Mark Lanegan on The 13th Floor Elevators – Easter Everywhere (1967)
The 13th Floor Elevators weren’t only innovative for their time. They were so different- I liked that from the first moment I discovered them. Like me, they came from a boring small town, and they established a musical independence that was new in its consequence. Optically they looked like backward hillbillies, but stylistically they conveyed an image of the future of psychedelic rock music. And nobody else sings like their frontman Roky Erickson does- he served as a role model for my own music later.
The intensity of their music has definitely something to do with the massive drug abuse of the band. How much they actually lived these songs can be seen in their further development – Erickson ended up in a psychiatric ward. Easter Everywhere thus becomes a testimony, one of these classics that means much more than the music on it. It is one of the few albums to which I still have to listen in its entirety and feel the same love and dedication as the first time. There is so much beauty and mystery in Easter Everywhere, and I’m not exaggerating when I say: the entire idea behind the Screaming Trees was not last to emulate the 13th Floor Elevators.
One cannot overestimate their importance for my artistic path. Who is going to listen to Easter Everywhere for the first time gets one good advice from me: prepare yourself for losing your mind. There is barely any more intense music.
by Mark Lanegan
Mark Lanegan’s stellar new album Straight Songs of Sorrow and book Sing Backwards and Weep are out since May 2020.