Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (14 page)

King Coffey, Butthole Surfers

As one of the earliest (and perhaps the very first) psychedelic rock bands, the 13
^th
Floor Elevators certainly influenced the course of music history through their steady output of red hot rock and input of LSD. It wasn’t until later generations came to appreciate the tortured genius of the Elevators’ frontman Roky Erickson, though, that the band’s true impact was felt, in everything from southern dream poppers R.E.M. to garage punks Mudhoney to Texan wackos the Butthole Surfers. Like
Syd Barrett
and
Daniel Johnston
, Erickson’s eccentricities have added to his status as cult icon, but the realities of his mental illness have, tragically, limited his ability to prosper creatively and financially.

Curt Kirkwood, Meat Puppets:

I love Roky. He’s one of the most fantastic poets, and the greatest singer. In the same way that Roy Orbison is an influence, he is. In terms of, like, space-aged doo-wop, R&B. I’ve always been really influenced by weird stuff from Texas. I was born there and moved away when I was pretty young, but was always really into the stuff from there.

In 1965, University of Texas student Tommy Hall decided to form a rock band as a mouthpiece for his radical philosophies on the uses of mind-altering chemicals. Because he was not a musician himself, Hall recruited capable instrumentalists to surround him while he relegated his own duties to lyric – writing and playing the “electric jug.” Having heard the local hit “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” by Austin group the Spades, Hall invited that band’s singer/songwriter – a 17-year-old prodigy named Roger Kynard (Roky) Erickson – to join as well. When he accepted, the band – called the 13
^th
Floor Elevators in some oblique reference to marijuana – was complete.

Signing to the Texas-based International Artists label, the Elevators re-recorded
You’re Gonna Miss Me
, which became a minor hit in 1966 and a garage rock classic. Early on, though, Hall wired the group into his own agenda, which included daily doses of LSD for everyone in the band and writing songs that encouraged psychoactive drug use as a way of life. On trips to San Francisco, where the Elevators played regularly, their friend Janis Joplin (who nearly joined the band while still living in Texas) introduced them to the similarly acid-friendly music of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

The band’s 1967 debut, The
Psychedelic Sounds of the 13
^th
Floor Elevators
– reputed to be the first musical use of the term “psychedelic” – came complete with liner notes that outlined Hall’s program: “Recently, it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state. He can then restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely. It this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs on this album.” An early acid rock classic, the record mixed Erickson’s bluesy constructions and strong singing with Hall’s drug advocations. It sold well despite its still-controversial subject matter, though soon Texas law enforcement had their eyes on the Elevators as the state’s leading hippie troublemakers.

On the follow-up,
Easter Everywhere
, the Elevators got even more adventurous, with mesmerizing songs like
She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)
and
Levitation
. Unfortunately, in early 1969 the Texas authorities caught up with the band, arresting Roky for possession of one marijuana joint. Erickson pleaded innocent by reason of insanity and was sentenced to a hospital for the criminally insane. Thus the Elevator’s third studio album,
Bull of the Woods
, written mostly by guitarist Stacy Sutherland, proved to be their last.

Van Conner, Screaming Trees:

Easter Everywhere
and
Bull in the Woods
are really hypnotic. I’ve listened to them a billion times and still put them on. There’s a heart and vibe to them that can freak you out. We have quite a few songs we didn’t put out because we thought they sounded too much like 13
^th
Floor Elevators. The last song on [the Trees’] Uncle Anesthesia has their spacey feel. And Mudhoney had a song called “Thirteenth Floor” that was a total rip-off.

Over the next four years in the psychiatric hospital, Erickson was given electroshock treatment and various drug regimens, the benefits of which were dubious at best. By the time he emerged in 1973 Roky had written a book of messianic poetry and declared himself a Martian. With the slight notoriety engendered by the Elevators’ appearance on 1972’s
Nuggets
compilation, Erickson briefly attempted to re-form the group, but soon began fronting a series of bands over the next decade with names such as Bleib Alien, the Nervebreakers, Evil Hook Wildlife E.T, and the Resurrectionists.

Away from Hall, Roky began writing new songs – with titles like
I Walked with a Zombie
,
Bloody Hammer
, and
Don’t Shake Me Lucifer
– that came straight out of the fantasy and horror comic books he devoured. Though his thematic fascination with the occult and Satanism would be echoed in escapist heavy metal music, the demons chasing Roky were quite palpable to him. Yet while Erickson’s obsessions had clearly become twisted, his effortless singing and songwriting abilities – capable of producing a classic rocker like
Don’t Slander Me
or a sweet Buddy Holly-esque tune like
Starry Eyes
– were amazingly intact.

Jean Smith, Mecca Normal:

I saw an article on him and he seemed to be pretty scattered in his thinking. I was interested what this person’s music sounded like. There’s some very disturbing stuff, like
Bloody Hammer
. This maniacal accusation against the psychiatric world he’s had to deal with. It’s super-personal – not polite stuff to talk about – and he obviously means it. His sincerity comes through to the degree that it’s uncomfortable. I like that his songs reveal something and get a reaction. I don’t know that music’s mandate is to make you feel good or tap your toe.

Erikson continued to perform and sporadically record into the mid-80s, but has never achieved more than a small cult following. By 1987, a discouraged Roky retired from music entirely. Without any income from the many bootleg releases of his music, he was forced to live on social security outside Austin. The ‘90s have been a bit kinder to Roky. With the help of family, friends, and advocates, Erickson improved his financial situation, and a tribute album further raised his profile. Following a 1993 return to the stage at the Austin Music Awards, Roky entered a recording studio for the first time in a decade. Working with local musicians such as Charlie Sexton, Lou Ann Barton, and the Butthole Surfers’ Paul Leary, Erickson recorded six new songs released in 1995 on King Coffey’s Trance Syndicate label (with an accompanying book of lyrics on Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61 publishing company). As Roky entered his forties,
All That May Do My Rhyme
proved he was still one of Texas’s finest singers and songwriters.

DISCOGRAPHY

13
^TH
FLOOR ELEVATORS

The Psychedelic Sounds of...
(International Artists, 1967; Charly, 1991)
; a founding document of the psychedelic era.

Easter Everywhere
(International Artists, 1968; Charly, 1991)
; an adventurous follow up that pointed in new directions.

Elevators Live
(International Artists, 1968; Charly, 1991)
; a good early live recording.

Bull of the Woods
(International Artists, 1969; Charly, 1991)
; recorded as the band was splitting up, it contains few Erickson songs.

ROKY ERICKSON

The Evil One
(415, 1981; Restless, 1987)
; studio album originally released with unpronounceable rune title (later released as
I Think of Demons
).

Don’t Slander Me
(Pink Dust, 1986)
; songs recorded 1983-84.

Gremlins Have Pictures
(Pink Dust, 1986)
; a mix of live and studio recordings from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

You’re Gonna Miss Me – Best of Roky Erickson
(Restless, 1991)
; a widely available collection of Erickson’s ‘80s studio work and live recordings.

All That May Do My Rhyme
(Trance Syndicate, 1995)
; a surprisingly solid return to the studio, with a mix of songs from a 1985 EP and brand new recordings.

Roky Erickson & Evil Hook Wildlife E.T.
(Sympathy for the Record Industry, 1996)
; includes live recordings from the ‘80s, studio work, and interviews.

TRIBUTE:
Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye
(Sire, 1990)
; a collection featuring Erickson’s songs recorded by ZZ Top, R.E.M., Jesus & Mary Chain, Butthole Surfers, and many more.

SILVER APPLES

Simeon, Silver Apples:

It’s like what happened to Rip Van Winkle. Twenty years were sliced out. There’s some sort of social/musical thing that links the ‘60s to the ‘90s in how it perceives itself through art. So you can skip the ‘70s, skip the ‘80s, and jump to the ‘90s and there’s this beautiful interchange. The guys I’m working with now weren’t even born when I recorded those albums.

While many obscure groups are granted the consolation that they were “ahead of their time,” few groups were quite as palpably precocious as Silver Apples. When they recorded in the late ‘60s, their metronomic beats and oscillating synth textures sounded like absolutely nothing that had come before. And though they’ve subtly infiltrated underground music through krautrockers like
Kraftwerk
and keyboard punks like
Suicide
, only now – three decades later – is the rest of the world truly catching up. The Silver Apples’ organic and psychedelic electronica is heard today in the space rock of Spectrum and Jessamine, the post-rock of Laika, the digital hardcore of Atari Teenage Riot, and the futurist pop of Stereolab and Yo La Tengo, all of whom have paid tribute to the group in recent years. Simeon, the central figure behind Silver Apples, was a hippie artist from New Orleans who came to New York in the ‘60s to work as a painter. To supplement his income, he sang in Greenwich Village clubs and coffee houses. Though the music he performed was generally standard blues and rock, on the side Simeon was interested in avant-garde music, particularly the early electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. One day in 1967 a composer friend showed Simeon an old World War II laboratory test oscillator, which had been used to send sound waves through equipment in order to check the effectiveness of circuitry. When Simeon heard the warbly tones the oscillator produced, he asked if he could borrow it. “I started thinking this had serious possibilities,” Simeon remembers. “If you had a halfway decent ear, you should be able to play this thing the same way you’d play a trombone or any instrument with a slide thing, where you could play notes between notes and do the whole spectrum.” That night Simeon’s group, the Overland Stage Electric Band, was performing at the popular Village hangout Cafe Wha? (where Bob Dylan had started years before). During one of the group’s extended instrumental jams, Simeon pulled out the oscillator and began playing it. Though Simeon liked what he heard, most of his bandmates didn’t and quit in disgust. Soon all that remained of the quintet was Simeon and the group’s drummer Dan Taylor, a gifted beat-keeper who’d played with Jimi Hendrix. Simeon and Taylor decided to continue on as a duo, writing original music for drums and oscillator.

Tim Gane, Stereolab:

We did a single that was kind of an homage to Silver Apples called “Harmonium/Farfisa.” They were just inspiring and awe-inducing. It shows how so many things are there if you just look for them. Any kind of strange music which you’d never imagine, to some degree someone’s already done it. The music is like a happy accident. Two people happened to meet and they couldn’t form a band so they did this. That’s what makes it interesting.

Simeon and Taylor called themselves Silver Apples, taking the name from a line in a poem by W. B. Yeats (“The silver apples of the moon / The golden apples of the sun”). Though they were without guitars, basses, and keyboards, Silver Apples were anything but minimalist. Expanding on the principles of the first oscillator, Simeon constructed an instrument, The Simeon, made of a dozen or so audio oscillators, with all sorts of amplifiers, sound filters, and radio parts, operated by 86 telegraph keys and a “whammy bar” type handle. While singing, Simeon played the bleeping midrange rhythm patterns with one hand, the whirly-sounding lead part with the other hand, and the pulsating bass lines with his feet. Because Simeon was untrained as a musician, he devised a system of color coding the controls; rather than playing in a particular key, each song was played in a color.