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!
encouragement with this massively important project!
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 |
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
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.
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.
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 |
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..."
Paul Drummond, the band's biographer, stated that the album was mixed at Columbia Studios in San Francisco, but this is incorrect because that studio did not exist until 1971. The likely story is that some form of mix was completed at Walt Andrus Studios and hastily sent off to Tanner 'N Texas for manufacturing and pressing, with initial copies shipping out at the end of October 1967. 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.
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 friend George Banks, 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."
"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."
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 |
![]() |
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 begun to separate due to sticky-shed, 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, with the magnetic layer peeling completely off the tape, 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.
The band during the Easter Everywhere sessions. (L to R, top row first): Danny Galindo, Stacy Sutherland,
Danny Thomas, Tommy Hall, Roky Erickson.
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. 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.
Lineup:
• Roky Erickson -- vocals, guitar
• Stacy Sutherland -- vocal (tr. 4), guitars
• Tommy Hall -- backing vocals, electric jug
• Clementine Hall -- backing vocals (tr. 9)
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. 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
Enjoy... and keep on climbing! :)
• 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!
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1URmecaMNURQsi1HkNyLoxibzHc7jcADw?usp=sharing
YouTube playlist available here: shorturl.at/ilAV4
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!
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1URmecaMNURQsi1HkNyLoxibzHc7jcADw?usp=sharing
Enjoy... and keep on climbing! :)
![]() |
Danny Galindo & crew overdubbing the Sounds Of The Earthquake; Tommy gives his "ok" ... |