<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nWhen I first call Willis Earl Beal, he hangs up on me\u2014irritably, instantly. (I hesitated for a fraction of a second after saying \"Hello.\") \"Now, see, why don't you just say shit?\" he asks. \"You called. You made the phone call. Why would you call and not say anything?\" It takes two more callbacks to convince him that 1) I am calling for GQ and 2) he has an appointment to speak with me.\n\nHe is apologetic, gracious. \"I'm sorry, sir. You know, the thing of it is, a lot of times people call, and they hang up the phone, or they're afraid to say something. I get a lot of calls. And it's all right, that's what the number's for. It's just frustrating when I answer the phone and they don't say anything.\"\n\nThe reason Beal gets \"a lot of calls\" is unique. As a Chicago street musician, he gained notoriety largely by posting hand-drawn flyers with his cell phone number on the bottom, offering to sing a song to anyone who called. This was a sustainable strategy when he was a homeless drifter wandering the streets of Albuquerque, trying to get someone to listen to him. It's a slightly less manageable situation for an XL Recordings artist, which Beal became this year. Beal's affecting, unvarnished home demos\u2014often just him abusing an out-of-tune guitar while singing in a guttural holler\u2014put the influential tastemakers who encountered them in mind of Daniel Johnston, Tom Waits, Wild Man Fischer: the great pantheon of outsider artists. Deals were inked. A fascinating and unlikely career was launched.\n\nIn conversation, Beal is disarmingly open, charming. From his stories and patter, he comes off either as the World's Ideal Living Embodiment of the Outsider Artist or the world's canniest charlatan imitator of them, amiably serving up an entertaining show for those willing to pay for it. His music drifts between these two poles as well, hitting upon startling moments of surreal lucidity (\"Sambo Joe From the Rainbow\") as often as it gets bogged down in \"oh lawdy\" hambone silliness. After we smooth over the initial misunderstanding, Beal chatted with me for over an hour, ranging across an astonishing story that included homelessness, a hospital stint, discharge from the Army, and his plans for a vigilante suit. I had the sense, talking to him, that he would have talked to me forever, and that he would have shared just as much had I been a middle-school janitor calling him from the middle of Nebraska.\n\n\n\nGQ: Where am I talking to you? Are you home?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Yeah, I'm at my grandma's house. I'm responding to the fan mail, and I'm drawing pictures. I've decided to call these pictures \"avant-garde art,\" because I'm not taking very much time on them. I write \"avant-garde\" at the top left-hand corner of the paper.\n\nGQ: What are you drawing right right now?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I'm drawing a picture of Emma Watson.\n\nGQ: Emma Watson, the actress? As in, Hermione?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Yeah. It's actually a rather risque picture. It's a fake picture I found on the Internet and printed out. It says \"Playwizard\" on top, and it's like if there were a Playboy in the Harry Potter world. I don't know. I don't use the Internet too much, but I printed this out a long time ago because I thought it might be interesting. Before this one, I drew a picture of Tom Waits. And prior to that I drew a picture of Charles Bukowski. And a hair pick with a black power fist on it. I wrote \"avant-garde\" in the top-left corner of all of these, so the people I'm sending these to know what they're getting and won't be disappointed at the poor quality.\n\nGQ: I was listening to your record\u2014the version of your record that XL is putting out, I mean. I understand that the album has gone through several different versions. What are some of the differences?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Well the one that was released by Found Magazine, I had selected the order of the tracks. And I considered it to be the best, out of the four years of versions that I did. I personally like the one I selected, because it's just more my style. It doesn't hit people with the dissonance right away. It comes in slow, and builds, and then comes back down. But the one they're going to release\u2014I suppose it's sort of the best for the situation. All things go with the flow, I suppose.\n\nGQ: Is that a new experience for you? Where someone else has an idea of how the album should be, and it ends up like that, and you go with the flow?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Yeah, that's a new experience. I'm not really used to it too much just yet.\n\n\n\n Willis Earl Beal, \"Wavering Lines\"\n\n  GQ: What's the been reaction that you've felt the most to it?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I was frustrated a little, at first. Not due to anybody forcing me\u2014nobody forced me to do anything. They just, you know, suggest that this course of action would be better and such-and-such. So I agree, out of initial ignorance, you know.\n\nGQ: So do you see it the way they can? Can you see your art the way they see your art?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I can, after repeated listening. I'll hypnotize myself into believing that it's the right course of action, and it's kind of like a prayer over the material and the order.\n\nGQ: The version I have opens with \"Nepenenoyka.\" What does that word mean to you? What is it?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: It's my alien name. They crowned me the Alien Prince of Pluto when they abducted me. [Beat]. I'm just kidding. It's just the name of the instrument that I use in that song. It's a child's harp; I think it's some kind of Swiss word. I found it in the flea market. It's like almost a triangle, without the points? And it's got metal strings on it. Maybe 25, 26 strings on there. It's very small; I don't really know how it's played. It came with a lot of suggestions for songs, and I didn't have the patience to look at it or read the directions. I just got a toothpick or whatever I could find and just went up and down on it, and pre-recorded a lot of different patterns and overdubs until I got something I thought was interesting.\n\nGQ: That's a difficult way to learn how to do anything.\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: It's trial and error, really. That's better for me. Because, I know this is going to sound too modest or something, but I don't know how to do anything. I don't know how to play guitar, I don't know how to do anything at all. I look at all things as tools. If you look at things as tools rather than something that you must learn, than you go about it in the right way. You go about it with soul and force and flow. If they are something more than tools to you, than you become burdened down by the history of what it is people expect. And frankly, I just don't care about that stuff.\n\nGQ: That's interesting to me. How long do you think your approach can stay pure? Because basically, you're recreating what happened when man first created the nepenenoyka, and they figured out what the hell it should do. And sooner or later, they started doing one or two things the same way twice, and then you had a whole legion of polished nepenenokya players on your hands, all playing the same thing. How do you keep it so you're approaching everything like it's completely new?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: It's easy. You just don't think about that. At all. You don't even consider that. First of all, any time you do another thing, it's new. All things are new, all the time. New, and old. So you don't have to worry about doing what you did, because you feel it again, and keep doing the same thing. It's gonna come out different every time anyway. Maybe it'll be very similar, but it'll be slightly different. So what? Just keep the singing the same song.\n\nI have an Auntie that I see at the family reunion, and she's a good singer. But I had never known she was a singer. I went there the last time, and everybody was finding out that I was involved in the music business, and she said, \"Hey, you know, I can sing, too\" and then she sang a song. It was a good song\u2014a real good song\u2014but nobody paid attention to it. I was like, \"What the hell? Why is no one paying attention to it?\" They said, \"She's been singing that song now for twenty-seven years. She doesn't even know any other songs. She can't even read. But she just sings the same damn song over and over again.\" And that's her music, you know? Who cares about fresh and new, and all this? I don't. I listened; I'd listen again. In fact, I'd like to make a record where it's just her, singing the same song fifteen times.\n\nGQ: Have you had to play shows yet ? How has it been having to play these songs multiple times?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I did that last night. For the second time of all times. I went into the studio and recreated some of the stuff that's on Acousmatic Sorcery. I put a little synthesizer in there so it sounds more bombastic. And then they put it on a cassette tape. And then they had a little reel-to-reel machine for aesthetic effect. They hooked it up over the PA system, and then I sing to the reel-to-reel machine. Then, on the last two songs, I play some minimalistic, sparse guitar. Then they asked for an encore performance last night. I hadn't thought about what I was gonna do, so I just said \"Okay, well everybody just clap and stomp at this particular rhythm.\" And then I did a song for them that I'd written last summer, that nobody'd heard. And everybody liked it. It was a good thing; I enjoyed it.\n\nGQ: Were you nervous?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Uh-uh. Well\u2014okay. So I'm lying. I was shook up. I was real scared, but I pretended like I wasn't. There was a man in the audience who started whooping and hollering in the middle of the performance, and it was kinda pissing me off. But I was trying to be a professional. But since I don't know how to be a professional, I told him to shut the fuck up. Just reflexively. Then I realized what I'd said, and thought, \"Well, now you've got to follow through with it. Now you've got to truly be pissed off so that the people can side with you,\" and so that's what I did. I said, \"I didn't come out here for this shit.\" And he calmed down, and then people were on my side. So I manipulated everybody. I had a good time, though, it was fine. We sold out of my 7-inch single\u2014before I even sing a note. I signed some autographs. It was completely surreal. I talk a good game, but this shit is tripping me out, for real.\n\nGQ: I bet. These are crazy times for you. Where were you a year ago today?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I was walking through Beverly at the time because my girlfriend had dumped me and her parents had sent me back home on the airplane. I was crying; I was literally crying. I know this sounds clich\u00E9 as hell, but I was just looking up at the sky, and crying, walking through the neighborhood. I actually got stopped by the cops that night, because a young black guy's not really supposed to be walking around in Beverly at night. They think you're suspicious. And it was actually two women cops who were black, oddly enough, and they're like, \"Sir, where are you going, exactly? Don't you live over south?\" I said, \"I'm all right, I'm good; here's my ID, I've got no record.\" And they actually were so sweet, they drove me back home. Wasn't that nice of them. They wanted to make sure I got home safely, you know?\n\nGQ: So what's your background? \n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I grew up initially in Chicago. I was there for 24 years before I left on my own. Actually, I tried to leave prior to Albuquerque. I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, because I joined the Army. I joined the Army because I'd always been a big Batman fan. And I was a lost person, so I thought, \"Hmm. Maybe I'll become a crime-fighting vigilante for my life.\" I designed a Bat Suit and everything. Thought about all the logistics, how it would have to be made out of kevlar, as opposed to that gray shit that Adam West wore.\n\nBut so I joined the Army, and it turned out that my priorities were slightly out of whack. The people in there didn't like me too much. And it stressed me out, so I started having these involuntary stomach spasms. And they didn't believe me; they thought I was just trying to get out of the Army. But it wasn't true\u2014wasn't trying to get out of the Army, I was really having involuntary stomach spasms. So they just let me out; I would have been dishonorably discharged or court-martialed. I can remember waxing and buffing many a floor at night time when everybody was asleep.\n\nAt any rate, they let me go, so I headed back to Chicago, got a job at the Willis Tower, which was then the Sears Tower. I think before that I worked at a couple thrift stores; I was working as a backhand man, unloading trucks. And then so I finally got this job at the Willis Tower, I was into it for a week, and then I ended up having those spasms again, then had to go to the hospital for five months. I lost a bunch of weight, got down to around 115 pounds, had a colostomy bag. Several hospitals, really, because I didn't have medical insurance. I even spent a little in a nursing home.\n\nI woke up in a pool of my own shit. I remember vividly it was liquid green; it looked a little like green Hawaiian punch. It was really awful. I kept getting infections, and they told me there was a possibility that I might wear a colostomy bag for my whole life. I was born with a birth defect; it has a name, but I don't remember. My intestines were simply in the wrong place. They had to sever a lot of my intestines, take &amp;amp;#x2018;em out.\n\nBut eventually I stopped having the infections. And they reattached me, and I got home, and I didn't get disability, but I did get a LINK card. I hung out for awhile, and convinced myself that I would never try to do anything but get a nice low-key janitorial job and eat hamburgers for the rest of my life. I was that happy just to be out, and on my own. And then I got better, and I started to get motivated again to do things. My dad, during that time I was at the hospital, had been talking to the account manager for the Sears Tower. They kept a correspondence, and said that whenever I got better enough to come back to work I could do that. They were aware of my situation.\n\nSo I went back to work at the Sears Tower, kept it for two years before I fucked it up. I let some contractors in in the morning time, and they broke the electronic turnstiles, and they didn't have a pass. But we saw them damn contractors every morning; I just didn't feel like filling out a pass. And I'd been working the dock all night. I let them in. So they fired me; it was neglect, or whatever.\n\nSo I decided, well, I have failed too many times in my life. I'm going to Albuquerque. I stayed out there for awhile; I was homeless initially. I had already called out there to a place that wanted to transfer with my company, but I got fired right in the midst of my preparation for the transfer. I told the man this, and he said, \"Well, come out anyway.\" And so I had to build up the money with day-labor jobs to come out there, came on out there, and they didn't have the job ready for me. They were gonna do, like, a background check to get my permanent employment registration card reinstated.\n\nThrough a series of occurrences, I went back to Chicago, came back, started working but didn't have a place to stay so I was homeless. Eventually, somebody let me stay in their place; one of my coworkers or whatever. He saw that I was kinda lost and let me stay. But we got into an argument, he kicked me out, he went back to Texas to get back with his ex-wife, and by then I had accumulated enough money to get my own little hole in the wall. And from my little time homeless, I had developed an interest in singing. So once I got my apartment, I decided to accumulate some instruments and recording equipment. I started writing songs, playing songs the way I saw fit. Three years down the line, I recorded over one hundred and thirty songs\u2014four, five, six CDs worth of material, countless cassette tapes\u2014just this big mass of crap. Audible garbage. But I got some stuff out of it, and I would leave my CD-Rs with little &amp;amp;#x2018;zines I did and would leave all around the hipster places and the coffee shops with my phone number on there. Did the advertisement for the girlfriend, Found Magazine found that, and then so forth and so forth.\n\nGQ: Well that's an amazing story. Are you aware of what an amazing story that is to people?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I mean, yeah, people tell me. It's all right; I'm glad I did it. It wasn't fun while I was livin' it, though.\n\nGQ: Where did you sleep when you were homeless?\n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Sometimes I would sleep on the patio of the New York Pizza Department. Now, it was called the New York Pizza Department simply for the fact that a lot of people like New York; it was actually in Albuquerque. I would sleep in the train station sometimes\u2014you know, I kept myself up, so I would wash up in the bathrooms. The thing is, I'd always have a little money in my pocket. I'd do day labor jobs; I'd go with the alcoholics and the bums and make the $50 a day, and then go to the homeless shelter at night. So I would go to the barbershop and get my hair cut, and just generally stay pretty straight edge and look like a part of the proletariat working class.\n\nI'd sit in the bus station, and a lot of times they wouldn't bother me, but then they started to recognize me, so I had to stop doing that. By the time they started to recognize me, I had been talking up a storm so much, and networking, and really trying to get out of that situation, that things were starting to happen for me.\n\nAnd then I ended up getting certified, and the man told me it was all right, I could work him even though I'd been fired in Chicago, so then I had a job\u2014a real job, for awhile\u2014and I stood to make some money. But they hadn't paid me yet, and it was like a four week period, so I had to kind of hang it on out for that little while, still do the day-labor jobs, still ride the bicycle up to work, and then get off at work in the morning and go downtown and stay in line. I got a second job at Burger King; got fired from that. For stealing hamburgers. And then I got a job at Java Joe's where I was a dishwasher, and I quit that job because they didn't have real dishwashing liquid; they had this fucking shit that you put in the dishwasher, so it burnt, and it peeled my skin. So I had to quit that job.\n\nBut I ended up finally getting my check, and it was like big\u2014huge. And then the guy let me stay with him. I remember, Jesse Del Rio was his name. He used to keep the air-conditioning on in the daytime, and it'd be pitch-black dark in the house, and whenever I turned on a light in the other room, he'd yell from the bedroom, \"Could you turn off all that light, please!\" So we eventually kinda had problems. And then I told him to go fuck off when I got enough money to get my own place. I did the dumpster-diving thing behind the New York Pizza Department. You'd be surprised at the kind of half-filled styrofoam trays people throw out\u2014good food. And that was my time homeless.\n\nGQ: What was the main life lesson you retained from being homeless? \n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I learned how good Americans have it. Even though it's hard being homeless, it would be harder in a big city like Chicago or New York. It's much easier to be homeless in a place like Albuquerque, because the homeless out there have a camaraderie. You can just lay out in the street, and somebody will come along and get you. I never did that, but I've seen guys who did. I developed these continuous relationships with guys\u2014I'd see them around, they'd see me around. There was this one sort of homeless deaf cowboy, he wore hearing aids in his ear, a ten-gallon hat, and he wanted to be a chef. He would always tell these corny-ass jokes to people. He and I would talk sometimes. I just learned to appreciate wherever I was and how good it is Americans have it, and how there's always family wherever you go if you can have the right kind of imagination.\n\n GQ: You've talked about Tom Waits before. He seems like a spirit guide to you; I don't know if that's accurate. When did you first hear him, and what did he do to you when you first did? **\n\n Willis Earl Beal:** I was in Chicago, walking on Belmont Street; that's where all the gays are. I would go there periodically, because it's interesting. Not that I'm minimalizing being gay or making it seem like a clown thing, or anything like that, it's just that on Belmont St., there are not only gay people, there are also transvestites who dress in a very flamboyant way. So I'll go over there with a Colt 45 or something and just watch them go by.\n\nAnd so I decided to go into this little store, and this man was playing Mule Variations. I can't remember which song it was. I told him, I said, \"Jesus Christ, this is great.\" And I think, with me being a black guy\u2014first of all, I don't think he would've expected me to come in there, it being the kind of store it was. And second of all, the fact that I liked it and it was his choice, it moved him, in a strange way, that I would say something about it. So we talked about music for awhile, stuff that we liked. He was a pretty eclectic guy, and he gave me the CD. Took it out the player and just handed it to me, just said, \"You need to discover Tom Waits.\" That's not my favorite record of his; I like Swordfishtrombones; I like The Black Rider, because it's very thematic. I love Frank's Wild Years, too.\n\nGQ: He's a member of a loose cadre of people who are associated with what is often called \"outsider art\"\u2014I know this is a term that's been bandied about around you, too. Who are some of the people in that world that you find inspiring? \n\n  Willis Earl Beal: Jandek, first and foremost. I like this guy in Chicago, he's kind of like Kool Keith, but of course Kool Keith wasn't an outsider artist. This guy, his name is Sharkula. And the reason I consider him to be an outsider artist is because his rhymes are completely stream-of-consciousness. They don't proceed in a conventional way; he's referencing all sorts of shit that somehow makes sense when he says it. And it's done with a lack of self-regard; he doesn't take it seriously. He'll burp in the middle of a song, for instance.\n\nI don't own any Daniel Johnston, but I did see The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the movie. I like that lady, Snowden. There's some others, I can't think of them now. The reason I gravitated towards outsider art is because I didn't feel like I had any kind of conventional talent. So I decided that I had something to express, but I may as well go to a medium where I feel like I can contribute and I won't be ridiculed or ignored.\n\nGQ: Do you see a point on the horizon where you get too successful? When answering phone calls from fans is no longer sustainable, when you have to perform weeks of shows. Are you worried about that? \n\n  Willis Earl Beal: I'm very worried. Because I believe that I have a good voice in a conventional way. And I'm with a label that, although they have a history of signing artists that push that envelope, and people who do things that aren't commercially successful\u2014they are on the coattails of an enormous success of a woman who, although she has a beautiful voice, is extremely commercial. I'm thinking, \"OK, so they picked me up because of the sounds I made in my apartment. Which are rudimentary at best. But they liked my voice. And they're releasing the initial CDs because they want to hold to their reputation for pushing the envelope. And I'm not talking bad about my employers, you understand? But at the same time, they want to capitalize on Adele's success, you know. And I'm not entirely sure what their plans are for me, or if they have any. Even if they decide to put all their muscle behind me, I'm not sure if I can live up to that. On the flip side, I'm not sure I can be a sustainable artist. I can bang a bucket all day. But am I the kind of person that's gonna last? I'm not really sure about that."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/willis-earl-beal-interview-xl-recordings>