Roky Erickson with Okkervil River – True Love Cast Out All Evil (Chemikal Underground)
4/5
By: Chris Jones
If you go to the right places and ask the right people (I’d suggest R.E.M. or Primal Scream to start off with), you’ll be told Roky Erickson is a musical legend, and has been for decades. Yet it’s only with Roky’s troubled past in mind that this album be appreciated to anywhere near a fair degree.
Roky dropped out of high school one month before graduation because he refused to cut his hair to fall in line with the dress code. This rebellion was to foreshadow his staunch anti-conformist ethos. In his late teens he formed a psychedelic rock band, the 13th Floor Elevators, which he played in for several years throughout the mid-to-late 60’s. It’s no surprise that The Elevators were open supporters of LSD, DMT, and Mescaline, but hallucinogenic drugs were perhaps a factor in Roky’s subsequent diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1968.
He was sent to a psychiatric hospital where he received electroshock therapy. In 1969 when found in possession of a joint of marijuana in his hometown of Austin, Texas he faced a ten year prison sentence which he swerved when he pleaded insanity. He was sent to Austin State Hospital, but after escaping one too many times his luck was out and he was sent to Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he remained, electroshock therapy and drugs included, until 1972.
Some of the recordings Roky made in Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane have been incorporated into True Love Cast Out All Evil too, which provides an eerie sense of his past lingering amongst the optimistic themes of hope and salvation. It contains a fair bit of unreleased material from the distant past, which lends the whole affair a real sense of variety, helping the listener to comprehend the span of Roky’s time making music and what the album represents.
Okkervil River supply a tight musical accompaniment over the whole LP, a band who have clearly enjoyed making music with their idol. Joy is one of the many emotions here, the album laying bare a whole range of them – happy and sad - to deftly illustrate the life and experiences of this fascinating man. The tormenting times, mistakes made and wisdom accrued are all presented in a way that won’t fail to place you in a contemplative retreat. It’s love, above all, that he comes back to as a theme most often. And whilst the idea of love as a saviour isn’t a particularly modern one, the sincerity with which it’s delivered refurbishes it anew.
Artists in this article: Roky Erikson
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