The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Back in the nineties, Super Furry Animals bought a tank and drove it to festivals. When, years later, a member was asked why, he said, “That’s what happens when you take four trips a week for a year.” But what happens when you take far more acid, for far longer? The answers lie in Eye Mind, which details the history of The 13th Floor Elevators, perhaps the most unhinged band ever.

Formed in Texas in the mid-sixties, the Elevators included a certain Tommy Hall, a manipulative bully who combined conservative politics with a lunatic zeal for LSD. Hall saw acid as a path to “pure sanity” and insisted his band-mates take it not just before every gig, but before every rehearsal. The results were some classic records, a new genre (psychedelic rock), and more nervous breakdowns than you can count.

Hall wrote lyrics that expounded his psychedelic philosophies. He also made a gimmicky sonic contribution by singing into an amplified jug, which both differentiated the Elevators and earned him the resentment of certain band-mates. However, fragile singer Roky Erickson was firmly under Hall’s spell, with tragic consequences.

Chart history records the Elevators as a one-hit wonder; but what a hit. Powered by spine-tingling vocals, ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ survives even the revelation that a 15-year-old Erickson wrote it with his mother in mind. Post-hit, the Elevators departed from all conventions in their bid to “play the acid”. Their druggy reputation would draw unwelcome attention from the Texas Rangers.

The Elevators’ story proves a catalogue of bad business decisions and missed opportunities. When they were busted for pot in Austin (at a time when pot was more stigmatised than crack is today), they decamped to San Francisco, but they’d left by the time SF’s psychedelic scene captured the world’s imagination. In any case, they’d been too far out to fit in. Even The Grateful Dead couldn’t believe that the Elevators took acid before gigs.

Back in Texas, the Elevators fell apart. Hall immersed himself in theories linking religion to LSD and wrote the dazzling ‘Slip Inside This House’, but then mania took hold. He fed acid to a capuchin monkey, convinced it would evolve into a higher being. He transcribed a map of the Holy Land on one of Texas, and declared Houston the New Jerusalem. He tormented his teenage girlfriend with his sexual jealousy (she wasn’t allowed to eat sausages). He ended up living in a cave with an acid cult.

Though on heroin, guitarist Stacy Sutherland was the only Elevator together enough to write the third album, but later a spell in jail led to alcoholism, and at 32 he was shot dead during a domestic. Roky Erickson, meanwhile, suffered repeated schizophrenic episodes. He became convinced that the Russians were sending messages to his teeth, telling him to kill Jacqueline Kennedy. After a pot bust he endured a period in a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. He’s since managed to invent another genre with his ‘horror rock’ solo records, but he has also, at various points, become a preacher, declared himself an alien, and allowed his teeth to rot. Still, Erickson remains a musician’s musician. Television, Primal Scream and Spacemen 3 have covered his songs. He’s revered by Josh Homme, Julian Cope and Patti Smith. Henry Rollins funded dental work.

As a storyteller, Paul Drummond has irritating quirks: he forgets what he has and hasn’t told you, and buries illuminating details in footnotes. He also betrays ignorance about mental illness, particularly when he quotes Antonin Artaud’s absurd theories. However, his love for his subject wins the day.

Two major lessons can be drawn from this fascinating book. Lesson one: LSD can stoke creativity. Lesson two: it’ll cost ya.