Blue Oyster Cult is a band at the crossroads. Not necessarily Robert Johnson's, but their sonic souls lie in the balance. After three LPs and a live dud, they have come back eclectic and accomplished on Agents of Fortune. But you lose a bit for every gift you allow yourself. In their own term, the BOC have become "pros," which, if you wanted to get realty cynical, could mean they'll be in competition with Barry Manilow or Elton John. Somehow we (and, some say, they) never conceived them that way. There may have been a synthetic feel to much of their previous music, but it always had teeth and sufficient dementia, the sense that things could go completely out of control and reduce us to rubble.

Now the BOC are phasing out their old producers, Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman, and phasing in a new era of democratic self-determination. But can they hold their fangs out of captivity? The question depends in midair, tense as the group, as reporters who have cared about their destiny at various stages of the game, as you if you liked them in the first place, probably. They'll be all right, but is all right enough? What follows are three faces of BOC—who they are, where they've been, where they're going, questions, answers, ad hominems. Hitler was nowhere in sight.

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Allen Lanier: Stonewalling It?

By Lester Bangs

Many people feel that in the past, BOC have been pawns of their producers, who also co-wrote many songs with them and generally shaped their image. Allen Lanier, who plays keyboards and rhythm guitar for the band and now writes and sings as well, is not one of them. Lester Bangs, who plays typewriter for CREEM, is, Bear in mind, whilst perusing the following discourse, that these two gentlemen are friends. Air-Wreck Genheimer sat in and dodged flak.

L.B.: Agents of Fortune is too professional. It comes off like you're trying to prove something.

ALLEN: It's like, wouldn't it be nice to make some money for a change?

L.B.: It's a good album, but it doesn't go apeshit. It's very careful.

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BOC Live: Laser In the Labanza

By Air-Wreck Genheimer

There is another camp, however, which may or may not spend a lot of time listening to BOC albums, but remains convinced that they are one of the fieriest live bands extant, far outstripping all units in the boogie league. To get the lowdown on the BOC live experience ca. '76, we dispatched Scoop A.-W. Genheimer to catch them in a greaser's palace in Minneapolis. The following is his special report.

The first time I saw the Blue Oyster Cult was in the summer of '74. When they struck their opening chord, I was so moved that I stood up and did No. 1 all over the people sitting in front of me.

The '76 tour started not without similarities. When Allen Lanier came to our hotel room to talk, I was doing No. 2. Fortunately Bangs had the situation well in hand, asking straight to the noggin questions, which culminated in the following:

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The Sandy Pearlman Only Some Of Us Know

by R. Meltzer

Since up until now Sandy Pearlman has been generally recognized as something akin to the major domo if not mastermind behind the Blue Oyster Cult, we thought it only appropriate to give him equal time in our coverage of their new, more independent phase. What follows is an affectionate memoir by one who has, over the years, known him as well as any other living human with the possible exception of his mother.

Summer of '74. '73? Hot nite anyway and Samuel Clarke Pearlman's got a notion to do some research on "Third Reich S&M bars of Manhattan" to work out some lyrics for a new BOC tune. He's askin me—an actual New Yawk resident (he's been livin' in Smithtown, Long Island with mom & dad since the fall of '62 and before that it was the three of 'em in Far Rockaway where I went to school with him and where Phil Ochs went home to hang himself (others who've lived there: Jonas Salk, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Dan Lurie—the one-time "Sealtest Strong Man" on Big Top, the original Jay of Jay the Americans, Hurricane Jackson who twice lost to Floyd Patterson, Michael Goodwin, AJ Liebling used to spend summers there, there's also a reference to the place on page 2 of Moby Dick) — to please assist him in finding some such dens of heavy metal depravity and first suggestion is of course the Eagle's Nest on Twenty-something Street and 11th Avenue or thereabouts (right off the docks). A light nite for customers so they won't hassle him about not havin .the proper black leather or jean-jacket attire. Parks his Saab or Alfa or whatever it was and tells me to sit it out while he's in there cause he doesn't want his cassette machine stolen (Ziggy Stardust is playin and so far he's been rather unconvincing in convincing me the alb is "one of the top 5 LPs of all time"). He don't stay in the club too long however, stompin out past a pair of 6'5" leather "Good Humor Men" to vehemently protest that it's just a buncha costumes.

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ALLEN: Well, yeah, it is. That's the sin of compromise, of equal contribution, 'cause everybody was writing, obviously. There's only one Sandy [Pearlman] lyric on this record.

L.B.: Your songs ["Tenderloin" and "True Confessions"] are really good. I'm glad they finally let you do it.

ALLEN: You gotta understand that for the first three years this band was just total insanity. We never made any money, Got fired from about every job we walked into. My whole thing these days is a real Howard Hawks kind of deal, y'know? It's show business, and I want to be a pro.

L.B.: What a cop-out! You asshole! You're not Dick Wagner playing backup for Alice Cooper. You could be a star; you could take over this band! "I'm a pro"—bein' a pro is nothin'!

ALLEN: To me it's not. I enjoy it. I think the new album is put together well; I don't think it's a brilliant album . . . You remind me of my mother sometimes: "You're such a talented boy . . .

L.B.: Do you have trouble writing new songs?

ALLEN: Yeah.

L.B.: Really? How come?

ALLEN: Because I'm too conservative. Too self-critical. That's why I like Raymond Chandler so much. I know he suffered from the same disease.

L.B.: You know, the stuff you do is really natural. I really liked your band at first because of that, and then I really got to hate it because it was all so unnatural. And mainly the reason for that is Sandy Pearlman. Because like the lyrics and image and that was just totally bullshit.

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LB: "When the fuck are you assholes gonna get rid of Sandy Pearlman?"

AL: "We're not gonna Lester, ya fucking goober!"

Upon that rather final note, Donald Roeser (alias Buck Dharma) came in and Lester grabbed him by the throat, leaving Roeser's little feeties dangling off the ground in the strangest glad to see you again greeting I'd ever seen. Then Bangs spun the little guitar player around and started humping him in the back, as if Roeser was a little French poodle-doggy with a moustache. Don (as he is known to his friends) quickly pulled off a double-reverse (probably thinking of his charming wife and daughter waiting patiently for him back home) with the aid of Lanier, who dumped a twelve ounce "Oly" beer down the inside back of Lester's Demon Lover T-shirt. Lanier knocked Bangs on the butt by way of a dead on the double bump bounce from bed to floor. Lester sprang, well, tottered anyway (finally feeling the two to three dozen Bloody Mary's he had ingested earlier) back up like a true champ and engaged Roeser in a kama sutra influenced, big time wrestling lover's joust on the bed. Each would repeatedly gain control over the other and then lose it:

DR: "You're not so tough for a big guy, Lester." (DR strangles LB while sitting on his face.)

LB: "I know, Squirt, but you're not so tough for a little guy." (LB lifting DR in the air by the throat.)

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Next stop is The Spike down the block where they got free macaroni salad every Thursday night and guys with self-inflicted tattoos and facial scars. Too lowlife and non-ritual-oriented for him so we try out a hetero palais de-nuit for a change of pace, the M&M Lounge on Little West 12th street where the topless honeys don't even get a dressing room so they gotta take it off and leave it on a chair (guys in blood-spattered butcher aprons cause there's meat racks on both sides of the M&M: Gerri Miller got her start there before she moved uptown to the Peppermint Lounge). I tell Sandy there might on the off chance be some rough trade types aboard ship who might prove interesting to him from a slightly different perspective (lyricists can always alter their vantage point for the duration of at least a single tune now and then). No go tho so there's only one place left to take this wouldbe Coleridge: THE TRUCKS . . .

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ALLEN: I really enjoy Sandy's energies, but I don't think he's that good a writer.

L.B.: Sandy has been the defining force behind the BOC.

ALLEN: He was for a long time, but why should I shit on him for that? You've always had this conception that the world's in chains, and Sandy Pearlman is the man in charge of the chain department. It's just a lotta shit.

AIR-WRECK: Do you ever think about leaving, beyond normal argument situations?

ALLEN: Hey, everybody in the band wants to or has quit at different times, for like three days, but I'm still totally convinced that there's a virtue in the band's existence. This may sound naive to you, but the band . . . just represents a very abstract idea of being able to do something, and do it well, and I think that means a lot.

L.B.: (sings) "You do what you must do, and you do it well"—yeah, but you do it better. I listen to those fucking BOC records—you were the only one that ever had any star quality.

ALLEN: What does that mean? A lot of people are stars, and totally obnoxious and uninspiring idiots. Isn't Dinah Shore a star? What the fuck does she mean to the world? She could sell cereal.

L.B.: Do you plan on having Sandy write any lyrics on the next album?

ALLEN: Well, first of all, there's no plans about it.

L.B.: Ah, come on.

ALLEN: Lester, you won't believe me, but the time came for us to do an album and everybody looked at each other and said—well, first of all, Albert's been the primary writer with Sandy, right? If you'll look at the credits on the other albums, you'll see BouchardPearlman. And it just happened that Sandy had not given him lyrics in six months, so he used Patti's lyrics to write with, or his old girlfriend Helen Robbins's. As usual, when he goes home to write something, he picks up what he's got, and he uses it. All of us did the same thing, and when it came time to do the record, we had 20 songs. And not one of them had Sandy's lyrics on 'em. All the other records, Sandy was around all the time, working hard on his lyrics, giving them to people and asking them to work on them. And this time he wasn't. That's the truth.

There's a thing about bands: one has to write one's own lyrics to be a legitimate band. And that's always been my . . . limitation. I wrote with Sandy six years ago, and then after that, I decided that I just didn't wanna write with anybody.

L.B.: Is that why the band didn't do more of your songs?

ALLEN: You'd have to see the way I work to realize that I'm my own worst enemy.

AIR-WRECK: Are you the only Gentile in the band?

ALLEN: No, Eric's [Bloom] the only Jew.

AIR-WRECK: Yeah, but the conception I've always had of BOC is that it's a Jewish Nazi band, getting in trouble with the JDL.

ALLEN: Sure, but I thought it was controversial. I enjoyed that. I don't think I ever came across much antiSemitism until I met Jews. [Laughs.] The biggest anti-Semites I know are Jewish. I mean look at films, "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers . . .

L.B.: When are you gonna get rid of Pearlman?

ALLEN: Why should we get rid of Pearlman? Did you ever see a band that didn't have a manager?

L.B.: Do you want Sandy to manage you for the rest of your corporate life?

ALLEN [laughs]: Corporate life; what a way to describe it! But it is a corporation, isn't it? BOC, Inc.

L.B.: All right, let me put it like this: I was told that the reason Pearlman still managed the band was that the band owed him a bunch of money.

ALLEN: Well, we do, but . . .

L.B.: Would you get rid of Pearlman if you could?

ALLEN: No, I wouldn't.

L.B. : Well, what's he doing for you? Why do you keep him around?

ALLEN: Well, I'd have to take you back—first of all, Sandy was—

L.B.: I don't wanna hear any of that crap.

ALLEN: WHY DON'T YOU WANNA HEAR ANYTHING EXCEPT WHAT YOU WANNA HEAR?

L.B.: No, no, because I remember the old days and all that. I've heard the Soft White Underbelly tapes and all the stories—

ALLEN: Why don't you get a blonde wtgand you can talk like Barbara Walters?

L.B.: —but you're talking about like 196—

/ALLEN: I'm talking about, you know, that the past has some importance and it means something that I've worked for Sandy for a lpng time and Sandy and I have hadins 4nd outs over the years, but I enjoy Sandy and I respect Sandy because I think that he's an intelligent person, a creative person, an energetic person, and an incredibly honest person. You think I go home at night and say any different? Sure, there's been lots of times I've got home and said "Fucking Pearlman, he's on my ass, he's full of wrong ideas" and all that kind of shit. But at the same time, at this point, I can do what I want, if I want to dd it. . .

L.B.: (sneers): "Oh, I can do what I want; I finally got my song recorded."

ALLEN: Well, isn't it true?

L.B.: Yeah it's true, but I imagine there were a lot more before that.

ALLEN: But that's water under the bridge. You've been working in this business for a long time, but I just don't think you understand what kind of business it is or what kind of relationships you have to build up with people. There's a million ways of working in this business, and the worst thing is that— first of all, everybody in this business still gets screwed financially, by everybody. I've met a lot of managers in this business and I've hated them all. It's almost, y'know, by its nature it's a lousy gig. But it's like one of those things that goes along with show business. You have to live with it. I hate all those people. I'd just as soon never go talk to the people at CBS, y'know, the record people and promotional people and all that kind of crap.

L.B.: All right, but on the other hand, I also think Sandy and Murray are lousy producers. They loused up all your other albums and they loused up Pavlov's Dog. But here you have coproduction credits: "David Lucas, Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman." What exactly did Sandy and Murray do on Agents of Fortune?

ALLEN: They mixed it. Sandy's a tremendous mixer. I think the only lack they have as producers is a lack of concrete musical. . . well, look, we did the album basically the way we wanted to do it, and Sandy's opinions were valued and taken as we judged them to be right or wrong. David Lucas helped us to do the tracks, and Lucas is also a great vocal producer. He knows just the right microphones and just the right things to tell people to make them sorta grab this note or that note. You want a producer that'll say, "Look, you guys are speeding up, you're slowing down, you're not putting the direct power into this track that you should be doing," and so on. And that's real important, because otherwise you come up with flaccid sounding music, or overly obnoxious aggressive sounding music, or . . . this is depressing to talk about. Seen any good movies lately?

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DR: "Yeah, well, take this, ya big prick!" (Kneeing LB in the labanza.)

But all parties must pass, and soon it was concert time. The Cult opened up with one of their new songs, "Tattoo Vampire," which was meanderingly poor; too muddled and undistinctive. But SKRONGKO! The flashpots went off ("Custom-designed, ultra-powerful 'semi-nuglear'—Abby Hirsch Public Relations") as the band launched into "Stairway to The Stars" and every single member of the audience started clenched fist power saluting, hopping up and down and flailing about like a room full of napalmed babies.

As Eric Bloom does the strangest disco prance this side of Soul Train, Buck Dharma plunks out the opening chords to "Harvester of Eyes" and before you can catch your breath, the laser blasts dissecting needles of light through your pupils right into the back of your skull (as it were indeed). The laser . . . the laser! THE LASER! Yes, it is the same kind of machine that Goldfinger used to try and burn off Agent 007's puddoodies. In fact, David Infante, the optical physicist retained by the band to work the thing, has to focus the light beam through a series of mirrors to insure that the laser doesn't burn out the audience's eyeballs. (Best hope that dude doesn't have an egomaniacal LSD flashback and decide to blind 13,000 16-24 year olds all in one brilliant [as in bright light] fell swoop.) All dangerously nasty, but great.

What appears to be thousands of thin squiggly green sine waves bounce and weave throughout the arena. All the heads in the audience seem disconnected from their necks as you notice them spinning around in slowly rotating concentric circles, trying not to miss a single light beat or a guitar strum; as you catch yourself doing the same thing. The tension increases as the laser beam vacillates and BOC plow through "Sinful Love" (the best of the new songs they performed here), "Cities on Flame," and "Telepaths."

A genuine highlight of the shqw came when Buck D. took the vocals on his composition "The Last Days of May," because I was so surprised to find him in such strong voice after Bangs squeezed Mr. D's throat like one would do to a plugged-up tube of toothpaste.

A couple more (one new and one old) of the Pearlman inspired (?) Computer/Bombers/Electric Dildoes With Teeth style numbers followed before the tune I had been waiting for thundered out. "Dominance and Submission" at last! Expecting violence and receiving Eric Bloom's disco trompings, (surrounded by the rest of the band with grins and eyes so big that their heads may as well have been giant "Smile" buttons) was confusing to say the least. But when the chorus degenerated to a Las Vegas style/Woody Guthrie sing-a-long, I couldn't help but enjoy it. Somehow, the idea of an S&M hootenanny appeals to me.

The remainder of the show consisted of the Cult doing what the Cult does best: an' dat be playin', daddy! Each member stretches out in solo land on "Buck's Boogie" . . . then all crash back together on a speedier version of their new LP's title track, "This Ain't The Summer Of Love." Bloom and Albert Bouchard team up on the drums with Lanier and Dharma likewise tag teaming the guitars, ooh!

A scourge of flashpot explosions signals the close of the concert proper with the Cult's blazin' rendition of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild." Ouch. Them flashpots sting the eyes like Dharma's mosquito licks sting the ears.

At last the encore and bro' Joe Bouchard finally gets to do his thing with the subways on his "Hot Rails To Hell," his bass guitar shakin' the ground jes' like the 5:15 express.

And to think they do it all without make-up.

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Sandy's driven past the trucks many a time, y'know one of them desertedby-nite vehicle depots on the outskirts of town where the joyboys go for a little impersonal hotstuff-in-the-dark amid the broken glass and dead rodents, he's been past and hooted out a helping of anti-homo whimsey with the window down a score of times at least. But never stopped til now. Stops and I lead him past the couple hundred millers-about a couple-three 18-wheelers into the bowels of the operation. There's this whole section for this with a whole lineup of hinds and a ringmaster urging folks on in "come and git it" fashion. Bunch of agog nances a little further in're craning their necks in the almost total black to get a decent look at this one particular instance of action off in a corner. Pair of 'em are coupled down there in the dinge and suddenly one of 'em yells out "Suck me harder!" I turn around and the author of "Flaming Telepaths" and "Dominance and Submission" is nowhere to be found, he's scrambooched his way out to the sidewalk with thoughts of upchucking din-din on his mind. Really stunned the boy: "It's like Dante! I never believed such things really existed on the earth! Dante!" (This from a cat who's always spent much of his leisure time in the reading enjoyment of the Bronte Sisters, Thomas Pynchon and Albert Camus: a little dose of REALITY for ya, Mr. Lit Fan!).

First "ROCK & ROLL" elpee our boy ever purchased (he was big on classical mostly with an occasional Cisco Houston) was Trini Lopez Live at PJ's (first one he bought).

Late summer of '69 this whole gang of us went up to the mighty Woodstock Festival, me, SP, R. Hoffman, B. Abrams, Fusion editor Robt. Somma's cousin Neil Louison, Shelly So-and-so. Really being "with it" all right and then a few weeks later when Sandee had a shot at going to the Isle of Wight whatsis for free (somebody was gonna pay him to scout the isles for talent) me, RH and BA were gonna pay our way to go along with him. Whole thing felPthru when we kinda got soured on the whole thing cause we all got our pusproducing smallpox things (required at the time) and Sammy just plum got squeamish and refused to get his: pustule fear!

Abstains from the use of intoxicants and mind expanders too, once said on the occasion of many of us college guys (went to higher ed with him too) checkin out the Tavern on the Lake at Lake Ronkonkoma in the fall of '63 that he didn't need to drink cause "nobody can notice any difference when I'm drunk from when I'm sober" altho it's hard to tell if he's really ever been drunk at all (once had three quick shots of tequila in '73—largely for experimental purposes —and there really wasn't anything to notice so maybe he actually knew something way before the fact, maybe). Generally prefers stuff like beer with raspberry syrup at the kraut joints in NY's Yorkville: quenching thirst is foremost. Once professed a fondness for "smoking mescaline" when the Underbelly was living in a decaying mansion in Great Neck (Sandy never stayed with them unless he was completely exhausted or his car was all broke down, preferred his mom's "full refrigerator" a full hour further away from the city) and the boys felt like being silly with it in a pipe all by its self (mostly like smoking sugar). Claims now that he's never had coca-cola but there was a time back in the late '60s when he was raving about the time he had these cocaine nosedrops and subsequently ended up spouting Hegel's myth of the whatchamacallit to a pack of wide-eyed students in the vicinity, sez now it never happened (memory cells on the blink?). Only anything he ever bothered to obtain from pop's drawers at the store was elixir terpin hydrate which he went nuts on the nite of Spring Weekend '64 at some North Shore beach (swang on a swing and spattered incoherencies into the ocean). (Unconfirmed report on the only time he took acid, small dose as it was: Boston '67, he's really digging the Byrds on the turntable until somebody spots him enjoying himself, whereupon he promptly stops.)

Finale (some pertinent facts y'might be interested in hearing)—The main reason the Underbelly (a/k/a the StalkForrest Group, also for a few weeks Oaxaca and I think the Santos Sisters for maybe one gig) never came out on Elektra their original label was they had this whole album done (their best far & away if y'axe fpe) and it was due for July '70 release only Sandy Andy figured gee nobody buys albums in July so he pulled this great stall with September in mind whereby he took his merry time deciding on the exact sequence of cuts for side one. Real great and Jac Holzman was so overjoyed with the idea that he dropped the act (the Sandman'll never admit it even tho impartial neutral third parties've been verifying this line of interpretation for years).

Finally when he's got this Krugman character inside at Columbia all lined up and everythihg to get the boys a fat contract as the BOC he still needs reviews and articles and stuff to take on over to Clive Davis to clinch the deal so what he does is literally dictate (natch!) whole reams of laudatory copy for me to get printed here and there under my own name and others (e.g. Jon Tiven who actually got the check from Changes mag instead of me!) and he won't let me say a goddam thing about their past incarnations cause he wants Cliveboy to think they're totally new so it's basically just him telling me what to say (standin over my shoulder checkin out every single word). This thing in CREEM that appeared somewhat later at the time of their first Columbia release ("Get Behind the BOC Before They Get Behind You") was almost totally Sandy's phrasing including the title, wouldn't let me put my two cents in to save my life (promises of gold albums to come with my lyrics on em filled my head plus all that still-lingering abstract "friendship" nonsense), only time in my dozen-year word-jockey career I ever played the mindless goddam shill. Never again . . .

Don't get me wrong tho Sandy, you're a prince. I'll never forget the time we had all that fun visiting the top 4 finishers in channel 5's pizza bakedown all in one nite (pre-asparagus days) and then you suggested in your famous witty fashion that we stop in for some SANDWICHES on the way back after we were stuffed to the effin gills, those were the days!