THE RETURN OF BLUE OYSTER CULT

THE RETURN OF BLUE OYSTER CULT~

SOAP, HAMBURGERS, AND THE ENTROPIC DISSOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE EXPLAINED! FINALLY.

FEATURES

George “Metal” Smith

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“Rossignol’s curious, albeit simply titled book, The Origins of a World War, spoke in terms of Secret Treaties, drawn up between the Ambassador from Plutonia and Desdinova, the foreign minister. These treaties founded a secret science from the start. Astronomy. The career of evil. ”

Words found on the inner sleeve of the Blue Oyster Cult’s Secret Treaties, a hard rock record to end all hard rock records. The cover portrayed five unfriendly looking characters collected around Nazi Germany’s crowning achievement in aviation, the ME 262—a jet fighter (among the first of its kind) that could have conceivably turned the tide of the air war over Europe had Hitler not been blind to the advice of his generals. It looked like it was parked in the courtyard of some ’burg in Paraguay; presumably the Cult had flown it there or were, at the very least, its “ready” crew. Or so I imagined when I was 18.

Can you picture it here in 1988? A young kid totally swept away by the imagery of a strange silver obelisk on the cover of Tyranny & Mutation (the previous year’s offering); so much so that he stared at the cover for so long that when he looked away at the living room wall, the image lingered on in his fundi as an optical trick.

In BOC, ca. this time, you had an act tailor-made for teen kids like

myself. Five unsavory boyos who made records that delivered the ultimate riffs, not just once, but again and again on songs like “Cities on Flame (With Rock n’ Roll),” “The Red & the Black,’’ “Seven Screamin’ Diz-Busters,” and “Flaming Telepaths.” Add to this an almost impenetrable lyrical gobble which mixed equal parts Outer Limits thriller, Madame Veronica's Dungeon Of Discipline, Lovecraftian themes expounded in The Shambler From The Stars and Beyond the Mountains of Madness, And cosmological conspiracy theories; heck, BOC were an act who, unconsciously or not, became the living embodiment of a pulp novel. It didn’t surprise me at all when, in 1985, Elektra released a sampler of material which contained a cut called “Arthur Comics” by a pre-BOC ensemble known as the Stalk-Forrest Group.

BOC were a band capable of engendering a fanatical response in their fans; deservedly so, since Tyranny & Mutation has been credited on “the Black side” as being “the finest example of riff in the history of the substance” and the subsequent Secret Treaties was a sophisticated masterpiece of metal which set the cretins to hopping long before Ramonesmania. Among many other brain-twisters, it featured insta-philosophico-history lessons on “ME 262” with the protagonist

complaining, “Must these Englishmen live that I might die/Must they live that I might die?” Subsequently, many labelled ’em "pompous.”

“Pompous" maybe, but BOC were the very first “big deal” American heavy metal band. Typically, they possessed an almost exclusively male audience (no chicks before “[Don’t Fear] the Reaper") and the wherewithal to mount elaborate and overblown stage shows which cemented such an audience. (For example; Outright purchase of albatrossian laser gimmickry including a 40-foot-long mechanized "Godzilla” and notable squabbling with then support-act, Kiss, overuse of pyro and stage explosives.) This was all before MTV, mind you; the national attention span had yet to decline to the five-minute threshold and a major label act didn’t have to look like fashion models—they could even be short, pudgy, and sinister if they wished. (Or tall, pudgy, and comical in the case of ZZ Top).

Heart and soul, no matter how addled, meant something to the majority of the fans spurring Buck Dharma to plaintively remark at the close of our interview, “Do you think the kids care as much about the music now? I don’t think so."

And that sums up the decline of BOC in this decade. Fire of Unknown Origin, released in 1981, was the last effective Cult record. “Burnin’ For You” became the band’s second hit single; “Joan Crawford,” and “Vengeance (The Pact),” weren’t too shabby either. Two years later, drummer Albert Bouchard—he of the gold lame shorts and leader of the guitar conga-line spectacle that was “ME 262,” left under a cloud and the audience ceased to bother. Club Ninja with its credits to “heavy metal” Sensei and totally unrocking delivery didn’t make it. BOC were reduced to opening for Rush, guys who once supported them, and small club tour dates.

Despite fan turnoff, the Cult’s stock remains high among their most successful (and younger) competi-

tors. Bret Michaels has admitted that in his pre-Poison days he fronted a BOC tribute act known as Spectres. (Hard to imagine Michaels emulating Eric Bloom.) Lars Ulrich confessed backstage at Monsters Of Rock that “Harvester of Sorrows” from... And Justice for All was, in part, inspired by ‘‘Harvester of Eyes” from Secret Treaties. (Facts courtesy of Deb Frost and Albert Bouchard.)

Could it be possible, then, for BOC to regain lost fame and fortune if the “right” record was made? Imaginos, the new LP, tries to answer that question; the record being a concept piece which ties (or tries to tie) together all the cryptic theory of

extra-dimensional treachery hinted at on the first three albums. It tells the tale of the Imaginos, a human of limitless power and influence acting under the guidance of Les Invisibles, super-beings whose dreams are of all human history. Their aim: The outbreak of World War I! (It does sound like an Outer Limits episode, don’t it?)

Although I’m not a teen anymore, I still find this Sandy Pearlman—BOC Svengali-type manager—concocted cloud of phlogiston much more entertaining than the prospect of say, a new Bon Jovi album entitled New Jersey. Columbia’s worked uptoo and maybe they should be; the album kicks harderthan anything since Fire. It should; it’s been laying around for some time as Albert Bouchard’s unfinished solo workmany of the numbers dating back to writing sessions for Blue Oyster Cult and Tyranny & Mutation.

I’ve been called upon to speak with Buck Dharma (once and sometimes still known as Don Roeser, legendary searing lead guitarist for the band) who admits: “Yes, at one point Imaginos was Albert’s work. The lyrical totality, Sandy’s story, had been around since the band was formed. It had been around since the release of the first record and he (Sandy) had tried to get the band to record the Imaginos concept since the very beginning. The band members (Roeser, Eric Bloom, Albert, Joe Bouchard, and Allen Lanier) resisted because they wanted to write and to continue to do so. I think we thought the concept was foreboding.”

Foreboding??? What could be more foreboding than lyrics like, Harvester of Eyes/that’s me and I see all there is to see /When I look inside of your head; right in front to the back of ydur skull/That’s my sign that you are dead. (From “Harvester of Eyes,” natch.)

Buck steams right ahead. “Well, for reasons mentioned we resisted recording the LP. I think that the resistance of the members who didn’t write Imaginos songs was the biggest factor.

“Meanwhile, it fell to Albert to write most of the music to the Imaginos lyrics, although there are contributions from everyone. All throughout the 70s, he (Albert) was working on it and when he left the band at the beginning of the decade the way was clear for he and Sandy to make this record; they began working on it. For several years it took quite a bit of studio time and money and it didn’t come out as Albert’s record. As a project, it was moribund until we agreed to finish it and put it out as a BOC album.”

Imaginos does make clear to all the old fans, should they care to listen, what BOC thought they were about from the beginning or, at least, what Sandy Pearlman wanted ’em to think they were about. Finally, it even constructs a theme song entitled “Blue Oyster Cult,” very handy if the record finds a new audience and a spiritual touch-base for expatriate followers since graduated to yuppiedom and convinced of the fact that “heavy metal’’ is “kid stuff” when

compared with the cold-fish boredom of more mature singer/songwriter types who populate VH-1 and sound nicer at wine-and-cheese parties. Not that the record needs those fans anymore; it’s a hammer blast of iron weirdness yearning to capture a whole new audience too young to have been around in the early 70s and receptive of that early majesty.

Dharma is excited. “I think what’s really neat about Imaginos is that it’s an overview of what BOC were from the very beginning. It’s a lot more coherent a vibe of what the band is than any of our recent records, certainly.”

Keeping the history of Imaginos in mind, it’s difficult to picture Dharma and Albert Bouchard as students at Clarkson College (where they first met and subsequently began working together) with the idea of constructing a “super-chops” heavy band around the ideology of some sci-fi hoodoo.

“No,” Buck says, “that came a little later. During the Soft White Underbelly era (another, pre-BOC incarnation with the tag “legendary” affixed to ’em courtesy of a few loose tapes and apocryphal test pressings), we were much more psychedelic. We were running four or five different concepts simultaneously. Half of our music was totally cartoon-like. I think we made a conscious move toward BOC after we started floundering with the Underbelly. It didn’t happen when Albert and I were at Clarkson— it happened much later.

“Originally we were a copy act heavily influenced by the white blues guys: Mike Bloomfield, Danny Kalb, and the Blues Project in America.”

The eyebrows go up again. One thing which I thought was pretty neat about BOC was the way in which they stood alone among their contemporaries in their almost complete lack of identifiable “heavy blues” influence.

“I think the sound was produced by the disparity of musicians,” Dharma muses. “We weren't all deep blues aficianodos. For some it was their first band.”

The unique, muscled sound they flexed in 1972 is still without peer. Back then, marketing hard rock records wasn’t as cut-and-dried as today’s rushtoward “niches” and easily pitched to “pigeonholes.” BOC did find an audience but eventually they lost much of it, unlike Kiss, competitors with much simpler appeal who were able to rally at the turn

of the decade and regain numbers without changing much of anything except allowing their style to become even more simple-minded.

“I think Kiss had a clearer conception of the youth they wanted to appeal to,” Dharma explains. “I guess we were less calculating; we didn’t know whom we were targeting in terms of our music. I don’t think we’re ever known in terms of that. We just put it out there.”

The question then arises as to how in this era of Poison/Def Leppard/ Whitesnake dominance, Imaginos can get a fair shake? It’s not a simple record; it’s complex and lacks any immediately identifiable hooks which would attract poodle-haired teens in spike-heels and Nikes. In essence, it’s a record that you have to and want to listen to again and again. It’s not disposable or throwaway like much of the competition. (As a good example, “The Seige and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weisseria” sports trademark BOC slinky riff and the amazing choral refrain of “Carpe diem!”)

“I don’t know how the record will be sold," Dharma continues. “I do know that CBS is real excited about Imaginos, whereas they haven’t been in quite a while. After you’re at a label for x many years—you do get lost. I do know that they regret having lost artists like Heart and Aerosmith who have since come back strong for other labels. I think they’re aware of that and something about the content of Imaginos has lit a fire under them too. They really like it and they’re sincere which, is good.”

In a sense it is, since such was not the case after the release of Club Ninja. No one seemed excited and the wheels had come off the act.

“I think we were very burnt out,” admits Buck. “Lack of perspective did it. We went from one tour to another record. We had spent fifteen years together. Personalities were ragged; Albert had left. I think we lost our psyche. Speaking for myself, that’s what did happen to me. I was Very glad to spend a year doing nothing professionally.”

While Buck was away, the heavy metal steamroller which he and his compatriots had been so instrumental in building got out of control and became somewhat less than music with a stupid message (analysis by way of Rick Johnson); it became music as stupid parody. This leads an intelligent person to think that Spinal Tap should be retroactively dubbed the only act that mattered, real or not, in this decade.

Dharma is amused. “Heavy metal seems like opera. The form is very rigid and the quality of the group is judged on how well they adhere to format. It’s much like the situation of opera singers who are rated on their interpretation of material which has been around for so long that everyone has a clear idea of how it should be done. I mean, the singer sounds a certain way. The guitar leads are done a certain way.” (Curiously, this brings to mind Blotto’s “Metalhead” which pre-dated Spinal Tap and featured Dharma on “lead histrionics.” The man knows what he’s talking about.)

"What I think is great about metal is that it endures and thrives without the support of the music business or the rank, stinking, commerciality of pop music and all the commercial tie-ins and product endorsements,” he continues in a conciliatory tone. “It just makes me want to puke! Music in today’s age is so much like ‘soap and hamburgers’; it’s not what I went into it for. It’s just disgusting to put it bluntly. In that respect, heavy metal which survives on its own is great.”

Maybe not. Followers of hard rock can tell you that metal is infected with the same “soap and hamburgers” malaise that Dharma says wrecks pop music. That it exists outside the framework of commercial radio and video promotion doesn’t tell the whole story; there does exist an entire promotion and support system designed for the handling of “heavy metal” product—any A&R rep worth his soap will tell ya.

Happily, Imaginos is not “soap and hamburgers.” Like the best of Secret Treaties, it’s still mysterious, busy, and crunching—hallmarks of “classic” BOC. Dharma and pals should give extra-special consideration to getting it out there in front of the kids and to serving it up in the fine hell-fire and brimstone style that it deserves.

“I’m ready to play. I want to get back out there. In fact, I’m feeling more excited about all prospects than at any time previously. I’d like to do more on my own; I know I’d like to produce. If the right bands are out there, that’s something I’d like to do.”

And that’s about it. BOC have a new record for ya and they’re rarin’ to go. Maybe they should patch things up with Albert too. He’s great! They’re great! Look at the Ramones and Mark Bell! Carpe diem! s