Sometimes credited with creating psychedelic music, Roky Erickson’s first band, the 13th Floor Elevators, stunned audiences with their concerts during the mid-1960s. Shortly after the 1966 release of their hit single, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” Roky entered the Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Rusk, TX under an insanity plea for a minor drug arrest. After three years at the hospital, Roky’s life was irreparably altered. In a tragic twist of irony, his psychological change brought a new level of creative brilliance to his work, and his psychedelic, lyrically fantastic music became a bird’s eye view into his new life.

Over time, Roky’s iconic status grew, and some of the greatest musicians in rock became his most ardent followers. In 1990, some of music’s most talented artists joined together to record his songs for the album Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye: A Tribute To Roky Erickson. REM, Julian Cope, T. Bone Burnett, The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Butthole Surfers declared their love for the idiosyncratic songwriter by happily tackling his songs about Satan and horror films, zombies and mounting paranoia.