Roky Erickson and the Aliens, “I Think of Demons” 1979(rec) 1986(comp)😈😈😈😈😈

I was deeply sad to hear last week of the demise of Roky Erickson, a tragic rock'n'roll hero and true original. As much as it's true that the originality of his work is closely connected with his mental health problems, I'd hate people to attribute his work to them: many have battled with schizophrenia, very few have made worthwhile art out of their demons. Roky became a local legend in the Austin scene quite early. He co-founded The 13th Floor Elevators at the age of 18 in '65, and had his biggest hit the next year with garage rocker "You're Gonna Miss Me", a classic break up song which has often been anthologized and covered since - you may also remember it from the movie High Fidelity. It's also the title of a -highly recommended- documentary on Erickson's life story. His first LP The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators (also 1966) is considered the first psychedelic album and was conceived as an inner journey to mystical "knowledge" through the use of LSD. Other musicians (Syd Barrett, Peter Green, Skip Spence) have had their careers wrecked by drugs-induced schizophrenia, but Roky seemed to cope well with drugs until the fateful moment of his arrest for the possession of a single marijuana joint in '69. Faced with the prospect of a 10-year jail sentence (Texan-style justice!) he chose to plead insanity and enter a psychiatric hospital, where he was involuntarily subjected to electro-shock therapy. After several escapes he was committed to Arkham (ehmm, sorry, Rusk State) maximum security hospital for the criminally insane together with axe murderers and the like. After 4 more years of electroshocks and huge doses of Thorazine, he was released in a pitiful state. What had been once just an unruly, drugs-experimenting, youth, was now convinced that his body was inhabited by aliens and saw demons lurking in every corner.

His new band, called Blieb Alien or simply The Aliens played a different style of music, closer to hard rock, while Roky screamed as if the horrors he sang about were real and chasing him. The lyrics are inspired by sci-fi and monster movies as well as his own nightmares. Even though the words aren't meant to be taken literally (he wasn't that crazy, at least not when he was released), he has admitted to conversing with Satan in the insane asylum, and was convinced that aliens walk among us on the Earth, often worried that his own body was taken over by one. His first post-asylum album was called The Evil One (I Think Of Demons is a partial reissue with slightly changed tracklisting). The title refers to Roky himself as he -the son of a repressive, fanatical Christian, mother- was convinced during his incarceration that only an alliance with Satan would help him get through the living hell of the asylum. Not that he ever seriously dabbled in Satanism, it was just a decision he had made in his head, and later reversed. The recording of the album was difficult, as Roky's concentration was fleeting.

It is a testament to the skill of producer (and former C.C.R. bassist) Stu Cook that it sounds as tight as it does, given that Roky's vocal had to be assembled from many different performances recorded in a period of two years. The band, on the other hand, sound fantastic, especially the duets of Duane Aslaksen on guitar and Bill Miller (former Cold Sun) on electric autoharp. The autoharp here is played like an electric guitar instead of the usual Celtic style, which has an other-worldly effect: the sound is reminiscent of twin lead guitar bands like Thin Lizzy or Wishbone Ash, but stranger. Opener "Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)" is a hard rocker with flaming guitars, shrieks and barks, and oblique, unsettling, lyrics. Improbably it's inspired by a true story: Soviet scientist and organ transplant pioneer Vladimir Demikhov had secretly experimented with head transplants, and even succeeded in creating two-headed dogs some of which survived for days after the operation. God knows what a fragile soul like Roky's, who had suffered for years in the hands of doctors, made of such facts. "Bloody Hammer" seems to be about his years in the asylum. Although the lyrics don't make any sense they conjure powerful and terrifying images: chains, ghosts, and psychiatrists making sure their patients don't "hammer their minds out". Sample verse: "I am the special one/My eyes, green and blue/And safely unbegotten/To the left to say "no"/While the others with their hair turned white/They just roll their eyes back to the top of their head/And hammer the attic floor with a bloody hammer/I never have the bloody hammer" What the hell was that about? I don't know but it's no harmless "I've-fallen-in-love-with-the-monster-man" Halloween fun, it's genuinely scary stuff. Compared to it, a song like the slow and ominous "Night Of The Vampire" with its Gothic organ is reassuringly rooted in classic horror literature. "Stand For The Fire Demon" is another theatrical and imposing semi-ballad, while the (literally) funereal-paced "I Walked With A Zombie" is strangely reminiscent of love songs by 50's girl groups. The rockabilly-ish "Don't Shake Me Lucifer" is about being tormented by Satan on a sleepless night, but on most songs he sings from the perspective of "the Evil One", some kind of demonic creature reveling in the darkness - though it's pretty obvious the singer chose to embrace his demons in order to appease them, somewhat similar to what he did when he had a notary officially declare him an alien in the eyes of the State, an act that had the desired effect of pacifying and silencing the inner voices. One of too many crazy stories about Roky, we'll save some for another post. Most of the other songs in the LP are fast rockers featuring guitar/autoharp duets, powerful singing and occult lyrics, each of them a classic. The album appeared in 1980 with partially different songs and titles (as Roky Erickson & The Aliens, The Evil One, and -later- as I Think Of Demons). It remains his best, and most cohesive, solo release and became a cult favorite with alternative rockers. The songs have been covered by R.E.M., The Foo Fighters, Queens Of The Stone Age, Fuzztones, and a whole slew of garage and punk bands. But no-one ever managed to transport us inside the nightmare like Roky did. You can get the music right, after all it's only rock'n'roll, but all the feeling is in the voice. R.I.P. Roky. You'll never know how right you were when you sang "You're Gonna Miss Me" all those years ago...

***** for Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer),  I Think Of Demons, I Walked With A Zombie, Don't Shake Me Lucifer, Night Of The Vampire, Bloody Hammer, Creature With The Atom Brain, The Wind And More

**** for White Faces, Cold Night For Alligators, Mine Mine Mind, Stand For The Fire Demon