Roky Erickson

Born Roger Erkynard Erickson in 1947 in Dallas, Texas, Roky Erickson was founder member of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a US band which, in 1966, laid claim to being the world's first psychedelic rock band. Their debut was called The Psychedelic Sounds Of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and this was the first time the word psychedelic had been used to describe recorded music. A second album, Easter Everywhere, was released but by this time Erickson's erratic, eccentric behaviour had begun to kick in. In 1969, he was arrested (for the second time) for possession of cannabis, but rather than serve a short period of time in jail, he pleaded insanity. Following some months in Hedgecroft Hospital in Houston, where he was administered electroshock therapy - which clearly accentuated his eccentricities - he was sent to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Austin. While in Rusk, Erickson started a band with fellow inmates called The Missing Links, for which he wrote nearly 100 songs, befriended Jimmy Wolcott (an Elevator's fan who had murdered his family while blitzed from sniffing glue), and was again subjected to electroshock as well as liquid thorazine treatments. Through the efforts of his family and attorneys, Erickson was judged sane by a Travis County jury and released in late 1972. Following his release, he put together his first solo band, Blieb Alien (later shortened to The Aliens). Instead of the psychedelic ballads and swirling guitar work of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, The Aliens played hard rock with dark, horror-fuelled songs about gremlins, demons and vampires. While the occasional intrepid interviewer came away with great copy (Erickson has told numerous journalists that he is, in actual fact, a Martian), it became clear that he danced to the beat of a different rhythm section. Jailed once again in 1989, for stealing other people's mail (a misunderstanding, he claims), a tribute album, Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye, was organised and featured REM, Jesus And Mary Chain and ZZ Top. Although he released an album, All That May Do Rhyme, in 1995, he apparently no longer writes music and rarely performs. When last heard of, he was living in a federally-subsidised house in Del Valle, a tiny suburb southeast of Austin, Texas. Locals say he has several television and radio sets switched on at any given time. Although he is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, he takes little or no medication. Friends take him to dinner once a week, help him to pay his bills (lack of royalties has been a constant source of fiscal problems) and keep him company.

More on Erickson at www.erickson.com