Blue Oyster Cult

"Blue Oyster Cult was the hardest band that D. Boon and I could copy off records. They were at the top of the one-eye pyramid. Their influence upon us was indelible." -- Mike Watt (Reactionaries, Minutemen, Firehose) 

Workshop Of The Telescopes: The Best Of BOC 

In the early 1970s, a burgeoning heavy metal scene dominated by a British contingency including the likes of the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, found its purest voice on this side of the Atlantic... Blue Oyster Cult. 

Eric Burdon pleaded in the Animals, "Please don't let me be misunderstood," as if it is the destiny of rock's greatest to be just so misunderstood. Out in San Pedro in the 1970s, Dennes Boon and Mike Watt could identify with being on the outside looking in, and Blue Oyster Cult was part of their world. In 1991, six years after Boon's untimely death in a van crash, Watt's trio Firehose (recording for Columbia) included BOC's "The Red and the Black" on their 7-song Live Totem Pole 
EP, as much an homage to Boon as to BOC itself. 

In the spring 1995, as these words are being written for the ultimate BOC anthology, Workshop of the Telescopes, Watt is still keeping up his end of the bargain, performing "The Red and the Black" at each and every pit stop down the road. In the audience is an alternative generation of rockers who appear to be as misunderstood as every generation of rockers before them, and every one that is likely to follow. 

Primal Screams 

Casting a glance back at the post-Altamont, pre-punk early 1970s, the 
prospect of an American band making a name for itself at the very top of 
the heavy metal pantheon was slim indeed. Heavy metal -- the 
success-rock genre dominated and empowered by the British whose pedigree boasted the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin at center stage, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple orbiting nearby -- was yet to find its purest voice on this side of the Atlantic. 

For that singular event to occur, the unlikeliest of circumstances would 
have to converge in the unlikeliest of places: New York, to be sure, but 
not picturesque Manhattan with its mobile shooting galleries and 
transcendental scene-makers. Instead, the locale is some hours' ride east 
to Long Island, the State University at Stony Brook, a campus noted for 
having traded support of its football team for concerts by the Grateful 
Dead and Jimi Hendrix. 

There was a certain communal house, every school had one; a shelter for certain elements of artists and musicians, social scientists and deviant 
lifestylers, drop-outs and drop-ins. Albert Bouchard (who played the 
drums), Allen Lanier (keyboards and guitar) and Donald Roeser (lead 
guitar) occupied themselves with advanced pursuits in the metaphysics of their time and space, which included Zap Comix, "Star Trek," various 
experiments involving stimulation and alteration of synaptic patterns by 
means of secret potions and concoctions, and, of course, rock & roll. 

The three pooled resources with two other legendary Stony Brook 
characters named Andrew Winters (who played some finger-style acoustic guitar and bass) and Les Braunstein (a singer and songwriter who wrote "Big Blue Frog" for Peter, Paul & Mary) to form a band that could only be described as 'experimental' in nature. The band was christened the Soft White Underbelly by its future co-manager (and fellow Stony Brook denizen) Sandy Pearlman, whose broad range of intellectual pursuits and scholarly obsessions informed the band's overall attitude and direction. 


It is fair to say that Pearlman became an indispensible member of the 
band and an integral role-player in all its multi-farious schemes. This 
was clearly an outgrowth of his position as one of the acknowledged 
founders of modern rock criticism, along with Richard Meltzer, Paul 
Williams, Jon Landau and a small handful of others. They were 
responsible for Crawdaddy magazine, the first publication to apply a 
Talmudic exegesis to the analysis of the new rock & roll that evolved in 
the late 1960s. Reading every new stapled, mimeographed issue of 
Crawdaddy was a true acid trip: You could never think the same old way 
again about the Byrds, or Motown, or Spyder Turner or Jefferson Airplane 
once you read the Crawdaddy take. As a matter of historical fact, 
Pearlman was the first to apply the term 'heavy metal' to the music at 
hand. 

It is crucial to make this connection in our saga, for it was precisely the commitment to intellectual truth even unto its innermost parts that separated the boys and their music from the rest of the pack. That said, Soft White Underbelly began to command the attention of the college community, which eventually led to a few select appearances in New York City and a development deal with Elektra Records. A considerable amount of time and money was spent recording an album which, for reasons long since forgotten, was never released. 

With the Soft White Underbelly's moniker neatly tied up in red tape in 
the record company's drawers, the band went through its first (and last, 
for more than a dozen years) personnel mutation. Donald 'Buck Dharma' 
Roeser, Bouchard, and Lanier were joined by Albert's brother Joe 
Bouchard (replacing Winter on bass); and Eric Bloom, "the Rock King of 
the Finger Lakes," who took Braunstein's place on lead vocals and rhythm 
guitar. Now known as the Stalk-Forrest Group (and occasionally playing 
as Oaxaca, pronounced wa-ha-ka), they began a rigorous routine of 
hitting every East Coast bar, club and dive that would hire them. 

They slugged it out for a year and a half in something less than the ideal creative environment. Still, they were able to temper the top 40 sets that the clubs demanded with their original material, much of it co-written with Pearlman. With renewed enthusiasm and the Elektra fiasco behind them, accepted a friend's offer to record a new demo album at his studio. Pearlman took the demo to a Marketing executive at Columbia Records, Murray Krugman. Within weeks the band signed with Columbia and took a new name, Blue Oyster Cult, originally the title of a Pearlman composition (which surfaced on their third album as "Subhuman"). 

Hot Rail 

BOC summoned all its resources for the aptly titled debut album on Columbia, Blue Oyster Cult (released January, 1972), an apocalyptic fusion of wit and irony, pop culture and social psychology, science and mythology, humor and madness, intellectual calisthenics and gutter outrage within the context of motorcycle gang riots, outer space exploration, folk mythology, drug traffic murders -- tactical directions 
that remained consistent for nearly two decades. It was a "perfect" album, inasmuch as every song remains memorable (i.e. performable onstage, programmable at radio), opening with the double-play of "Transmaniacon MC" (Pearlman's long overdue elegy to Altamont) and "Cities On Flame With Rock 'n Roll" (BOC's first official single). 

The album was produced by Pearlman and Krugman, who (with considerable help from NYC jungle kingpin/engineer David Lucas, who first heard BOC at a party for decadent New York hipsters at a post-season closed Catskill resort) would stay together through the band's first seven years and as many LPs. The songwriting pattern was also set: Pearlman's lyrical visions of Lovecraftian dementia countered by fellow traveler Meltzer's twisted, perverse wordmongering (as in "Stairway to the 
Stars") -- all grounded by BOC's acute musicality. 

Their presentation onstage began to metamorphosize on-tour with Alice 
Cooper that year. BOC's growth was immediate and overwhelming, as images developed without the self-conscious posing that characterized British heavy metal bands. Caped, leather-clad Eric leered at audiences behindsilver-mirrored shades and led them in choruses of "Lucifer, the light"; white-suited Buck attained major pyrotechnic levels, earning him top 10 honors in every rock guitar poll; menacingly frail-pale Allen (longtime companion to poetess Patti Smith) lurked in the shadows of BOC's pulse, both musically and visually; and Long Island's deceptive brothers 
Bouchard drifted effortlessly from piledriving bottom-end work to more 
exotic rhythms with enviable finesse. High above loomed the giant BOC 
banner, ancient symbol of Kronos (Saturn) in white on a field of black. 

America embraced BOC feverishly, acceptance previously reserved for the best of the U.K. bands. To whet fans' appetites (and take up slack until the second album's release), a limited-edition 12-inch in-concert EP was issued to media, Live Bootleg (October, 1972). It featured "The Red and the Black" (advanced conceptual theme of the forthcoming album) and "Buck's Boogie" b/w "Workshop of the Telescopes" and "Cities On Flame With Rock 'n Roll." This white-sleeved vinyl slab retains its status as the Maltese Falcon of heavy metal collectibles. 

The album that followed, Tyranny and Mutation (1973), extended BOC's 
preoccupation with the macabre. Sides were cryptically labeled The Red 
(phantasmagorical id-teasers, supernatural wraiths by Patti Smith, 
Meltzerian convulsions and vampires attacking the subconscious) and The Black (physical, sensual, aural assaults on the frontal lobes, as in "7 
Screaming Diz Busters"). In retrospect, the album has taken its place 
alongside BOC's debut as a classic, definitive heavy metal source. 

It has been argued that the release of the next album, Secret Treaties (1974) marked one of those moments in rock when a band's public image nearly overpowered its existential reality. BOC had ascended to headliner status in many U.S. cities -- without benefit of a top 40 hit or even a gold album, just "Cult power!" (bolstered by rock critic endorsements in the press and on the FM airwaves) and sheer musical 
depth. The latter was evident on a new single, "Career of Evil" (co-written with Patti Smith) b/w "Dominance and Submission"; and such tracks as "Flaming Telepaths" and the portentous "Astronomy," from the ever-delayed project known only as Imaginos. 

With BOC's image as a rock & roll band only hair-close to critical mass explosion at that point in their lives, one can only imagine the personal changes that each member was going through. They negotiated some creative elbow room with On Your Feet Or On Your Knees (1975), the first of their three live albums, now regarded as a punctuation mark at the end of the first phase of their career. In addition to concert versions of non-album rarities (like Steppenwolf's elegy to Pearlman's 
favorite summer of love, "Born To Be Wild," modulated by Buck and Eric's 
chainsaw guitar duel), the double-LP also collected three songs apiece from the first three albums, including Meltzer's "Harvester Of Eyes," Pearlman's phantom Messerschmidt "ME 262," and the BOC touchstone, "Subhuman," all three from Secret Treaties. 

Phase Shift 

The title of BOC's next album, Agents of Fortune (1976), their first new studio recording in two years, alluded to the individual contributions that not only resulted in an incredibly successful release but also pointed the way for future projects. During BOC's longest hiatus to-date, each member invested in his own 4-track machine, and worked up songs on their own that were listened to and considered by the other 
members. 

Consensus cuts made it onto the album and, no surprise, yielded an actual hit single: Buck's beautifully dreadful "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was a top 40 hit (#12 in Billboard) well into 1977. It was the only music heard in the original Halloween film; Stephen King quoted its lyrics in The Stand, and it was released twice more in live versions. Also destined to become a classic BOC track was Pearlman-Roeser's 
"E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)," likewise issued in two subsequent live versions. Meanwhile, the chart flash of "Reaper" prompted a follow-up single: "This Ain't the Summer of Love" provided typical irony for that tenth anniversary season. 

"Reaper" catapulted Agents of Fortune past the RIAA platinum million-selling mark and pushed the previous live album past RIAA gold in the bargain. It also paved the way for BOC to underscore their new recording mode with a new stage show. They joined forces with one of America's most advanced optical physics laboratories to develop rock's most sophisticated and controversial laser light show ("Don't look 
straight at it, Johnny!"), costing $100,000 ('70s dollars!). 

With the next album, Spectres (1977), came an even more advanced laser 
show: twice the cost, twice the firepower, with nifty tricks like criss-crossing the stage in a spider web of beams, or encasing each member in a cone of laser light. Buck's second breakthrough single, "Godzilla," endeared BOC to Japanese audiences who loved their techno-edge and laser madness, and welcomed them as gods, as befit the musical emissaries of their national hero, Godjira. 

The album's double-intended [Phil] Spectral/spectral nature was broad enough to encompass "Gin' Through the Motions," co-written by Eric and ex-Moot the Hoopla mailman Ian Hunter (Bloom later gusted on Hunter's 1979 solo LP, You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic). Buck's "Golden Age of Leather," the story of the last generation of renegade 'bikers holed up against the world in the Grand Canyon, became a Blue Oyster Cult signature. 

The rock press had provided a forum for BOC's members to express repugnance at On Your Feet's sins of omission/commission three years earlier. Their second live album, Some Enchanted Evening (1978), was intended to "make up for" its predecessor and did just that, benefiting from having played more than 250 shows to a half-million people during the year since Spectres' release. In addition to five BOC 'standards', this live LP attained a place in history by reprising the MC5's "Kick 
Out the Jams" and the Animals' "We Gotta Get Outta This Place." 

Just as before, the live album marked a turning point in the BOC saga, 
time for a change, time to consider their position in rock's hierarchy 
as the last few months of the 1970s slipped away. The biggest change was inevitable, as BOC set about the recording of their first album in 
California with a new producer. 

Into The Storm 

Mere weeks prior to the release of Mirrors (1979), BOC laid waste to 
sold-out audiences in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, as Eric sang nearly the entire set in Japanese, including a lengthy intro to "Godjira/Godzilla." Back in the U.S., the new album represented "Change with a Capital C," according to Bloom. Pearlman and Krugman had delegated its production to staff producer Tom Werman, whose credits included Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent, and who went on to produce Motley Crue. The album's high points were many (R. Meltzer's tongue-in-cheek S&M fantasy "Dr. Music" comes to mind, with Ellen Foley, Genya Ravan, and Willie Nelson's harp player Mickey Raphael), but it was Allen Lanier's "In Thee" that took the pole position as the first single release. 

The decision to work again with an outside producer proved to be monumental for BOC: Cultosaurus Erectus (1980) brought them together with Martin Birch, who had just produced Black Sabbath's comeback LP, Heaven and Hell. As it happened, Pearlman had taken over the Sabs' management and booked them with BOC as "The Black and Blue Tour," chronicled a year later in a film of their Nassau Coliseum concert, simply titled "Black and Blue." In November, Don Kirshner invited BOC 
for their first-ever tv appearance on his "Rock Concert"; there was a 
doubletake for those who'd caught Kirshner in a rare 'speaking role' on 
"Here's Johnny (The Marshall Plan)" from Cultosaurus. 

Blue Oyster Cult's tenth album, Fire of Unknown Origin (1981), marked a second (and final) collaboration with producer Birch, and earned BOC its first top 40 hit in five years with "Burnin' For You," written by Buck and Meltzer. The album also included the third (and final) songwriting foray between Bloom and British fantasy/fiction novelist Michael Moorcock, as they lamented Elric the Eternal Champion in "Veteran of the 
Psychic Wars;" it was an appropriate follow-up to their earlier "Black 
Blade" (opening track of Cultosaurus), and "The Great Sun Jester" (from 
Mirrors). The cut is also heard in the soundtrack to the animated film, 
"Heavy Metal." 

BOC's first live album in four years, Extraterrestrial Live (1982), was the product of a half-dozen shows recorded coast-to-coast during a 4-month period spanning 1980-81. The double-LP's one dozen 'greatest hits' could not be disputed, and half of these were 'encore' live versions. To no one's surprise then, it was the one new track that grabbed attention: BOC's take of the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" (with 
guest guitarist Robbie Krieger of the Doors), recorded at the Country Club in Los Angeles the week before Christmas '80. 

The summer of '81, during the Euro metal festival season highlighted by Castle Donnington in England, attended by more than 100,000 people -- longtime tour manager and lighting designer Rick Downey joined Blue Oyster Cult as drummer, in the wake of Albert Bouchard's departure. Downey's only studio recording with BOC was on The Revolution By Night (1983), produced by Bruce Fairbairn (who had produced Loverboy, and went on to produce Bon Jovi). Coming after a live album, the new LP capped a year of minimum performances and maximum rehearsals and recording, but it was worth it: seven of nine tracks were writing collaborations with outside guests, including Eric with Aldo Nova on "Take Me Away"; and Buck with Patti Smith (who had previously written as a duo-only with Albert) on the "Shooting Shark" single. 

1984 and Beyond 

After twelve albums in twelve years, it must have taken gargantuan strength to gig straight through Orwell's year-of-years and release no new LP in 1984. Instead, energy was devoted to gathering songs for the upcoming album, between sporadic BOC and retro-Soft White Underbelly shows. Downey left and drummer Tommy Price (ex-Billy Idol, Scandal) took over for recording. Allen Lanier went on-leave and was replaced by Tommy Zvonchek (ex-Aldo Nova, Public Image Ltd.), but Lanier returned to the band by the spring 1987. 

BOC's first new album in 27 months, Club Ninja (1986) found them 
reunited with Pearlman, his first LP as their producer in nine years 
(since Spectres), although he had accumulated credits with the 
Dictators, the Clash, and Dream Syndicate in the interim. For the BOC 
sessions, Buck and Basketball Diaries poet/novelist Jim Carroll co-wrote 
"Perfect Water"; while "Dancing In the Ruins" was a lucky find from two 
unknown songwriters who seemed to have in mind a sequel to "Burnin' For You." BOC agreed, and the song vaulted inside the top 10 on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart. Director Frank Dilea's video (he did "Shooting Shark") was an MTV top 20 clip, focusing on a skateboarder in a 
post-apocalyptic setting as BOC played amidst fiery ruins. 

It would take another two and a half years for the denouement of Blue 
Oyster Cult to work itself out, the summer '88 release of Imaginos -- 
more than twenty years in its creation, more than six years in its 
recording. Imaginos! "The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms." 
One of rock's densest and most erudite concept albums, it could serve 
well as a doctoral thesis -- if the heavy metal origins of World War I 
were a subject for dissertation. 

As it stands, BOC's legacy will be the stuff of legends for every heavy 
metal generation to come. To counterphrase Mike Watt, the kids of today 
don't have to protect themselves against Blue Oyster Cult.

Discography:

 

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