‘The Evil One’: did Roky Erickson invent acid sci-fi?
One seminal band of the 1960s’ heady counterculture didn’t just prove influential on the era’s psychedelia but is credited with coining the very term. Flashing business cards back in 1966 with the tag ‘psychedelic rock‘, Texas garage trippers The 13th Floor Elevators conjured a deeply lysergic yet atypical slice of freaky acid-fried proto-punk. Frontman Roky Erickson’s reverb-soaked guitar attack twisted with Tommy Hall’s hypnotic electric jug, cutting a distinctly surreal yet raw hard blues that effectively scored flower power while keeping one foot in the southern underground.
They were also keen devourers of copious amounts of LSD. Giving troubled Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson a run for his money, the band would regularly drop tabs before a show and actively encouraged acid use on their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators‘ sleeve notes, boldly praising the drug’s consciousness expanding possibilities. “It has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view,” Hall wrote. “He then can restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely.”
Robust sanity, unfortunately, wasn’t in Erickson’s reach. Incessant hallucinogens and underlying mental health issues resulted in eventual incarceration at Cherokee County’s Rusk State Hospital, enduring electroconvulsive therapy and the weathering effects of antipsychotic medication until his release in 1972. Writing songs and poetry during his forced stay, an initial preoccupation with Christian mysticism and themes of brotherly love soon gave way to the horror and sci-fi of his youth.
“I’m a horror lover, and that’s what I’m into now. I’m trying to horrify them, demonise them, and ‘possessionise’ them,” Erickson told Fort Worth Star Telegram in 1981, confessing the keen departure from his earlier psychedelia. “I guess that would be a really good way to describe what I do. All my life, I’ve run into people who said, ‘If you read too much of that horror, it’s going to hurt you.’ They were always trying to take it away from me. But people love monsters. They love horror movies and I just figured it would be kind of neat to put it all into music.”
Forming Blieb Alien in 1974, ‘Blieb’ an anagram for ‘bible’ and ‘Alien’ a German pun on ‘allein’, ‘alone’ in English, Erickson swapped God for Satan and imbued his haunting experiences in a psychiatric unit with demonic overtones, ‘Don’t Shake Me Lucifer’ and ‘I Walked with a Zombie’ unsettling explorations of Thorazine doses’ lethargic side-effects, and ‘Bloody Hammer’ lambasting some of the staff who treated him, including the site’s real Dr O’Chane.
Produced by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, the now-renamed Roky Erickson and The Aliens’ debut album sessions were fraught with recurring episodes of psychological instability. Becoming increasingly unreliable, Cook ended up having to edit the material recorded and construct the record piece by piece with the material sufficient to work with and The Aliens’ backing tracks. Suffering another psychotic episode and spending 90 days in Austin State Hospital, Cook and manager Craig Luckin chaperoned Erickon during his permitted day trips to the city’s Hound Sound Studios to record the remaining vocal tracks.
Its eventual release was shrouded in confusion due to the UK and US labels’ butchering of the record’s tracklist and album artwork. Wanting the album to be titled The Evil One, CBS went ahead and slapped an eponymous name for its 1980 British release, while the States’ 415 Records honoured the desired title but added numerous studio cuts without Erickson’s blessing. Subsequent remasters and digital releases have compiled the respective song lists into a definitive 15-track bumper creature feature under its true The Evil One heading.
So, did The Evil One birth acid sci-fi?
Dropped amid a new wave climate revering The 13th Floor Elevators’ garage influence, The Evil One‘s raging hard rock assaults haunted by vampires and ghosts perfectly chimed with the feral punks like The Cramps or Butthole Surfers, whose drummer King Coffey would later produce 1995’s All That May Do My Rhyme.
While not inventing ‘acid sci-fi’ (that claim surely goes to Chrome or even Silver Apples), The Evil One stands as one of its finest examples.
