Wesley Willis Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Wesley Willis (May 31, 1963 - August 21, 2003) was a musician from Chicago.
A 6'5", 350 pound, diagnosed schizophrenic with a habit of head-butting people, Willis created more than fifty albums full of bizarre, excited, and often obscene rants about crime, fast food, cultural trends, violent confrontations with superheroes, commands for his "demons" to engage in zoophilia and praise for his favorite actors, politicians, and hip-hop and rock artists.
Willis' songs invariably featured the title as a chorus and ended with the phrase "Rock over London! Rock on, Chicago," and then a popular commercial slogan. Willis had no musical training and relied on the prerecoreded arrangements from the Auto-Accompany features on his keyboards. Willis occasionally changed the key or tempo or pressed a "Drum Fill" button for a slightly different arrangement. His well known songs include Rock'n'Roll McDonald's, Cut the Mullet, Rock Saddam Hussein's Ass,Suck a Cheetahs Dick, Alanis Morissette, and I Whupped Batman's Ass''.
Willis and his siblings spent most of their childhoods in various foster homes. In 1989, Willis began hearing "demon voices" and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He called his psychotic episodes "hell rides." Alternatively, rock and roll was "the joy ride music" and Willis often indicated that listening to and performing music helped him battle the voices.
In the early 1990s, Willis became creatively active, selling his marker drawings of the Chicago cityscape (drawings which would appear on the covers of his albums) on the city’s streets. In 1992, Willis joined musicians from the city's alternative rock scene to form the hard rock band the Wesley Willis Fiasco, which produced such future file sharing favorites as Jesus is the Answer and Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost. Although few took him seriously, Willis created a buzz in the Chicago music scene and soon caught the attention of American Recordings, a major record label.
The Wesley Willis Fiasco released one rare 7" record split with the band Sublime. The Sublime side was their song "All You Need". The Fiasco's side was a song called "Get On The Bus", which was very loosely about Wesley's need to ride a bus from show to show with the band because of his intense fear of plane trips. Transporting unstable Wesley was one of the leading causes of the eventual break up of the Fiasco.
Without his band, Willis was signed to American Recordings in 1995 and went on to record two albums for the label (while producing dozens of other albums independently) and became a minor novelty rock sensation. He toured frequently, was profiled on MTV and was a guest on Howard Stern's radio show.
Some have questioned the tastefulness of Willis' audience. Rock critic Will Robinson Sheff wrote that Willis’ "periodic appearances for crowds of jeering white fratboys evoke an uncomfortable combination of minstrel act and traveling freakshow."
On August 21, 2003, at the age of forty, Willis died due to complications from chronic myelogenous leukemia. At the time of his death, he had recorded over 1,000 songs.
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