[13th Floor] Elevators Interview [Side B]

  • AV: The album Psychedelic Sounds leads off with the hit single "You're Gonna Miss Me" (reached #56 on Billboard in 1966) which opens and closes with Roky's outrageous scream. This vocal mannerism has been described by Sam Andrew of Big Brother and the Holding Company as an "eldritch scream." Andrew states that "Roky's scream was kind of metallic and non-human." How did Roky develop this singing technique?RE: I just did it.PS: Roky had a kind of natural vocal talent which was evident the first time I ever heard him when he was still with The Spades. The antecedents for his style might be found in Little Richard perhaps, James Brown certainly, but a lot of it was Roky himself.CH: My life with Tommy and the 13th Floor Elevators were wonderful, magical experiences. I remember when we came to California in 1966. Every station we turned to was playing "You're Gonna Miss Me." It was such a thrill.
  • AV: Roky, did you play harmonica for all the songs on the albums? RE: Yes.
  • AV: "You're Gonna Miss Me" is credited to Roky Erickson although on the back cover it is spelled Rocky Erickson. TO: International Artists never made an error they didn't want to make.
  • AV: Is the spelling of your first name an acronymous form of Roger Kynard Erickson?RE: Yes. I've been called Roky most of my life and I've always spelled it as Roky.TO: It was never Rocky.
  • AV: "Roller Coaster" is one of the greatest psychedelic songs ever recorded. Discuss the composition of this song (written by Tommy Hall/Roky Erickson) about an acid trip which is highlighted by Tommy's electric jug that sounds like the hallucinatory flight of a bumblebee. RE: If you are going to talk about some kind of weird drug then it's something you want to know what it is. It's something you could come back to---like a wine in church where you could leave it in a container and it would turn into a drug.
  • AV: Do you recall how Tommy Hall wrote the lyrics to "Roller Coaster" which still ring true today: "After your trip, life opens up, you started doing what you want to do/And you find out that the world that you once knew/Gets what it has from you/No one can ever hurt you because you know more than you thought you knew/And you're looking at the world through brand new eyes/And no one can ever spoil the view/Come on. . .and let it happen to you (hey, hey, hey)/Come on. . .and let it happen to you/You've got to open up your mind and let everything come through."PS: The lyrics are quintessential Tommy Hall. They are the embodiment of Tommy's idea that through the use of psychedelic drugs the human race could achieve a sort of chemically induced metamorphosis. In retrospect it all seems rather naive but basically that was the gist of it. I would agree it is one of the greatest psychedelic songs ever recorded.
  • AV: "Splash 1" is a great slow song written by Roky and Clementine Hall. Discuss the inspiration for this well-written acid-penned song as evidenced by the lyrics: "The neon from your eyes is splashing into mine/They're so familiar in a way I can't define." I heard you started to write the song, but couldn't finish it.RE: What happened was that I was looking at Clementine and feeling like I've been here before. So I wrote the beginning, "I've seen your face before/I've known you all my life." Then I got so wrapped up into it that I couldn't write it and she wrote the rest of it.CH: Tommy never pushed me to write, but Roky and Tommy wanted me to be involved. This is how I came to write "Splash l" with Roky for the Psychedelic Sounds album. He had written the first line ("I've seen your face before/I've known you all my life) and then Roky asked me, "Would you like to take a crack at it?" So I wrote the rest of the song which has psychedelic connotations in such lyrics as: "The neon from your eyes is splashing into mine/They're so familiar in a way I can't define."I owe the title of "Splash l" to Roky because he always used the word "splash" in a lot of his conversations. Every song we did was going to be another "splash"---a surprising piece of news or something that was shocking. Every song was going to be a discovery.
  • AV: What did you think about the Clique's cover of "Splash 1" which appeared in the late 60s and sold moderately well.RE: I haven't ever heard of that group.
  • AV: "Reverberation (Doubt)" is another great song that wraps psychedelic music around lyrics of death: "You finally find your helpless mind is trapped inside your skin/You want to leave but you believe you won't get back again/You only know you have to go, but still you can't get out/You try and try, you die and die, you're stopped by your own doubt." What are your thoughts about death?RE: It's like that song Arthur Brown sang called "Fire." When I first heard that song it scared me to death. I don't know why, but that song upset me. Another song that scares me is (Napoleon XIV) "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" where they want to take me back to the Good House.
  • AV: Have you ever noticed how other groups have copied the style of the Elevators? For example, the Rolling Stones' background vocals of "Gimmie Shelter" and the lyrics of "Monkey Man" seem to have been styled after the Elevators' "Reveberation" and "Monkey Island." RE: It's like this. Communism writes the songs. "Street Fighting Man" and "Parachute Woman" and "Factory Girl." You'll hear communism in these songs. I wrote one called "Join the Marching," but instead of fighting you join the marching. Keith, poor little Keith, does all the writing. He and the Rolling Stones try to write good songs, but if you "make friends with police," you can understand what's going on:"The stars are here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy, `cause where I live the game you play is to compromise solutions." That's communism. That's a commie song. They have an interpreter and sing to each other. "Street Fighting Man" is a song they play while people kill one another. AV: What do you mean by "make friends with police"? RE: "Make friends with police" is a line from a book called Meetings with Remarkable Men written by the devil and Gurdjieff. He also wrote All and Everything. These are books I love. I sold my soul to the devil. [This section of transcript moved to match audio]
  • AV: "Don't Fall Down" has alternating lyrics which seems to juxtapose psychedelic lyrics with the love for a girl. Great vocals at the end in a high-pitched voice that asks a double entendre question (i.e., chemically via LSD and/or physically with the girl): "Do you feel it, feel it, feel it?" RE: That was intentional.
  • AV: "Fire Engine" has the following lyrics: "Let me take you to de empty place in my fire engine/It can drive you out of your mind/Climb the ladder of your own design in my fire engine/Don't tell it to go slow or stop/You're got to work it right up to the top/A piercing bolt of neon red/Explodes on fire inside my head."TO: The song was about DMT ("de empty") which was the most powerful psychedelic ever made. If you smoke DMT it is like instant LSD magnified 500 times. It lasts twenty minutes, but is much stronger than acid. Very scary. "Fire Engine" was written specifically about the drug DMT which was a fast acting psychedelic which you smoked with pot. You could feel the effect within five seconds of smoking it. There was also DET which lasted a couple of hours. People here in Austin (I won't mention any names) made psychedelics available for free to a lot of us including the Elevators. "Fire Engine" describes how fast it comes on.
  • AV: "Thru the Rhythm" seems to challenge the way things are viewed by straight society compared to those who "educate" themselves with mind-expanding drugs as evidenced in the lyrics: "Thru the rhythm of darkened time/Painted black by knowledge crime/and repetitions pointless mine/Instilling values the sick define/That weaves the fabric that keeps you blind/That ties your hands and cloaks your mind/But on my stilts I'm above the slime/Come on up if you can make the climb." Please comment on the making of this song as well as the classic question at the end of that song about being high that asks, "Where are you?"RE: I don't know.
  • AV: The Powell St. John tune, "You Don't Know" states "you don't know how young you are" which can be construed on several levels (e.g., a person experimenting with drugs for the first time or a person's naïveté). How did this song evolve?PS: Basically this song is about all the uninitiated youth that thinks it knows so much and yet still doesn't know itself. Listen to Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom Flashing,"particularly the hook line, "Oh, but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now."
  • AV: "Kingdom of Heaven" is another Powell St. John song which evokes the feeling (with its guitar and slowness of its vocals) of someone in the middle of an LSD trip and seems written around the religious metaphor that LSD is God (i.e., "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you"). The song is highlighted by the electric jug that has an ever-so-slow spaced-out "oooh" and the unbelievable wail by Roky at the end of the song.PS: I accept your interpretation except that LSD is not God but rather we all are God. AV: "Monkey Island" seems to be another song the Rolling Stones ripped off under the revised title of "Monkey Man." Is Powell St. John's song about "pretending to be a monkey too" about someone who looks and thinks differently than those in straight society? Great vocal effect by Roky at the end where he sounds like a monkey before his voice trails off in that strange way.PS: Here again you hit the nail on the head as to the meaning of the song. The part about the Stones is an interesting speculation and the thought has occurred to me too. AV: The liner notes to "Tried to Hide" state it was written about those people who "for the sake of appearances take on the superficial aspects of the quest." Huh?PS: As I understand it, it's about those who pretend to be hip, those that try to fake it. Not long after the Elevators formed an incident took place that Tommy said later was one of his inspirations for this song. One afternoon I was approached by a kid named Sally Mann who was around the scene. She is the same Sally Mann who later was featured in Rolling Stone magazine's famous groupie issue. At the time of that publication she was living with the Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco, but she was on the scene in Austin well before that. She knew that I knew Roky and that I knew where he lived. She asked me to take her there on the pretext of giving him something. I didn't ask what it was and so in the interest of helping two deserving young people I took her to Roky's apartment. Roky wasn't in as it happened so I left Sally and went on home. I heard later from a slightly irritated Tommy that he and Clementine had come in later bringing Roky home to his place from one of his first acid trips and who should they find in Roky's bed but Goldilocks herself: Sally Mann---bummer. Tommy was irritated because, as he saw it, this was a disruptive incident and it didn't fit the kind of LSD experience he was trying to provide for Roky. And so, according to Tommy, "Tried to Hide" was written with that incident in mind for all the Sally Mann's of the world. I know I left the girl at Roky's apartment; beyond that I don't know how much of the story is true. I was just following The Golden Rule.
  • AV: Why did Benny Thurman and John Ike Walton leave the Elevators?DG: Danny Thomas and I were off Riverside jamming at a house. Stacy showed up and we jammed together. Then about a month later Stacy called and asked if I was looking for a gig and if I could get in touch with that drummer. I said, "Sure." We happened to be in the right place at the right time.PS: This is just speculation, but I have a feeling that in Benny's case he was getting a little too far out. Tommy didn't approve of speed and Benny was becoming more fond of it. For John Ike's part, his parents were both alarmed and concerned with Tommy's influence and the direction the band were taking. As the situation progressed Tommy began to have misgivings of his own. As he admitted to me once, "Well, you can't hip everybody." I imagine that John Ike and Benny fell into this category of unhippables.
  • AV: What were your influences as far as music?DG: Danny Thomas was pretty much a soul and R&B drummer. If I had to pick one influence for me it would be Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. I love their stuff. I was about twenty-one years old when I joined the Elevators. I had grown up in San Antonio until I moved to Austin in 1963.
  • AV: Where did you jam with the Elevators?DG: We used to jam out in Kerrville at a place owned by a guy named Robert Eggers who had a ranch house out in the country.
  • AV: "Slip Inside This House" is an eight minute poem of exquisite beauty as shown in such lyrics as: "If your limbs begin dissolving/In the water that you tread/All surroundings are evolving/In the stream that clears your head." There is also that transitional stanza that states: "There's no season when you are grown/You are always risen from the seeds you have sewn/There is no reason to rise alone/ Other stories given have sages of their own." What was the background for the composition of this incredible song?DG: The song was already written when Danny Thomas and I joined the group and we spent the summer (1967) learning the music. All the songs for Easter Everywhere had already been written. We just kept polishing up on the arrangements until it got into the can.
  • AV: What does "Slide Machine" refer to in Powell St. John's song?PS: In a literal sense the slide machine is the road grader that is used to clear rock slides off the roadways in the mountains. In a figurative sense it carries an association of power: pushing at the forces of nature, danger, the threat of being wiped out, and so forth.
  • AV: "Nobody To Love" is a Stacy Sutherland composition/vocal which seems to be a prelude to the songs he wrote for Bull of the Woods. Why didn't Roky sing this song and why wasn't another song (e.g., "Fire in My Bones" or "I Don't Ever Want to Come Down") used since Sutherland's song is atypical and not up to par with the other Elevator songs?DG: Because we wanted Stacy's song. Stacy had just gone through a busted relationship with his girlfriend and I'm pretty sure that's where the origin of that song came from.
  • AV: "Baby Blue" is a fantastic cover of Bob Dylan's song with Sutherland's guitar providing a perfect blend to Roky's vocal. How was this song chosen and re-arranged in the Elevators own inimitable style?PS: This song was one of the first that the group chose to perform. I'm sure it was chosen because it is a great song and, unless I miss my guess, they tried it out and liked it and it all fell together from there.DG: The Elevators were already playing "Baby Blue" when I joined the band, but it was pretty much Stacy's guitar arrangement that made it a great cover.
  • AV: What is the meaning behind the song "Earthquake"? DG: "Earthquake" is a song about making love.
  • AV: "Dust" is a reference to death and has effective guitar work by Stacy Sutherland. The last line is almost prophetic: "We still need attention to help us along."DG: The Elevators could have used some direction, but we were pretty stubborn. We wanted to do things our way.
  • AV: "Levitation" is definitely psychedelic as it states:"Heading for the ceiling/I'm up off the floor/I've broken my horizon out distancing my doors." And later: "I don't need these wings to guide me/They are hardly ever there/It's the clear I made in-side me/Makes me feel light as air." Any particular memories about this song?DG: It's a kick ass song, but it was written before I joined the band.
  • AV: "I Had to Tell You" is a Clementine Hall-Roky Erickson composition which is a beautiful ballad whose lyrics are frightfully unprophetic: "Every doubt that bounds me/Every sound of riot/Everything is quiet/But the song that keeps me sane." And the song closes with the following: "If you fear I'll lose my spirit/Like a drunkard's wasted wine/Don't you even think about it/I'm feeling fine." Please discuss this song which has Clementine and Roky sharing vocals and has nice harmonica work by Roky.CH: "I Had To Tell You" was the other song I wrote with Roky and it appeared on the Easter Everywhere album. Roky had already completed the melody and had it on tape. Tommy wasn't interested in it that much since he was working on something else, but Roky and Stacy were interested and suggested I work on it. I took it home for the weekend and wrote the lyrics. Stacy loved the part about the "drunkard's wasted wine." We were going through some tough times so that's how I started the song: "Chaos all around me/With its fevered clinging/But I can hear you singing/In the corners of my brain." When we started to work on the song it needed some harmony so I started humming. Roky asked me to sing with him on the record and so I ended up singing with him. Roky also provided some beautiful harmonica work.DG: I played the twelve string on that song listening to Roky cut it on playbacks.
  • AV: "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)" is an underrated song that grows on you with Roky's eerily slow vocals backed by Stacy's guitar and Tommy's jug. It has a strange almost uneven flowing beat and is a song you can get lost in, especially the subtle snatches of guitar by Sutherland around the lyrics "Only higher existence, consciousness, and bliss" and later around "The light strains through your near closed eyes/Like ribbons through your lashes." Excellent guitar work by Stacy.DG: "Postures" is my personal favorite of the Elevators' songs. I remember telling Danny Thomas to give it a little soul, a little more R & B. I guess that's really where I was coming from on that tune since my early years were spent listening to soul music. I would listen to KAPE which is a black music station in San Antonio.
  • AV: The Elevators played extensively in California including the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. Why didn't the Elevators relocate to California and sign with another label?PS: I have often wondered about this. It all happened while I was in Mexico and they had returned to Texas by the time I arrived in San Francisco in December of 1966. They were better than the majority of bands working in the area at the time so it wasn't the competition. I don't know what it might have been.DG: I didn't play in California, but we played a lot in Texas. The Love Street Light Circus in Houston was a blast! The Elevators were pretty much the house band there.
  • AV: Do you remember playing with any other groups like Bubble Puppy, Fever Tree, Josefus, or the Moving Sidewalks?DG: Not off hand, but there was a group called Lost and Found that used to open for us a lot.
  • AV: The Elevators were constantly harassed by the police including at least one occasion where all the musical equipment was destroyed by the authorities while looking for drugs. There is also a rumor that the second time Roky was busted was a set up. Apparently some kid who was busted for marijuana was told the charges would be dropped against him if he said the pot was Roky's. Do you know anything about this?DG: I have no idea.
  • AV: There is also a story about Roky being committed to the Austin State Hospital, but then he was broken out by Tommy and some other people. Do you know anything abut this?DG: You're asking me to presume a lot. To tell you the honest to goodness truth, I'm not going to discuss it. If you want to know, you're going to have to direct it to those people.CH: Everybody has a different theory of what happened to Roky and his subsequent mental condition, but let me say what I believe. Roky was extremely sensible, intelligent, and level-headed. I would best describe his personality as ebullient. One day Tommy and Roky had dropped some LSD and it was getting late. We were near his mother's house and Roky asked if we could drop him off. Tommy and I suggested he crash at our place but Roky said, "No, it's my mom's place and it will be cool."I don't know what happened after we dropped Roky off, but he either freaked out or his mother was appalled at the state he was in. Consequently, his mother had him committed to the Austin State Hospital where I believe he underwent shock treatment. We began to hear, through our friends and inside sources, that Roky was in terrible condition. Some of the guys decided to break Roky out during his recreation period.One of the doors was broken and Tommy even left money to have it fixed. The Roky we now saw before us was different. Whether it was the shock treatment by itself, or in conjunction with the fragile condition of Roky's mind from drug usage, I don't know if anyone can really say. He was never the same again. Roky's mother, who is very religious, must have decided it was best to have him sent away. (This decision may have, in part, been made since Roky had also recently been busted when the Elevators had played at Sam Houston State University.) Roky was then sent to northeast Texas to Rusk State Mental Hospital.
  • AV: Was there any effort made to get Roky out of jail on appeal after he was sent to Rusk State Hospital where he ended up staying three and a half years in a mental institution?TO: I think an attorney named Jim Symons worked on the case, but that is about all I know.
  • AV: What was Roky's mental condition like before he went into the hospital and also discuss his subsequent treatment that included electric shock "treatment" and other "stabilizing" drugs?PS: I don't know anything about Roky's state of mind at this time. Electro-shock therapy was a treatment of choice for any number of mental conditions at the time. I know of one case where a kid was committed by his parents and given electroshock simply because he was a member of The Young Peoples Socialist League. In that atmosphere, and considering Roky's background, I'm surprised the doctors didn't amputate his head.
  • AV: Roky, did people come by and see you at Rusk State Hospital?RE: I can't remember too much.
  • AV: Roky's imprisonment essentially meant the end of the Elevators. What happened to the group immediately after Roky's imprisonment?DG: I don't know. I was in California at the time.
  • AV: What about the two subsequent albums that were put out by International Artists?DG: The Elevator Live album is just claptrap that was put out to capitalize on our success. It wasn't live. It was just a bunch of studio outtakes that was overdubbed with audience noise. It was plain fraud.
  • AV: What about Bull of the Woods?DG: I was on one cut of Bull of the Woods that had been recorded earlier. Ronnie Leatherman came in to play bass and help finish out the album. Roky had a few songs that he had either written or sung on before he was sent away. Roky wrote and sang "May the Circle Remain Unbroken" and "Never Another." He also sang on "Living On" and "Dr. Doom." It was pretty much Stacy's album since he wrote and sang most of the songs. International Artists used a lot of horns to fill in the spaces since Tommy had also left.
  • AV: Did the Elevators make any money at all?DG: The only money the Elevators made was off appearances.
  • AV: How do you feel about it?DG: How would you feel after you got raped?
  • AV: What were the circumstances of Stacy Sutherland's death that occurred 8/24/1978?RE: Stacy Sutherland was killed in a domestic squabble. The stories I hear are very strange. I don't want to repeat them.DG: I didn't hear about it until almost a year after he died.
  • AV: The music of the Elevators never received any extended airplay, but their reputation has become legendary and their music influential. How do you perceive the Elevators contribution to rock and roll?DG: There are bands all over the world trying to emulate the Elevators. A good indication of the Elevators' influence was the recent recording that Bill Bentley put together for Warner Brothers called Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson. It consisted of twenty-one different contemporary bands doing covers of Roky and the Elevators' songs.
  • AV: The way I look at the Elevators is their story is almost like a Greek or Shakespearian tragedy. It's too bad a movie hasn't been made about the Elevators because it would be unbelievable.TO: It would be like a psychedelic Spinal Tap! It would blow away The Doors movie.DG: It serves as a great lesson as to how bad you can get screwed around by management, especially if somebody is not taking care of the band then they can get burned real quick.
  • AV: I think the Elevators have been very influential as far as other musicians, yet most people don't know who the Elevators are.DG: That may be true here in the United States, but if you go over to England you will find about twenty-five Roky Erickson or 13th Floor Elevator albums available. You don't hear the Elevators on the radio in the U.S. because major labels don't own it and therefore they're not going to work it. Secondly, the sound quality isn1t very good, especially compared to the hi-tech capabilities that are now available.TO: The recordings were bad to begin with. The first recordings were done in a primitive studio. The first album was done in three track: bass and drums on one, then vocals, and then guitar on another track. They never did capture on record the Elevators as good as that band was live.DG: I think they did when they put out the first album.
  • AV: Where did the Elevators record Easter Everywhere? DG: We recorded at Walt Andrus Studios in Houston. It was the same studio where Fever Tree recorded.
  • AV: What about the Elevators album cover for the first album, Psychedelic Sounds?TO: John Cleveland, who was an artist here in Austin, did that great cover. John was a graphic artist here in town who was into creating psychedelic stuff with paint.
  • AV: Who came up with the logo of the pyramid with the eye? The pyramid and eye logo comes from the back side of a one dollar bill which states "Annuit Coeptis" and has exactly thirteen layers of bricks in the pyramid.PS: It was one of those arcane symbols of which Tommy was so fond and so vague in explaining. Maybe it had something to do with Scientology. Tommy was very big on Scientology.TO: Roky and Tommy came up with that idea.
  • AV: Update me on the whereabouts of anybody connected with the Elevators.TO: Frank Davis, who helped engineer the Elevator albums, is in Houston and is a successful artist. I don't think he's doing engineering any more. Tommy Hall and Clementine are divorced although they both live in the San Francisco area. Powell St. John is in Berkeley, California raising his family and doing computer work. John Ike Walton lives in Kerrville and owns a pet store. Lelan Rogers lives in the Los Angeles area.
  • AV: How would you like the Elevators to be remembered and what do you think their contribution to music is?DG: I always had these mental images of the 13th Floor Elevators as Ghost Riders in the Sky. There were lots of times I felt like that.TO: I think the Elevators were the best and most influential rock and roll band to come out of Texas and one of the best in the country. They are a classic example of how the music business can screw you and do you in. They are a classic example of how drugs can inspire and destroy creativity. It's ironic that the psychedelic music of the Elevators could touch so many hearts and minds, yet there wasn't one person in that band that wasn't irreparably damaged by psychedelics in one way or another. The Elevators have never received any royalties or money from their records. Lelan Rogers has the master tapes. The Elevators were ripped off completely. If you want to help Roky Erickson, who is essentially unsane, then money can be sent to a foundation set up for Roky: Roky Erickson Trust Foundation #2 3216 Lafayette Austin, TX 78722
  • AV: It's been a long strange trip for the Elevators. Any final reverberations or doubts?RE: Well, that's what I'm talking about. And there's nothing to be ashamed of about that, but you might feel better about not having them. You'd like to be able to have that.AV: Have what?RE: Well, it's that same thing again. There are these things you can get and so if you have the thing you're going to like it.AV: What things are you talking about?RE: Whatever it is that you're trying for. If you have the thing, the real nice thing.AV: Give me an example of a real nice thing.RE: Whatever you're talking about. You don't want the second deal. You don't want the one that might be bad.AV: What about the first deal?RE: You want it.AV: But not the second deal?RE: Well, the second might be good too, but it might be something you might not want or something like that. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. AV: One final question for Roky. How did you come up with the title for "Splash 1"?RE: I don't know. Probably from studying those things I told you about. You know, the good things and not the other things. You know what I mean?AV: No.RE: That's what I was telling you about.AV: I still don't know what those things are.RE: Whatever it is.AV: But I don't know what it is.RE: Well, that's what I was talking about. In other words, what I'm trying to explain to you, in other words, is you keep asking me questions about things that are real good things, but they're scary. Do you understand what I'm saying?