Page 3 of 5
In his lyrics, Hall penned elegant lines about trust: "Don't fall down as you lift her/Don't fall down/She believes in you," and spiritual bonds: "She's been always in your ear/Her voice sounds a tone within you/Listen to the words you hear." There were also, of course, plenty of encouragements to take a magic blotter ride: "You finally find your helpless mind is trapped inside your skin/You want to leave, but you believe you won't get back again."
This new musical mysticism attracted a following in Texas. Elevators bassist Ronnie Leatherman remembers Hall hosting weeknight sessions in Houston where he'd play records and deliver his divine philosophies to gathered flocks.
As the band started touring Texas, though, young idealists weren't the only ones listening. The Elevators lived in a conservative hotbed when, as drummer John Ike Walton tells it, rednecks were really red. The Elevators were seen as threatening to the very moral fabric of the state; their arrests were broadcast on television. Walton says the cops wanted to beat them up, cut off their hair, and throw them in jail. Band members spent time behind bars or were threatened with hard labor on the cotton farm for such minor violations as possession of a joint.
The Elevators decamped to the more supportive environs of San Francisco in 1966. With connections to Joplin and other Lone Star State buddies gone West, the group was quickly playing venues like the legendary Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom, its audiences growing exponentially. The Elevators shared stages with the popular acts of the time: Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape. They were embraced by the locals, despite having much shorter hair — a consequence of going through so many drug trials — and Hall occasionally getting smacked around for taking Richard Nixon's side in political debates.
They were barely scraping by, though, getting paid $100 each for Avalon gigs, and by the beginning of 1967 they moved back to Texas. Deeper fractures also plagued the group. Hall's insistence that the band "play the acid" every time they picked up an instrument was at odds with the members who didn't enjoy the drug, and it was taking its toll on the ones who did.
The Elevators' last hurrah came in the form of 1967's Easter Everywhere. The landmark album was littered with allusions to Hall's Eastern religious studies. The songs were ethereal love ballads lifted by exquisite harmonies ("She Lives (in a Time of Her Own)"); and parables with heavy visual imagery ("If your limbs begin dissolving/In the water that you tread/All surroundings are evolving/In the stream that clears your head"). The record's lo-fi production value added to its eerie aesthetic, as did Hall's photo on the back cover. He's holding a finger to his lips in a warning to handle the mysteries of the universe cautiously.
From that minor peak the band fell mightily, starting in 1968. Erickson's story became perhaps the most tragic. After becoming increasingly irrational on- and offstage, he cycled through mental institutions and in 1969 was locked up in Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Texas on drug charges, the final patch of dirt on the Elevators' grave. Sutherland also entered dark times: He battled for years with hard drug addiction before being shot to death by his wife, Bunni, in 1978.
Hall's path became more difficult to trace.
Hall and Tausch divorced in 1973. He'd been bouncing between California and Texas for years, and the distance took its toll on the couple. (They remain close friends; she lives in San Leandro, and they dine together once a month.)
Hall spent decades out of touch with his Elevators family, the gaps dotted with drug convictions he doesn't like to talk about and random anecdotes noted by a handful of journalists (such as one about his membership in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Laguna Beach LSD commune linked to Timothy Leary).
After the Elevators members had scattered, they became more than a cautionary narrative about fried trippers. Serious music fans dug them out of history's annals. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck once joked that his band name stood for "Roky Erickson's Music." The Butthole Surfers rode the Elevators' early wave of Texas psych into the punk era. Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes calls the Elevators the most important Texas psychedelic band, adding that Texas was a ground zero for psychedelic garage rock. An entire movement of druggy British music enthusiasts, from Spaceman 3 to Primal Scream, sang the group's praises and covered its songs. This spring, a 10-disc box set of Elevators music will be released online through the International Artists Web site.
Perhaps the biggest Tommy Hall fan is longtime music journalist and former Warner Bros. publicist Bill Bentley. He produced the 1990 Erickson tribute, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, featuring Elevators songs covered by Julian Cope, R.E.M., and ZZ Top, among others. The industry insider had attended countless Elevators shows in his native Houston with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. "We'd pore over those lyrics like that was our little religious text," Bentley says.
Bentley calls Hall the most important philosopher in his lifetime, even though Hall sometimes speaks in tangents that make it difficult to follow his logic. Case in point: When Bentley interviewed his idol in 1990, Hall's transistor radio was on the fritz. The LSD enthusiast didn't believe this was the fault of any old wiring, though. He told the reporter that the Japanese had burned it out by sending it too much electricity.
Showing 1-2 of 2
