{"id":21327,"date":"2021-07-28T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21327"},"modified":"2021-07-21T12:27:58","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T16:27:58","slug":"remembering-roky-erickson-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/28\/remembering-roky-erickson-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Roky Erickson, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"But Luckin \u201ccouldn’t find any commercial American label that wanted to put this guy out,\u201d says Chris Knab, co-founder of San Francisco-based independent label 415 Records. Selecting songs from the UK release and adding five other tracks from the sessions, 415 released the music as The Evil One<\/i> in 1980. Taken together, Erickson\u2019s recordings from that period are hailed among his best work.<\/p>\n

In the late \u201870s, Barry Simons ran a popular North Beach nightclub, the Back Dor. And Simons\u2014who considers The Evil One<\/i> one of the greatest records of all time\u2014says that he booked Roky every chance he got. \u201cI was basically cherry picking all the best bands from the Mabuhay Gardens and other places,\u201d he says. \u201cRoky was one of the really important ones. And I could get any of the best bands in town to support Roky, because they all wanted to be on the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roky would go on to make some additional recordings in the coming years; flashes of his brilliance showed up in the lyrics and the playing. But his mental health issues persisted, as did his run-ins with the law. He was arrested on mail theft charges. \u201cRoky did<\/i> take his neighbor’s mail,\u201d says Bentley, who had become friends with Erickson in the mid 1970s. \u201cBut he taped it to his wall unopened. He did not open their mail! He just liked getting<\/i> mail. When he’d get cards \u2013 \u2018Join this,\u2019 \u2018Join that\u2019 \u2013 he would send them all in. I think it was his security blanket.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1990 Bill Bentley was a well-known and influential music industry figure; he organized an all-star tribute to Roky, the album Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye<\/i>. That CD featured 19 contemporary artists \u2013 ZZ Top, Butthole Surfers, R.E.M., Julian Cope, former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd, The Jesus and Mary Chain and others \u2013 interpreting music from Roky\u2019s solo and Elevators days. Proceeds went toward helping defray Roky\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n

Things got somewhat better for Erickson in the \u201890s and beyond. His youngest brother Sumner was named as Roky\u2019s legal guardian; he helped get the musician\u2019s affairs in order. In 2005, Roky was the subject of a well-received documentary, Keven McAlester\u2019s You\u2019re Gonna Miss Me<\/i>. That same year, Bill Bentley was executive producer of a career-spanning compilation release, I Have Always Been Here Before: The Roky Erickson Anthology<\/i>. Erickson rallied and got back to playing live; a 2007 performance at the Ponderosa Stomp Festival in New Orleans was a high point. Roky recorded a new album, 2010\u2019s True Love Cast Out All Evil<\/i>, with Okkervil River. And he toured to wide acclaim with acolytes The Black Angels in 2014.<\/p>\n

Bill Bentley has plenty of experience putting together heartfelt tribute albums. He was the executive producer for a set honoring San Francisco\u2019s own Skip Spence, 1999\u2019s More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album<\/i>, and he oversaw similar projects in tribute to Doug Sahm, O.V. Wright and others. As with those projects, the subjects of tributes may not have been household names, but they counted many revered artists among their most ardent fans.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image from the collection of Dwayne Mileham<\/p><\/div>\n

And that meant that when Bentley put out the call for what would become May the Circle Remain Unbroken<\/i>, he easily and quickly found willing contributors. Wilco\u2019s Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, Ty Segall, Mark Lanegan and Margo Price celebrate Roky\u2019s music on the tribute album with their versions of songs from his catalog. Along with The Black Angels, fellow Texans paying tribute to Erickson on the new album include Charlie Sexton (with The Kills\u2019 Alison Mosshart) and Gary Clark Jr. And the greater Bay Area is represented by recordings from Chelsea Wolfe and Brogan Bentley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s something going on with Roky’s legacy,\u201d Bentley believes. \u201cI was shown that by talking to young bands. In some ways, there’s more interest than the first [tribute album].\u201d And those who weren\u2019t able to participate sent their regrets. \u201cThere was interest from Metallica,\u201d Bentley says. But for scheduling reasons, they weren\u2019t able to take part. The 12 songs on the album \u2013 and the variety of participants \u2013 nonetheless demonstrate the breadth of Erickson\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n

Roky\u2019s physical health had been a longtime concern. Bill Bentley recalls seeing him onstage in April 2019 at The Chapel in San Francisco; Roky was there to perform The 13th<\/sup> Floor Elevators\u2019 1967 album, Easter Everywhere<\/i>, in its entirety. \u201cHe was sitting down, kind of remembering most of the lyrics, but he was having trouble breathing between songs,\u201d says Bentley. \u201cThis overwhelming spirit came over me, and it told me, \u2018Roky’s leaving.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentley says that toward the end of that performance, when Roky played \u201cPostures (Leave Your Body Behind),\u201d that feeling hit him even more forcefully. \u201cI left that show that night with my oldest boy, and I said, \u2018We have to do another tribute record for Roky, because I don’t think he’s going to be here much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

One month after Bentley saw Roky on stage at The Chapel, Erickson was gone. Bentley kept working on the project, working an arrangement with Matt Sullivan\u2019s Light in the Attic Records for a single-disc release on Record Store Day 2021. That label had reissued Roky\u2019s The Evil One<\/i> album in 2013. Bentley says that for Sullivan, \u201cit was spiritual to honor Roky’s memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentley reflects on the legacy of Roky Erickson. \u201cYou know, for somebody who really did almost lose it all, he never quit trying,\u201d he says. \u201cI look at that life, and I think, \u2018Man, it would’ve been so easy for him to just shut it all down and quit,\u2019 But he never did, man. He always came back.\u201d<\/p>\n

An edited version of this feature appeared in <\/i>SF Weekly. A more in-depth exploration of <\/i>The Evil One is featured in my upcoming book, <\/i>Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave, due later this year from HoZac Books.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… But Luckin \u201ccouldn’t find any commercial American label that wanted to put this guy out,\u201d says Chris Knab, co-founder of San Francisco-based independent label 415 Records. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21337,"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-21327","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\/21327","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=21327"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21342,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21327\/revisions\/21342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}