Nope, Sonobeat never recorded the Elevators, but we knew ’em well
SONoBEaT aND THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVaTORS
Sonobeat Features
Sonobeat and The 13th Floor Elevators
A brief introduction
May we refresh your memory about (or, in the unlikely event you’ve never heard of these guys before, introduce you to) the 13th Floor Elevators? Although Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and even The Beatles experimented with psychedelic rock (before it was called that) in the mid-’60s, it was the 13th Floor Elevators in Austin, Texas, in 1965, who perfected and named the genre. The band was co-founded by lead singer and guitarist Roky Erickson (“Roky” is a portmanteau of the first two letters of his first and middle names, Roger Kynard), amplified jug player (amped juggist?) Tommy Hall, drummer John Ike Walton, lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland, and bassist Benny Thurman. For the depth of its legacy, the band itself was relatively short-lived, forming at the end of 1965 and collapsing in 1969 after numerous drug busts and personnel changes. Sequentially, drummer John Ike Walton was replaced by Danny Thomas, bassist Benny Thurman by Ronnie Leatherman, Ronnie in turn by Danny Galindo, Danny by Duke Davis, and Duke by, yes, Ronnie Leatherman once again. Austin music legend Powell St. John offered deep collaboration with the band, especially on its first album, The Psychedelic Sounds of..., as did Tommy Hall’s wife, Clementine, each contributing iconic songs to the band’s repertoire. Famously, during the band’s live appearance on Dick Clark’s nationally televised American Bandstand in 1966, Dick, at the band’s sly request, innocently asked “Who’s the head man of this group here, gentlemen?” and Tommy responded “Yeah, we’re all heads”, following which Dick mentioned that the band would soon have an album out. When Dick asked the name of the album, Tommy answered “The Head Stones” (a reference to Psychedelic Sounds of...), following which Dick quickly ushered the band offstage. There’s no more world-famous, if not misunderstood and under-appreciated, Austin band of the ’60s than the 13th Floor Elevators.
The sheer bravery of it. To make music like this in Austin, Texas, under that anvil of social and religious pressure, with such emotion and depth – how do you do it?”
The Paul Drummond books
Although there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of magazine and newspaper articles written about the mysterious 13th Floor Elevators, only Paul Drummond’s 2007 biography of the band tells the authoritative story. Of course, there’s more to add to the story in the 17 years since the book’s release, but Paul lays a solid foundation.
That said, Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, the Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound is as good a narrative history of any musician or band as you’ll ever get. It’s a true story that reads like a thriller, complete with heroes and villains, innocence and disgrace, twists and turns, and, ultimately, death. Paul, who served as the official Elevators archivist with unprecedented access to every living former member of the band, thoroughly documents how the Elevators as a band came to be the cult phenomenon that it is and how its individual members came to be who they were and are. There are surprises at every turn, including Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr.’s appearance as a character witness at Roky’s 1966 drug bust trial. Paul dedicates the book to Elevators’ co-founder Stacy Sutherland, who died on August 24, 1978. A wealth of Elevators posters, handbills, and never-before-published photos, along with extensive interviews with those who were there during the Elevators’ rise and fall, round out Paul’s narrative, which also serves to illuminate the turbulent Central Texas music scene in the ’60s.
In 2020, Paul added the ultimate depth to the Elevators’ story with 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History, a book that rightfully can use the cliché “chock full” to describe the goodies between its covers. From the turn of the millennium, Paul collected hundreds of rare and never-before-published photos of the band, both on- and off- stage, dozens of ’Vators concert posters, countless newspaper clippings (tracking the band’s playdates, rise and fall, and issues with law enforcement), and offbeat memorabilia (concert ticket stubs, band contracts, album covers, radio station record surveys tracking the popularity of the band’s singles, and so on). We were pleased to contribute material for Paul’s book from the Sonobeat archives and to have connected Paul to Sonobeat friend Ralph Y. Michaels, who snapped candids of the Elevators performing at Austin venues in the mid ’60s. You’ll find some of Ralph’s candids, many of which grace the pages of 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History, over in Ralph’s Elevators Collection.
We caught up with Paul in November 2024 for an update on his Elevators projects. He’s currently updating Eye Mind to include new chapters focusing on certain individual members of the band. We hope to see the new edition of Eye Mind before the end of 2026.
Stacy Sutherland’s tragic story
Vicki Welch Ayo takes us deeper into Stacy Sutherland’s tragic story in 2015’s Thirteenth Floor Elevators’ Stacy Sutherland: Down The Rabbit Hole. Vicki, who’s written extensively about Houston-based bands of the ’60s and ’70s, certainly knows the Elevators’ story well, but what makes her book quite different, poignant, and compelling is that it’s built from the emotional correspondence between an east coast Elevators fan – Roy Waidler – and members of the Elevators and their families, particularly Stacy himself, his wife Bunni, and his mother Sibyl. Down the Rabbit Hole is augmented with Vicki’s own extensive interviews and illustrated with photos from the Sutherland family albums.
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”
KAZZ-FM and the Elevators
In January 1966, an excited Roky Erickson brought a freshly minted copy of the Elevators’ first single to KAZZ-FM’s rock deejay (and Sonobeat co-founder) Rim Kelley“Rim Kelley” was the radio air name used by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr. as a deejay in Austin, Texas, during the 1960s that he continued to use as a Sonobeat producer from 1967 to 1970., who had been Roky’s classmate at William B. Travis High School in Austin only two years before. The single, You’re Gonna Miss Me, had just been released on Austin’s Contact label and was the same version issued later in ’66 by Houston’s International Artists. Rim played the single over the air only minutes after Roky arrived at KAZZ’s studios, and we’re 99.9% certain that was the world premiere broadcast of the 13th Floor Elevators’ inaugural single. Later, when the Elevators first album was released, over the course of a week Rim played every track from the album on his program.
With the release of the Elevators first single, the band became an overnight sensation in Austin, booked into every top rock nightclub in town. Over the ensuing months, KAZZ, which broadcast live remotes of pop, jazz, and rock acts from Austin nightclubs multiple evenings every week, broadcast the Elevators from the New Orleans Old World Night Club on multiple occasions, promoting both the club and the band. Although Rim hosted many of the live broadcasts, KAZZ’s program director Sam Hallman and station manager Bill Josey Sr. also hosted Elevators broadcasts. Everyone wanted in on the action.
Rim served as master of ceremonies at the January 7, 1967, Elevators concert at Austin’s Doris Miller Auditorium. The concert featured the spectacular psychedelic Jomo Disaster Light Show, created with overhead projectors and heated glass slides covered in oil, water, and colored inks. The Jomo Disaster later became the house light show at The Vulcan Gas CompanyThe Vulcan was Austin’s first successful hippie music hall, opening in 1967 in an old warehouse at 316 Congress Avenue and closing in 1970. Its better known successor was Armadillo World Headquarters..
...what makes The Psychedelic Sounds [of the 13th Floor Elevators] powerful 40 years later isn’t its questionable philosophy but, as the title makes clear, its psychedelic sound. The 13th Floor Elevators were a remarkable band: [Roky] Erickson’s wild-man vocals create an atmosphere where unfettered mayhem reigns. Stacy Sutherland’s piercing guitar puts a dark mood on Roller Coaster and Reverberation (Doubt), while drummer John Ike Walton ties it all together.”
Sonobeat and the Elevators... sorta
In the early 1970s, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. was intrigued with quadraphonic audio, a system using four speakers – front left, front right, rear left, and rear right – to surround the listener with a 360° sonic experience. CBS Records, Sony, Sansui, and other big electronics companies were promoting competing quad formats, each claiming theirs as the “next big thing” in consumer audio. Anticipating quad. in one format or another, soon would replace regular two-speaker stereo, Bill assembled a studio band he called Base specifically to record quad material. By 1973, his aim was to release a Base mono/stereo/quad compatible album. His recording sessions featured hand-picked musicians he'd worked with in prior years, either via remote broadcasts over KAZZ-FM or in other bands Sonobeat had recorded. Among the musicians who performed in Base were former Elevators bassists Danny Galindo and Ronnie Leatherman and lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland. Although nothing came of the album, it was the closest Sonobeat ever got to recording the Elevators.
We were a hard rock investigation into ideas.”
Listen!
A limited-edition ten CD box set, Sign of the Three Eyed Men from International Artists, released in spring 2009, contains a booklet by Paul Drummond that includes scans of additional materials from Rim Kelley’s personal collection. In 2011, International Artists released Music of The Spheres – The Ultimate 13th Floor Elevators, a 9-disc vinyl box set with a revised edition of Paul’s Sign of the Three Eyed Men booklet.
Roky died in Austin, Texas, on May 31, 2019, at age 71. A quick Google search of “Roky Erickson death” brings up hundreds of tributes, recollections, photos, and crazy stories about one of the most revered rock musicians of the past 55+ years.
Excerpts from Paul Drummond’s interview of Sonobeat’s Rim Kelley for Eye Mind that didn’t make it into the book
Paul: Would you give me a basic history of [Austin’s] KAZZ-FM?
Rim: KAZZ was first licensed by the FCC in 1958 and played only jazz, but by fall 1964, when I joined its DJ staff, it was block programmed, and jazz was relegated to the night shift. The programming ranged from The Grand Ol’ Opry in the wee early morning hour to Sinatra and Mantovani pop during the day to folk and jazz at night. When I started college at the University of Texas in fall 1964, I began looking for a radio job. I was turned down by KNOW, where I really wanted to work, since it was THE Austin rock station. Dad [Bill Josey Sr.] suggested I make a demo tape and take it to other stations. I did, and Gib Divine, KAZZ’s station manager, hired me. I wanted to program a rock show on FM, and Gib agreed. I took the 4-8 pm slot Monday through Friday and the noon-4 pm slot on Saturdays. Dad became sales manager at KAZZ late in ’64 and replaced Gib as station manager in ’65. KAZZ was owned by Monroe Lopez, who also owned Austin’s Big 4 Mexican Restaurants. When we began distributing a top 40 survey through local record stores, the Big 4 Mexican Restaurants advertised on the back. It was Dad’s idea to do remote broadcasts from local night clubs – the Eleventh Door, the New Orleans Club, Club Seville, the Club Saracen – to attract advertisers. The live broadcasts began in late ’65. We began with demure acts, like Ernie Mae Miller at the jazz piano at the New Orleans Club and the Kings IV at Club Seville, but eventually, we began to broadcast rock bands, like the Sweetarts and the Elevators. Monroe sold the station to KOKE AM in late ’67, and KAZZ ceased broadcasting in January ’68. When it resumed broadcasting later in ’68, it had changed its call letters to KOKE-FM [simulcasting KOKE-AM’s signal]. The KAZZ call letters were later taken by a Washington state FM station that has no relationship to the original KAZZ-FM in Austin.
Paul: Why didn’t you record the Elevators for Sonobeat? Rumour has it you nearly did.
Rim: Dad and I asked Roky and Tommy [Hall] whether they were committed to IA [International Artists Records in Houston], and that we wanted to record them. This was in early ’67. They were under contract to Leland [Rogers, of IA] for some time into the future, and Tommy said, “Maybe when our contract is up"” That was the end of it. We were interested in psychedelic music, and many of the groups we later recorded for Sonobeat either skirted the genre or hit it dead on. The Conqueroo often is categorized as a psychedelic band, and they were truly a terrific band, but I’d label the single we released by them as jazz-rock fusion, not psychedelia. The Thingies and Mariani were far more psychedelic than The Conqueroo, but neither approached the sophistication in psychedelic lyrics that the Elevators achieved.
Paul: The Elevators began playing the New Orleans Club 9th February 1966 after their Jan 27th bust. Why did you champion their record when the AM station KNOW banned it?
Rim: Roky was my classmate at [William B.] Travis High School [in Austin]. I liked him. He was smart. I’d heard the Spades [Roky’s first band] play. They were pretty good for a garage band. The Elevators were even better, and You’re Gonna Miss Me was a good rock song. We didn’t emulate KNOW. We were known as the maverick radio station. When Roky brought the first test pressing of You’re Gonna Miss Me by the Elevators up to the station, I recall throwing it on the turntable and auditioning it. It was by a local band, it was good, and Roky made the effort to bring it to me personally. There was no way I wasn’t going to play it. I still have that test pressing. Later, Roky and Tommy came back up to the station with a DJ copy of the single on the Contact label (which I also still have), and I interviewed them briefly on the air.
Paul: Did you broadcast their first performance and do you recall a story Benny Thurman related to me about a “blue northern” hailing on the roof during the first broadcast and the audience all dancing in an inch of water?
Rim: The storm during an Elevators broadcast on KAZZ, that Benny called a “blue northern”, rings a bell, but I don’t recall that it was the first broadcast or that the audience danced in water. However, I seem to recall that the noise from the storm was so great, pounding on the New Orleans Club’s metal roof, that it disrupted the broadcast. Now, if only we could find a tape of that broadcast...
Paul: How did your father [Bill Josey Sr.] relate to the band? Were they approachable?
Rim: Dad liked the whole band, particularly Tommy and Clementine [Hall], and, of course, Dad appeared at Roky’s drug trial in Austin as a character witness. Dad was trained as a psychologist. But Dad also was a musician and played jazz and big band-style coronet. He had many theories about why rock music "worked"... that the root of music was entirely the beat, which is why rock music touched a nerve. Dad quite liked rock music and, I think, was a pretty hip guy who surprised the groups we worked with at Sonobeat. I think Tommy, in particular and moreso than Roky, related very well to Dad. Tommy and I spent time between sets at one New Orleans Club live broadcast talking about the “lost chord”. This predated the Moody Blues album by that name. Tommy explained how the lost chord was created by what wasn’t played and, therefore, was perceived much like a line that has no actual width is perceived by placing a piece of black construction paper across a piece of white construction paper. Tommy had incredible theories and was articulate.