RSS Feed More Past Print
"After you trip, life opens up--you start doing what you wanna do...c'mon, C'MON let it happen to you..."
-- "Roller Coaster," 13th Floor Elevators, '66.
"We were known as the first psychedelic band, the first one to be able to play music that would make you see things if you wanted to..."
-- Roky Erickson, in a 1975 interview with (excellent) Texas magazine Not Fade Away.
"The music was erotic spiritualism--but those names wouldn't exist for a while. Not until Time and Newsweek named it for us. Right now, it was an awakening, an energy."
-- Stephanie Chernikowski, 13th Floor Elevators celebration, Not Fade Away.
Among the recent half-joking talk about a Psychedelic Revival there's a tiny grain of truth: 1977 has seen, apart from everything else, two extraordinary singles by supposedly "burnt-out" acid cult cases--"'Beautiful Stars," by Sky Sunlight and the New Seeds, and. "Bermuda" by Roky Erickson. To the ever-present, dementia has been added a solid '77 rock base: still on the edge, further maybe, but TIGHTER, 1967 through a finer mesh. Now Sky: as Saxon, he'd led the Seeds through pure rancid splendour (and a Top 10 single) through increasing self-plagiarism to reality adjustment problems and hitching round Topanga Canyon crashing on people's floors...
But it's Roky we're dealing with, and here we enter Myth City. Got your wing-heels? Good. Earliest recorded evidence is a pair of singles in 1965: at the time, Roky was singer with an Austin band called the Spades, who cut "I Need A Girl" / "Do You Wanna Dance," and "You're Gonna Miss Me" / "We Sell Soul" for Zero records.
The first met its bargain bin destiny years ago, but the second was available at London's Rock On record shop a year ago: it's astonishing, for its time. The A side suffers in comparison with the full Elevators version, which went Top 10, but "We Sell Soul" has to be one of THE tracks of the era. The tune is copped from "Gloria" (as was much of '65 "punk" material), but Roky's vocal is already frighteningly intense in his commitment: behind him in the chorus, an Indian chant moans. A diamond in the rough--caught at the exact moment when dancing was yielding to more complex pleasures in the hearts of garage America. "Do you FEEL IT? You make me feel SO GOOD!"--for once you'd best believe.
Anyways, one night Roky was playing with the Spades, and, as he tells it in Not Fade Away:
"All of a sudden these four cats came in, and it was like they had auras round their heads. 'Cause you noticed them..."
The four auras were Tommy Hall, John Ike Walton, Stacy Sutherland, and Benny Thurman: with Roky, spirited away from the Spades, they became the 13th Floor Elevators. And here's where the drugs come in, best told by one Larry Sepulvado, in Mother magazine (1968):
"As a student, Tommy became personally involved with the ethical and religious attractions of drugs...Tommy's attitudes were quickly absorbed by the group through his charismatic personality and presence. Especially by Rocky (the 'c' was dropped in '68) who Tommy had singled out. At 17, he was given a quick, hard introduction into Tommy's world of psychedelic mysticism." Right, and in case you think they were jiving, here's more:
"The most noticeable thing about the Elevators was their rationalisation of their environment and way of life. Though there has always been a religious connotation linked with drugs throughout history, the religious ramifications that the Elevators attributed to them was unprecedented in rock music".
Pure white light: that's what gives the Elevators their power, their ability to move, 10 years on, when most "psychedelic" music merely seems an embarrassment, locked in time. Y'see, there was some POINT to all the chemical ingestion; whether you agree/believe or not, you can't doubt the sincerity/commitment.
Plus, the records were great rock. Dynamics--songs--playing--all ringing clear as a bell, a clarion call to an era that turned sour before their eyes, as they suffered. They knew how to suck you in, so good. At the beginning, Positive ruled: they were going to change you/the world, no messing. Their "quest for pure sanity" dominated their first album, Psychedelic Sounds Of..., released on the International Artists Label in 1966--that's right, before the Dead, Big Brother, simultaneously with the Airplane's first tentative attempt. In contrast this is fully assured, confident. They knew what they wanted to do.
Apart from the famous "You're Gonna Miss Me" (for most people, including myself, their first exposure to the Elevators on Nuggets) which had already been released (again) as a single on Contact records) it includes a reworking of "We Sell Soul"--"Don't Fall Down" as well as "Fire Engine," an early staple of Television's sets: perhaps the bestrax in a jewel of a record are "Roller Coaster," the disturbed "Reverberation," and the frankly messianic "You Don't Know" ("If I knew the truth for you I'd surely stand and shout it..."). Star rating: universal. I could sum it up by a quote from Tommy Hall in Mother magazine, 1968:
"Man in the future is going to be sitting in front of one of these albums, not necessarily ours, and the album would do a thing to him that would be like music, and wouldn't normally be expected...that's what we're trying to play in our music -- the immortal theme..."
Eleven years on the records sound dated--the production especially--but the power remains. And if nothing else, the positive power of the Elevators' music is even more desperately needed NOW. With a 1977 reality. But I digress: in the the middle of all this, and having a hit (as well as playing San Francisco) they got busted, and the run-ins started. The reason, beyond the mere offence? You guessed it: being too powerful, too honest, (where have you heard THAT before, recently?).
The pressure dropped: two members, John Ike and Bennie, left early in '67, and the others hid away during the summer--inactive while what they'd pioneered exploded. They reformed and recorded album two -- Easter Everywhere--in late summer. It lacks the plain euphoria and unity of the first album, when they were celestial cruising: here the dream gets a bit convoluted--"Four and Twenty birds of Maya baked into an atom you" (from "Slip Inside This House")--while retaining the strange pulse of Tommy Hall's electric jug.
Individual cuts, however, for sheer intensity, rise above anything they'd done hitherto: "I Had To Tell You," an achingly beautiful song co-written by Roky and Clementine Hall, Tommy's wife and author of the band name (there are no 13th floors in the States), the transcendent "She Lives," and the self-explanatory "(I've got) Levitation."
Why Easter Everywhere?
"It comes from the idea that you can be born again, that you can constantly change and be reformed into a better and better person."
Now from here on in, it's downhill--as it was for the "Acid Movement" generally. "Reality," in the form of malevolent police and an unsympathetic record company grounded the Elevators. IA boss Lelan Rogers had never approved of the band's lifestyle, only their dollar earning potential.
It was more than just reverberation: Roky, needing a relief from pressure, was interned in Hedgecroft, a "rest" hospital, at the suggestion of IA. He escaped, but almost immediately was busted again: to avoid jail, he pleaded insanity and ended up in Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in early '69. A fate beyond the worst imaginable paranoia--remember Cuckoo's Nest, or Frances Farmer. Stacy Sutherland was also arrested, and went to Huntsville (Texas State Prison).
Shaken at the impending disintegration of their prime money-making group, IA released a truly absurd "live" album in '68--which turns out on inspection to be already released trax and studio outtakes with overdubbed applause (in true exploitation fashion)--and the incomplete Beauty and the Beast as Bull of the Woods early in '69.
IN 1972, Roky was released, "due to a great deal of pressure and litigation by family and friends" (Not Fade Away). In the 1975 interview, Roky is prepared to talk about it a little:
"It was just terrible, man...See if I said something...I'd slip and forget I was in a mental hospital, and I'd say something, and they'd say: 'You're crazy. You're gonna be put here one more year for that.' There's injustice in justice." Seen.
The effects of such Kafkaesque labyrinths on Roky's already shaken psyche can only be imagined. It's amazing that he's making music again: and even more amazing that it's SO good.
After an abortive Elevators reforming in 1973, with John Ike, he began playing the clubs in Texas with Bleib Alien. His mystical preoccupations had taken the more bizarre path they're charting now. In 1975, he said:
"Like I have 85 songs to do--all new ones. You know, when the wind stops blowing, and something else kinda blows through: songs that make you think about things beyond--psychic things, and ghosts and goblins and gremlins and things like that, waiting beyond your door. Fun things."
The product of the association with Bleib Alien was a single on the Mars label in 1975, produced by Doug Sahm (of the Sir Douglas Quintet): "Two Headed Dog" (Red Temple Prayer)/"Starry Eyes." The latter is a lovely ballad: "Dog" is majestic, murky, music from another planet. Kremlins/gremlins. The Devil/the USSR. Further charting his obsessions with Russia (like Patti's obsession with Ethiopia--hey, and maybe SHE'D have been locked up 10 years ago).
And then the Sponge EP--more diabolic swirlings of a strange power, and the Virgin single, "Bermuda."
Into the sun. If you wanted to, you could see the Elevators' story as the paradigm of the acid band, or, even further, any group of people who publicly live too fast, too free, too open for society's comfort (like the Pistols now). The euphoria gave way to a nightmare reality: they flew higher--fell harder. Reports about the original members hint at various degrees of derangement: at least Roky has a British outlet and an audience for his music.
Future plans may be a live recording to be released by Virgin: now all that remains is for someone to release the original Elevators albums, NOW. So they can work their power. And then maybe Skip Spence and Syd Barrett will lift up their axes and speak.
(Thanx to: Edwin a/k/a Savage Pencil, Roger Armstrong, and Not Fade Away (available from Compendium Books, Camden or from 1316 Kenwood, Austin, Texas 78704, USA) for their research and dedication.)
PAST PRINT
ALBUM OF THE WEEK