I Rocked With a Zombie
Roky Erickson’s usually cited claim to fame is the edgy psychedelic classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” recorded back in 1965 with the 13th Floor Elevators of Austin, Texas. Erickson and the Elevators’ drug theorist, Tommy Hall, sparked the band’s trippy fury with an odyssey of chemical experimentation notable even by the standards of the time; two classic albums, The Psychedelic Sounds of… and Easter Everywhere, were the result. But the band fell apart and Roky’s personal odyssey began soon after that. It included travel, disease, increasing mental problems, a pot bust, extensive psychotropic drugs prescribed by doctors, incarceration in a state hospital, an escape, a resulting three-year sentence to a hospital for the criminally insane, some scattered recording, a belief that he was from Mars, and other adventures.
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Erickson’s best work ranged from bayou howling that surpassed Creedence (“Don’t Slander Me”) to proto-hard-rock rumbling (“Don’t Shake Me Lucifer”) to effortless Buddy Holly-goes-to-Liverpool pop (“Nothing in Return”) to an odd sort of folk horror (“I Walked With a Zombie”). His peculiar tragedy is nicely captured in the fact that You’re Gonna Miss Me: The Best of Roky Erickson, which came out on Restless records in 1991, is at once a furious, awesome document and all the Roky you’ll ever need. The organizers of Austin’s South by Southwest music festival had been trying to put together an Erickson redux concert for years; they’d been hampered most recently by his being incarcerated yet again. (He’d been collecting his apartment neighbors’ mail and taping it to his walls; according to an article by Austin writer John Morthland, Erickson was diagnosed at the time as having organic brain damage.) In 1991 the festival managed to actually produce a Roky Erickson live onstage; but all he could do was squint his eyes and wave. But at the climax of last Wednesday’s Austin Music Awards, a pickup band led by guitarslinger Will Sexton walked out in front of the crowd at Palmer Auditorium. Center stage stood a vacant-stared street person, apparently just back from a day of dumpster diving. Erickson sported a lumberjack’s beard, a wino’s eyes, and a severe case of bed hair. He wore two clashing long-sleeved shirts and a discolored red jacket. Standing stiffly, his arms crossed protectively, he had the basic mien of a drunk enduring a few moments of salvation before getting fed, or a distracted dog going through his repertoire of tricks. Between verses he yawned.
