Whatever the cause of Erickson's mental disarray - LSD, schizophrenia, the trauma of being institutionalised, or some combination of the three - he became, like Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and Skip Spence, a tragic totem of the relationship between drugs, music and madness. "The devil, see, he's my friend," he informed a bewildered Kent. A famous interview with the NME's Nick Kent in 1980 fixed him in the mind of rock fans as a befuddled wreck, burbling about aliens and demons. In 1969, he pleaded insanity over a drugs charge and spent three years in a Texas mental institution, from which he emerged somewhere south of normal. More than his music, though, what Erickson became famous for was losing his mind. You might recognise the Elevators' incendiary first single, You're Gonna Miss Me, from the opening scene of High Fidelity. They were certainly the first to apply the word to disorientating, acid-warped rock, influencing the likes of Janis Joplin (who almost joined) and the Grateful Dead, and later covered by REM, Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain and even ZZ Top (whose roots also lie in Texas psychedelia). Erickson's 1960s band, the 13th Floor Elevators, have been called the originators of psychedelic music.
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