Blog Rock over London, rock on Chicago: Wesley Willis' early years

The main points of interest in Michigan City, Ind., are a giant outlet mall, a few ominous Simpsons-like cooling towers, a state prison that executes prisoners, and, quite conveniently, a sizable cemetery. Still, over the holidays, I made the trip out from Chicago to Michigan City to meet face-to-face with Paul Young, Wesley Willis’ first and only art mentor. I first got in touch with him early last year when Dominican University was hosting an exhibition of 25 drawings titled Drawn By Wesley Willis. He, gallery head Jessica Cochran, and exhibit curator Jakub Niedorezo talked to me about the handful of drawings that were on loan from Young.

“I didn’t realize I was his teacher until about eight years ago,” Young told me. “Someone told me, ‘Hey Paul, do you think Wesley Willis was maybe your best student?’ I was shocked to even hear that. You live in a life and you can’t see outside of it to see what the hell’s going on, and then I realized that I’m very proud of him.”

Howard Wolinsky

That much was clear in the afternoon I spent with Young. In addition to being Willis' teacher, Young was also perhaps Willis' biggest fan—except for his “damn music.” He’s collected 250 of his cityscapes, rough sketches, and more unusual drawings. Most of them are from 1981-1985, the period when Young was a first-year architecture professor at IIT. The two of them met in Chinatown in 1981, after Paul saw a just-out-of-high school Willis with a folding chair out on the street, working on this drawing:

Howard Wolinsky

This is the earliest known Willis drawing in a collection. It’s different from the majority of Willis' drawings in that there are people on the sidewalks. When I asked Young about it, he showed me the de-evolution of people in his drawings. These stick figures above look downright exquisite compared with the tally marks they’d become later before being phased out completely. I wondered aloud if maybe people were eliminated from his drawings as a reflection of how anonymous and suffocating the city can be, but Young didn’t see it that way. Willis loved cities, he said. So much so that he wanted to be an architect and make buildings for Chicago. In 1981, though, he had a lot of big strikes against him, poverty probably being the most prominent. He wasn’t yet schizophrenic.

For Willis, art was just about the act of drawing. The end result mattered, but for him, it was a means of survival in the early ’80s. “I’m not sure which siblings were living with him, but… he wanted to help his mother pay the rent, [for] food, clothing.” Young said. So, he invited Willis to sit in on his classes at IIT whenever he pleased—he basically was able to audit IIT classes for a couple of years. He’d come and go, usually working independently on his own projects.

Howard Wolinsky

Howard Wolinsky

Howard Wolinsky

Howard Wolinsky

A moasic of different building textures.

“He had a new market," Young said. “He had me and my students, and faculty. These people were all amazed. These students, they couldn’t believe anyone could do such a thing.” As one of the deleted scenes from 2003’s Willis documentary The Daddy Of Rock ’N’ Roll illustrated, his was a truly unique talent: Recording engineer Steve Albini recalled seeing Willis in a train station perfectly drawing from scratch a completely different train station that's elsewhere in the city. He wasn’t shy about his talent, either—he’d charm anyone he’d meet into buying his art. Not everyone at IIT was thrilled to have Willis around, though. Dean George Schipporeit would make Willis' life a living hell, kicking him off the campus upon sight. Willis retaliated by nicknaming him “Dean Shipwreck.”

As Willis made more and more money from his drawings (he made such a big splash that the Chicago Defender wrote an article about him), he was able to move onto his other big passion, music. “First he bought a radio, then he bought a CD player,” Young said. “Then it progressed into the whole music thing. He loved music—everyone loves music. Who doesn’t? Mozart loved music, you know? But, so, that ended up taking over.” Even though Willis wrote a song about Young, it didn’t change his mind.

Lyrics to Wesley Willis' song "Paul Young"Howard Wolinsky

Young still respects Willis' music and the lives it touched, but he thinks his drawing suffered because of it. “Later on, he would bang them out very fast, maybe with felt markers. But earlier on, he was very much like a student… he would do preliminary things. He would explore. He would go to the library [and] Xerox things.”

A 2001 Wesley Willis drawing of Buckingham Fountain. Note how much simpler it is compared to earlier ones.

But it's hard to tell. Last year’s art-focused Willis documentary Wesley Willis' Joyrides shows that Willis was drawing right until the very end: He was sketching on his deathbed in 2003, as he was dying from leukemia. Although in most people’s minds, Willis was a chronic schizophrenic first and a musician last, the former didn’t really impact the latter, according to Young. “His illness affected his life, but not his art.”

Howard Wolinsky