THE 61 TERRIBLE SECRETS OF THE BLUE OYSTER CULT

THE 61 TERRIBLE SECRETS OF THE BLUE OYSTER CULT

Rick Johnson

The Blue Oyster Cult is what’s sometimes spuriously referred to as a “critic’s band” (see #43). As befitting such a characterization, critics—and ever writers—like to embroider their BOC copy with the scrimshaw and folderol of their own unfortunate, miserable existences. In The Biz, this is what they call “color.” In real life, however, it’s called a heap of dirty lies.

There’s been a persistent grumbling among the literate electorate that certain pieces in CREEM, most recently Rush, Queen and all the July record reviews, are for the most part sad delusions of drug-addled writers’ sick imaginations. That, in fact, there are no facts. The furtive scribbler would just as well have dreamed up the whole thing between episodes of Woody Woodpecker.

All too true. Honestly, if you knew the sordid slime that goes on among these elevated typists—the crude lies, the bitterness, the unholy pacts and sleazy deals [see *58], the fast n’loose promo floozies who take it on the run and never look back — you’d start reading Nude Musclemen for your rock info. All the writers do.

Each and every one of these terrible secrets, however, are guaranteed to be 100% T-R-U-E. I ask you—would a Ranger lie to a little camper? Well, alright, so maybe *30 isn’t altogether free of suspicion, and maybe *2 isn’t strictly above-board and—OK, for Pete’s sake!— * 16 is stretching it a bit. Hey, it was deadlinesville, Floyd!

But everything else is absolutely the whole truth and nothing but! Even the rumors are true, or at least actual rumors. Would you just give us a break and steal these secrets before they all come true!

1. The story behind “OD’d On Life Itself”: “If we don’t live it, we think it’s funny. ‘OD’d’ isfunny, a totally bullshit song. Sandy saw this chick who was totally out of it, a real asshole. She’d OD’d on life. We cracked up.”—Eric

2. Rumor ’76: As a promotional stunt for “ (Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Buck and Eric firebombed the office

of a New York suicide prevention hotline.

3. BOC have never appeared on television. How do we know they really exist?

4. Wrestling critic and BOC lyricist R. Meltzer was the lead singer for a brief period in 1968. Says Buck: “We were sandwiched between James Cotton and Richie Havens at the Cafe a Go Go and Meltzer sang the blues. To a packed house of college kids, the band did like a frenetic and desperate jam while R. took off his shirt and ran back and forth across the stage yelling ‘Piss!’ into the microphone. We knew then we needed a real lead singer.”

5. Allen claims that former manager/producer/ writer and whipcracker-in-general Sandy Pearlman initially reminded him of Eddie Haskell.

6. Buck wore pants with pennies glued on them at their first Fillmore gig.

7. Hot crullers to Hell: Original bassist Andy Panda left the band so he could work in a bakery.

8. Albert used to live in a New York apartment where “the neighbors are twelve feet across an air shaft and there was this guy who liked to beat off right in front of the open window.

I tried to stare him down, but he always kept doing it 'til I had to pull the drapes.”

9. Buck’s solution to above: “Next time he does it, go over to the window with a carrot and a knife and start cutting away at the carrot real slow.”

10. A pool shaped like sunglasses: Eric lives near Ian Hunter in Connecticut.

11. The singing replacement for Meltzer was Les Bronstein, who would do things like sitting on the studio floor and chanting “1 got to crap this vocal.” “Also,” added Joe, “he couldn’t sing.”

12. The group’s catchy moniker was made up by Fearlman, who neyer said why.

13. Original title of Spectres: The Big Hurt.

14. Eric Bloom initially got into the group (asroad mgr.) because he had a truck and PA.

15. The “real weirdodom lurking behind their unassuming physiognomies,” according to Lester Bangs: “A girll know retired , upstairs from a party one night, only to find one of the Cult nosing around her doorway, kneeling to nuzzle this all-but-strangerto his particular heights of ooh-lah. She demurred. ‘I don’t know,’ she said later. ‘Suddenly it was like we were just two... things.’”

16. Buck on the early days: “Jac Holzman of Elektra saw the band live for the first time on hog tranks. Had the contract blanks set up right there!”

17.A1B. named his first kid Jacob Dylan. So u>hat if it was a girl.

18. Bryan McLean, formerly of Love, was considered as the replacement for mung-lung Les Bronstein, but after hearing the band, he said, “No. I really can’t do this and anyway I gotta go tp Tampa and see Liza Minnelli.”

19. Rumor’73: Buck to marry the girl from the Summer Blonde commercials?

20. “We have a hard-core of about a quarter-million fans,” says Eric, a total which is roughly equivalent to the number of hogs slaughtered daily in the U S.

21. Donald Roeser. Donald Roeser: “The raw side of us has never been captured. It’s like wax build-up on a kitchen floor.”

22 Jiings of the party? Eric: “We hung ojut with Alice Cooper on one whole tour, and our idea of ‘partying’was to go to one of the motel rooms, drink maybe a six-pack of beer and watch Beverly Hillbillies ’til 3 a.m,”

23. The group’s favorite audiences are in the South and the Northwest.

24. The famous wrestling match between Lester Bangs and the tag-team of Dharma and Lanier, as reported by ringside announcer Air-Wreck Genheimer: “It all started when A! called Lester a fucking goober in reponse to his latest attack on Sandy Pearlman. Upon that note. Buck came in and was grabbed in the throat by Letter, leaving Buck’s little feeties dangling off the ground. Bangs spinned the wiry guitar player around and started humping him in the back as if Buck was a little French poodledoggy with a mustache. Then Buck pulled a double-reverse while A1 dumped a can of Oly down Lester’s shirt and knocked him on his butt with a double bump-bounce from bed to floor. ‘Bad’ Dharma then strangled Bangs while sitting on his face. Finally, A1 kneed him in the labanza.” Sorry, no decision.

THE CRITICS MOO

“When they struck their opening chord, I was so moved that I stood up and did number one all over the people in front of me.”—Air-Wreck Genheimer

“An S&M hootenanny!”

> —A.W.G.

“Blue Oyster Cult is God!”

—Robert Duncan

“Eric Bloom: this rich man’s John Kay. ” — Lester Bangs

“Get behind the Blue Oyster Cult before it gets behind youPJ

—R. Meltzer

“Is it decadence when you’re so lazy you gotta take drugs to meet deadline?” —L.B.

THE CRITICS OINK

“...Just slightly better than seeing Kansas in the nude.”

—LesTremayne

“The real Grand Funk. ”

—Mark Jenkins

“Bubblegum nihilism.. .establishes BOC as the Steppenwolf of the 70’s.” —Lester again

“About as scary as a lizard scene on Cisco Kid." —J. Lizard

“...More like the Moody Blues than ever before.” —M.J.

“... Soulless diabolism... decadent, fashionable quasi-fascism.”

—Undisclosed Limey

“No, it’s on Columbia. ” —Clive D.

25. True fact: the first LP Sandy P. bought was Trini Lopez Live At P.J.’s.

26. Transplanted Detroiter Deniz Tek, leader of Aussie band Radio Bird man, was so overcome by “Dominance/Submission” that he named their obscure-but-great first LP Radios Appear. That’s the one with the original “Aloha Steve And Danno.”

27. The story behind “Dominance/Submission”: “A kid is hitchhiking on New Year’s Eve in 1964, down as you can get, when he gets picked up by what you gotta envision as this frowzy divorcee and her daughter. They scoop his ass up and zip off, and then...” Darn, Lester never finished the story.

28. The original title for Agents Of Fortune was This Ain’t The Summer Of Love.

29. If you think Blue Oyster Cult is a stupid name, get a load of their earlier calling cards: the StalkForrest Group (No Stalk, No Forrest, of course), the Soft White Underbelly, Oaxaca (Elektra’s idea) and, according to R. Meltzer, the Santos Sisters for one night.

30. Rumor ’81: Joe Bouchard is the real father of the Humbard Grandkids.

31. There is no such thing as a stun guitar.

32. BOC’s very first live release was a limited edition 12-inch promo EP called Live Bootleg (Col. AS-40). “The most powerful live recording ever,” according to Metal Mike Saunders, it included concert takes of “Cities On Flame With Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Workshop Of The Telescopes,” “The Red And The Black” and the now-legendary take of “Buck’s Boogie,” which later turned up on the anthology LP, The Guitars That Destroyed The World (Col. 31998, ’73).

33. You used to be able to send away for the complete BOC lyrics, back when they were worth sending for.

34. “The best description of their material ever to appear in TV Guide, ” according to some CREEM nitwit, is this summary of an old episode of Thriller: “The Trashers move into a grim, unpleasant old house—where all the mirrors are hidden away in an attic.”

35. Sorry, ’nothing about David Lee Roth in this one.

36. Rumor 75: BOC are all the sons of symphony orchestra repairmen.

37. Meltzer again: “‘I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep’ bears a strong resemblance to various European national anthems.”

38. The now-defunct hippie rag SunRise gave Tyranny And Mutation a peace-sign rating in a 73 issue. Also rating the chicken paw were Toni Brown and Terry Garthwaite’s Cross Country LP and the third or fourth Doobies album.

An Evening With Groucho and Deep Purple’s Made In Japan, however, received power salutes. Roxy Music got the finger.

39. Some of the “lost” songs performed but never recorded include “Donovan’s Monkey," "Just Like Hansel And Gretel,” “Curse Of The Hidden Mirrors,” “Holiday Hill” (a Patti Smith tune about dating a werewolf) and BOC versions of “Uncjer My Thumb,” “Purple Haze” and a 35-minute attack on “It’s Not Easy, ” featuring triple drums and fuzz bass.

40. To finally clear up the issue, lyricist Helen “Wheels” Robbins is definitely Albert B.’s ex or she isnt.

41. The band retains their very own optical physicist, David Infante, to run their laser light show. Infante has to focus the light beam through a series of mirrors to make sure the laser doesn’t roast the audience’s eyeballs.

42. Incidentally, it’s the same kind of machine thatGoldfinger used while trying to reduce 007 to Jello soup.

43. Why is BOC considered a “critic’s band”? Is it because they can count among them one or more actualy rock critic (you used to see an occasional Bouchard byline in the original Crawdaddy) like the Dictators, Gizmos, Mogen David and the Winos, the Jon Tiven Experience and Slick ’Em? Is it because the critters loved them back when John X Public was still heavily into Emerson, Lake and Palmer? Does anyone care?

44. The shortest band in America? Well, let's just say that, in the Third World, where relief agencies use a height-to-weight proportion to determine who gets the food, BOC would receive Oreos, Snickers and birthday cakes every day.

45.Inspirational verse: “They’re ten years ahead of their time, but 1 love them anyway, especially their asses.”—“Some Girl,” 1972.

46 .Complaint Dept.: “‘Reaper’ is a really great song, so it pissed me off that I didn’t have any songs by me on the album ’cause it was their first to go gold."—Meltzer, 77 47. had this bitch, you see... Patti Smith is considered by some to be the sixth Oyster. Not only has she collaborated on some of their finest tunes (“Career Of Evil,” “Baby Ice Dog") but she even sings some leather icicles in “The Revenge Of Vera Gemini.”

ALL ABOUT PUSTULE FEAR

This is the 1976 interview with Al Lanier that turned into the wrestling match in #24.

LB: Agents Of Fortune is too professional.

AL: It’s like, wouldn’t it be nice to make some money for a change? It’s showbiz, and I want to be a pro.

LB: What a copout! You asshole! AL: You remind me of my mother sometimes.

LB: I really liked your band at first, then I really got to hate it...and mainly the reason for that is Sandy

Pearlman.

AL: Why should I shit on him? You’ve always had this conception that the world’s in chains and Sandy is the man in charge of, the chain dept.

LB: When are you gonna get rid of him?

AL: Why should we?

LB: 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. AL: Well, we do, but...

(commence to grapple)

48. Oh yeah, she’s also married to Al Bouchard. [Anythingyou say,

Rick.-Ed.)

49. More important Albert facts: he says “Golden Age Of Leather” is like j Queen, and his drums are Zickos,

“the first plastic set I've ever owned.”

50. Way back in 1975, the grolip had to make between $40-50,000 a month just to break even. This is the same amount that Americans now spend daily to fight dandruff.

51. The guitar that Buck first used with the band was a $14 Tosca with Condor Echo Pickup. He later switched to a 74 Les Paul.

52. Elektra still has enough early BOC material in the can for two LPs.

53. Eric Bloom’s nickname is Manny.

54. Two out of three ain’t bad... some of Manny-boy’s pearls of swine wisdom include: “All Englishmen are faggoids or fungoids,” “Baseball is punk shit,” and “The only things louder than us occur underground. ”

55. The umlaut over the O in BOC was Al Lanier’s idea. He’s the only one that knows what an umlaut is.

56. According to ex-producers Sandy and Murray (the Grimmer 1 Twins), the Red/ Black sides on Tryanny And Mutation stand for mutation/Quaalude (red) and tyranny/methadrine (black).

57. It was because of Sandy P.’s last minute maneuvering that the Cult (then Oaxaca) was dropped from Elektra. He kept stalling the release date so that he could figure out the exact sequence of cuts and because “Nobody buys albums in July."

58. Later, Sandy redeemed himself by lining up Krugmdn at Columbia. He still needed press clippings to cinch it with Clive Davis (then boss at Col.) so he “dictated whole reams of laudatory copy” to who-else-butR. Meltzer to get printed under various different names. Says Richo, it was the only time in my dozen-year word-jockey career I ever played the mindless goddam shill.”

59. Rumor 74: BuckDharma to play Big Brother in Stanley Kubrick’s remake of 1984?

60. The Blue Sell Out?—or—Why so sappy these days, guys?: Albert:

“What we were trying to do on Agents Of Fortune was please everybody all of the time. We’re trying to keep a balance between having enough smooth pop stuff so that people will buy the record and enough heavy stuff we can do in our live show.” Too bad it hasn’t worked.

61. The real story behind “Going Through The Motions": Albert: “It’s sort of like P. J. Proby. It’s the story of a relationship not built on love, but merely the physical.., ”