Recording The 13th Floor Elevators

John M. Lomax:

In your engineering days you had a lot of contact with the 13th Floor Elevators. What did you think of them?

Frank Davis:

They made an incredible impression on me because, aahh, well Roky, his vibrance was so incredible. These people were just far out there. I thought they had instantaneous communication wiih some foreign sphere. Felt that they were really right there.

This song, "Slip Inside This House" [from Easter Everywhere]. We had been mixing it all night and all day; it's a real long, complicated song. Its got eight tracks. It was the weirdest goddam mix because of the way these people put their stuff down. They'd talk all the way through it. They'd be arguing about some of the craziest shit you ever heard. I mean it just didn't make any sense whatsoever and you'd start snapping and get back on the knobs and all of a sudden you're way out in space.

So we finished the mix, and they heard it, and Tommy Hall -- he was the writer -- just really spaced out. They didn't really talk about anything after that, after the final mix ...

So I ... Roky was there, he was the last to leave ... I said I thought this was this way and Roky said, "No man, wait just a second."

He told them [the band] to go on and he stayed and said, "C'mon over here and sit down." He just got yellow all over, this little, little thing all around the edges of his head started getting yellow.

His head was real wide and he had lots of hair, y'know. His eyes were just ... Phew! Like saucers, standing about three inches out from his head.

Yeah, so I just gave in to it right then. This happened to me on yoga one time, but it was nothing like this; this was very liquid. The whole top just started turning, and it was way up here [touches his head] and it was something not in vision.

It opened up like that, like a vortex right down into my head and he was up there looking down like that saying, "C'mon, like this."

And bong! I went out and I don't remember a thing after that for two or three days. I thought I was floating around the room. I thought I was levitating. I swore that he was levitating me. And after that I thought I could. I thought I did it once after that, too, which was a completely different scene.

Source: KPFT Radio Guide (June 1975)