{"id":21325,"date":"2021-07-27T05:30:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T09:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21325"},"modified":"2021-07-28T14:26:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T18:26:24","slug":"remembering-roky-erickson-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/27\/remembering-roky-erickson-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Roky Erickson, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"Bill Miller would play amplified autoharp in Roky\u2019s late \u201870s band, The Aliens, but by that time he had been a fan for years. He says that Roky was always unpredictable. \u201cOne thing about working with Roky: any day might be the last day,\u201d he says. \u201cBack in the days of The Elevators, the big draw was, \u2018You better go see him, because this is definitely it. This’ll probably be the last time.\u2019\u201d He laughs and adds, \u201cThey were on their last legs at their very first<\/i> gig<\/i>! So, that’s a pretty compelling draw, you know? \u2018You don’t want to miss this no matter what.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Bentley grew up in Houston; he was a fan right from the start. \u201cWhen The Elevators first started playing in Houston, it was at a club called La Maison in January of \u201866,\u201d he says. \u201cI became a maniacal, completely over-the-top fan of The 13th Floor Elevators.\u201d Noting that he has seen nearly every rock band of note, Bentley remains convinced that the Elevators \u201cwere the best band I ever saw live. Better than the Beatles, better than the Stones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentley says that Roky\u2019s band \u201chad this other-worldly power, because they were writing about all kinds of spiritual, metaphysical, psychological things.\u201d Much of the inspiration for the music, he notes, came from a notable source: \u201cIt was LSD!\u201d<\/p>\n

Roky had a relationship with the Bay Area that went back to his Elevators days. The band played a run of dates at The Avalon in 1966. \u201cTheir little bit of Heaven was those couple of months they spent in San Francisco,\u201d says Bill Bentley. He recalls asking Neil Young, whose band Buffalo Springfield had opened for the Elevators, what he thought of the band. \u201cWow,\u201d Young told him, \u201cThat jug was loud!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Elevators were volatile; drug busts and their wild reputation made regular touring a challenge. By the time the band released its third album, 1969\u2019s Bull of the Woods<\/i>, the group had already disintegrated. That same year, guitarist, singer and songwriter Roky Erickson was arrested for possession of one joint; to avoid Texas\u2019 extreme punishment for such an offense, Erickson pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. Admitted to a series of state-run mental hospitals, he was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatments. Already fragile, Erickson \u2013 who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia \u2013 would never fully recover.<\/p>\n

Concerned friends and associates did what they could to help Erickson continue to make music; he recorded tracks with fellow inmates, including a convicted multiple murderer. Judged sane in 1972, Erickson was released from the mental hospital, though he would return again many times. Save for a pair of 1977 singles, Erickson didn\u2019t release any music during the 1970s. But as that decade headed to a close, he traveled to California with The Aliens.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo courtesy Light in the Attic<\/p><\/div>\n

While in the Bay Area, The Aliens would make what would become The Evil One<\/i>. Producing those sessions was Stu Cook, best known not as a behind-the-console figure but instead as the bassist of one of America\u2019s best-loved bands, Creedence Clearwater Revival.<\/p>\n

Craig Luckin had been Roky\u2019s manager for some time; he knew Stu Cook on a casual basis, and approached him about working with his mercurial client. A longtime fan, Cook was eager to take on the project. But Erickson was going through one of his more challenging times, Cook says. \u201cHe could sing and write and keep it together to do a live show, but he was too agitated to spend a lot of time in the recording environment. Sometimes he’d be incredibly coherent and focused and enthusiastic; other times, he’d be totally distracted or worried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recording commenced in San Anselmo and Oakland; those represented all of the instrumental parts. Once basic tracks were done, Roky left California, returning to his native Texas under circumstances that \u2013 like much of his life \u2013 remain shrouded in a haze of confusion and vagueness. There he was re-institutionalized. But there was still the matter of completing the vocals on the album. \u201cI had to get Roky out of Rusk State Mental Hospital in Texas to do the lead vocals on some tracks,\u201d Cook says. Luckin and Cook would check Roky out on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Roky\u2019s songs of that period displayed a fascination with horror movies, the occult and other esoterica. The song titles help tell the story: \u201cBloody Hammer,\u201d \u201cI Walked With a Zombie,\u201d \u201cCreature With the Atom Brain,\u201d \u201cNight of the Vampire,\u201d \u201cI Think of Demons\u201d and \u201cIf You Have Ghosts\u201d are representative samples. Cook would eventually assemble 15 songs from the sessions.
\nWhen the record was finished, Craig Luckin turned to the task of finding a way to release it. Ten songs were released in the UK as Roky Erickson and the Aliens<\/i> (though it\u2019s sometimes considered an untitled album). The terms of Luckin\u2019s agreement with CBS stipulated that Roky\u2019s manager retained the rights to make a separate deal for releasing the recordings in the United States.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Bill Miller would play amplified autoharp in Roky\u2019s late \u201870s band, The Aliens, but by that time he had been a fan for years. He says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,57,62],"tags":[4601,326,4600,1878,2443],"class_list":["post-21325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-psych","category-rawk","tag-billy-f-gibbons","tag-black-angels","tag-neko-case","tag-roky-erickson","tag-stu-cook","cat-41-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21356,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21325\/revisions\/21356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}