AUSTIN, Texas — Back in 2007, it looked as if Paul Drummond's exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) biography "Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, the Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound" was going to be the last and final word on this most seminal of '60s rock bands.
Turns out Drummond wasn't quite finished. Witness "Sign of the 3 Eyed Men," a 10-CD box set curated by Drummond that does for the music what he did for the story.
Approved by both the Roky Erickson Trust and guru/jug player/acid achiever Tommy Hall, "Sign" might be as definitive a take on a rock band as has ever been legally assembled. This includes the band's studio albums — the ground-breaking "The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators," the masterpiece "Easter Everywhere," the nearly-Roky-free "Bull of the Woods" — in both mono and stereo versions, tacking on outtakes and alternate recordings.
A mountain of paper, including nifty reproductions of handbills, posters and stickers, is stuffed into a vintage-looking envelope.
The oversized, 72-page book documents the sessions and releases in loving detail, acting as a thumbnail history of the band, its highs (sorry) and lows. (Texas fun fact: In mid-'60s Austin, one could get up to a 10-year sentence for trace amounts of weed, but peyote and LSD were 100 percent legal. This might explain how psychedelic rock got started here and why the band decamped for the more liberal San Francisco in '66.)
Drummond moves through the band's depressing history (busts, police trouble, line-up changes, Erickson's precarious mental state) with a strong balance of detail and verve, augmenting the narrative with vintage photos and fliers.
Early 1966 recordings, recorded right after the single "You're Gonna Miss Me" and compiled here as "Headstone: The Contact Sessions," show that the band hit upon its world-changing aesthetic early, a charged combination of Stacy Sutherland's twangy lead guitar, Hall's spacey electric jug, a tight R&B rhythm section and Erickson's extraordinary voice, part rocker, part blues shouter, part howling banshee of the scrub-brush West.
No wonder Janis Joplin sounds an awful lot like Roky on the Big Brother and the Holding Company album "Cheap Thrills" — how could you not want to sound like Roky after hearing his pipes?
It's a blast to hear "Psychedelic Sounds" and "Easter Everywhere" in their mono versions; every song is punchier, more alive and definitely more rawk. (Oh, Beatles fans, just wait until you hear "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in mono, coming to stores Sept. 9 — you will not be the same.)
But the highlights are the oft-bootlegged live recordings. "Live in Texas" documents sets broadcast on KAZZ-FM from the New Orleans Old World Night Club. It must have been a shock to hear "You're Gonna Miss Me" and that surreal electric jug coming out of your radio, but the really mind-blowing stuff is on "Live in California," which documents '66 performances at the Avalon Ballroom.
The recording quality is shockingly good and the covers of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and Buddy Holly's "I'm Gonna Love You Too" show just how far ahead of the curve the Elevators were. This is pure psychedelic punk rock, mind-expanding and smart and raw. "Death in Texas" compiles some shows from 1967 and 1973, proto-metal reunion material.
The CD called "A Love That's Sound" is an assemblage of tracks for the band's "lost" third album, also known as "Beauty & the Beast." Those sessions eventually became the much-maligned album "Bull of the Woods."Sutherland was running the group; Erickson is only on four songs. But there are amazing moments. Sutherland's guitar is at its strangest, and "May the Circle Remain Unbroken," the album's final song, will smash your heart into tiny, pyramid-shaped pieces.
The box is limited to 4,000 copies and costs roughly $150. Of course you need it.
Early in the Elevators' career, Tommy Hall tapped onetime Austin songwriter Powell St. John to contribute some material. St. John — then a beatnik moving into hippie style who had once played at Threadgill's with Janis Joplin and Lannie Wiggins in the trio the Waller Creek Boys — knocked out songs over the Elevators' first two albums, including "Kingdom of Heaven," "Monkey Island" and "Slide Machine."
After forming, then leaving, the band Conqueroo in Austin in '66, St. John headed to San Francisco in the late '60s to form the band Mother Earth.
These days, he plays with Erickson's old band the Aliens, and that crew backs him on the surprisingly spry "On My Way to Houston." In fact, the unrecorded Erickson song "Hardest Working Man" opens the disc, St. John's voice a weird Dylanish instrument sitting over Doc Ward's big drums and lightly fuzzed chordings.
St. John's harmonica drifts in and out of the songs. The Dylanisms become more pronounced on the title track, "I Loved the Way You Played the Piccolo," a lovely piece of folk double-entendre with Ralph White on violin.
And you have to love "Song of the Silver Surfer," a (no kidding) ode to the Marvel Comics character, reminding you that the herald of Galactus was an acid-achievers icon. This seems appropriate — St. John was present at the creation and remains a psychedelic warrior of the first order.
Joe Gross writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: jgross(at)statesman.com.