The Evil One
Originally released in the UK as the 10 song album Five Symbols in 1980 and as The Evil One in 1981 (with 5 songs replaced), this definitive CD gathers all 15 songs from the Stu Cook (Creedence Clearwater Revival) late 1977–79 produced sessions. 2×LP includes 20 page booklet, download card for full album, and etching by artist Travis Millard (Side D) Rare / unseen archive photos and ephemera.
Celebrating a creative purple patch by a singular performer, Light In The Attic is to reissue the three albums issued by Roky Erickson in the 1980s: The Evil One (LITA 097), Don't Slander Me(LITA 098) and Gremlins Have Pictures (LITA 099). Together, they're a chance to pick up a missing jigsaw piece in the history of American rock ‘n’ roll in deluxe packages. As the core member of the 13th Floor Elevators and an undisputed pioneer of psychedelic rock, the ‘60s were thrilling times for Erickson. His band riding high in their native Texas and beyond, the howling single 'You're Gonna Miss Me’ was his calling card, but Erickson's ‘60s ended in the stuff of nightmares. Under sharp scrutiny by the authorities due to the band's well-expounded fondness for psychedelic drugs, Erickson was found with a single joint on his person. Pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to avoid prison, he was sent to the Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane, where he was 'treated’ with electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatment. Erickson pulled through his three and a half years at Rusk, and even put together a band while incarcerated. The Missing Links contained Roky plus two murderers and a rapist. Released from the institution in 1974, Roky found his legend had grown while he'd been away – not least because ‘You're Gonna Miss Me’ was included on 1972's Nuggets compilation. He formed a band, the Aliens, and set about honing a hard rock sound that placed the psychedelic garage blues of the Elevators firmly in the last decade. Though it was produced at a time when Roky was struggling to cope with drugs and life on the outside, he hit form on his first post Elevators album-proper, 1981's The Evil One. Produced over a period of two years by Stu Cook, from Creedence Clearwater Revival, it's a masterful collection of songs about zombies, demons, vampires and, yes, even the ‘Creature With The Atom Brain’. These tracks, inspired by schlock sci-fi and horror movies and colored by Roky's distinctive, high-pitched vocal and squealing guitar, are among the maverick performer's best. At the time, Roky explained the album this way: “It's gonna go back to the ferocious kind of rock ‘n’ roll of the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds.
It's the kind of music that makes you wish you were playing it or listening to it for the first time ‘way back when.’” But the record would not reach the mass audience of those bands, its success hampered by erratic release schedules and disastrously awkward press interviews. A year after its release, Erickson would become convinced that a Martian had inhabited his body. He would soon become obsessed with mail, and take to taping it, unopened, to his bedroom walls. Many of Erickson's demons were yet to show their faces. But the B-movie demons he exorcised on this record gave us one of hard rock's strangest, most inventive albums.
Review
Roky Erickson was very much a changed man when he re-emerged on the music scene in the late '70s after a deeply troubling stay in a mental institution following an arrest for drugs in 1969. The graceful but energetic proto-psychedelia of Erickson's music with the 13th Floor Elevators was replaced by a hot-wired straight-ahead rock sound which suggested an updated version of the teenaged garage pounders Roky recorded with his early group the Spades, and the charming psychobabble of Tommy Hall's lyrics with the Elevators gave way to twisted narratives documenting Roky's obsessive enthusiasm for cheezoid horror movies of the 1950s. It wasn't until 1980 that Erickson released his first solo album, and that disc has had a rather eventful history. Stu Cook (ex-Creedence Clearwater Revival) produced the sessions over a period of two years, and the album appeared in Europe as Roky Erickson & the Aliens (released by CBS in England, making it Roky's only major-label release to date), while in America it came out as The Evil One on the San Francisco indie 415 Records. The British and American releases featured different track lineups, and each version featured songs which didn't show up on the other; to complicate matters all the more, early versions of three of the songs were released on a small-label EP in France. His band, the Aliens, are in sharp, precise form; Erickson's vocals confirm he's a blues-rock belter of the first order (even when he's raving about creatures with atom brains, two-headed dogs, or the Evil One himself), and if the songs are a bit odd lyrically (which you would expect from the titles), the tunes are clever and punchy and rock on out. While the serene and evocative folk-rock of All That May Do My Rhyme represents Roky Erickson's strongest solo work, The Evil One shows just how strong a rocker he could be – and how good a band he could put together. Great stuff, and certainly the best representation of Roky's “latter-day punk” period. Mark Deming – Allmusic Guide