Artist info:
Also known as
Verified yes
GenreRock, Rock & Roll, Ethnic/Folk
Rank9,121 (new)
Albums32
Songs101
AboutThe 13th Floor Elevators were an American rock band from Austin, Texas, formed by guitarist and vocalist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall, and guitarist Stacy Sutherland. The band existed from 1965 to 1969. During their career, the band released four LP records and seven 45s for the International Artists record label.
They were one of the first psychedelic bands. The 2005 documentary You're Gonna Miss Me credits Tommy Hall with coining the term psychedelic rock, though artists such as the Holy Modal Rounders and the Deep had described their music as "psychedelic" earlier. 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.
Their debut 45 You're Gonna Miss Me, a national Billboard No. 55 hit in 1966, was featured on the 1972 compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, which is considered vital in the history of garage rock and the development of punk rock. Seminal punk band Television played their song Fire Engine live in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s–1990s, the 13th Floor Elevators influenced important bands such as Primal Scream, the Shamen, and Spacemen 3, all of whom covered their songs, and 14 Iced Bears who use an electric jug on their single Beautiful Child. In 2009, the International Artists released a ten CD box set entitled Sign of the 3-Eyed Men, which included the mono and new, alternate stereo mixes of the original albums together with two albums of previously unreleased material and a number of rare live recordings.
The 13th Floor Elevators emerged on the local Austin music scene in December 1965, 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.[8] Tommy Hall was instrumental in bringing the band members together, and joined the group as lyricist and electric jug player. The band's name developed from a suggestion by drummer John Ike Walton to use the name Elevators. Clementine Hall added 13th Floor.[9] In addition to an awareness that a number of tall buildings in the US lack a designated 13th floor, it has been noted that the letter "M" (for marijuana) is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.[8]
In early January 1966, producer Gordon Bynum brought the band to Houston to record two songs to release as a 45 on his newly formed Contact label. The songs were Erickson's You're Gonna Miss Me, and Hall-Sutherland's Tried to Hide. The 45 was a big success in Austin, and made an impression in other Texas cities. Some months later, the International Artists label picked it up and re-released it.
Throughout the Spring of 1966, the group toured extensively in Texas, playing clubs in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. They also played on live teen dance shows on TV, such as Sumpin Else, in Dallas, and The Larry Kane Show in Houston. 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. In October 1966, it peaked on the national Billboard chart at the No. 55 position. Prompted by the success of the 45 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.
The International Artists record label in Houston, also home to contemporary Texas underground groups such as Red Krayola and Bubble Puppy, signed the Elevators to a record contract and released the album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in November 1966, which became popular among the burgeoning counterculture.[8] Tommy Hall's sleeve-notes for the album, which advocated chemical agents (such as LSD) as a gateway to a higher, 'non-Aristotelian' state of consciousness, has also contributed to the album's legendary status.
During their California tour, the band shared bills with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Great Society with Grace Slick, and Moby Grape. On returning to Texas in early 1967, they released a 45, Levitation, and continued to play live in Austin, Houston and other Texas cities. In November of 1967, the band released a second album, Easter Everywhere. Highlighted by the opening track, Slip Inside This House, many critics and fans consider the album their finest work. It also featured a cover of Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. However, shortly before work began on Easter Everywhere, Walton and Leatherman left the band because of disputes over mismanagement of the band's career by International Artists and a fundamental disagreement between Walton and Hall over the latter's overzealous advocacy of the use of LSD in the pursuit of achieving a higher state of human consciousness. As a result, they were not credited in the Easter Everywhere sleevenotes, despite having appeared on (I've Got) Levitation and She Lives (In a Time of Her Own). Despite the lengthy studio work and resources utilized, and the album's later legendary status, Easter Everywhere was not the success the band and International Artists had hoped for. Lacking a hit 45 and released too late in the year, it sold out its original run but was never reprinted, suggesting somewhat disappointing sales. Record label paperwork indicate that the debut LP sold upwards of 40,000 copies during its original run, while Easter Everywhere may have sold around 10,000 copies.
While the band were unable to repeat their national success, they were still a powerful presence on the Texas rock music scene. Chris Gerniottis, ex-lead singer of Zakary Thaks has spoken repeatedly of how the Elevators stood apart from all the other bands on the regional scene, and they continued to influence these bands during the late 1960s. Following the local popularity of the track Slip Inside This House, an edited 45 was released in early '68 and saw plenty of rotation on Houston radio. Meanwhile, the Elevators had lost their bass player Dan Galindo, who went on to another International Artists band, the Rubiayat. Duke Davis briefly replaced Galindo, before the band's earlier bassist Ronnie Leatherman returned in the Summer of 1968. As documented in a lengthy interview and article in the Texas underground music magazine Mother No. 3, the band worked all Spring of 1968 on their new album, which at one point was to be called Beauty and the Beast. 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 c. August 1968, which was composed of old demo tapes and outtakes dating back to 1966 for the most part, with some phony applause added. Around this time, the original 13th Floor Elevators disbanded, as the original nucleus of Erickson-Hall-Sutherland had been reduced to guitarist Stacy Sutherland only. 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. Initially disliked by many Elevators fans, it has found a substantial fan-base today, with some even rating it the band's best LP. These final sessions consisted of Sutherland on guitar, Ronnie Leatherman on bass, and Danny Thomas on drums. A few live gigs were played around Texas during the second half of 1968, until an 'obituary' in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1968 declared the band gone. 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 c. March 1969. The very last 13th Floor Elevators record released by International Artists was a reissue of the You're Gonna Miss Me 45, dating from c. mid-1969.
Singer Janis Joplin was a close associate of Clementine Hall and the band. She opened for the band at a benefit concert in Austin, and considered joining the group prior to heading to San Francisco and joining Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her style of singing has been described as having been influenced by Erickson's trademark screaming and yelping as showcased in You're Gonna Miss Me.
Drug overuse and related legal problems left the band in a state of constant turmoil, which took its toll, both physically and mentally, on the members. 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.
Bull of the Woods, released in 1969, was the 13th Floor Elevators' last released album on which they worked as a group, and was largely the work of Stacy Sutherland. 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.
During the initial months of their existence as a band, the electric guitars used both by Roky Erickson and Stacy Sutherland were Gibson ES-330s. 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. According to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top in the documentary You're Gonna Miss Me, the guitars were run through Fender Blackface Twin Reverbs, Fender Reverb Units (referred to as a "tube reverb" or "reverb tank"), and Gibson Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tones.
A special aspect of The Elevators' sound came from Tommy Hall's innovative electric jug. The jug, a crock-jug with a microphone held up to it while it was being blown, sounded somewhat like a cross between a minimoog and cuica drum. In contrast to traditional musical jug technique, Hall did not blow into the jug to produce a tuba-like sound. Instead, he vocalized musical runs into the mouth of the jug, using the jug to create echo and distortion of his voice. When playing live, he held the microphone up to the mouth of the jug, but when recording the Easter Everywhere album, the recording engineer placed a microphone inside the jug to enhance the sound.
The band was unique, even in the 1960s, in that they (at Tommy Hall's urging) played most of their live shows and recorded their albums while under the influence of LSD, and built their lifestyle and music around the psychedelic experience. 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.
They were one of the first psychedelic bands. The 2005 documentary You're Gonna Miss Me credits Tommy Hall with coining the term psychedelic rock, though artists such as the Holy Modal Rounders and the Deep had described their music as "psychedelic" earlier. 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.
Their debut 45 You're Gonna Miss Me, a national Billboard No. 55 hit in 1966, was featured on the 1972 compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, which is considered vital in the history of garage rock and the development of punk rock. Seminal punk band Television played their song Fire Engine live in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s–1990s, the 13th Floor Elevators influenced important bands such as Primal Scream, the Shamen, and Spacemen 3, all of whom covered their songs, and 14 Iced Bears who use an electric jug on their single Beautiful Child. In 2009, the International Artists released a ten CD box set entitled Sign of the 3-Eyed Men, which included the mono and new, alternate stereo mixes of the original albums together with two albums of previously unreleased material and a number of rare live recordings.
The 13th Floor Elevators emerged on the local Austin music scene in December 1965, 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.[8] Tommy Hall was instrumental in bringing the band members together, and joined the group as lyricist and electric jug player. The band's name developed from a suggestion by drummer John Ike Walton to use the name Elevators. Clementine Hall added 13th Floor.[9] In addition to an awareness that a number of tall buildings in the US lack a designated 13th floor, it has been noted that the letter "M" (for marijuana) is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.[8]
In early January 1966, producer Gordon Bynum brought the band to Houston to record two songs to release as a 45 on his newly formed Contact label. The songs were Erickson's You're Gonna Miss Me, and Hall-Sutherland's Tried to Hide. The 45 was a big success in Austin, and made an impression in other Texas cities. Some months later, the International Artists label picked it up and re-released it.
Throughout the Spring of 1966, the group toured extensively in Texas, playing clubs in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. They also played on live teen dance shows on TV, such as Sumpin Else, in Dallas, and The Larry Kane Show in Houston. 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. In October 1966, it peaked on the national Billboard chart at the No. 55 position. Prompted by the success of the 45 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.
The International Artists record label in Houston, also home to contemporary Texas underground groups such as Red Krayola and Bubble Puppy, signed the Elevators to a record contract and released the album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in November 1966, which became popular among the burgeoning counterculture.[8] Tommy Hall's sleeve-notes for the album, which advocated chemical agents (such as LSD) as a gateway to a higher, 'non-Aristotelian' state of consciousness, has also contributed to the album's legendary status.
During their California tour, the band shared bills with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Great Society with Grace Slick, and Moby Grape. On returning to Texas in early 1967, they released a 45, Levitation, and continued to play live in Austin, Houston and other Texas cities. In November of 1967, the band released a second album, Easter Everywhere. Highlighted by the opening track, Slip Inside This House, many critics and fans consider the album their finest work. It also featured a cover of Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. However, shortly before work began on Easter Everywhere, Walton and Leatherman left the band because of disputes over mismanagement of the band's career by International Artists and a fundamental disagreement between Walton and Hall over the latter's overzealous advocacy of the use of LSD in the pursuit of achieving a higher state of human consciousness. As a result, they were not credited in the Easter Everywhere sleevenotes, despite having appeared on (I've Got) Levitation and She Lives (In a Time of Her Own). Despite the lengthy studio work and resources utilized, and the album's later legendary status, Easter Everywhere was not the success the band and International Artists had hoped for. Lacking a hit 45 and released too late in the year, it sold out its original run but was never reprinted, suggesting somewhat disappointing sales. Record label paperwork indicate that the debut LP sold upwards of 40,000 copies during its original run, while Easter Everywhere may have sold around 10,000 copies.
While the band were unable to repeat their national success, they were still a powerful presence on the Texas rock music scene. Chris Gerniottis, ex-lead singer of Zakary Thaks has spoken repeatedly of how the Elevators stood apart from all the other bands on the regional scene, and they continued to influence these bands during the late 1960s. Following the local popularity of the track Slip Inside This House, an edited 45 was released in early '68 and saw plenty of rotation on Houston radio. Meanwhile, the Elevators had lost their bass player Dan Galindo, who went on to another International Artists band, the Rubiayat. Duke Davis briefly replaced Galindo, before the band's earlier bassist Ronnie Leatherman returned in the Summer of 1968. As documented in a lengthy interview and article in the Texas underground music magazine Mother No. 3, the band worked all Spring of 1968 on their new album, which at one point was to be called Beauty and the Beast. 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 c. August 1968, which was composed of old demo tapes and outtakes dating back to 1966 for the most part, with some phony applause added. Around this time, the original 13th Floor Elevators disbanded, as the original nucleus of Erickson-Hall-Sutherland had been reduced to guitarist Stacy Sutherland only. 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. Initially disliked by many Elevators fans, it has found a substantial fan-base today, with some even rating it the band's best LP. These final sessions consisted of Sutherland on guitar, Ronnie Leatherman on bass, and Danny Thomas on drums. A few live gigs were played around Texas during the second half of 1968, until an 'obituary' in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1968 declared the band gone. 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 c. March 1969. The very last 13th Floor Elevators record released by International Artists was a reissue of the You're Gonna Miss Me 45, dating from c. mid-1969.
Singer Janis Joplin was a close associate of Clementine Hall and the band. She opened for the band at a benefit concert in Austin, and considered joining the group prior to heading to San Francisco and joining Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her style of singing has been described as having been influenced by Erickson's trademark screaming and yelping as showcased in You're Gonna Miss Me.
Drug overuse and related legal problems left the band in a state of constant turmoil, which took its toll, both physically and mentally, on the members. 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.
Bull of the Woods, released in 1969, was the 13th Floor Elevators' last released album on which they worked as a group, and was largely the work of Stacy Sutherland. 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.
During the initial months of their existence as a band, the electric guitars used both by Roky Erickson and Stacy Sutherland were Gibson ES-330s. 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. According to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top in the documentary You're Gonna Miss Me, the guitars were run through Fender Blackface Twin Reverbs, Fender Reverb Units (referred to as a "tube reverb" or "reverb tank"), and Gibson Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tones.
A special aspect of The Elevators' sound came from Tommy Hall's innovative electric jug. The jug, a crock-jug with a microphone held up to it while it was being blown, sounded somewhat like a cross between a minimoog and cuica drum. In contrast to traditional musical jug technique, Hall did not blow into the jug to produce a tuba-like sound. Instead, he vocalized musical runs into the mouth of the jug, using the jug to create echo and distortion of his voice. When playing live, he held the microphone up to the mouth of the jug, but when recording the Easter Everywhere album, the recording engineer placed a microphone inside the jug to enhance the sound.
The band was unique, even in the 1960s, in that they (at Tommy Hall's urging) played most of their live shows and recorded their albums while under the influence of LSD, and built their lifestyle and music around the psychedelic experience. 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.
Most Popular Songs (More)
Most Popular Albums (More)
Artists you may also like
Pictures (0)
no pictures
Fans (1)
