by JOHNSON CUMMINS

"You're gonna look around in your mind, girl/You're gonna find out that I'm gone/You didn't realiiiiiiiiize," screamed a teenaged Roky (pronounced Rocky) Erickson in the bona fide classic "You're Gonna Miss Me." In this 1966 garage rock nugget by Austin, Texas's 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson's howl encapsulated the danger of rock 'n' roll while planting a knife in the heart of the namby-pamby innocence of the beat groups of the day - all before he had even finished the first verse.

Erickson's teeth-rattling vocals single-handedly introduced a fire and rage to the American radio dial for the first time. Erickson may have sounded like he was screaming into the cold eyes of a callous girl, but by the time he got around to the second verse, howling, "You're gonna wake up wonderin'/Find yourself all alone," before capping the song off by repeating "I'm not coming home," the song suddenly took on a different resonance. Given how the man's tragic tale would play out only two years after this recording, the by-the-numbers boy-loses-girl scenario mutates into something darker and eerier, with Erickson seemingly screaming into the face of his own fate.

Head games

When the word "acid casualty" is bandied about, Erickson sadly and somewhat erroneously finds himself in the company of tragic comrades like Brian Wilson, Moby Grape's Skip Spencer, Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green, Rolling Stone Brian Jones and the recently departed Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Shortly after his 1966 chart topper, Erickson began his 40-year battle with schizophrenia.

The 13th Floor Elevators hardly tried to hide their penchant for hallucinogens. In fact, drug references litter their first record The Psychedelic Sounds of…. Not only was this the first time "psychedelic" was officially applied to music, but this substance-soaked album preceded Sgt. Peppers and Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by a full year.

The band proudly boasted that they inserted the number 13 in their name because the 13th letter in the alphabet is M, and M stood for marijuana. When Dick Clark, after the band's 1966 Halloween appearance on American Bandstand, asked them who the head of the band was, Erickson didn't miss a beat and answered, "we're all heads" - which floated right over the wig of "the world's oldest teenager."

By the time the Elevators made it to San Francisco, their doors of perception were swung wide open. And by the time the band had recorded their second album, Easter Everywhere, the constant use of LSD was beginning to take its toll on Erickson. He was frequently too high to perform, choosing instead to simply marvel at the feedback emanating from his amp while his guitar hung on his shoulder, untouched.

Shutting out the voices

The future of the band was extinguished by 1968, when Texas Rangers busted Erickson for possession of one joint. Already no stranger to the law, Erickson had been lucky to get off on a technicality on a previous drug bust, but probably due to the 13th Floor Elevators' flaunting its encouragement of hallucinogenic experimentation, the Texan legal system was only too eager to make an example of him. They demanded a 10-year prison term with hard labour. Erickson's defence lawyers argued that their client had taken acid over 300 times and therefore plead insanity to avoid the lengthy sentence. Erickson found himself locked up for three and a half years with murderers and rapists at the Rusk Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane.

The mental-health machine in Texas at the end of the '60s was more likely to merely warehouse wards of the state than lead these unsightly longhairs and scourges of American youth to recovery. Tragically, Erickson received regular treatments of electro-convulsive therapy, washed down with a steady diet of thorazine. By the end of his stay at Rusk, Erickson's schizophrenia had become full-blown, with his rational mind fighting for space with demon's voices. Trips back to mental institutions peppered much of the '70s and '80s. Although he would later marry and have two daughters and a son, a peek into Erickson's government-subsidized apartment at the time revealed that he was indeed losing his battle with the voices in his head.

Throughout the '70s and much of the '80s, Erickson had little contact with the outside world, and it was widely reported that he'd adorned every inch of wall space with his neighbours' junk mail (he was arrested in 1989 for mail tampering, but the charges were dropped) and frequently had numerous TVs and radios tuned to different stations at full volume in an attempt to drown out the voices in his head. He would also fall victim to his paranoia, and had police scanners to monitor their actions. In 1982, he got a notarized document explaining that he was not from the human race, and that an alien had overtaken his body.

Monster mash

Throughout these troubled times, Erickson would turn to music for solace, but instead of writing songs about unrequited love, he sought inspiration from one of his favourite obsessions, horror movies. Erickson began exorcizing the tormentors in his head with songs like "I Think of Demons," "Night of the Vampire," "I Walked With a Zombie," "Stand for the Fire Demon" and other macabre hard-rock songs that would earn him the status of cult legend. A 1990 tribute record, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, featuring REM, ZZ Top, the Jesus and Mary Chain and more only amplified his legendary status.

Talking to Erickson at his Austin apartment over the phone, my tape of our 45-minute interview is littered with Erickson answering numerous questions with simple uh-huhs, and awkward lapses into silence as his TV blares the Cartoon Network in the background. When he does choose to answer questions, about his favourite horror movie (it's The Hand, hands down) or favourite ice-cream store (Amy's Ice Cream in Austin, which features a sweet cream malt named in Roky's honour), he seems like a child far younger than the teenager who originally electrified the radio dial in 1966.

Asked what the song "Don't Shake Me Lucifer" is about, he answers, "Not getting busted. Lucifer will help you out like God would, and he would go against people frisking you and shaking you down. I am a friend with both the devil and God. I think they both get along with each other."

As for "Creature With the Atom Brain," he says, "It's about this man who was in prison and he swore that when he got out, he would kill the people that put him in prison, so he builds these monsters that have atom brains and kill people."

Does he still maintain that he's an alien? "No, but I think I was one."

Back in the saddle

Now on a diligent medicinal regimen, eating healthy and surrounded by people who love him, Erickson is doing better than he ever has in the past 38 years. Perhaps serving as a badge of honour in his fight with schizophrenia, Erickson recently celebrated the first anniversary of his driver's licence (he drives a Volvo). He's once again playing live shows, which excites him more than ever. Montreal will mark his first show outside of Texas in over 20 years, with the exception of his recent show at Chicago's Intonation festival last month.

Interest in Erickson's work has never been more avid. Keven McAlester's new bio-doc You're Gonna Miss Me retraces the path of his life, Welsh band Mogwai recently collaborated with him, and his wailing has found a whole new audience after "You're Gonna Miss Me" recently showed up in a Dell computer commercial.

Did he ever think he would be singing "You're Gonna Miss Me" 40 years down the road? "Uh-huh."

Is he surprised to have more fans than ever? "Not really. I knew I would always be famous."

Roky Erickson & the Explosives play at 9:30 p.m. (following a 7:30 p.m. screening of You're Gonna Miss Me) at Film Pop, at Associaçao Portuguesa (4170 St-Urbain) on Friday, Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., $25, or $6 for the film alone

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