CULTOSAURUS RESURRECTUS
Sleaze VS. Blue Oyster Cult
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Blue Oyster Cult crawled to life in the summer of 1967 as Soft White Underbelly, a hippy-ish jam band that aped the “San Francisco Sound” of the Grateful Dead and all their Patchouli sniffin’ brethren. And things were good, as they often are when drugs and free love are involved. The whole band was college educated and deeply influenced by  science fiction and fantasy writers. Future punk poet Patti Smith was a friend, and even threw in some lyrics here and there. What with all this reading and writing going on, they quickly garnered a reputation as a ‘thinking man’s rock band’. Except they weren’t all that ‘rock’. At least not yet.

Around that time, Soft White Underbelly met a couple of first generation gonzo rock writers, Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman. Together, the band and the journos concocted a new musical vision, a biker-gloom extravaganza of arena shaking proportions, one that mixed comic book science fiction with thunderchucking doom-prog rock n’ roll, complete with a black leather heathen up front, a knight in white satin to the side, and eye-burning lasers everywhere. Local dive-bar champ Eric Bloom was recruited to fill in the biker boots and mirrorshades, David Roeser became Buck Dharma, and the hustle was on. As the 70’s wore on, BOC went from strength to strength, eventually landing in the top 20 charts with Agents of Fortune, their 1977 album, which spawned the lasting monster hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. In a stunning example of 70’s pretzel  logic, the band decided to invest their winnings into an experimental, cumbersome, and alarmingly expensive laser show, one that dazzled and terrified their audiences, when it worked, which was not very often.

The band recovered from the laser fiasco, but public tastes were rapidly changing. Punk knocked the ‘dinosaur rock’ BOC helped invent into the dirt, and by the time arena bands were cool again, they were young and blonde and wrote dumb shit like “Talk Dirty to Me”, which still seemed quite modern in the face of creaky BOC chestnuts like “Flaming Telepaths”. But BOC soldiered on, shedding original members as they went, until 1989, when they were reduced to the mere Two Oyster Cult of Bloom and Dharma. They finally cracked under financial pressures and died a quiet death. For about three months. Then their manager called, asking if they were interested in a tour of Greece. They were. Original bass player Alan Lanier jumped back in – a Three Oyster Cult, now – and the band was back in operation. They eventually struck a record deal with Sanctuary, and have not looked back, playing almost a hundred shows a year. Fortune smiled once again in 1998 when Saturday Night Live first aired the infamous “Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult” skit, featuring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken in the throes of cowbell fever during the imagined “Reaper” studio sessions. The skit turned a whole new generation on to the thrills and chills of the BOC. Reaper’s influence continues as time goes on, landing on TV and movie soundtracks whenever the ‘70’s vibe’ is needed.

Recently, I had a chance to talk to BOC singer Eric Bloom and original drummer Al Bouchard for Classic Rock magazine. Both of ‘em talked enough for two interviews, hence this slightly choppy but informative interview.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Sleazegrinder: Before BOC, you played in college bands …and so did Ronnie James Dio!

Eric Bloom: I knew Ronnie back when he was in Ronnie and The Prophets. We were both in upstate New York bands in the 60’s. I was playing fraternity parties when I was in college. You know, like in Animal House, when they had Otis Day and the Nights playing, that’s what I used to do, that’s how I started in this business. I went to Hobarth college, which is right near Syracuse, and in the mid 60’s, where I went to school, there were 10 fraternities, and every other weekend they had live music. You’d do four sets, so you’d have a break in between, and we used to like to go to the frat across the street, to see who was playing, to see what your competition was like. And when I’d see Ronnie Dio in there, he’d blow my socks off. He was amazing. He had his own risers! They did “Tommy”, the whole musical, and Ronnie played horn. Should I say that again? Ronnie played horn! That band eventually became Elf, and the rest is history.  Of course, he’s much, much older than I am. That’s a joke.

Is it true you spent the summer before joining BOC washing dishes?

Summer of 1967, I had a band that fell apart, so I washed dishes in Provincetown, MA all summer long.  I had a great time. I worked at the Plain & Fancy restaurant.

Eric Bloom killin' the summer of love.

There you go.

Is it true BOC got your first record deal because you played at a nudist colony?

Ha. Well…this was about 1970. We knew this guy who would get us gigs on occasion, and he asked, ‘How would you like to play this party at a closed summer camp?’ I guess it was about September or October of ’70. Camp Swan Lake was closed and a bunch of couples, probably 40-50 people, were renting it for the weekend to have a party. These guys had a bubble you could blow up with a big fan, and a hundred people could fit in. So they put a riser in it, and we played in one end, and the people watched us in the other end, in this plastic bubble. Some of the people at this party were swingers, which maybe why this story started getting around. But this guy David Lucas was there with his wife and children. He knew somebody there, and lived nearby, so he came down. He heard us play, liked us, and asked us if we had a record deal. We were in between deals, since Elektra wouldn’t release the one we recorded for them. He said he has a studio in Manhattan.

That ended up being a very important meeting in BOC’s history, because he co-produced several of our albums. He helped us succeed.

So no nudists?

There was a gig we played at a nudist colony, but that was in the 90’s, 30 years later. It was with Eric Burdon, and there were nudists. And I tell you something, I wish they were dressed.

I think people forget, sometimes, that Blue Oyster Cult is a New York band.

New York is a strange place. You think ZZ Top, and you think Texas. Beach Boys, you think California. You think ‘New York’, and nobody really comes to mind. There’s no real New York sound. The Ramones would be as close as you can get. We only play New York twice a year, at the most. It’s like playing Vegas to us, just another place to play, even though we live here, it doesn’t count.

Well, there’s Kiss. Which reminds me, did Gene Simmons tell you there was too much ‘poetry’ in Blue Oyster Cult?

He might have been right, he certainly made enough money. I remember we had a gig with them, and we had a keyboard in our band, so he walks by and gives the cross sign when he sees them. “Oh, no keyboards, that’s not rock n’ roll”.  It’s a different trip.

Speaking of trips, I have friends that tell me they spent a lot of their teenage years smoking pot and staring at your album covers.

Well, I did the same thing with Disraeli Gears and Are You Experienced, and the first Doors record.

I don’t think you guys did anything awful back in your prime. I certainly can’t dig anything up.

Thank god there was no internet in those days. These days, you can’t get away with anything. Back then, ignorance was bliss. Whatever happened backstage or in hotel rooms, it was all private.

Until a roadie writes a book about you.

Well, you’ve got to take what an ex-employee says with a grain of salt. Like Martin Popoff’s book about us, “Secrets Revealed”. I read the first thirty pages and it’s filled with quotes from people that used to work for us or who used to be close to us 30 years ago, and now they have sour grapes, and he never even called me to see if it’s true. So, just be wary about that kind of stuff.

Have a lot of your fans from the 70’s stuck with you all these years?

I meet a lot people these days that are 40-50 years old that are ‘Captains of Industry’ who tell me they were big fans of BOC in 1976, 1977. They’ll say, “Oh, I loved you guys, and by the way, I’m the president of General Electric, or something.

Do you think your style of ‘arena rock’ will ever come back?

I find a lot of people come up to me at shows and say, “I don’t like the music today, I’d rather listen to classic rock”. So who knows?  

BOC are currently on the road. They’ll be touring the UK in the summer and may be working on a new album next year. Visit Eric at his website.

www.ericbloom.net

__________________________________________________________________________________

BONUS: Al Bouchard on the “Imaginos” album.

Al was BOC’s original drummer. He was let go in the summer of 1981, after showing up late for a few gigs on a UK tour. After leaving the band, he began work on a solo album, which was eventually released as a Blue Oyster Cult album called “Imaginos” in 1988.

So, how did your solo project end up as a BOC record?

I started working on a solo record, which ended up being a Blue Oyster Cult album. It was supposed be Albert and Friends, and I had all these people, I had Alex Lifeson, Robby Krieger, Aldo Nova, all these guitar players, plus my friend Kenny Aaronson, who was the bass player in Dust.

Dust were awesome. One of the first metal bands!

They were great, yeah.  So I got all these people together, and then I got a drummer this guy Tommy Price, because it was hard to direct the band from behind the drumkit. So I did the record, and still no money. Sandy Pearlman was trying to convince the guys at Columbia to put it out, but they didn’t want to hear about the drummer from BOC. But then Buck Dharma released a solo record, and then they decided to pick us up.