Livin' On
When Clementine Tausch married 13th Floor Elevators "founder and visionary" Tommy Hall in the mid-sixties, she was inadvertently joining the Elevator "family," simultaneously assuming the role of den mother, moral supporter, and co-songwriter with Roky Erickson.
"We did ‘Splash 1,’ because he said that it was like something splashed between us when we met. For me, it was like neon flashing when our eyes met. We dearly loved each other but not in sexual way. I said, 'We should call this song 'Splash 1,' and that's how that song was written.”
Over the past couple years the Austin Chronicle has been publishing some pretty swell articles on Texas psychedelic innovators like Shiva's Headband, Zakary Thaks, and the Golden Dawn, including the above snippet from an interview with Northern California resident and ex-Elevator-wife Clementine Hall (neé Tausch). Writer Margaret Moser's interview is only one in a series of features that has covered the Elevators' long, strange journey from Texas to San Francisco and back. Along with her two-part article “High Baptismal Flow,” Moser has also tracked down and/or briefly spotlighted all the legendary band’s original members like Hall (a current San Fransiscan who post-Easter Everywhere moved to Laguna Beach and crashed with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love commune), Stacy Sutherland, Ronnie Leatherman, (who recalls, “When we first went to California, Roky was so full of life. It was great. Going everywhere with the band, it was so exciting. We could get in to see all the other bands. People were so into music back then. It was just amazing to us to play all these places. I'd think, 'Why are we the ones with the records out?' Then there was the Grateful Dead, Big Brother, Moby Grape. It was like, 'Wow, we get to be part of this, too!'"), John Ike Walton, Benny Thurman, Danny Galindo, and Danny Thomas. So if you're too impatient to wait for Hollywood to get the ball rolling on the proposed feature starring Jack Black as Roky, or can't afford the gas to chase down the You're Gonna Miss Me documentary at some college-town film festival, you can at least spend a few hours poring over some of this here virtual journalism.