World Famous Comics: Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound
Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound
By: Paul Drummond Publisher: PROCESS Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: PROCESS Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 454 Publication Date: 2007-11
"One of the most exhilarating and important rock 'n' roll stories ever told."-Julian Cope
The trailblazing 13th Floor Elevators released the first "psychedelic" rock album in America, transforming culture throughout the 1960s and beyond. The Elevators followed their own spiritual cosmic agenda, to change society by finding a new path to enlightenment. Their battles with repressive authorities in Texas and their escape to San Francisco's embryonic counterculture are legendary.
When the Elevators returned to Texas, the band became subject to investigation by Austin police. Lead singer Roky Erickson was forced into a real-life enactment of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and was put away in a maximum-security unit for the criminally insane for years. Tommy Hall, their Svengali lyricist, lived in a cave. Guitarist Stacy Sutherland was imprisoned. The drummer was involuntarily subjected to electric shock treatments, and the bassist was drafted into the Vietnam War.
This fascinating biography breaks decades of silence of band members and addresses a huge cult following of Elevators fans in the United States and Europe. The group is revered as a formative influence on Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Primal Scream, R.E.M, and Z.Z. Top.
Roky Erickson is the subject of a heralded recent documentary feature, You're Gonna Miss Me; a box set of remastered Elevators CDs with liner notes by author Paul Drummond will be issued in fall 2007.
Information and Emotion This is without a doubt the best, most well researched rock biography I've ever read. True, the author may have trouble distinguishing between 'affect' and 'effect,' and he may have got a few details about life in Texas circa 1965 wrong, but he truly delivers the goods that all of us Roky/Elevators fans have been waiting to hear for a very long time. He's great on details, and attentive to historical and cultural context. As far as I can see, he's tracked down every surviving member of the band (including Tommy Hall!), and pieced the whole story together in meticulous detail, 1965 to 1968. It doesn't get better than this. All the information (Tommy) you could want, combined with emotion (Roky) required for a spell-binding read. This book lives in a time of its own!
Twice Born Gypsies One of the BEST music biographies ever written that tells the story of a decade in American music history with all of the uncensored truths intact. This book is overflowing with all of the explanations, descriptions, and details about which everyone has wondered for almost a half-century. This is a valuable source for those who are just starting down the road as well as answering some questions about unfinished business for those who experienced it. The research for this book rivals scientific methods of verification. One review called it "rock archeology". If you want to learn about the psychedelic era and the band that paved the way for the Beatles' "Lonely Hearts Club" and the Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow", then this is a must read. Not only does it tell about the music of the 13th Floor Elevators but it also "gets it" when explaining the philosophies of the Hippie Generation. This is more than a biography. It is a history book and a legend told in an honest and unbiased way. Paul Drummond outdid himself on this effort. Thumbs up.
The book I've always wanted This is a crucial book for anyone who's a fan of the 13th Floor Elevators or the American psychedelic music scene in the 60's. Drummond really did his homework and the level of detail is amazing. The book reads well, it's entertaining and ultimately a fascinating story of artistic struggle.
Slip Into This House Paul Drummond's book finally delivers all the details behind the story of one of America's finest and most idiosyncratic rock bands, the 13th Floor Elevators. While the history of the Elevators has long been shrouded in mystery, Drummond's heroic research has given us interviews with nearly every major player in their story, as well as a rich supporting cast of friends, cronies and enemies. If Drummond almost tells us more than we might ever want to know about the Elevators, the musicians who comprised the group and the philosophies that drove idea man Tommy Hall, the book is a welcome corrective to the sketchy biographies of the group that have appeared in the past. A truly mind-boggling study of the intersection between rock and roll, expanded consciousness and the cultural tumult of the Sixties, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the 13th Floor Elevators or the times that produced them.
Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson Comprehensive book. Leaves out the fact that John Ike Walton was married to me -- Gloria Greenfield (at the time, I was in college at UT Austin) from 1971 thru 1975. When Roky got out of Rusk, John Ike "found" him and tried to restart the Elevators... this was the time frame of the appearances in Austin and in Houston at La Bastille. We were married at this time. The "club" called Ling Kong in Port Aransas was totally funded by my money -- I had inherited from my parents while I was still a student at UT. Anyway, it wasn't much more than a concrete slab and some bathrooms in a mosquito pit on some land that we didn't own -- it belonged to a much wiser investor who also owned "Custard's Last Stand" a popular ice cream place in Port Aransas. He also retained any liquor rights if the place became a moneymaker -- which it didn't!! Anyway, I have a lot of photographs of John Ike, me and Roky at our house in Austin on Enfield Rd. right when he got out of Rusk. Roky still had the charming, boy-face that captured so many female fans on stage. But there were always the creeps that literally came-out-of-the-woodwork to follow him and hand him drugs, which they knew he would readily accept.
John Ike and I got divorced in October of 1975 --I've got the divorce decree petitioned in Dallas, to prove it!!
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