(1947----) Birthplace: Dallas Genre: Rock and Roll Influenced: Sixties acid rock bands from Austin to San Francisco

As one of the founders of Austin's first internationally known band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson helped to invent the sixties music known as Acid Rock. Singer and songwriter Erikson displayed an intensity and poetic, almost religious vision that inspired many musicians and imitators. But his early successes were cut short by drug and mental health problems.

Born Roger Kynard Erickson into the family of an architect, Roky joined the 13th Floor Elevators in 1965. The Elevators, reputedly named after the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M for marijuana, openly advocated a path of enlightenment through drugs. Driven by a unique sound created by fuzzed out guitars, various percussion, and an amplified electric jug, the Elevators were truly awe-inspiring in their appearances around Austin. The groups' first album on the International Artists label out of Houston was titled The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, and it quickly became a cult classic on college campuses at the beginning of the Hippie Era. Many of the groups best songs, including the electrifying "You're Gonna Miss Me," were written by the teen-aged Roky Erickson.

A second album, Easter Everywhere, was followed with a more restrained and universal message advocating enlightenment, but the political and philosophical message was lost on the authorities. The band became the focus of drug busts, and in 1968 disbanded. Erickson was arrested on drug charges in 1968 and opted for a stay in a mental institution. Unfortunately, he was sent to Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and returned to the outside world in 1971, after various treatments including electroshock therapy, a changed man.

During the seventies Erickson continued to play solo and formed a band called Bleib Alien, but most of the spark was gone. His 1980 album for CBS generated little interest. In 1990, after an arrest involving a misunderstanding with the U.S. mail, friends organized an impressive tribute album titled Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, which featured some 19 groups, including Z.Z. Top, R.E.M, and the Butthole Surfers performing Erickson's best songs, simultaneously demonstrating just how good those songs could be. Erickson himself emerged in 1995 from his eccentric reclusive lifestyle long enough to produce an impressive album titled All That May Do My Rhyme, which held out some hope for his continuing life as an artist.