13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History
$80.00
Author: Paul Drummond
Before the hippies, before the punks, there were the 13th Floor Elevators: an unlikely crew of outcast weirdo geniuses who changed musical culture. Through a rich and diverse array of primary materials – including previously unseen band photographs, rare artwork, items from family scrapbooks and diaries, new and archival interviews, dozens of press accounts, (and many Austin Police Department records!) – this impressive volume tells the complete and unvarnished story of the band. Born out of a union of club bands on the burgeoning Austin bohemian scene and a pronounced taste for hallucinogens, the 13th Floor Elevators were formed in late 1965 when lyricist Tommy Hallasked a local singer named Roky Erickson to join up with his new rock outfit. Four years, three official albums, and countless acid trips later, it was over: the Elevators’ pioneering first run ended in a dizzying jumble of professional mismanagement, internal arguments, drug busts, and forced psychiatric imprisonments. In their short existence, however, the group succeeded in blowing the lid off the budding musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinatory take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music.
