13th Floor Elevators - Easter Everywhere (1967) [Original Stereo Mix]

13th Floor Elevators - Easter Everywhere

Original 1967 Stereo Mix

International Artists IA-LP-5 (Discogs)

~ThePoodleBites rip in 96kHz / 24bit FLAC + full high-res scans!~

It is no controversial fact that Easter Everywhere is regarded by many as the finest psychedelic album ever produced. A recent poll from a broad Sandoz-enthused Facebook group found it placed comfortably ahead at #1, with its opener "Slip Inside This House" also earning the title of #1 psych track ever recorded in a separate poll. For such an influential and beloved album, it is an absolute crime that its original stereo mix has still never appeared officially. That's right; contrary to Charly Records' blatantly false claims, only a vastly inferior reprocessed mix has appeared on all reissues dating back to the 1970s. Today I set the record straight once and for all.

This is a bit longer post, but this is necessary so that you can fully appreciate one of the finest records on Earth when listening in the best sound quality available anywhere ever. 

Thanks to my friends C.F. and @PsychTrailMix for their contributions and
encouragement with this massively important project!

A significant amount of Roky / Elevators research was originally done by Jack Ortman in the '80s.

Some of the information here originally comes from the extensive network of the Texas Psych Group.

Most of the photos, info, & references in this post are published by Paul Drummond.
If somehow you haven't yet, you need to buy his astounding photo book -- it's quite amazing! There are vastly more rare pictures there. For the hardcore Elevators fans, you need to find Eye Mind. You won't be disappointed.

Original front cover artwork for Easter Everywhere, as scanned from a 'Posturos' sleeve that had

been kept inside the original shrink wrapping since 1967

Tommy Hall during the Easter Everywhere
sessions, probably discussing the philosophical
tenets of the acid experience

The 13th Floor Elevators have one of the most interesting and amazing stories of '60s rock allure. The first band to call their music "psychedelic rock" was actually a bit of an assembled group, hand-picked from the growing underground Texas scene by acid-driven visionary and electric jug player Tommy Hall. The fundamental philosophy was that by taking LSD, one becomes totally aware of themselves and their many faults, and that by channeling the emotions generated by the drug one could continually refine themselves into a more perfect being.

Tommy and the band believed in this so fully that the conglomerate resolved, from their conception, that the purpose of the Elevators' music would be to spread this message of continual rebirth through psychedelic drugs to the world. By partaking at every performance and "playing the acid," the band would attempt to trip out their audience in the same way and spread the message that they thought would change the world. While short-lived and nothing more than kids at the time, the band certainly left their mark. Some of their shows are of great lore, but it is the perfect achievement embodied by their studio album Easter Everywhere for which the band is most well-remembered.  

Below I give details on some history of this fantastic piece of American music history.

The original rear cover artwork for Easter Everywhere, displaying the chakras of a meditating yogi
and Tommy's infamous "shh" photo 

The story of Easter Everywhere starts in the winter months of 1967, as the band had just been yanked back to Texas from a successful venture with the growing hippie scene in San Francisco, California. Their record label, International Artists, demanded that it was time to start working on the second album. Contractually bound to oblige, the band, still mostly in their original line-up, went into the studio and recorded "She Lives" and "Levitation," which had already made their appearance as regular parts of the band's live set. These recordings are stunning; John Ike Walton's drumming on the former track is enough to make any early prog enthusiast drool; Stacy floats off into inner space during the chorus, while Roky forges ahead, double-tracked and unhindered, when suddenly the band are back on the verse, perfectly tight and rocking so hard that you almost think they were sober (spoiler: they weren't).

But, this lineup just wasn't to be. In February 1967, John Ike Walton and Ronnie Leatherman decided to leave the band, disgusted by the obvious label mismanagement and overwhelmed by Tommy Hall's fundamental message of acid deliverance. They were replaced by Danny Thomas and Dan Galindo, respectively, who would return with the band to the studio in September 1967 to finish creating the album which would seal their infamy and mystique forever.

Danny Thomas smokin' the drum kit

Dan Galindo high on bass

The sessions could be summarized as a creative but precisely-composed ordeal. Tommy, for instance, demanded every aspect of Roky's voice be sung exactly as he imagined it for the poetic masterwork "Slip Inside This House." With its long verses in trochaic meter featuring difficult-to-pronounce words, Roky was constantly frustrated, with tensions eventually erupting into a fist fight between the musicians. Onlookers watched fearfully, with engineer Frank Davis remarking that "The fight wasn't anything compared to the irony; it was like the pope and some goddamn saint just knocking it out over which path to glory they should take... to see these people I'd come to consider saints coming to blows over something so tedious..."

The results, though, are spectacular: as Davis perfectly stated, "Roky could have read the dictionary and just given you chills." The voice and the band formed a perfect vessel for Tommy's message, elevating the listener from this corporeal realm to the spiritual one; this was exactly the effect Tommy had intended.

Producer Lelan Rogers (far left) & the band goofing off in the studio. Lelan was known to partake
in the band's green cigarettes during the Easter Everywhere sessions.

The "dark angel," psychedelic guitar
genius Stacy Sutherland

When experiencing the album, one is struck by how astoundingly coherent and intricate it is, so much so that it's hard to believe that it was written and recorded entirely under the use of LSD. Tommy was known to spike drinks with his never-ending supply of acid, while Galindo admits to using speed to improve his playing. To combat the difficulties of ever-evolving songs, Davis recorded the album by doing a basic first dub and then re-recording individual parts one-by-one, achieving a perfectly-synchronized final take. Roky was reportedly so heavily dosed during the sessions that his guitar parts, defiantly played out-of-tune while standing on top of a speaker cab, were almost entirely re-recorded by the very serious and immensely talented Stacy Sutherland in the process.

In some sense it's amazing that the vibrations erupting from that little-known Texas studio reached the highs that they did. But one should remember that Walt Andrus' studio was, at the time, state of the art -- it featured an Ampeg AG-300 8-track recording console, whereas little-known pop groups such as The Beatles were still bouncing around with 4-track. The fact that the album was mastered and pressed cheaply has led many to believe that it is a poor sounding recording, which it was not. Studio owner Walt Andrus speaks of the sound reverently:

"Easter Everywhere is something that no one will ever know how good that really was -- because of the mix! The clarity of the original recording was immaculate... I brought in some little itty-bitty speakers to see what it'd sound like on a car radio, and so the initial mix was real bottom-heavy, compensating for the small speakers. I offered to mix it for free, but there was too much wrangling going on over at IA. The original eight-track masters to it don't exist anymore, so you can never go and fix that. That thing was just beautiful, and all the pressings I've heard were..."

Frank Davis and Lelan Rogers in the recording booth

Walt Andrus in his studio

The band had actually played a substantial role in the mixes, as engineer Frank Davis recalls three people had to "play the board" as the sound rolled out of the speakers. Some form of mix was completed at Walt Andrus Studios before being sent out for "editing and mastering" at "Columbia Mastering, CA" (according to the band's biographer, Paul Drummond), which probably refers to Columbia Studios in Hollywood. The master lacquer was probably received back in the armadillo state and hastily sent off to Tanner 'N Texas for plating and pressing, with initial copies shipping out at the end of October 1967. 

The album's artwork was elegantly crafted, as one would expect considering the diverse and elaborately recorded sounds within. Prominently displayed on the front cover, drawn by George Banks (who, contrary to some sources, was never the band's manager), is the blazing Eastern sun, an image discovered by Tommy Hall within a book of Tantric art by Ajit Mookerjee. This aureate star represented the open flaming third eye, above which is the seventh chakra, or realm of Nirvana. With 47 rays, the sun alludes to the 47th Problem Of Euclid (a.k.a. the Pythagorean Theorem, with Masonry overtones), which in turn connects to the square cover, itself representing the temporal world. The sun, as well as the disc inside, were circular, symbolizing the spiritual world. Below the sun is the band's name formatted into the eyes of Buddah. By placing the cover to one's forehead, the flames burn above their new disciple, and it is thus suggested that all could consciously reach the state of immortality by studying the contents within. The gold ink used for the cover, which rubs off easily on the fingers, was chosen as being symbolic of the divine. Still today the original album covers are artifacts which absolutely must be seen to be believed; no reproduction has ever done the artwork justice, and no digital scan could ever capture its breathtaking beauty.

The album is certainly one of the earliest concept pieces to emerge in popular music. The obvious motifs of light and of the sun appear frequently in the album's lyrical content. For example, in Stacy's heartbreaking, auto-biographical song "Nobody To Love," the chorus refrains:

Danny Thomas with sun motif above his head.

The number 5 was also symbolic for the band

She knew the sun would come

And it would shine for us all day

And burning bright its morning light

Would flood us with the day

Another obvious reference is in the closing track "Postures," which functions as Tommy's conclusive song about the never-ending quest:

The higher you're living now the purer it burns

So keep climbing, move your energies higher

So keep climbing, your sun catches on fire

So keep climbing and bathe in the sun

That dawns in the darkness once the journey's begun

Similarly the opening track seems to contrast this "high baptismal glow" with the ever-present darkness of creation, both metaphorical and literal:

In this dark we call creation

We can be and feel and know

From an effort - comfort station

That's surviving on the go

There's infinite survival in

The high baptismal glow

Slip inside this house as you pass by

Hence, implying that by actively improving oneself through use of psychedelics, mere man is able to reach the ultimate state of consciousness, heaven, reincarnation -- the level of God. Tommy combined the ideas of Eastern and Western philosophy into one unified ideal, as he explains openly in the band's sole interview, given to Houston fanzine Mother on 20 November 1967:

"Well, [the title] comes from the idea of Christ Consciousness. And realizing that you can be born again; that you can constantly change and be reformed into a better and better person. It's like a progressive perfection, and Easter Everywhere is sort of the combination or culmination of this idea as echoed in the public. It's like everyone is snapping to this; that there is a middle ground between the Eastern trip and the Western trip, and that is by learning to use your emotion and realizing what emotion is and why it is there and how to control it from a pleasure point of view so that you don't get hung up in a down place. It's just the idea of rising from the dead all over, everywhere."

Tommy & Clementine Hall taking a break during the recording sessions

After the album had been released, the band found themselves quite disappointed with the outcome. The quiet pressing (necessitated by the length), mastering errors (detailed below), and cheap vinyl led the band to feel unduly ashamed of their masterwork and basically dismiss it. In that same interview, Danny Galindo even goes as far as to state:

"Danny Thomas and myself, this is our first album. We had never played a job together. We had to do it the hard way, as hard as anyone could have done it. All this album is really, is an indication of the potential we have in this group. Our following albums will be much, much better and as the group tightens and the quality improves, so will our recordings."

Initial Billboard appearance,
from 2 December 1967

Easter Everywhere appeared on the market in October or November 1967 and was met lukewarmly with initial acclaim, even appearing for three consecutive weeks in Billboard, but disappeared from the pop scene without a trace by January of 1968. It seemed just as well, since Tommy, with his musical vision fully realized, decided that the music format no longer functioned as a proper vehicle for his ideas, and soon left the band indefinitely for San Francisco. Roky would soon find himself subjected to forced Thorazine treatments and electroshock therapy before being institutionalized for five years inside Rusk State Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane due to possession of a single marijuana joint. Stacy Sutherland would continue on to persevere with the band's final album, Bull Of The Woods, before calling it quits and forming the band Ice, which recorded material for International Artists that was never released, as the label declared bankruptcy and disappeared. 

Advertisement for the late-'70s UK
Easter Everywhere reissue

It wasn't until the late 1970s that interest (or nostalgia) in the band began to resurface. Inspired by this, the International Artists label was rebirthed, and new reissues were created for all of the label's twelve albums. However, the haphazard storage of the tapes or straight disregard for their whereabouts meant that something had to be done for the new masters, at least for the first few albums. What happened next has been the subject of much debate, but here is my best estimation of the story after considering all the details.

The original tapes for the Elevators albums had probably begun to deteriorate due to improper storage, and the multi-track masters had been overwritten long ago. To combat this problem, the engineers re-processed the mixes using fake stereo imaging, phase processing, and extra reverb. The result was a horrible, messy, phased sound, but apparently this was preferred to transparency on whatever damage had accumulated. In this process, it's likely that the original tapes were totally destroyed, and were disposed of quietly, with these new "remixes" taking their place. These tapes were used for all of the '70s reissues, and every single reissue on Earth after that. Patrick Lundborg claims in The Acid Archives and in his online Lyrsegia blog that the '70s pressings sound better than the originals; and indeed, I've even heard some well-known record dealers claim the same. This is very, very incorrect, and horribly misleading. Only the original 1967 pressings present the album as intended. While the later reissues are definitely from tape, they do NOT feature the far superior original stereo mix, and do not even somewhat reasonably compare to the first pressings.

In 2011, after much criticism for their 2009 Sign Of The Three Eyed Men 10-CD set containing only this inferior "alternate" stereo (and a mono needledrop), Charly Records, an ex-bootlegger UK-based company, released Easter Everywhere as part of The Albums Collection, which they maintain is sourced from an original stereo LP. In reality, it's a rip from a '70s (or later) repressing with all the added phasing intact. The Self-Declared "Lama" Of Record Collecting apparently had a hand in this one, too -- I sincerely wonder if any of them have ever even heard an original pressing!

The band during the Easter Everywhere sessions. (L to R, top row first): Danny Galindo, Stacy Sutherland,
Danny Thomas, Tommy Hall, Roky Erickson.

This album has been transferred to digital and shared online many times by various well-meaning fans. The earliest is probably from the Texas Psych Group's bootleg Roky Erickson CD Club, which, if the criminal fraudster leader doesn't dissuade you from, the sound quality will: it was transferred on a turntable going noticeably too slow, with the bass cranked up, and put through some noise reduction for good measure. Yikes.

Online ripper jpstooges has tried his hand at this one, and while escalating at least thirteen floors above the Roky CD Club version, it's basically raw and fails to correct for a few things: obvious vinyl noise, three mono-to-stereo mixes, and the treble boost from his cartridge. Probably the most well-known fan version of this album floating around is from the "Essential" compilation created by JWB, which made many valid corrections but used a large volume of EQ, destroying the natural sound of the original that many (including myself) prefer. That same transfer was most recently used by Prof Stoned for his post, which revealed that there were some problems with the transfer itself, including boomy bass, compressed dynamics, slightly off speed, and vinyl noise that an auto de-clicker didn't clean up. There have also been some other transfers that I won't discuss because they're really not worth mentioning.

So, for the first time ever, I present the original stereo mix of Easter Everywhere, fully manually restored to full fidelity as it was intended to be heard in 1967: no EQ, no alt-mix-revisionism, just master tape sound. It goes without saying that this project is rather special: for me, this is the greatest record ever made -- and I've treated it as such, making absolutely no shortcuts at any part of the restoration process. I have been waiting for many years to do this album justice with a definitive digital edition, and at last it's complete. I hope that you will enjoy it. Download this and forget that any other version of this album exists.

Included in this post is the digital debut of the band's interview in Mother magazine, along with an enormous archive of photos from the original sessions, scanned from the best sources possible.

Proceed with caution...

Lineup:
• Roky Erickson -- vocals, guitar
• Stacy Sutherland -- vocal (tr. 4), guitars
• Tommy Hall -- backing vocals, electric jug
• Clementine Hall -- backing vocals (tr. 9)
• Dan Galindo -- electric bass
• Danny Thomas -- drum set
• Ronnie Leatherman -- electric bass (tr. 3 & 8)
• John Ike Walton -- drums & percussion (tr. 3 & 8)


Track listing:
1) "Slip Inside This House" (Hall/Erickson) - 8:02
2) "Slide Machine" (Powell St. John) - 3:43
3) "She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own)" (Hall/Erickson) - 2:59
4) "Nobody To Love" (Stacy Sutherland) - 3:01
5) "Baby Blue" (Bob Dylan) - 5:17
6) "Earthquake" (Hall/Erickson) - 4:50
7) "Dust" (Hall/Erickson) - 4:01
8) "(I've Got) Levitation" (Hall/Sutherland) - 2:40
9) "I Had To Tell You" (Clementine Hall/Erickson) - 2:29
10) "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)" (Hall/Erickson) - 6:30

Equipment Lineage:

– Audio-Technica VMN40ML stylus on AT150MLx dual moving-magnet cartridge
– Audio-Technica AT-LP1240-USB direct drive professional turntable (internal stock preamp/ADC removed)
– TCC TC-754 RIAA phono preamp (new regulated power supply, added LM7812 regulator)
– Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 MkII (96kHz / 24bit)
– Adobe Audition CC 2020 (recording)
– iZotope RX 7 audio editor (manual declicking, EQ subtraction, additional adjustments)
– Audacity 2.3.3 (fades between tracks, split tracks)
– Foobar2000 v1.5.1 (tagging, dynamic range analysis)

Thanks for taking the time to read my posts and check out my blog. I'd greatly appreciate it if you leave a small comment below. Notes from my readers are what inspire me to keep going. Thanks!
MEGA: https://mega.nz/folder/YIkWWR5B#OIB3UlmZj7aki_s4h9oEDg

 

Enjoy... and keep on climbing! :)