and it said "Hi, How Are You?" And I just thought, this is hilarious!

JL: The Beatles were a big influence on your music when you were just starting out, weren't they?

DJ: Oh, sure, that's my influence. I was a Beatlesmaniac already, but then I decided [when I was starting out] what am I gonna do, how am I gonna do it . . . The Beatles are my major influence, so I just listen to the Beatles all the time. And The Beatles are so influential already to so many groups. It's just like any kind of famous painters, you can see their influence on other kinds of paintings in art or advertising or whatever, they're so influential, like Leonardo da Vinci or Michaelangelo, or anybody. You see it in comic book art, you can see the influence. Like Barry [Windsor] Smith could be influenced by Michaelangelo a little bit. So I'm influenced by The Beatles, mostly, because I love their song structure, and the good rhyming, and their influence and everything. Of course they had influences too, like Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland and stuff like that.

JL: Who's your favorite Beatle?

DJ: Well, all four of 'em!

JL: Your songs are very personal; what motivates you to record them, and even more so to perform them live in front of such a large crowd?

DJ: Oh, ha ha! I see, yeah. Well, um, ah . . . [long pause] What'd you say?

JL: Well, what's your motivation to record and perform?

DJ: Ha ha! What's my motivation to record and perform . . . hmm, that's what I do! [laughs] Cuz I'm trying to make a living at it. When I was young, before I was really into The Beatles, I knew they existed, but not much. I played The Monkees all the time, and The Monkees, you know, I still love The Monkees. But I was just thinking, my dad works in a factory, he's just fine 'cuz he's the head honcho, you know. And I was just thinking, I gotta get out of the rat race, I haven't worked today, I don't wanna work! [laughs] I'LL BE AN ARTIST! [laughs] That's what I thought, I'll be famous and I'll be rich! That's how I thought. But I was sooo lazy about getting down and drawing. Everybody knew me as "Hey Danny, he's an artist! He's drawin'! Draw me a picture, Danny!" But I was always looking at everybody else's pictures and thinking, these kids have talent! They've got more talent than me! But I was Danny the Artist to them, and I thought they all were [talented], too, and that's how I feel about everybody. That if anybody gave it a go at anything, they could really . . . if they try, they could make it.

But it's so sad, after high school, so many of them end up working, and having babies, and getting married, and having babies, and the wife stays at home while some guy's working shoveling coal, working at the steel mill. And they work at the steel mill and they're super rich. And they don't fuckin' care! They're rich! You know, and I'm not rich compared to those steel workers, they're laughing at me. I'm not rich like them. I'm not laughing at them either, but I'm rich enough to get by. I'm happy! [laughs]