Roky Erickson Outdoes Himself on Career Retrospective I Have Always Been Here Before

The 13th Floor Elevators roared out of Texas in the mid-'60s with a goal that went beyond merely rocking hard. They wanted to preach the new religion of LSD, sing the praises of this new drug and lifestyle. The Elevators were the first and perhaps greatest in a tradition of psychedelic music that Lenny Kaye compiled in his excellent collections,Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era.

Owners of Nuggets or fans of the movie High Fidelity should be familiar with Erickson's mad howl as it appears on the classic track "You're Gonna Miss Me." Erickson was oft-imitated but never equaled, and he belongs with Jagger, Plant and Joplin as great voices of the era. Roky Erickson's great themes were of course the power of psychedelic drugs, the underrated energy of the individual, and a focus on Satan and demons, which he claimed resulted from the 1950s B-horror movies he grew up watching.

The 13th Floor Elevators released two successful albums, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators and Easter Everywhere, before Erickson went to jail on charges of drug possession. It was not a time that Roky would have an easy time recovering from. Standard practice in the late 60s included electroshock therapy for anyone not conforming to behavior standards, and needless to say, Roky was not the man's idea of a model citizen. The Roky that emerged from the electroshocks (and the countless LSD binges) was fragile, erratic and not always on top of his game.

The group disbanded, but Roky would continue to write and record music with much difficulty. There's no confusing the pre- and post-electroshock versions of Roky Erickson. His revolutionary wail had mostly subsided into a warble, although he still had the chops for rocking screamers such as "Bloody Hammer," "Stand for the Fire Demon," and "Red Temple Prayer (Two-Headed Dog)." But for the most part, Erickson's work after the Elevators consisted of chiming love poems ("Clear Night for Love", enthusiastic surrealism ("Cold Night for Alligators") and Dylan-esque ranting ("Social and Social-Political Injusticees").