13th Floor Elevators - History: Falling Apart

History: Falling Apart

While the band were unable to repeat their national success, they were still a powerful presence on the Texas rock music scene. Chris Gerniottis, ex-lead singer of Zakary Thaks has spoken repeatedly of how the Elevators stood apart from all the other bands on the regional scene, and they continued to influence these bands during the late 1960s. Following the local popularity of the track "Slip Inside This House", an edited 45 was released in early '68 and saw plenty of rotation on Houston radio. Meanwhile, the Elevators had lost their bass player Dan Galindo, who went on to another International Artists band, the Rubiayat. Duke Davis was briefly brought in to replace Galindo, before the band's earlier bassist Ronnie Leatherman returned during the Summer of 1968. As documented in a lengthy interview/article in the Texas underground music magazine Mother No. 3, the band worked all Spring '68 on their new album, which at one point was to be called Beauty And The Beast. But an unstable member line-up, and the increasingly erratic behavior of the psychedelicized Tommy Hall and mentally fragile Roky Erickson, led to little of value coming out of these sessions. The live shows had lost their original energy, and often the band would perform without their lead singer Erickson, due to his recurring hospital treatments at the time. The last concert featuring the 'real' Elevators occurred in April 1968.

International Artists put out a Live LP c. August 1968, which was old demo tapes and outtakes dating back to 1966 for the most part, with some phony applause added. Around this time, the original 13th Floor Elevators disbanded, as the original nucleus of Erickson-Hall-Sutherland had been reduced to guitarist Stacy Sutherland only. Sutherland brought some of his own songs for a final set of studio sessions which led to the dark, intense posthumous album Bull Of The Woods. Initially disliked by many Elevators fans, it has found a substantial fan-base today, with some even rating it the band's best LP. These final sessions consisted of Sutherland on guitar, Ronnie Leatherman on bass, and Danny Thomas on drums. A few live gigs were played around Texas during the second half of 1968, until an 'obituary' in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1968 declared the band gone. International Artists pulled together the various studio recordings from 1968 and with the assistance of drummer Danny Thomas added some horn arrangements, which became the Bull Of The Woods album, released c. March 1969. The very last 13th Floor Elevators record released by International Artists was a reissue of the "You're Gonna Miss Me" 45, dating from c. mid-1969.

Singer Janis Joplin was a close associate of Clementine Hall and the band. She opened for the band at a benefit concert in Austin, and considered joining the group prior to heading to San Francisco and joining Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her style of singing has been described as having been influenced by Erickson's trademark screaming and yelping as showcased in "You're Gonna Miss Me."

Drug overuse and related legal problems left the band in a state of constant turmoil, which took its toll, both physically and mentally, on the members. In 1969, facing a felony marijuana possession charge, Roky Erickson chose to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital rather than serve a prison term, thus signaling the end of the band's career.

Bull of the Woods, released in 1969, was the 13th Floor Elevators' last released album on which they worked as a group and was largely the work of Stacy Sutherland. Erickson, due to health and legal problems, and Tommy Hall were only involved with a few tracks, including "Livin' On," "Never Another," "Dear Doctor Doom," and "May the Circle Remain Unbroken".