The 13th Floor Elevators
Their contemporary influence has been acknowledged by 1960s musicians such as Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Peter Albin of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Chris Gerniottis of Zakary Thaks.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the 13th Floor Elevators influenced bands such as Primal Scream, the Shamen, Lime Spiders, the Jesus and Mary Chain[11] and Spacemen 3, all of whom covered their songs, and 14 Iced Bears who use an electric jug on their single "Beautiful Child", as well as The Black Angels in "Sunday Afternoon".
The 13th Floor Elevators emerged on the local Austin music scene in December 1965,[7] where they were contemporary to bands such as the Wig and the Babycakes and later followed by Shiva's Headband and the Conqueroo.
The band formed when Roky Erickson left his group the Spades, and joined up with Stacy Sutherland, Benny Thurman, and John Ike Walton who had been playing Texas coastal towns as the Lingsmen.
During the Summer, the IA re-release of "You're Gonna Miss Me" became popular outside Texas, especially in Miami, Detroit, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
[citation needed] Prompted by the success of the single, the Elevators toured the West Coast, made two nationally televised appearances for Dick Clark, and played several dates at the San Francisco ballrooms The Fillmore and The Avalon.
During their California tour, the band shared bills with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Great Society (featuring Grace Slick), and Moby Grape.
Following the local popularity of the track "Slip Inside This House", an edited version was released as a single in early 1968 and was played frequently on Houston radio.
However, because of an unstable member line-up and the increasingly erratic behavior of the psychedelicized Tommy Hall and mentally fragile Roky Erickson, little of value came out of these sessions.
The live shows had lost their original energy, and often the band would perform without their lead singer Erickson, due to his recurring hospital treatments at the time.
The last concert featuring the "real" Elevators occurred in April 1968. International Artists put out a Live LP in August 1968, which was composed of old demo tapes and outtakes dating back to 1966 for the most part, with fake applause and audience noise added.
Sutherland brought some of his own songs for a final set of studio sessions, which led to the dark, intense posthumous album Bull of the Woods.
Erickson, due to health and legal problems, and Tommy Hall were only involved with a few tracks, including "Livin' On", "Never Another", "Dear Doctor Doom", and "May the Circle Remain Unbroken".
International Artists pulled together the various studio recordings from 1968 and, with the assistance of drummer Danny Thomas, added some horn arrangements, which became the Bull of the Woods album, released in March 1969.
[7] In 1969, facing a felony marijuana possession charge, Roky Erickson chose to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital rather than serve a prison term, thus signaling the end of the band's career.
Sutherland's pioneering use of reverb and echo, and bluesy, acid-drenched guitar predates such bands as ZZ Top, Butthole Surfers, and the Black Angels.
At Tommy Hall's urging, the band often played their live shows and recorded their albums while under the influence of LSD, and built their lifestyle and music around the psychedelic experience.
[citation needed] Intellectual and esoteric influences helped shape their work, which shows traces of Gurdjieff, the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski, the psychedelic philosophy of Timothy Leary, and Tantric meditation.
The original 13th Floor Elevators line-up was built around singer/guitarist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall, and guitarist Stacy Sutherland.
Walton and Leatherman left the band; in their stead were new recruits Danny Thomas (drums, piano) and Dan Galindo (bass) which completed the classic Elevators line-up.
Erickson attempted a sporadic solo career, burdened by management who exploited his instability and involved him in contracts that left him no control or profit from his music.
He recorded All That May Do My Rhyme for the Trance Syndicate label, owned by the Butthole Surfers's King Coffey, who claimed Erickson told him it was the first time he'd ever been given a royalty check for his music.
He died in 2001 from complications of Hepatitis C. Danny Thomas left the 13th Floor Elevators in 1968 and was hired to perform with blues guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins.
After leaving Texas and returning to North Carolina, he played from 1970 to 1997 with: Lou Curry Band, Dogmeat, Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, and Bessie Mae's Dream.
"[32] Bassist Leatherman lives in Kerrville, Texas, where he plays occasionally with local bands and fellow Elevator John Ike Walton.
Another partial reunion occurred at Liberty Lunch in Austin in 1984, with Roky alongside John Ike Walton on drums and Ronnie Leatherman on bass, with Sutherland's place taken by guitarist Greg Forest.
On May 10, 2015, members of the band (Erickson, Hall, Leatherman, and Walton) joined for a 50th Anniversary reunion concert appearance at the psychedelic music festival Austin Psych Fest (Levitation 2015).
In 2007, the band's biographer Paul Drummond published his first book, Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and The 13th Floor Elevators (Process Media, December 2007), which was based upon an extensive oral history.
In 2020, writer Paul Drummond published, through Anthology Editions, his second book on the group with "an unprecedented catalog of primary materials—including scores of previously-unseen band photographs, rare and iconic artwork of the era, items from family scrapbooks and personal diaries, new and archival interviews, dozens of contemporaneous press accounts, and no shortage of Austin Police Department records.
