Ramsey Wiggins : Me and Gilbert Shelton: A Memoir

Legendary underground cartoonist and comix artist Gilbert Shelton.

Me and Gilbert Shelton: A Memoir

By Ramsey Wiggins / The Rag Blog / March 8, 2010

Legendary underground artist Gilbert Shelton will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Tuesday, March 9, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.

Shelton is the creator of such iconic comic strips as the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, and Wonder Wart Hog. His comix have sold over 40 million copies in 15 languages. Born in Houston, Shelton developed his art in Austin and then San Francisco. He now lives in France, where he is collaborating with French artist Pic on a strip called Not Quite Dead.

I. The Texas Ranger and Wonder Warthog

"Bright college days, oh carefree days that fly
To thee we sing, with our glasses raised on high." -- Tom Lehrer

In 1960 at the University of Texas (at Austin: that was the only one back then), if you helped to sell the Ranger, the student humor magazine, you got to attend the keg party that was held the weekend after the issue hit the streets. If you were only 20 years old and looked like you were 14, access to many kegs of beer on a Saturday night was a more than reasonable payment for hawking the magazine on campus for a couple of hours.

One of the other perks was that you got to hang out with the people who created the magazine. That’s when I met Gilbert Shelton and the others who brought forth the prize-winning best college humor magazine in the country.

The Rangeroos, as they called themselves, were an extraordinary bunch. Creative, smart, hard-drinking, and somehow older and more worldly-wise than the rest of us, they were the best of the best. We who were less than pretty, less than rich, or, despite being both, still disaffected, were drawn to the like minds of this social and party axis.

Lieuen Adkins and Gilbert Shelton when they both worked for the famed humor magazine, the Texas Ranger. The photo was taken at Lieuen's house on East 23rd in Austin, where the LBJ Library now stands. Photo by Bob Simmons / Austin Photos '62-69 / Texasghetto.org.

This was where I met people who knew stuff: music to listen to, authors to read, how to write, what was funny, and how to drink a lot without throwing up. I also met Janis Joplin, Bill Helmer (later a senior editor at Playboy), Dave Hickey, Billy Brammer, Tony Bell, Lieuen Adkins, Joe Brown, Hugh Lowe, Pat Brown, and all the others who couldn’t settle for life in the herd.

These were heady times. The glacial epoch of the early cold war era was transitioning into Camelot; crewcuts, panty-girdles, Eisenhower, and communist witch hunts were yielding to Ivy League, leotards, the Kennedys, and the Playboy philosophy. We joined the Civil Rights movement. We danced the Limbo, drove MGs and Volkswagens, and listened to The Kingston Trio, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan’s acoustic incarnation. We read poetry and angry young men. It was rumored that women could have orgasms, and that love might be free. Revolution wasn’t in the air yet, but the possibility of joy extended to the horizon.

One of the newer joys back then was to pull the king’s beard. Marching and demonstrating for civil rights had been righteous, but dreadfully serious. Mockery and satire, when served up with a deft hand, were much more cool. A put-down, especially when the target remained clueless about the damage done, was the coolest of all.

The Ranger served this up and more. In 1960 the entire staff was fired three times in the course of a semester for hiding various put-downs and obscenities in successive issues of the magazine. After that, the infighting became more and more elegant, as a blustering and clueless Texas Student Publications office was outflanked again and again by subtlety, irreverence, and skill.


Enter Wonder Warthog.

He had already appeared in 1962 in the Bacchanal, an off-campus commercial attempt by Bill Killeen -- and several of the staffers fired in 1960 -- to escape the strictures of a college publication. The threat of the draft drove Gilbert back to graduate school 1962-63 where he became the editor of the Ranger and further polished the Hog of Steel.

WW sent up superheroes, arch-villains, beatniks, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, and most concepts of morality extant at the time. Gilbert, who has nearly always had a collaborator or two, worked off and on with fellow Rangeroos Tony Bell, Lieuen Adkins, and Joe Brown to produce the first drafts of what would become world-class social satire.

Wonder Warthog later took Gilbert and friends to a wider audience, but back then the Fearless, Fighting, Foulmouthed alter ego to mild-mannered Philbert Desanex, ace reporter for the Muthalode Morning Mungpie was all ours. Frat boys might have money, cars, and high-maintenance girlfriends, but we had Wonder Warthog. Comic books had a whole new meaning.

Things change, and everybody moves on. One day I looked up and I was married, a father, a graduate student, and wore a suit to work at the Graduate Dean’s office. The summer of love came and went. John Kennedy had been assassinated, then Robert, then Martin Luther King, Jr.

Janis died of an overdose, then Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. Woodstock had turned into Altamont. The Civil Rights movement had turned into a shooting war. Vietnam was turning teenagers into post-traumatic heroin addicts by the thousands. We all marched after Kent State; My Lai revealed us as torturers, rapists, and murderers. The ship of hope was dashed on the rocks of the military-industrial complex. I drank too much and every night before I fell asleep had the terrifying thought that my life would be the same until I died.

Meanwhile, I heard stories. Gilbert had joined Pat Brown, then a student at the Cleveland Art Institute in Cleveland, where he had tried to work for American Greeting Cards, but it hadn’t taken. Back in Austin, he did psychedelic posters for the Vulcan Gas Company, then he joined the general exodus to the west coast, hoping to do rock posters.

His new strip, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, had begun to appear in The Rag, an off-campus production with low production values and a serious antipathy for the Vietnam War. The strips in The Rag would be reprinted in rags all over the world

In 1971, my college friend Dave Moriaty showed up and told me how he, Gilbert, Jack Jackson (whose art carried the moniker "Jaxon") and Fred Todd had bought a printing press and were publishing comic books as Rip Off Press. I wanted to die from envy. He was thinking of starting a magazine, and suggested that I might want to join them.

Dave Moriaty at the Rip Off Press, 17th and Missouri in San Francisco, in 1970. Photo by Bob Simmons / Austin Photos '62-69 / Austinghetto.org.

II. Rip Off Press

"The term 'drunken printer' is redundant." -- Men’s room wall in Rip Off Press

I wanted in the game. The degree was finished, the marriage was over, my boss was about to retire, and I had more old friends in San Francisco than I did in Austin. The party wasn’t over yet. I had already stopped cutting my hair, so in May of 1972 I quit the job, took out my retirement money, and headed for the coast.

Rip Off Press had relocated from the increasingly dangerous and expensive Haight-Asbury area into the warehouse district at the bottom of the north side of Potrero Hill. There was a trucker’s bar across the street (The Bottom of the Hill Bar, now famous as a music venue), and my friend Moriaty had a flat up the hill on Arkansas Street. You could see Berkeley and Oakland from his back porch and Mount Sutro from the front window. The flat downstairs could be had for $100 a month. Jack Jackson and his old lady lived across the street. Deal.

Rip Off Press was hot. Gilbert wasn’t just an artist, he was now a franchise. He lived with a very, very smart woman, Laura Fountain, and they had a big house on a cul-de-sac that had a block party every Bastille day.

Faded glory: Your correspondent Ramsey Wiggins, upstairs at the Rip off press office in 1972. Photo by Bob Follet.

The Freak Brothers were worldwide. A German lawyer with a Polish name, Manfred Mroczkowski, had come up with the idea that all the bootleg European editions of the Freak Brothers could be licensed and made to pay royalties. The first official publication had just come out in German. Rip Off and their main competitor, Last Gasp Eco-funnies had come to détente; each sold the other’s material in their mail-order operations. Serious business.

Rip Off was begun to print rock posters, but the ancient press wasn’t good enough for close-register poster work. It was, however, good enough for underground comic book covers, and was soon augmented by a better, smaller press. Gilbert’s office/studio/playhouse was upstairs, the press, shipping office, and a cavernous, mostly empty warehouse were downstairs. In the summer, the roof was festooned with sunbathing naked hippies. The truckers loved us. At 10:30 and again at 3:00, Fred Todd would ring a bell and we would troop into the walk-in safe for a smoke break. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I wasn’t good enough to be on the creative team, but Art can always use another handmaiden. I went to work as a dogsbody in the job printing shop we ran as a sideline and was given the nonpaying title of Managing Editor for the short-lived Rip Off Review of Western Culture.

It was the end stage of the best of times. In 1972 the summer of love had come and gone, but there were still affordable places to live, the counterculture was alive and well, and San Francisco was -- well, San Francisco. Robert Crumb was there, along with S. Clay Wilson, Dave Sheridan, Ted Richards and all the other underground comic artists.

Rock stars came and went. Chet Helms, grand poobah of the near-defunct Family Dog, appeared from time to time to try and get us to print posters on the cuff. Eddie Wilson, who had started Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, stopped off at our house to have a shower.

Gilbert Shelton designed this poster for Austin's famed rock hall, the Vulcan Gas Company.
The great circus that was Berkeley was across the bay, and Marin County was across the Golden Gate Bridge. Occasionally a young woman would find it interesting that I worked at Rip Off Press. I got tongue-kissed by a Hell’s Angel at the Garden of Earthly Delights, and had enough class to give him some tongue back. We parted with mutual respect. I was, after all, from Texas.

Once at a party I stepped between Robert Crumb and a large, angry woman who took offense at his Big Ass Comics, keeping her at bay while he escaped down the stairs. I ate with artists, and I drank with giants.

Every morning I would drink a pot of strong coffee and walk down Arkansas Street to the bottom of Potrero Hill, arriving at the press at the civilized hour of nine o’clock. Company president Fred Todd would be in the office, pacing up and down, throwing the point of his buck knife into the floor and swearing as he waited for the mail and the daily receipts to see if we would be able to buy paper and ink or, on Fridays, meet the payroll.

The shipping clerks would already have popped their white crosses and begun packing up orders. Moriaty got us to work burning plates for the printers. By 10 the head printer, a part-time rock organist and full time drug addict, would arrive and begin his morning routine of two cups of coffee, two joints and two Desoxyns before cranking up his press. (Our motto was “Quality is not our bag”)

Gilbert would arrive around eleven and, depending on the company that showed up, work, play ping-pong, or otherwise amuse himself. Jack Jackson worked at home but would pop in, usually late in the afternoon. Various print shop customers, artists, artist wannabes, and plain delusionals would come and go through the day.

At noon we would troop across the street for a sandwich and a beer, then back to the press for the afternoon, then back across the street for beer, eighty cent highballs, and a game of pool. Then back up the hill for dinner or out into the night, depending on the amusements available for the evening.

Life was good. I worked in the print shop with a future mayor of Marble Falls and a future Austin real estate developer. One day the drug addict printer got his right arm stuck in the press. He was in a cast for a long time.

Eventually a woman joined me from Austin, and we were together for quite a while. We later had a son who became famous. The Rip Off print shop invested in a worn-out magazine web press that we could never get to work right. I almost fell into the folder.

Things, change, and everybody moves on. After I had been there for about a year, the job printing shop, never a profit center, was declared a failure, closed and the equipment was sold off except for one press used to print comic book covers. The Rip Off Review of Western Culture wasn’t cultured enough and ceased publication. I was out of a job and out of Rip Off Press.

I stayed on in San Francisco for awhile, but after three days transcribing numbers at a nut and bolt manufacturing company for a temp agency, I had had enough. I was a revolutionary, god damn it. I spent two weeks in my basement rebuilding the engine in my 1966 Volkswagen, then packed the woman from Austin and what else would fit and headed back to Austin in September of 1973: The last to come to San Francisco, and the first to go back. I was sad for a time.

Rip Off Press founders Fred Todd, Gilbert Shelton, Jack Jackson, Jackson's companion Beatrice Bonini, and Dave Moriaty.
Time passed. Rip Off Press prospered without me, and I without it. The chance meeting with Eddie Wilson in my San Francisco living room turned into a three-year rock and roll marathon as the Advertising and Public Relations Director at Armadillo World Headquarters. After I burned out at the Armadillo, I made a Faustian bargain and sold ads for the Austin Sun, and, after that I really floundered for awhile. Doug Brown took pity on me and I started one of several stays at Oat Willie’s, Austin’s oldest headshop. The Sixties were officially over, even in Austin. It was confusing for awhile.

Meanwhile, more and more comic books came out of Rip Off Press. Dave Sheridan continued to collaborate on the Freak Brothers, and Fat Freddy’s Cat became its own publication. Paul Mavrides also began collaborating on the Freak Brothers in 1978.

Foreign-language editions came out officially in every European language except Russian. I’ll bet there is at least one unofficial version there, too. So far, no one in China has offered to make a deal, nor have the African languages stepped up, but long after the counterculture had lost its currency in the U.S. it remained alive and well in Europe, and The Freak Brothers did well. The Freak Brothers appeared in High Times magazine, and Universal Studios bought the license to produce a live-action Freak Brothers movie. Gilbert did an album cover for Doug Sahm, and then one for the Grateful Dead. Money rolled in.

Then, the logical next step for the Freak Brothers: A coffee table edition.

Freak Brother Freewheelin Franklin with his customary sage advice.
III. Oat Willie’s Campaign Headquarters

Ok, so I’m a clerk at Oat Willie’s, in 1978, leading the simple life, when the word comes out that Rip Off Press has done the first Freak Brothers collection, a coffee-table sized perfect bound book, for a respectable price and at a respectable investment in production costs, which Gilbert is going to go on tour to promote. One of the places he wants to do this is Austin, and since Oat Willie’s sells more Freak Brothers comics than any place in Texas, he wants to do an autograph party here.

Did I mention spending three years flogging rock and roll at the Armadillo? Anyway, Doug asked me to help a little with the publicity, so I started calling around and, a few days before the event went around to visit a few disc jockeys at a few radio stations. It turns out that the Freak Brothers are about as famous as Jerry Garcia. Everybody talks it up on the radio, and Gilbert gets to do an on-air on the top-rated FM station in Austin.

Came the day, and the place was a mob scene. Gilbert signed autographs until his hand hurt. TV stations showed up, then more people showed up. At one point a cop showed up in a patrol car, and everybody was nervous until it turned out he just wanted a signed copy of the new book like everybody else. He went to the head of the line.

I’m pretty sure that was the biggest-grossing day in Oat Willie’s history. It was the first really good day for me in a long time, anyway. I remember it fondly.

And Then…

Things change, and people move on. Gilbert and Laura escaped to Europe in 1979, first for an extended visit, and then permanently to Paris in 1982. Robert Crumb and his wife Aline Kominsky live in France, too. Two American national treasures, expatriated to France. Hmm.

Gilbert Shelton: Cool one with a cool one.
Dave Sheridan, Gilbert’s first collaborator, died of cancer in 1982. The Freak Brothers continued with collaborator Paul Mavrides. Universal Studios bought two more licenses to produce a Freak Brothers movie, and another company, bolixbrothers in Bristol, England, has been trying to produce an animated feature since 2003. The latest, but hopefully not the last, Freak Brothers collection is the full catastrophe, the Freak Brothers Compendium, which is the complete collection, all under one cover.

Gilbert’s latest undertaking is Not Quite Dead, the adventures of the world’s least-famous rock band. It’s also a collaboration, this time with the French underground cartoonist Pic. Three issues of this comic are out so far, and two have been translated into English.

Me, I stumbled around like a bull in a china shop until I had a spiritual awakening in 1989, and have been remarkably clear-headed since then. I live sedately in Austin with my wife, who understands me.

We’ve both done well, Gilbert and me.

I’ll get to see him one more time at Oat Willie’s on Friday, March 12th, where he’ll be autographing his works one more time. I’m doing a little publicity for this one, too, but maybe the lines won’t be as long. Or maybe they will.

He’ll host an art retrospective on Saturday the 13th at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture if you miss the autograph party. If you see a tall old guy with a glass of club soda, it’ll be me.

Until we meet again: Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were first published in Austin's underground newspaper, The Rag.

• Cartoonist and underground artist Gilbert Shelton's work is being featured in an exhibit at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, 1516-B South Lamar Blvd. in Austin. Shelton's work will be on display from March 13th-May 8, 2010. An opening reception, featuring the artist, will be held on March 13, starting at 7:09 p.m. Original art and prits will be available for sale.
• Gilbert Shelton -- whose published work includes The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart Hog and Not Quite Dead (with French cartoonist Pic) -- will autograph copies of his work at Oat Willie's Campaign Headquarters, 617 West 29th St. in Austin, beginning at noon on Friday, March 12, 2010.
• Shelton -- whose Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are to be featured in a movie now under development, will appear in "A Conversation with Gilbert Shelton" at South by Southwest (SXSW), at the Austin Convention Center, Monday, March 15, 2010, at 3:30 p.m.

Gilbert Shelton: Things are looking up.

Gilbert Shelton and the Simpsons' Matt Groening.

Gilbert did this jacket art for the Grateful Dead.

Wonder Wart Hog at home.

Fat Freddy's Cat speaks in many tongues.





Shelton's latest effort, done in collaboration with French artist Pic.

Still from long-in-development Freak Brothers movie, Grass Roots.

Texas Ranger party in 1963 at 18th and Brazos in Austin. That's Fontaine Maverick dancing on the furniture. Ramsey Wiggins is the tall guy in glasses and the gray sports jacket (already) turned to the left. Photo by Bob Simmons © 2000.

Some of the Rip Off Press crew at the corner of Franklin and Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco in 1969. Photo by Bob Simmons.


Rip Off Press staffers dine in San Francisco, 1972. L-R: Bob Follet, editor of the Rip Off Review; Beatrice Bonini, Jack Jackson, Dave Moriaty, Aline Kominsky, Ramsey Wiggins, and Philipp Carlisle. Grab from a polaroid photo taken by the waiter.

Oat Willie's crew, 1977. Ramsey's the tall dudely one in the shades. Photo by Ken Hoge.

Ramsey Wiggins, his own self. Photo by Eric Rosenblum from the Austin Sun Reunion, October 31, 2009.
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Mesmo's Reflections on the Sixties

Janis Joplin, folksinger. Austin, Texas, 1965, at The 11th Door on Red River Street. Photo by Bob Simmons / The Rag Blog.

Gerry Storm wrote the following reminiscence on Austin music in the sixties for the Texas Ghetto website in 2000. Austin was a center of the era’s dynamic counterculture and a point of origin for psychedelic rock.

Gerry writes “Mesmo’s Desert Diary” on a reliably irregular basis for The Rag Blog. "A septuagenarian desert rat" who now lives in Southwest New Mexico, Gerry Storm is a former student at the University of Texas in Austin who was a peace activist in the Vietnam era and a noted rock musician during the sixties and seventies. He has added a brief afterthought at the end of this article.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2008

The Way We Were
Austin Music : 1965-1969
By Gerry Storm / The Rag Blog

There was no great migration to Austin in 1965. New arrivals were usually headed for the University of Texas, a place in the state bureaucracy, or they were new personnel assigned to Bergstrom Air Force Base. Austin had the reputation of being a beautiful, rather colonial place, with no industry and low pay. U.T. graduates used to lament this situation as they packed their bags and headed for promising, good paying jobs in Dallas and Houston.

Those of us with friends in River City liked to visit because it was always a place to have a good time. It was a city of state drones and school teachers, politicos and lawyers, academics and professional students. It was a place that rich kids preferred to congregate as they waited for their inheritances. It was said to be rather snobbish, a city of tea sippers. But on all social levels, it was a good place to party.

Being the State Capitol and home of the state's largest and most prestigious university, there was an underground of irreverent scholars, artists, and politicos--some of them with national reputations--that you don't find in any city. Although they were tolerated in Austin, they hardly dominated the scene. For the most ambitious, Austin was only a stepping stone to the West Coast or the Northeast. That was one of the appealing facets of the town that survives today: It is a good place for a smart kid with ambition and talent but no money to start a reputation.

Night life? No, there wasn't much of that either. The Club Caravan in the Villa Capri Motel was the only place with a full-time band. The few rock clubs in town changed owners and formats regularly and enforced strict dress codes. There was a big country and western joint near Round Rock, Big G's, but you wouldn't have mistaken Austin for Nashville.

You couldn't buy a drink of hard liquor legally unless you were a member of a private club but you could buy whiskey by the half-pint to gallon, bring it into any beer joint and drink it all.

The veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict who had flocked to U.T. to cash in on the GI Bill, were gone by the early '60's. Their departure had left a definite social vacuum on the night life. The barracks erected for them and other students who couldn't afford a dorm had been razed, and that area of the south campus had been landscaped to feature the oil rig, Santa Rita Number 1.

The University and public places in Austin had been integrated quickly after Lyndon Johnson a few years earlier decided to run for President, without much fanfare or tumult, prompting black residents to ask, "If it was so easy why didn't they do it a long time ago?" But it was still a southern town. The only place with any sizeable mixing of the races was Charlie's Showcase, an East Austin rhythm and blues joint that served as a gathering place for the adventurous.

This was an era when the big happenings were private parties. The times seemed to dictate this social preference, and (as any college-age Texas kid, legislative aide or local dandy could tell you) there were plenty of these. Until a new resident found his or her social group, however, Austin could be a dead town.

Lyndon B. Johnson, longtime resident of the little city and owner of the broadcasting monopoly which controlled the town's major radio and only TV stations, was now President of the United States; his long time crony, John Connally, was Governor of the State of Texas; Frank Erwin, a member of the Johnson team, was running the University of Texas through the Board of Regents. The Johnson machine was housed in Austin and its power players exerted tremendous influence over not only the city and the state, but the world.

Mother U.T. ruled the cultural life by booking virtually all the name, live, entertainment through the Cultural Entertainment Committee. She was showing off her new art building by lining up one impressive exhibit after another. Gregory Gymnasium served double duty as the Longhorn basketball arena and the campus concert hall. The all-white Longhorn football teams were on a long roll under Coach Darrell Royal, necessitating major expansion of the football stadium. In fact "expansion" was a key a word on campus as the inevitable invasion of the Baby Boomer generation which would eventually double the enrollment was in its early stages. There were no women's sports teams at the university and coeds could not wear slacks or shorts or jeans to class but they could and did wear mini-skirts, much to the delight of girl watchers.

There was a fair amount of vice in the little city, presided over by a group of bank robbers and hard-core thugs known as The Overton Gang.

The Hill Country west of the city was still unspoiled and largely undiscovered, although the national press covering Lyndon at home had found it and been properly seduced. They regaled over the rides between Austin, Johnson City, and a Highland Lake called "Lake Granite Shoals" (soon to be renamed "The Lyndon B. Johnson Reservoir"). This was the preferred playground of the Johnson clan.

Although the influence of this political machine on the little city was well-known to and weathered by the populace, chances are the Overton Gang was more popular and, perhaps, more ethical.

Some of the best attended musical events were the "Folk Sings" on campus. These were strictly acoustic events featuring students. The repertoire was primarily traditional folk although some of the performers wrote compelling songs of their own.

Bob Dylan was the hero of the day to most folk music fans. His music could be heard in the neighborhoods around the campus, coming from students rooms and over the little local radio station KAZZ. He had managed to crack the pop music Top 10 with his ballad "Like a Rolling Stone".

The would-be professional rock musicians were playing the "English Sound" and some of them had affected the English look with "Mod" clothing and hair that was a little longer than normal (normal was quite short at the time).

There was a distinct difference between folk fans and rock fans, the former being more altruistic and the latter more animated. It came as quite a shock, therefore, when Dylan appeared at the Newport Folk Festival that summer with a rock group. In succeeding interviews he revealed that he felt like electric music was more suited to the times and that he planned to make all his future appearances with an amplified band as backup.

Folk purists were aghast, they felt betrayed. But young men of his generation got the point, there was a new fear sweeping this group. President Johnson had announced that American forces in Viet Nam would be increased by several hundred thousand, by one million inside a year. The young men understood that they would soon be called upon to put their lives on the line for their country. Many of them did not like the idea of forced inscription to defend a corrupt government thousands of miles away in Asia. None of them liked the idea of dying.

This was the source of the new angst in the music. Folk musicians throughout the country started "going electric", buying pickups for their acoustic guitars and little amplifiers to go with them. They still differed from the rock musicians in that they were usually rank amateurs when it came to playing in bands. But the music most of the rock musicians played was covers of current and past hits-nothing original. And the folk players wrote almost all their own music, the lyrics to which were now reflecting their discomfort with the growing war and its ramifications. With amplification, one could protest louder. The rock musicians were also feeling the cold wind of the draft in their lives, and they heard the voices of protest.

In September of 1965 Bob Dylan appeared in Austin at the Palmer Auditorium. It was a seminal event in the history of music in "River City". So great was the response to this music that hundreds of would be protest rock musicians went home and started trying to write songs for this genre. They also started letting their hair grow. Dylan's attitude and appearance seemed to serve as the signs of the new times and his message was loud and clear: don't go away like lambs to slaughter, stick together, fight the system.

There was a curious scene on San Jacinto street, a block up from the historic Sholtzgarten. On the corner was The Jade Room, a dress code night club which featured English copy bands, go-go girls, and dancing. In mid block was a nondescript little hole in the wall called variously "The Library" or "Fred". It featured folk singers, no dancing. Since these were the days before liquor-by-the-drink was legal in Texas, both places were basically beer joints. The Jade Room was very formal, run like a tight ship by its owner/manager, one Marge Funk. The Library/Fred was barely managed at all and had a succession of lessees and would be impresarios, barely keeping afloat.

On some nights there were dozens of performers who wanted to sing but not all of them made it to the mike before closing time. These performers had at least one thing in common, they were no slaves to fashion. Being unkempt was part of the scene at this club, performers and audience alike sharing this mindset. Performers from Fred did not play at The Jade Room nor vice-versa. But there was talent at both places.

The Thirteenth Floor Elevators -- Tommy, Bennie, Rocky and Stacy -- at the New Orleans Club in Austin, Texas, 1965. Photo by Bob Simmons / The Rag Blog.
Austin's first nationally famous rock band grew from a combination of these two scenes, the English copy bands and the folkies, the boys at The Jade Room and those at The Library/Fred. The driving force behind the marriage was one Tommy Hall, leader of the first Austin band to find success in the rock business. He was originally from Houston, an English major. In the family who hung out around the Ghetto, he was called "Turn On Tommy". He was a fast talker, a hustler, a jive artist, a rapper, a believer, a fanatic, a salesman, and sometimes a bore. Originally he had been a Young Republican but had switched allegiances when he became infatuated with music. He was also a good student in his early years at U.T., a quite literate young fellow with English language skills. He could not play a musical instrument so he took up the jug. He could not play the jug very well either, at least not in the traditional sense.

Unknown, unheralded and largely unheard at the folk sings was a skiffle group called "The Lingsmen". Skiffle was a bastard stepchild of folk and acoustic blues which had a brief fling on the hit parade with an English group led by one Lonny Donegan. Leader of The Lingsmen was Tommy Hall. If you had heard The Lingsmen then and been told they would be the band that would put Austin, Texas on the map as a center of pop music, you could have been forgiven if you had laughed.

In the summer of 1965 when Dylan shocked his followers by going electric, Hall got the message. The Lingsmen played that summer in Corpus Christi. They were no longer a skiffle group. They were covering the rock and roll songs of English bands and surfer music in a decidedly electric format. The group consisted of two boys from Kerrville, Stacey Sutherland and John Ike Walton on guitar and drums, respectively, and Austinite Benny Thurman on bass. None of them was much of a singer. None of them was much of a rock musician either, although Sutherland had some experience. Hall acted as manager of the group but did not play.

Another rising star on the scene in Austin was one Roger Erickson, Jr., the son of an architect/engineer father and frustrated opera singer mother. Rocky, as he was called, had an abiding love for the blues and a good collection of blues records which he learned to imitate quite well. He also had inherited his mother's voice, a powerful, intense instrument. He had received early musical training and was a competent guitar player. While still a student at Austin High he made a reputation by being expelled for refusing to cut his long, black, wavy hair. Rocky was a good-looking, very likeable fellow. He had plenty of charisma. He was a budding star. His debut on the Austin scene (while still in his teens) came when he put together a band he called "Rocky and The Spades".

They appeared at The Jade Room and were by most accounts a decent band, and a very loud one. They did not last for long and did not develop a large following. However, in Rocky, Tommy Hall saw the vocalist that he had been searching for to front The Lingsmen. Throw into this mix a lot of spooky mysticism, a little LSD, plenty of pot, other chemicals, sex, an amplifier for Hall's jug, the literary talents of Clementine Hall, Tommy's wife at the time and the author of most of the band's better lyrics, alienation, angst, and a "can do" attitude and you have the recipe that created the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Hall had become an erstwhile "Acid Guru", an individual who guided others through LSD trips. In San Francisco, in Boston, and in Austin these individuals were forming groups of followers who believed that their guides (Gurus, masters, etc.) were disciples of God (or The Man himself) sent to lead them into a greater glory. Charles Manson fit this mold. It is said that Tommy Hall had this kind of power over Rocky Erickson and others. For better of worse, it was under this veil of mysticism that Austin's first successful rock band emerged.

© Gerry Storm 2000

Afterthought.

The real story of the Austin scene was beneath the surface in the pot biz. Well into the '80's it was the dealers who financed the shows and various other businesses, bailed out buddies, financed bands, etc. You gotta have some capital to create a scene! The first upscale hippy businesses that morphed into the 6th Street scene were financed by the pot trade. Whole Foods? Dell? There was no grand conspiracy or cartel, just some guys and gals who figured out a way to cross and deliver it to a waiting buyer, and resist bragging about it. Lots of them figured it out and made it work for a time. I'd guess that they are still at it, although growing on this side of the border seems to be more common these days.

Gerry / June 21, 2008

Source. / Texas Ghetto

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