Synopsis
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 Hall asked 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. Writer Paul Drummond has gathered an unprecedented catalog of primary materials—including scores of previously-unseen band photographs, rare and iconic artwork of the era, items from family scrapbooks and personal diaries, new and archival interviews, dozens of contemporaneous press accounts, and no shortage of Austin Police Department records—to tell the complete and unvarnished story of a band which, until now, has been tragically underdocumented. Before the hippies, before the punks, there were the 13th Floor Elevators: an unlikely crew of outcast weirdo geniuses who changed culture.
About the Authors
Paul Drummond is a renowned antiquarian bookseller based in London. He’s the author of Eye Mind (2007), the exhaustive and definitive biography of the 13th Floor Elevators. Drummond has spent years documenting every aspect of the history of this amazing band, resulting in this comprehensive work. 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History places the band finally and undeniably in the pantheon of innovators of American rock music to which they have always belonged.
Jon Savage is an English writer and music journalist. Beginning his career in 1976, he published the punk fanzine London's Outrage before moving on to write about music and pop culture for major publications including Sounds, Melody Maker, The Face, New Statesman, and The Observer. In 1991, he released England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, the award-winning definitive history of punk in the United Kingdom. He continues to be a regular contributor to The Observer Music Monthly and MOJO. Savage's most recent books are 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded and The Searing Light, the Sun & Everything Else, an oral history of Joy Division.
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