Monahan knows the quality of the recordings will turn off the casual fan. But that hardly matters: The songs speak loud and clear through the static and deterioration. They offer one more bit of proof that Erickson was indeed a very sane man in the 1970s and early 1980s, a musician capable of writing witty, plaintive songs about everything from his hatred for the music business ("@2 Gone and Number") to his steadfast belief that no one will ever keep him down ("You're an Unidentified Flying Object") to, well, the truest, purest love ("I've Never Known This 'til Now," "I Love the Living You," and so many others). On each song, Erickson strums his guitar carefully, defiantly, and sounds alternately like Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly. They could trap his body at Rusk, but never his mind, never that voice.
"When I heard these songs, I was amazed," Stewart says. "Here were these love songs he made while he was in Rusk that no one had ever heard. I knew people who were into Roky would die to hear these songs."
If nothing else, Monahan hopes, perhaps some musician out there will hear these songs and want to cover one or a few of them. It has happened before: In 1990, Warner Bros. Records' Bill Bentley--a Houston boy, baptized in Erickson's holy waters when he was just a teenager--assembled the likes of R.E.M., the Butthole Surfers, ZZ Top, Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and so many others to record Roky's music for the heartfelt homage Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye. It was the first and maybe the last time the phrase "tribute record" meant something.
"I was 15 when I first saw the Elevators, and when I saw them, they completely opened me up to what music could be, especially rock and roll," says Bentley, who is writing a book about Erickson's days in the Elevators. "Rock and roll had always been entertainment, and the Elevators showed me it could be more than that. I thought, 'If this is the way it could be, this is it for me.' I grew up a little more, and I never found a band after that that could do it for me. They used spiritual and philosophical concepts to talk about how to evolve yourself. And Roky is one of the greatest examples of a rock and roll singer who ever lived, and people need to know that. It's easy to dispose of our artists. Once he was labeled crazy, that's more what he was than an artist--he was crazy. But in the Elevators, he wasn't crazy. He was the best."
And so Roky Erickson will have one more record in stores that he may or may not know is out there. One day, it might put a little money in his pocket. One day, maybe someone will record one of these songs and make it a hit. Either way, he won't care.
Until a few weeks ago, Stewart hadn't even seen Erickson in more than a year, since Erickson moved from his hovel outside of Austin into a four-plex near his mother's home. Stewart says Roky recognized him but wasn't happy to see him this time around. Monahan thinks that when Erickson saw Stewart, he saw work--and Roky doesn't much care for that anymore. In the end, his legacy will be left to those who care more about Roky than Roky.
Which brings us back to Jegar Erickson, the son who doesn't think of Roky as a burned-out legend but simply as the father he wanted but never knew.
"When I go someplace and say my dad's Roky Erickson, the way people act, it makes me proud," he says, insisting he will begin very soon reaching out to his father, that he will not waste another day staying away from Roky. "The mention of his name makes you go, 'Whoa, you're his son?' For a long time I never told anyone. I didn't want people to feel...well, because I didn't have the relationship with him, I didn't want it to be like riding on his coattails. I didn't want people to think I was using him like so many other people had. I tried to downplay it.
"But I've never been ashamed of my dad. The most important thing to me is my family. My dad could be the kind of guy who worked nine to five, mowed the lawn, or he could be how he is now, and it wouldn't change how much I love him or how much I respect him. I just didn't understand it. And I don't know if I totally wanted to. But I am ready to now.
