The 13th Floor Elevators

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The 13th Floor Elevators
General information
Genre (s) Rock , psychedelic rock
founding 1965
resolution 1969
Founding members
Roky Erickson
guitar
 Stacy Sutherland
Tommy Hall
Bennie Thurman
John Ike Walton

The 13th Floor Elevators were an American rock band formed in Austin , Texas in the fall of 1965 by Roky Erickson , Tommy Hall, Bennie Thurman, Stacy Sutherland and John Ike Walton. The band name refers to the 13th letter of the alphabet, the M, and this stood for marijuana that made you "high", that is, brought you to the top like an elevator. Another interpretation says that due to triskaidekaphobia in the number of floors in many American skyscrapers, 12 is followed by 14 and the band name is a paradox.

Band history

The only chart positioning was achieved by the single You're Gonna Miss Me . It ranked 55th in the United States in 1966. Erickson had released a first recording of this song in 1965 with his old band The Spades , which he left shortly afterwards. The 13th Floor Elevators it came in early 1966 to a new recording of the song and a publication under the Contact - label , which became a local success. The takeover of the single by the Houston International Artists label in the same year then hit the Billboard charts . Soon thereafter, an invitation on Dick Clark's television show American Bandstand followed .

In the same year the band released the first album The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators . The band was the first to market itself under the term Psychedelic . Just two weeks later, the Grateful Dead also picked up the term. By 1968 the 13th Floor Elevators played two more studio albums. The Elevators were known for their consumption of marijuana and LSD (the latter was still legal for a short time when the band started out), only drummer John Ike Walton distanced himself from it early after he had had bad experiences with his second LSD trip . Regular checks by the Texan police were the result. After Erickson, who had been treated for schizophrenia the previous year , was finally apprehended in Austin in 1969 with a small amount of marijuana, he pleaded on the advice of his attorney for incapacitation in order to avoid a prison sentence of up to ten years (the sentences for Marijuana holdings were not significantly reduced in Texas until after 1970). After he had escaped from a mental hospital in Austin several times, he was finally transferred for several years to a better secured mental institution in Rusk , in which predominantly serious violent criminals, rapists and murderers were held. The band broke up in 1969. After the dissolution there were some projects of the respective members, but never a serious reunification. A tragedy also occurred in 1978 when Stacy Sutherland was shot dead by his wife during a serious argument.

music

The band's music was clearly characterized by rhythm & blues and was comparable to the style of the Rolling Stones and the young Frank Zappa (Slip inside this house - Trouble every day) in the 1960s. What was unusual, however, was the energetic, shrieking voice of Roky Erickson and the boy from Tommy Hall, electrically amplified with a microphone . The youth stands in the tradition of the blues and mainly replaced the bulky and expensive double bass during the 1930s . Basically, it was a larger, bulbous bottle that was blown into. Such bands were known as jug bands . Tommy Hall used it to create high, rhythmic staccato tones , the frequency and pitch of which varied slightly. This created a sound carpet in the background of the music, which gave the band a unique and unusual character.

In addition to the Amazing Charlatans , The 13th Floor Elevators were the first band to play live under the influence of LSD. They saw themselves as a better live band though. The 13th Floor Elevators also had external songwriters. These included Tommy Hall's wife, Clementin Hall (Splash 1 , I Had to Tell You) and Powell St. John (Kingdom of Heaven , Monkey Island , You Don't Know , Take That Girl , Right Track Now), who was in The 1960s also influenced many other musicians in Austin, Texas.

The pieces You're Gonna Miss Me and Slip Inside This House as well as the album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators are now among the classics of garage rock and psychedelic rock .

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
You're gonna miss me
  US 55 08/20/1966 (5 weeks)

Albums

EPs

  • 1966: You're Gonna Miss Me / Tried to Hide / Reverberation
  • 1978: Live in Austin, Texas 1967 (3 track EP)

Compilations

  • 1985: Fire in My Bones
  • 1987: Elevator Tracks
  • 1988: Easter Everywhere / Bull of the Woods
  • 1988: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators / Live
  • 1991: The Collection
  • 1991: The Magic of the Pyramids (as Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators)
  • 1992: Another Dimension
  • 1993: Best of the 13th Floor Elevators
  • 1993: Les génies du Rock n ° 056: You're Gonna Miss Me
  • 1994: Paradise Lost - Texas Rockmusic Heritage, Vol. 2
  • 1994: 1966-1967 Unreleased Masters Collection
  • 1995: The Best of 13th Floor Elevators
  • 1997: All Time Highs
  • 1997: The Best Of… Manicure Your Mind
  • 1997: The Masters
  • 1998: Through the Rhythm
  • 1999: The Interpreter
  • 1999: The Interpreter Vol. 2
  • 1999: His Eye Is on the Pyramid
  • 2000: Up on the 13th Floor
  • 2001: The Legendary Group at Their Best
  • 2002: The Psychedelic World of the 13th Floor Elevators
  • 2002: Absolutely the Best of the 13th Floor Elevators
  • 2004: Going Up - The Very Best of
  • 2009: Sign of the 3 Eyed Man (10-CD-Box + Book)
  • 2011: Rockius of Levitatum
  • 2011: Music of the Spheres - The Ultimate 13th Floor Elevator Vinyl Box Set (10 LPs)

Singles

  • 1966: Reverberation / Fire Engine
  • 1966: You're Gonna Miss Me / Tried to Hide
  • 1967: Levitation / Before You Accuse Me
  • 1967: She Lives (In a Time of Her Own) / Baby Blue
  • 1967: Slip Inside This House / Splash 1
  • 1968: Livin 'On / Scarlet and Gold
  • 1968: May the Circle Remain Unbroken / I'm Gonna Love You Too
  • 1996: Levitation

literature

  • Paul Drummond: Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and The 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound , Los Angeles 2007, ISBN 0976082268 .

Web links

Commons : Roky Erickson  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Audio samples

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stacy Keith Sutherland
  2. ↑ Definitive Albums: The 13th Floor Elevators 'The Psychedelic Sounds of ..' (1966), The Infinitely Influential Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / altmusic.about.com
  3. ↑ Chart sources: US