13th Floor Elevators: Headstone - The Contact Sessions

The 13th Floor Elevators - "Headstone: The Contact Sessions" (1966/2010) - Contact Records

Hello Friends,

Tonite we're listening to the first LP in our recently acquired Music of the Sphere's box set.

Recorded in early 1966 by legendary psychedelic producer Walt Andrus, Headstone was supposed to be the Elevators' first LP (it was to be released on Gordon Bynum's Contact Records), but for reasons too convoluted to go into here, the finished product never saw the light of day! Luckily for us, The Elevators "lost" first album wasn't really lost all and they would eventually be signed to Houston's International Artists record label and get a proper debut with The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.

Headstone (recorded in mono) sounds raw and raucous. Loud and electric.  A mix of original and cover tunes. Perfect in all its imperfection.  

Its a proper-sounding album and not just a collection of demos and outtakes.

It should also be noted that by early 1966, most of the members of the band were subsisting on a steady diet of marijuana, various pills and LSD.      

The opening track-- what would become the band's signature song-- "You're Gonna Miss Me", sets the stage not only for the rest of the album, but for the rest of the band's too-short career. 

At first, "You're Gonna Miss Me" sounds like pretty much any other post-British Invasion garage rock song, thunderous power chords (played by guitarist Stacy Sutherland) lead to a chaos-fueled drum beat that sounds as if both the drummer (John Ike Walton) and the drumset are tumbling down a flight of stairs while never quite losing the beat.  And what's that sound weaving between the beats like a swarm of stoned bees?  Why its an amplified jug being played (er, rather, being vocalized) by Elevators' founding member, Tommy Hall.  Within the first 20 seconds you can tell this band is going to be something more than just another Yardbirds-influenced blues band! 

Then... there's the voice! Like a demonic freight train breaking through the gates of hell, the barbaric yawp of lead singer, Roky Erickson, pierces through the music sounding just as frightening and unhinged today as it must have to audiences back in 1966. Amazing! 

You're gonna wake up one morning as the sun greets the dawn,
You're gonna wake up one morning as the sun greets the dawn,
You're gonna look around in your mind, girl, you're gonna find that I'm gone...

"You're Gonna Miss Me" is followed up by another original written by Tommy Hall & Stacy Sutherland, "Tried to Hide".  Then there's a cover of the Solomon Burke blues tune, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love".  Next up is the the aching ballad, "Take That Girl" written by fellow Austin bohemian and frequent Elevators' collaborator, Powell St. John.

"You Can't Hurt Me Anymore" is another Hall-Erickson composition.  Side One closes with a nod to another fellow Texan, Buddy Holly, with the Elevators covering "I'm Gonna Love You Too" which sounds a little like what Holly himself might have sounded like if he would have made it to 1966-- stoned, world-weary and jaded, and with an electric jug frantically going at it in the background.

Side Two opens with another Powell St. John composition, "Monkey Island".  Its creepy and psychedelic as Erickson sings (yells) his heart out with lyrics literally about living on a monkey island.  ("Living home on Monkey Island, baby, right in the middle of a zoo / Living home on Monkey Island, baby, pretended to be a monkey too".) 

If a Southern and stoned Bob Dylan sang lead for Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, it might have sounded something like the next song, "Roller Coaster".  Another Erickson composition complete with tempo changes and very psychedelic lyrics about "opening up your mind and letting everything come through".

Things quiet down a bit on the gorgeous ballad, "Now I'm Home (Splash 1)", co-written by Erickson and Tommy Hall's wife, Clementine.  More melancholia, more paranoia and a killer guitar solo. Sample lyric: "The fierceness of my feelings rocks me like a roar / Its good to know we won't be strangers anymore".  (Supposedly Roky began writing this song after meeting yet another Texas native, Janis Joplin!)  On the song "You're Gonna Miss Me", Erickson declared with little uncertainty, "I'm not coming home!"-- on "Now I'm Home", midway through Side Two, he's apparently had a change of heart!  

The record ends with early versions of two more great psychedelic originals, "Where Am I? (Thru the Rhythm)" and "Fire Engine".  The former reaching new heights in lyrical neurosis while the latter is a surf tune written as a tribute to a mind-expanding DMT experience ("The Empty Place" = "DMT Place", get it kids?)

Again, there's some long story as to why Headstone wasn't released as the band's first album.  It would have made a fantastic debut.  But take a bunch of loud rock & roll, some rowdy Texas teenagers, a bunch of mind-altering substances and a very public drug bust and I guess its lucky that anything survived!

    Here's an early version of "You're Gonna Miss Me" courtesy of Roky Erickson's first band, The Spades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qan7lVj3KtM.  

Can't wait to hear what's up next, the band's actual debut, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators!

RATING: 4.5 Let Me Take You To The Empty Place On My Fire Engine out of 5