If ever there was a cautionary tale of the excesses of drug, sex and rock n roll that will bring a tear to the eye – the story of one of the pioneers of psychedelic rock – Roky Erickson – is it.
Like Syd Barrett, a common point of reference, Roky Erickson rose to cult-hero status as much for his music as for his tragic personal life; in light of his legendary bouts with madness and mythic drug abuse, the influence exerted by his garage-bred psychedelia was often lost in the shuffle. Born Roger Kynard Erickson on July 15, 1947, in Dallas, TX, he began playing the piano at age five; by age 12, he had also taken up the guitar. The child of an architect and would-be opera singer, Erickson dropped out of high school to become a professional musician. In 1965, he penned his most famous composition, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” which he first recorded with a group called the Spades. The song and his high, swooping tenor brought him to the attention of another area band, the psychedelia-influenced 13th Floor Elevators, whose lyricist and jug player Tommy Hall invited Erickson to join; the Elevators soon cut their own version of “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” and took the single to number 56 on the pop charts in 1966.
The 13th Floor Elevators were perhaps the inventors of psychedelic rock. Certainly they were among the very first to play it. They were also one of the first bands to suffer the prejudice of the moralists and the law. They were, alas, also among the first to pay the consequences of drug abuse.
The band formed in Austin, Texas, around jug musician Tommy Hall and vocalist Roky Erickson, who had already released an earlier version of his You’re Gonna Miss Me in 1965, with the Spades. Tommy Hall, who had a background in science and philosophy and had been one of the first kids in town to experiment with drugs, was the brain behind the project. He wrote the cerebral lyrics to their songs, and he invented the sound of the electric jug that became the trademark of their arrangements. Stacy Sutherland was the quintessential fuzztone and reverb guitarist.
Their first album, The Psychedelic Sound Of The 13th Floor Elevators (International Artists, 1966), released in the spring of 1966, is one of the most fascinating of the acid age, the archetype of psychedelia. The album presents a collection of acid ballads that feed on sound effects (Reverberation), on ethereal folk-rock (Splash), on rhythmic boogie (You’re Gonna Miss Me), and on down-and-dirty improvisation (above all Roller Coaster, but also Fire Engine). Theirs is a rhythm and blues a la Rolling Stones, viewed through the deforming lens of LSD.
The group’s anthem, You’re Gonna Miss Me, which made history in the genre, is a ferocious and dissolute soul song with hints of Tex-Mex and depraved vocalizations, full of instinctive fury, and propelled by the demented rhythm of Hall’s deafening electric jug.
Despite the instability of the lineup, the group recorded Easter Everywhere (Radar, 1967), which includes Postures, She Lives In A Time Of Her Own and Skip Inside This House. The album was Tommy Hall’s attempt at assimilating Eastern philosophies (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism) as well as Quantum Physics into psychedelic music. Then Hall left the band while Erickson was arrested for drug possession, and locked in a psychiatric hospital for schizophrenia. He is practically absent from Bull Of The Woods (Decal, 1968), an album that contains some of their most bizarre experiments. After their break-up the band attained cult status. Best (Eva, 1994) is a good anthology.
When Erickson came out of the psychiatric hospital (1972), he published a book of poetry. Despite his mental instability, he hit the scene again during the rush of psychedelic revival and punk-rock, with dark humor and a taste for the supernatural that carried him away from his origins, towards a macabre rhythm and blues, with lyrics filled with alarming monsters (Bermuda, 1977, Two Headed Dog, 1975).
And The Aliens (CBS, 1980) and The Evil One (415, 1981 – Sympathy, 2002) are the two albums which define Erickson’s solo career. The second contains bewildering rave-ups such as Creatures With The Atom Brain and Stand For The Fire Demon, voodoo-blues a la Credence Clearwater Revival, such as Night of the Vampire, and his spiritual testaments: I Think of Demons and I Walked with a Zombie.
An album of previously unreleased material, Don’t Slander Me (Pink Dust, 1986), is a work of lesser quality, except for Bermuda and the wild Don’t Slander Me.
Erickson ended up in a mental institution again, but the record industry continued to release every thing that he had absentmindedly recorded. I Think Of Demons (Edset, 1987) is a compilation of leftover cuts from those sessions. Gremlins Have Pictures (Pink Dust, 1986), Mad Dog (Swordfish, 1992) and Love To See You Bleed (Swordfish, 1992) include several rarities. Click Your Fingers (New Roses, 1990) is a compilation of EPs: Mine Mine Mind (Sponge, 1977) and Clear Night For Love (New Roses, 1985), and the Holiday Inn Tapes, which are very crude acoustic recordings. Never Say Goodbye (Emperor Jones, 1998) is a collection of home recordings made between 1971 and 1985. Three live albums were also released.
Broke and incapable of caring for himself, Erickson released one last, very spartan album, All That May Do My Rhyme (Trance Syndicate, 1995), recycling old material (the EP Clear Night For Love, the 1966 single We Sell Out by the Spades, and remixes of old classics) along with new compositions.
DissatisfiedSounds 