Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound

Call it superstitious or silly, many tall buildings do not have a 13th floor so Roky Erickson played on this idea giving birth to the first psychedelic rock group called the 13th Floor Elevators. Somebody should have told Roky not to name a band after such an bad luck omen, because after the release of their premiere album, the group was involved in a series of bad luck events and the murky annals of rock history bestowed the psychedelic crown on other bands of the time who mimicked the sound and ran with the success.

Roky Erickson was the real-life poster boy of Ken Kesey’s , “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, who unintentionally ended up in a mental institution for many years. His band-mates didn’t fare any better. Tommy Hall, ended up living in a cave and Stacy Sutherland was sent to prison. The drummer was subject to electric shock treatments, and the bass player was sent to the Vietnam War. For the first time we can finally read what happened to the group as Paul Drummond brings us the full story in his book called Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound