Roky Erickson

By the '90s, Erickson was struggling to survive on a $200 monthly Social Security stipend; after an arrest on mail theft charges (later dropped), he was reinstitutionalized. In 1990, however, artists like R.E.M., ZZ Top, John Wesley Harding, and the Jesus and Mary Chain recorded his songs for the album Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, which brought his work to a wider audience than ever before. In 1993, Erickson performed publicly for the first time in many years at the Austin Music Awards. A few months later, he returned to the studio with guitarists Charlie Sexton and the Butthole Surfers' Paul Leary to record a number of new songs. In 1995, Leary's bandmate King Coffey released Erickson's All That May Do My Rhyme on his Trance Syndicate label. Four years later, Trance issued Never Say Goodbye, a collection of rare, private recordings and unreleased Erickson compositions. (Coffey claims Erickson told him he was the first person to ever give him a royalty check for his music.)

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