Sandy Pearlman, nurturing a fascination with the Second World War, spawned the main theme for Blue Oyster Cult's third album, to be titled Power in the Hands of Fools but in the end was given the mystery-invoking name Secret Treaties, BOC's most ambitious project.

Originally Sandy Pearlman had envisioned the Blue Oyster Cult to be a trilogy of albums, then be finished. But as we know, the five persistent young New Yorkers told a different tale.

This album could be called the first real band album. On the first LP, the group was still getting used to the transition in sound from SWU/SFG to the heavier Blue Oyster Cult style. The second album was written and recorded hastily when the band wasn't touring, which was almost constantly. For their third, though, they at last had time as a band to work on arrangements and add those finishing touches to make a great record.

From the very beginning, Richard Meltzer, Sandy Pearlman and Patti Smith created many conceptual seeds that provoked musical inspiration in each band member. In those days, most of the music was shaped and conceived during rehearsals - one guy would come up with an idea, and they'd all help arrange the songs. As producers Sandy & Murray would also add bits, and that's why there seems to be a lot of writers for a song.

One of the first concepts for the album was based around the first operational jet airplane, the Messerschmitt Me 262A. This inspired the use of more figures from WWII. When Murray Krugman wrote the words to Joe Bouchard's tune, Gopher Chauffeur, he changed it to Boorman the Chauffeur, appropriating the name of Hitler's secretary and closest advisor, Martin Bormann. Murray kept Joe's original third verse, using its rhythm to shape the two verses he wrote. The final tune, though, was perhaps too similar to "ME 262," and didn't make the final cut.

Murray had a strong hand in the album cover designs, and although Boorman the song never appeared on record, "The Limo Man" and his "Rock and Roll Vehicle" did get their day in the cover photo of next year's On Your Feet or On Your Knees.

Allen wrote a voodoo-inspired song for this album called Mesdames Sarat, and this song is one of the most unusual of outtakes. The song itself is like a backward riff of "The Red and The Black," and, in fact, the intro to the song is what we all know today as the live intro to "The Red and The Black." This tune is actually more jumpy than "R & B." The take I have heard was before the guitar solos were recorded. Eric sings the song with a very eerie feel, with this strange lyric: "Candy came back in the rain last night/ stood at my bed poked at my side/ A black hat magician with a black cat's eyes/ Swim through me like I swim through the night/ She say: Coca Cola Voodoo/ Real Thing Mambo/ Loa Loa Oooo!"

Career of Evil had its beginning with Patti Smith's "Poem of Isadore Ducasse," which borrowed a few lines from Allen Lanier's works. The lyric was edited to better fit the song. Here are some of the missing lines: "Anyone I choose confess false with me/ is in deep/ Your disguise don't petrify me/ you're mine for the taking" and a parenthetical "(Don't send me no letter of revenge/ all action hinges on me/ I hold all the cards my friend/ to know to kill create/ and it's you I'm staking/ I'm making/ a Career of Evil/ Don't send me no letters of revenge/ Your helpless brother...etc.)" And yes, the etcetera is a part of it...

Subhuman was Eric's attempt at something from the wealth of Sandy Pearlman's Imaginos concept. The lyric as we know it from Imaginos' Blue Oyster Cult gives a fairly good picture of what the song is about, but the edited lyric that appeared on Secret Treaties' "Subhuman" made it difficult to interpret, and all the more fascinating for the fans.

Dominance and Submission was the true story of an automobile ride taken with Suzy and her brother, in which some unexpected sexual actions were suggested. The riff for "Dominance and Submission" was the brainchild of Eric Bloom, who would stay behind in the practice room at the band house, and fiddle around with all the instruments. These experimentations were what led to ME 262, as well as the classic Harvester of Eyes.

A couple of Cultivating moments from Richard Meltzer entered this album in the shape of Harvester of Eyes and Cagey Cretins. Richard wrote a lot of poems and prose and was close to the band in their early days. What he wrote provoked a lot of musical ideas, especially from Albert and Buck. "Harvester of Eyes" is Meltzer at his best. Story is that Meltzer was inspired to write this lyric after reading about Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas' unfortunate contraction of Ocular Tuberculosis. Eric added the outro ad lib about the perverted street walker lurking about back alleys collecting eyeballs in his pink leather bag.

For "Cagey Cretins" Albert reworked an old guitar riff from the Soft White Underbelly song Bark in the Sun and turned it into one of the strongest up-tempo tunes in BOC history. Sadly, this was never performed live.

The final songs are part of Sandy Pearlman's Imaginos. Flaming Telepaths is partly about experimental drug use. The original lyric was significantly different than what came out on the record. The band took the original Pearlman lyric and added bits, and changed parts. For instance, the original lyric included these lines: "It's a flaming wonder/ A pyric lens/ Dealing searing truth/ and meaning ill/ Blood does not boil and steaming clouds of vapor rise/ painting red the heads of wonder still." Buck was responsible for "Trinity acts a mineral fire," and Albert contributed the lines "Is it any wonder that my mind's on fire, imprisoned by the thoughts of what you do..." Albert wrote the music for this tune, Eric shaped the vocal parts, and Buck gave the tune strength with his lead guitar parts.

Astronomy is the ultimate ending to this album. Joe Bouchard was the creative force behind the verses, and Albert got the song together by borrowing the progression from David Bowie's "Panic in Detroit." The lyric was all Sandy Pearlman and a strong part of Imaginos. In a sense, the majority of this album could have been parts of Imaginos, not just the two songs re-vamped for that album.

"Astronomy" once again introduces Suzy, Sandy Pearlman's girlfriend, who at the time was very experimental and sexually aware. This song has its roots in Suzy's lesbian encounter and the reaction to it.

When this song was first being put together, the band actually had auditions to determine who would sing "Astronomy." Interestingly, Albert won the audition, but when it came time to actually put down the tracks Eric sang the song. That's why before the album came out Albert sang the song live.

A device that worked great on past albums was incorporated again on Secret Treaties - putting unusual interludes between the songs. This not only added to the songs, it was a great way to give each side of an album a continuity, and also compelled the listener to hear each side in its entirety. This was used to great effect between "Flaming Telepaths" and "Astronomy" with the use of a German music box. (To this day the piece of music it plays is still unknown). When they were mixing the album at Columbia Studios, Sandy Pearlman found a barrel organ, and upon playing the thing, he instantly decided where to fit it in. Throughout Secret Treaties, he used small snippets, synthesized loops and sound effects to tie the songs together.

This album stands up to the test of time. It is lyrically obtuse enough to give a listener many hours of pondering, and is both energy-intensive but at the same time subtle, which is a knack Blue Oyster Cult has which most other bands do not. The lyrics and music are a many-layered universe, where you can peel away layer after layer, exploring each deeper one until you're satisfied that you've reached what the song means to you. And, listening again later might bring you yet another, completely different meaning. Each listener can have a different idea of what the song is about, and none of them would be wrong. And this is one of the reasons that keeps people enthralled with the amazing Blue Oyster Cult.

After wrapping up the early era with Secret Treaties and On Your Feet Or On Your Knees, the next phase of Blue Oyster Cult was characterized by a new twist in the band's song-writing process: everyone in the band acquired their own home 4-track recorders and began writing songs in a much different fashion than had been done previously: at home, alone rather than with the group in a live or rehearsal situation.

Agents Of Fortune was the result of this new step in their creative process, and defined a new method of how an album's material was chosen. For a song to appear on an album, it actually has to fight its way through several stages to finally make it to the final cut.

This evolutionary chain could be broken down in three steps:

1) home demo, to be presented first at a band meeting and hopefully chosen to be worked on further,

2) Pre-production demos, which are all basically live versions from band rehearsals (with perhaps some vocals and guitars added on afterwards to present a clearer idea for the producer to work with) and

3) Studio sessions, the selected "winners" go into the "real" studio to be properly recorded for inclusion on the released product.

By this stage all the selections have been made, leaving none or very few left-overs from the real studio sessions.

Titles submitted as home demos for this upcoming album were: from Albert, several tunes written with Patti Smith's lyrics. As before with Career and Baby Ice Dog, Albert wrote musical themes to Patti's poems, and the results were The Revenge Of Vera Gemini, To Remember Debbie Denise, Sally, Soul Jive, And a first attempt at A Fire Of Unknown Origin. This version, a slow ballad and very different from the "Fire" of 1981, was taken all the way to the final step of production, but in the end didn't fit the rest of the material, so was left off the album.

Albert also wrote two songs with Helen Wheels' (Robbins) lyrics, Tattooed Vampire & Sinful Love, as well as This Ain't The Summer Of Love with lyrics by California journalist Don Waller, and touched up by Murray Krugman. He also wrote a song with Richard Meltzer's words called Hansel & Gretel and a first attempt at Imaginos that never passed the doorstep to the studios. (Imaginos actually had a couple of different song structures before making the final and complete version we all know).

Allen came up with six tunes for these sessions, and they were True Confessions, which he sang himself, and the masterpiece Tenderloin, as well as Searchin' For Céline, a song about French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline, which appeared soon thereafter with a slight re-write on the Spectres album. Allen also presented a song with a Jim Carroll lyric called Dance The Night Away, which can be found on Carroll's 1983 album I Write Your Name. Two others were Lookin' For The Look and Danger Water.

Joe had a couple of ideas for the album, the magnificent musical picture movie Morning Final and a song called Paint The Sky Red.

(Don't Fear) The Reaper started out on Buck's home demo with a couple of guitar and bass tracks with vocals. To top it off, he added percussion in a most unusual way, Buck played the "drums" for this demo by hitting the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and for cymbal effects simply said "psscchh...." which is very humorous, but also quite effective. The demo itself is almost exactly the same as the final version on the album. It did go through a couple of peculiar experiments (that failed) before its final mix. Producer David Lucas had Randy Brecker play some flugel horn in between the vocals, which was awful and thankfully left off the final mix.

E.T.I. came into these sessions as a raw instrumental cut, and was instantly liked by everyone. Both Joe and Sandy attempted a lyric for the song. Sandy's first try at the track bore the name of Punishment Park. Rumour has it that Sandy himself made an attempt to sing this track. By the time they started the actual album session Joe sang the song with his lyric, Des Pot Soup, which only lasted until Sandy came up with the E.T.I. lyric.

The following excerpt appeared in the 01 Apr 1976 edition of the "Bay Area Reporter":

At this time Buck also wrote Wind, Weather & Storm, which was later used for his solo album Flat Out.

Surprisingly, after having co-written five songs, more than half of the Secret Treaties album, Eric must have gone dry on ideas, leaving him completely off the writers credits on this entire project.

In March of 1977, as the Agents Of Fortune 250 date tour ended and the guys got some time off from the road, it was time to start preparing new material for the next album. Lots of decisions had to be made: which direction to follow and what kind of concept to go with on this follow-up to Agents.

They had to adjust to a new way of life in the shadow of chart success, and the demand to become hit makers. There were, for the first time, commercial pressures to at least match the success of Agents, and since the hit of "The Reaper," they all saw the possibilities of having radio hits. Although in those days they were almost guaranteed a big seller, they had moved up the ladder of commercial success, and almost subconsciously they had a different directional approach to their playing, and the necessity to become more easily accessible is heard in their playing.

The clash between Punk and Disco distorted guidelines of Rock & Roll that year, so Buck's guitar sound was cleaned up, and he used a variety of amplification to give a new sound for this record. The E-bow was introduced and that was even more evident in the live shows where Buck would extend the outro solo of "Golden Age of Leather" using the E-Bow.

Joe would change his Paul McCartney / John Entwistle style of bass playing towards Steely Dan-type "session" low-end filler playing. Albert's drumming and especially fills were "cleaned up" to focus on the song and the singer, and Allen's keyboards were more featured to enrich those current sound desires from the heads of Columbia Records.

Some songs had been written during the year, and some of it was actually written much earlier during the final overdubs on the recordings of Agents of Fortune, so the inspiration muse was with them all the time. It was just a question of tracking the ideas for the home demos, and picking out the best contenders for further work. Each of the five set out to write his own material and bring it to a central band meeting with the producers for a serious listening and voting on what was workable for the new project.

With the experience from Agents of the year before, it fell natural to everyone to be involved with the production alongside that of producers Sandy Pearlman, Murray Krugman and David Lucas.

Each individual's contribution was more than advice and ideas for their own songs. At some times a song would be worked on by several people to reach the common goal of a complete workable song.

By April 1977, the first batch of tunes were submitted for scrutiny and ten days were set up for pre-production rehearsals and recording demos at New York's Daily Planet Rehearsals and Magnagraphics Studios.

After that, they took a full week to record at The Record Plant and tracked the first titles that had been selected from the pre-production sessions, and at that time these songs were: I Love The Night, Goin' Through The Motions, Godzilla, Searchin' For Celine, Death Valley Nights, Fireworks plus the unreleased Prisoner Of Your Own Device.

They went back on the road for a few months and then returned in July to begin phase two of the pre-productions, this time at S.I.R. Studios in New York. There all the latest ideas had to be tried out as well as any improvements they had thought of. They also managed to squeeze in a few cover tunes done the BOC way. Just for fun they recorded Be My Baby, The Ronettes song, as well as Peter Tosh's Steppin' Razor which they used to simply call Dangerous.

The band had started trying out Godzilla live while on tour in June and when they came back to the studio, they had a clearer vision of what direction to take the song. "Godzilla" was the first time the Eventide pitch control unit was used and it held a great potential for echo effects, and has since become a token ingredient in modern day state-of-the-art recording devices.

With eight producers as a complete team, each with their own ideas and thoughts about how to best present these songs, they practically lived in the studio during rehearsals and recording, and things got wild. BOC would take over the whole studio - in studio A you could find Joe and David Lucas tracking vocals, Albert and Murray in Studio B doing Death Valley Nights and E. Bloom with Sandy in studio C tracking Goin' Through The Motions all at the same time... How's that for max effort?

Sometimes this would be good other times not, but compromise and perfection doesn't ever match. Some things in retrospect will always remain a hang-up with somebody and perhaps deem a certain song unlistenable for whatever reason. Albert, for instance, felt he copped out in his writing for this album. He is happy with some parts and lost with other ideas. He actually wrote the music for a lot of Imaginos at this time, but as we know all of those songs were rejected by the band at that time.

Tracking was done relatively quickly - they didn't spend as much time on Spectres as they had done with Agents. But they had a larger budget that allowed them to be a bit indulgent, they came up with a bunch of more intricate ideas that were realized, such as the Newark Boys Choir on Golden Age. The album to be titled Spectres was finished in August and released in October of 1977.

Now what was it that evolved into Spectres... let's take a look at the material that each individual brought in.

BOC used to open up for Mott The Hoople back in 1973, and since the Ian Hunter Band opened up for BOC on a few occasions, Eric learned that he lived not to far from the British singer. So Eric went out to dinner with Ian Hunter a few times, and they decided to give a try to working together. Goin' Through The Motions was a lyric Eric had written and with Hunter's help, they came up with the feel of the song.

Eric also came up with a few other tunes, one was called Sky, which was merely a track with no vocal. It has a very strong Stalk-Forrest feel to it with more modern day heaviness. However, as good a track as it was, there was no time for the band to work it up.

Meet Me In Las Vegas was something possibly conjured up through the Roulette picture of the fold up of Agents. The song had a few funny lyrical points, Eric sings of 'The Bright Lights Big City... So The Story Goes.' Eric played drums and bass only for the track.

Seasons of Isolation has a great eerie feel to it, reminiscent of "The Subhuman." It would have been my choice any day for the album, once again a very strong Stalk-Forrest sound. I would assume the lyric was in regards to loneliness on the road at times, but I'm not sure as the words aren't all that audible on these 4-track recordings. There is a track for drums, a second track for bass, a third track for guitar and the fourth for vocal. That's what most of these home sessions were, although I would think that if a song had been more complete when presented to the band, it may have gone further.

Buck was being very productive for these sessions and came up with just that...finished versions of the songs he submitted. While on tour for Agents of Fortune, he came up with the riff to Godzilla in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, and then conjured up the story and theme for the song. He then wrote that one verse which basically told all, which is why there is no other verse in the song. The story was already all there, and as we know, that worked out just fine.

The Golden Age of Leather was a lyric written by Buck's longtime friend, Bruce Abbott, which gave Buck the opportunity to write the #1 Biker's Eulogy Anthem of the world. His original demo had the acappella intro, and the full first part of the tune and then ended with the acappella part again. After some thought, he felt something was missing from the song, so he wrote the 'Dawn Colored the Sky' part to finish up the story and give it a stronger visual aspect, both in words and music. This is my personal favorite of the album and perhaps one of the finest songs BOC ever did. The song depicts the futuristic vision as seen back then when they thought Harleys were dying... of course we know now they're bigger and stronger than ever before.

I Love The Night was his third entry to the album. On the original demo, there was a third verse which apparently made the song too long for the accumulated producers' wishes. However I think that it would have been better without the edit, because it gives a more complete story. In retrospect the band must agree, because when the song is performed live, that missing third verse is included.

Donald Roeser's lyrics are seriously overlooked by the mass, but check these songs out, they are absolute brilliance. No Mortal can argue with this!

Allen had already submitted the song Searchin' For Celine for the Agents sessions, but being a bit close to the same funky feel you get with "Tenderloin," it was put on hold for this album. Allen originally sang this song himself but he handed it over to Eric, whose voice gave the song that stronger BOC feel. This is where the "he" in the lyric was changed to a "she." The Celine of the song was not really a girl, but rather the French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (1894-1961). Allen, whose favorite music inspiration came from the '60s Soul era (Atlantic/Stax black music), was always into the more open, funky feels of music. He composed this song on the Clavinet at his home and brought it in for the rehearsals. It was the odd one out from the rest of the album.

Allen also wrote and sang a song called Please Hold which is a great song with a strong Keith Richards overtone to the vocal phrasing, and yet another clever main guitar riff line to go underneath the quirky rhythm. A very cool track that unfortunately didn't go beyond first try-outs. It's my educated guess this song is a description of a telephone call to France, kind of a song sequel to "Lonely Teardrops" from Mirrors. It would have been a very interesting addition to the album had it been chosen.

Joe, out of frustration from a cancelled part of a Canadian tour, went home and whipped up his two featured songs in a couple of hours... Wow!

Nosferatu must have been on TV one of those nights, because his capturing of the eerie images of that film sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. On this track Joe plays the Chamberlain, a "stone age" sampler. Like the Mellotron, the Chamberlain is a keyboard instrument which emulates different instruments by playing taped "samples" of the real instrument. Each key is linked to a tape, and after you let go of the key, the tapes have to have time to rewind before you could play that key again. This made this instrument a rather difficult machine to master.

Another interesting note is that Joe wrote and scored a four-part horn section for two trombones and two french horns to be used with Celestial The Queen. These tracks were mixed so low on the record that they are barely audible, but can be heard on the outro of the song, as well as underneath Allen's Mini Moog solo. Listen carefully and the sound balance will reveal these spectacular lines underneath everything else. Joe wrote the arrangement and David Lucas went out and found four players and tracked them for the song, but in the end most listeners never know they are there.

The French Horn idea had been attempted once before by David Lucas, who thought that "The Reaper" would benefit from this treatment. Luckily, the horn part was not in the final mix (there would be a lot fewer fans had it been in), but interestingly, some of the guitar and bass lines carry echoes of those deleted tracks.

Joe had 5 other home demos for the sessions and one of these was In The Presence of Another World, which at the time was a completely different musical piece to the same lyric, with only the 'Your Master Is A Monster' part kept for the Imaginos version we all know. This version was uptempo pop with a quirky English-type feel a la early '70s psychedelic mixed with the sounds of early Alice Cooper.

Beyond The Barrier is a pop song about a space journey taking them about as far as perhaps Star Trek Voyager, or a clever seduction scheme with lines like 'We're goin beyond the speed of light and It's too late to turn around.' The main riff must have been an inspiration from having toured with UFO, as the riff is a variation of the intro to "Rock Bottom," with the same chord progression that you hear live at the end of "R. U. Ready 2 Rock." A very '60s feeling song, though with a free-spirited atmosphere to it and a neat guitar riff to support the main feel of the song.

Will To Survive, a shuffle tune in a light mood is somewhat closer to Moon Crazy, but not as strong. It features a lyric penned by Helen Wheels. This song is about the struggle to handle the break up of a relationship-being tough on the outside but lost on the inside with lots of questions. The main line was 'Why Haven't I Died? The Will To Survive...'

Night Rider is the best track of Joe's unreleased stuff here, and was originally called Dope Rider about people smuggling drugs, and dope dealers out on the town pushing their stuff. The track has the greatest guitar lead riff to it which grabs you immediately. During pre-production the song was given new life by Buck, who re-wrote it, giving it a new lyric and a more suitable singing line for the verses. The bridge and chorus remained very true to the original demo, but the input from Buck really made this one of the best unreleased BOC songs of this era. Buck's version, although sticking with the same theme, turned into Night Flyer. 'Step Outside and Leave Your World Behind.' As good as this song was, it didn't quite fit the concept on Spectres, and was thus left off. But it's never too late...

Heavy Music, apparently about listening to your favorite tunes loud while you're out speeding on the freeways, sounds like a sort of tribute to Deep Purple's "Highway Star" in the lyrical sense, but musically is a bit more Doors-styled in the vein of "Not To Touch The Earth." This song was also re-written a few times, and during pre-production it turned into M For Murder. 'Best Protection That Money Can Buy,' this is a Private Eye story with the Butler's wife as the fiend of the story. (Albert wrote a piss take of it changing it to M For Music with the line: 'The Best Components Money Can Buy'). A very upbeat tune with a fast pace, but perhaps not heavy enough for the record.

Albert wrote a bunch of tunes during the Agents tour, and having started already in 1975 with the song Imaginos, he continued with the scripts as he felt there was something specially appealing to him from this Sandy Pearlman concept. He wrote, amongst others, Del Rio's Song, The Girl That Love Made Blind, Frankenstein, and I Am The One You Warned Me Of. None of these songs were approved by the band, as they felt a concept album would be a bit too much for BOC. Albert also wrote a few songs that weren't tried out until Mirrors, one called Tough And Tender, the other Prisoner Of Your Own Device. Both tunes were co-written by his then-wife Caryn Bouchard. The songs he turned in were: Fireworks, a song Albert felt all right about, but couldn't nail the chorus. In retrospect, he felt he didn't sing well on the chorus and should have worked harder on it. Buck helped him with the back-up vocals which sort of saved the track, but a bit more time may have given him stronger conviction to the song which was first entitled Blazing Red.

Death Valley Nights was done already in Albert's home demo, and nothing was added save the band's participation as players, as well as Buck's beautiful guitar work.

Make Me Your Man was another non-contender in the final rounds. Strange, because it is a quite good song, but perhaps a bit too much of that sing-along feel, but the back-up part of the song is strong and eclectic, though once again, the chorus is not as strong as it could have been. Less poppy and it would have been a contender and perhaps even on the album.

The overall feel for this album is the Love music of BOC, perhaps because they all seemed to have children around this time... Parental feelings lending a new vibe to a more mature and softer Cult. Although, half of the album was very strong, and especially so with the tracks that were featured in live shows from this, the softest album yet from a band whose name delivers the hardest heaviest meanest and yet coolest Rock & Roll there ever was.

At the end of the 1978 World Tour in October of that year, the band finally had some time to themselves to start concentrating on song writing for the next album.

After a full year of concerts they had lots of material packed away from hotel room sessions, sound checks and normal passing time, so pre-production for Mirrors-to-be began in December with (as usual) all five guys submitting their home song demos, themes and ideas they'd come up with during the year.

Starting around the first week of December the band was booked at Full Tilt Rehearsal studios in New York. After getting comfortable in the studio, test recordings were done on a bunch of brand new songs.

Oh Cherry, a song written and sung by Buck, was another up-tempo tune in the same vein as "Born To Rock." Somehow this tune fell short and was dropped from the front-runners. Another entry from Buck, Mirrors, made such a strong impact it even spawned the title of the new album, (and for the first time, there was a title track on a Cult album).

On the original demo, Buck had his wife Sandra singing back up vocals, which might have been a deciding factor in their trying female back up vocals on this album for a change.

Joe Bouchard had written a trio of songs that he presented earlier in October, and all three were strong. They were Gun, a song that was even played live in concert a couple of times in February of 1979, and Elle Sol (or English title "She's The Sun"), a definitively New York Velvet Under- ground sounding piece. The third song was I Am The Storm. At first the song was kinda wimpy sounding-like a western saloon tune with spike piano and a happy-go-lucky feel and a slightly different lyric, but we all know that the end result came out as one of the heaviest songs off the album.

Albert, as always with tons of songs in his back pocket dished up two pieces that almost made the record, and both of these were also tried out live a couple of times in February of 1979. These songs were Shot In The Dark, a detective romance with a hearty lyric, and TNT (Tough 'n' Tender), a pretty heavy tune, but neither of these fit in with the other selections, so they were shelved.

Eric brought in a winner with his first collaboration with Michael Moorcock, The Great Sun Jester.

Allen had a couple of great tunes, In Thee which in its early version featured Eric playing the drums, friend Pete Haviland on rhythm guitar and Allen singing. Allen's other tune was originally called Wind In My Veins, but because of its repetitive chorus, it was nicknamed and finally renamed Lonely Teardrops. With Allen feeling uneasy about singing, he left that chore for Buck to handle on the album.

More songs were learned and rehearsed before X-mas, and one of these Albert had written, a beautiful tune called The Only Thing that Lasts Forever. It sounds as it would be a fitting piece for a part of the Imaginos saga, and speaking of that... Joe had written In The Presence of Another World the year before, and the band had tried it out during rehearsals for the Some Enchanted Evening Tour, but this time the band tried it for real for possible inclusion on the album. Moon Crazy was also tried out before the holidays and originally started out a bit differently with some rhythm feels changed for the final version.

Buck had written a song for a Patti Smith poem called The Devil's Nail. They decided, however, that Smith's lyric was too 'out there,' even for BOC, so Buck went home over Christmas and with Sandra's help, wrote a smashing new lyric. And the song, retitled The Vigil, is without a doubt most fans' favorite song from the album.

After the Christmas season was over the band returned to the studios and a couple more songs were tried out. Albert's attempt a hit song, You're Not The One (I Was Looking For), used The Cars' tune "My Best Friend's Girl" as a model, but added a twist with Albert's overturned back beat against the song. Although in terms of Oyster wisdom it was a total sell-out, I still found the tune a perfect commercially likeable pop song, making it a favorite of mine.

The last song to enter these rehearsals was Joe's riff rock song Dr.Music, brought to life with an almost ordinary lyric from none other than the wacky master himself, Richard Meltzer!!

When these early rehearsal sessions ended, the band went out to play a handful of shows in the New Jersey area, and there they tried out the new songs that they felt the strongest about. Two of these special shows were at a place called Alexander's in Browns Mills, New Jersey, and lucky fans there got to hear songs that never made the album, and were never performed anywhere else.

Before the band went out to California to record the album, the collected pre-production demos were submitted to the record company and producer Tom Werman, who made the final decisions on which songs would fit the best together.

To date, these rehearsals and recordings were the bands most thorough work for any album before or after, with almost 3 months on pre-production alone. And for all that work came the album that most fans put at the bottom of their 'fave album' list; which Eric, in England's New Musical Express paper, alluded might make good frisbees; and to this day is sometimes referred to as "Errors."

After the disappointing Tom Werman-produced Mirrors album, The Cult were looking for something to get themselves back on track again. As it happened, Sandy Pearlman had recently signed British rockers Black Sabbath to a management deal, and they were at that time recording their classic Heaven & Hell album with Martin Birch producing. Impressed with the work Birch did for the Sabs, BOC decided to have a go with the old Deep Purple master. Thinking that Birch would be able to give them that heavier edge to their music, The Cult set out to write as heavy a set of tunes as they could. In usual order everybody made their home demos and brought them in for the band meeting, to decide which songs they would be working on. The band then went in to See Factor Studios to begin rehearsal.

About a dozen of these tunes were demoed by George Geranios on an 8-track machine over the course of two weeks in March of 1980. These tapes were then given to Martin Birch for his input before they all met in the studio. The results of this pairing would turn out to be one of the finest records the band had put together to date. Not only was the songwriting flawless, but the production and performances were more creative, innovative and more daring than anything since the "good old days" of their first three albums. Here's a look into what became Blue Oyster Cult's seventh studio album, Cultosaurus Erectus.

Albert, prolific as always and intense in his search for the perfect Cult tune, submitted an entire album's worth of material for consideration, despite having just demoed another dozen tunes for the Imaginos concept. Musically these tunes all had a very heavy approach seldom heard since Secret Treaties or Agents of Fortune's "Tattoo Vampire." Albert's presentation included Unknown Tongue, a song composed around a lyric by David Roter, an old band mate and friend of Sandy Pearlman from the early Soft White Underbelly/ House on The Hill days. Albert had renewed his friendship with Roter, who had since become a professional comedian and had written a bunch of lyrics. Albert was inspired to write music to accommodate his unusual lyrics, and this song was their first collaboration.

Secondly was a song that Albert had tried twice before, both times with different lyrics. Originally it was Soul Jive from the Agents demos, with a Patti Smith lyric, and the second time around it was Jungle Fever, that time with lyric penned by Albert. This tune's third and final outing was coupled with a lyric by Helen Wheels. As White Hot Star it sounded more together than the previous attempts but still not strong enough to make the final cut. Lover's Loan was another written with Helen Wheels but in a very unusual fashion: on long distance telephone calls while the band was on tour. Both the words and music were composed during their conversations.

Operation Stardust, Undying Flame and Alpha and Omega were tunes written with lyrics by Ronald Binder, who now is a corporate law student, but was once named Punk Of The Month in John Holmstrom's classic PUNK magazine. Binder came to the band's attention by being a Helen Wheels fanatic, who ended up working for Sandy Pearlman as his gofer. During this time he wrote a bunch of lyrics for the Cult to use. Joe and Albert were keen on his stuff but others were not so enthralled, so the only Binder song that ever got onto a Cult record was I Am The Storm from the Mirrors album.

Next up are three songs with lyrics by Albert and his wife (at the time) Caryn. Lucy (Love's Lost Legend) is a song in the best Vampire style of Helen Wheels, but actually set to a shuffle beat. The tune sounded cool, but lacked that eerie touch their previous nocturnal themes had. Albert's original demo of Monsters sounds very true to the final version with only a few minor details changed for the continuity of the record. Hungry Boys In Brooklyn, (later shortened to Hungry Boys) was the last of the three Bouchard household contributions.

Two Richard Meltzer collaborations made appearances on Albert's demos, I Need A Flat Top and Adopt Me. Both sounded great but were not right for this project.

Hell Bustin' Loose, (subtitled She Fell In Love With Ritchie Blackmore's Dildo) set to a reversed "Man On The Silver Mountain" Blackmore guitar lick was an Albert original. It was based on an incident at a Rainbow show in which a roadie tossed a giant black dildo on stage and Rainbow's drummer, Cozy Powell picked it up and started playing drums with it. Thinking this was hysterically funny, Albert conjured up a story of how a girl in the audience fell in love with it and that became the lyric. Funny, but definitely not suited for a Cult album, (Although Albert probably just included it on the tape to see the look on everybody's faces when they listened to it). Four of these twelve songs were accepted by the band as good candidates for the album project, the other eight remaining tunes stay shelved to this date, except "Adopt Me" which appeared on David Roter Method's 1986 Bambo LP. Says Albert of this period, "I wrote most of those songs with Eric in mind as the perfect vocalist." Not being wrong about that, three out of the four tunes they worked on were sung by Eric. Of the four, only "Lucy (Love's Lost Legend)" didn't make the album.

Joe brought in a song he'd written with a Helen Wheels lyric called Falling Angel which in its demo and pre-production versions had a different lyric. Not completely happy with what the lyrics sounded like, Joe revised them and altered the title to Fallen Angel rather than have the song left off the album. He also brought in a reworked leftover from the last album session, Gun. This was a song the band had worked on and had even played live a couple times, but never could be made to fit in with the rest of the album's material, so it was hung up to dry for another year. Hot Desert Sand was the third song he submitted, but it was not to be for this album project. In fact, it remained untouched until he re-did it in 1989 for his Cult Bros. project, where it was retitled Run To The Sun. Joe's fourth home demo was Anyway You Want It, but that was considered too Stonesy and too similar to "Gun." Lastly was Infinity Machine, a cool almost techno-sounding tune with a massive Velvet Underground "Waiting For My Man" feel to it.

Buck brought in three superbly strong tunes for these sessions, and had Eric sing the impeccable hymn to Middle Eastern upsetter The Ayatollah Khomeini. Here's a song that would have also fit perfectly for the recent run-ins with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The difference between the demo and album tracks is night and day. On Buck's original demo he sang the tune himself with a laid back and indifferent attitude. But the album's stunning performance by Eric took this song to heights of the meanest sounding B.O'Cult tune ever.

Deadline was another tune Buck brought in, just like on the first album, a song about a person who did some stupid things and paid for it with his life. This powerful song was never played live, to the disappointment of many B. Dharma fans.

Buck's third submission was called Hold Me Tight, a great riff, but certainly not a very Cult sounding lyric. During the rehearsals, this was mainly referred to as Track X as they tried a few alternate lyrics, before settling for the Richard Meltzer penned Lips In The Hills. Another great example of Eric's incredible vocals.

Eric, who'd enjoyed writing music to Michael Moorcock's contributions on the last album, had received The Black Blade from Moorcock when they met in England during the band's November 1979 tour. So, with the help of old mate John Trivers, he wrote the music to this Sci-fi story of the sword that rules its master and eventually the universe. Eric's original home demo was just about half the song only, a kind of budget version of what was to become the anthem opening for Cultosaurus Erectus. Without a doubt this is one of the most majestic songs ever by this band.

Eric also brought in this weird semi-reggae/ska tune called Showtime which they all liked, but it didn't belong on a BOC album. Nevertheless, they liked it so much they tried an uptempo version in Ska beat with a rocking outro, and later a more Cowboy-esque acoustic version!

Allen didn't get any songs on this album, a sad loss to that full band contribution feeling. There are also no traces of any home demos from him, which doesn't mean he never wrote anything, but rather that his material might not have been of Cult status.

But, while practicing on the material the whole band worked on The Marshall Plan (Here's Johnny). This went through a few alterations and drastic feel changes before settling on something which was perfected by Martin Birch in the studio. Lyrically it was very close from the start, with minor rephrasings in the vocal. While recording the song Eric had some great spoofs on the break where the young Johnny speaks to himself in the mirror. Instead of dreaming of stardom and getting his girl back, he sees this tough record executive telling him to get real guitars, real amps, and like "Hey kid... Come back when you have a real band... Don't call me, I'll call you!" Very humorous, and obviously not intended for the song.

In the U.S. Cultosaurus Erectus peaked at #34 on the Billboard chart, spending only two weeks there. However, Cultosaurus Erectus was the first BOC album to enter the British charts in the Top 20. It entered at the #14 spot, straight out of nowhere, and it could have become their largest seller there ever, had the record company promoted it more than just that half page advert in Melody Maker or NME. But, even with almost no support, it still stayed within top 40 for a full 6 weeks, and in the UK where they support their own first and foremost, that's not bad for an American band!

As the 1980 Black & Blue tour ended its gallant crusade, plans were conceived for the future Fire Of Unknown Origin album. Brad Delfour, the editor of Heavy Metal magazine, was an acquaintance of Albert Bouchard. He had talked of bringing to life a comic/cartoon or animated Imaginos with Sandy Pearlman, when the movie concept of Heavy Metal came up, which ultimately provided a stepping stone for Blue Oyster Cult to create new music. The chance to write music for a movie was a thrill for all the band members (and they each set out to create songs to match the script of this movie) and this incentive created all kinds of ideas for songs.

In reality, only two songs, Vengeance (The Pact) and Don't Turn Your Back were written following the script of the movie. A third, Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver was inspired by it. The other songs came from lyrics by the usual BOC suspects - R. Meltzer, David Roter, Sandy Pearlman, Patti Smith's lamenting poem of loss, Fire Of Unknown Origin, Michael Moorcock's sci-fi writing on inner space and torments of the soul in Veteran Of The Psychic Wars.

Pre-production for this album began in January of 1981 at See Factor rehearsal studios, with all the selected songs brought in so the band could work up the material together. A lot of the arrangements had already been determined prior to taking this step, so it was easy to learn the new material in a short period of time.

Producer Martin Birch was working on the Black Sabbath album Mob Rules at this time and came out of that project just as BOC headed into the studio for tracking at Kingdom Sound (dubbed "The Submarine" by Donald).

Birch would let them do what they needed and threw his magic into the music during mixes adding his trademark touch.

For the pre-production rehearsals, Buck brought in a couple of tunes he'd been working on. One was an instrumental track called Don's Heavy in the pre-production notes of George Geranios. A real quirky bit of music that obviously was designed for a vocal, but as far as I know, no vocal attempts were ever made. Unlike "Track X" ("Lips" a.k.a. "Hold Me Tight") which went through numerous rewrites and still landed on the album, this track got put on the back burner too early and was never finished.

Richard Meltzer's lyric, Burn Out The Day took shape with music that Buck wrote for his Flat Out project. Meltzer originally sent the lyric to Albert with a note saying "I think I got a good one here." Everyone recognized this lyric's potential, but before becoming the version we know, both Joe and Albert took a stab at putting music to it. Finally they handed it over to Buck and Buck returned with a home demo version. Both Albert and Buck spent some time working on finishing touches to the song, trying out some different feels before they finally settled on the version we have on our records.

Allen wrote the music for Don't Turn Your Back, which in fact remains his last contribution to date on any BOC album. The track itself holds Allen's wonderful rhythm feel and chord progressions bouncing off each other in a most splendid way. His main piece here was the basic riff and progression. Buck came in and shaped up the song and he also wrote the lyric using images seen in the script of the Heavy Metal movie.

Eric brought in a nice pack of songs, as we know from collaborations with former bandmate Jon Trivers and his wife Liz Myers. Trivers goes way back with Eric to the late '60s when he and Eric played in the band "Lost & Found." After that band was over, Trivers landed a gig in the Grease band on Broadway. It was there he fell in love with the keyboard player, married her and moved out to the West Coast. Myers started a little jingle company with her girlfriend and Trivers got a gig with Prism (a Canadian Band). Eventually they struck gold by scoring the theme for the CBS Evening News. Eric would visit the couple on occasion, and the next time he did, they wrote a set of songs they thought befitting the BOC aura. Sole Survivor, certainly fit that bill, being about the last man on earth, so destroyed and paranoid that even rescue is not desirable.

After Dark was a completely different tune, and Eric wasn't thrilled with the lyric's theme, so he and Liz Myers wrote a whole new set of words for this tune. Eric also finished off his collaboration with Michael Moorcock by writing the score for Veteran Of The Psychic Wars. Eric came up with the intro theme and then took on the rest of the track as it appeared in his head, went downstairs in the basement and completed this very heavy track. As it was with all of the Michael Moorcock lyrics, they had all been mailed to Eric, so the two never really even saw each other. Eric simply worked off the feel from the words.

During rehearsals Eric also sang a song called Too Young To Die, a song he has no recollection of today, even on listening to it. So there's some proof of the hidden mysteries coming out of the vaults years later...

Joe thought up the drum rhythm for Veteran of The Psychic Wars, thinking of marching bands. He told Albert he thought it would be a great idea to replace the bass with only the drums supplying the natural bass. The final version, though, featured Jesse Levy playing upright bass with a bow.

When the band submitted the songs for the movie, they included Taarna's Theme (Vengeance (The Pact)), Heavy Metal and Don't Turn Your Back, and as an added attraction Veteran was included on that tape. For some reason the movie people didn't go for the obvious choices - the songs that follwed the movie's script - but instead selected "Veteran" for inclusion in the movie. Joe was at this time still convinced that his song Gun would be perfect for an album. He brought in a new rendition of the song with a complete re-write of the chorus and middle-eight. It could really have been a contender here if Eric had been given the chance to sing it. Some of Joe's stuff would have benefitted from Eric's vocals, but this never happened with this song, and it never made any album. Joe also submitted for the final time In The Presence Of Another World, and let Eric sing this, but it never made the cut until Imaginos became a reality.

Taarna's Theme or as it was re-titled for the album: Vengeance (The Pact) was a complete collaboration between the brothers Bouchard. Joe wrote a song called Dakota Silo Sitter after having met an Eskimo guy on a plane, whose job was to sit with his finger on the nuclear button in a North Dakota missile silo, just waiting for the "go" signal. "He was a neat guy who had all the clearance and responsibillities on his shoulders, but he was really a nervous chap who'd eat pencils...a pencil eater! So I started to fantasize about his situation. Musically I had figured how "Morning Final" and "Nosferatu" had been my two Epic sounding songs, and this was to be the third in the series, with elaborate chord and tempo changes. Not your typical candidate for a hit song. I played the song to Albert who thought the track was great, but said, "Let's get rid of this Eskimo story," and he began writing the new lyric straight out of the script from the Heavy Metal movie." In the end this song became Taarna's Theme, i.e. Vengeance (The Pact). The lyric follows the story almost frame by frame as we see it in the movie.

Albert had been working a lot with David Roter, and he brought in another of Roter's songs, Joan Crawford. It was Albert's track with Jack Rigg helping out on the arrangement. (Unknown Tongue was the first of many song entries for the Cult by Roter. The band had tried out his Il Duce which later on was released on Roter's own first album Bambo, along with his own versions of "Joan" and "Unknown Tongue.")

Here Roter dabbled with Frank Zappa's favorite pet peeve - religious hypocracy, sex and drugs, stupidity and nonsense... and who will ever forget that MTV banned the video clip for this tune.

Joe told us "Working out the piano part on 'Joan Crawford' was a fun experience. Albert had me play classical-style piano parts over and over in my garage, and he took the tapes and edited them together and then Allen added some of his stuff to it. I remember doing this on the day John Lennon died, kind of eerie to look back on it like that."

"I actually never played this song on the record as I was really sick on the day they tracked the song, so Donald played the bass, and he altered one progression in the chorus, but when we played it live later I returned to playing it the way I originally had done. They also added that "Hall Of The Mountain King" bit during the recording. Martin Birch felt that the take had such a good feel to it, there was no reason for me to go in and try to do it better, because the mission was complete."

Joe's only contribution to this song on the record is singing backup vocals. There had been a little argument about who would do the backup vocals. Albert had his idea and Joe had some different ideas... but when it came down to the day to record, Albert didn't show up so it is Joe you hear.

The idea for the sound effects in "Joan" had come during the rehearsals. They worked up the vamp part of the track, and didn't know quite what to do with it, when the sound effect idea popped up. Kind of like in "The Marshall Plan" from Cultosaurus with "Johnny's" thoughts being heard and Don Kirshner's voiceover. Buck found some sound effect records in the studio and began to cut up tapes, splicing them together in different ways, and thus assembled the car-screech-racing- song-baby-crying-telephone effect in a few days, while the other guys were recording. It was all edited together on a 4-track Teac. The sound effects part was fulfilled with the second part when Albert added the "Christina..." voice over.

Back to the briefly alluded to Il Duce for a moment. There is a bit more info on this track in the Popoff book, tied in with the genesis of "Joan Crawford":

Interesting to note Albert's recall of Il Duce being developed initially under the title of "Russian Army On The March"...

Apart from appearing on Bambo, Il Duce, of course, has found more recent exposure on Albert's "Re-Imaginos II" having been co-opted under the ever-widening purview of the Imaginos umbrella, although you'd be forgiven for considering that to be a bit of a stretch... at this rate, I'm putting money on Debbie Denise to make volume IV...

Albert also came up with the heavy riff called Ear Damage which eventually turned into Heavy Metal: The Black & Silver with Sandy Pearlman's lyric about deep space, Einstein's theories, novas and black holes. Eric had some fun during time off when he dabbled with other instruments and started playing around with the bass lick for Heavy Metal. By the time the band started working on the track, they all felt it would be a more interesting track if Eric kept playing the bass line on this tune. Eric had to invent the vocal phrasings on the spot as he read off the lyric to it, which turned the tune into the complete song we know to end side one on the original vinyl.

The title track Fire Of Unknown Origin was an older poem by Patti Smith that Albert had scored music for in 1976. That time it didn't make the album. The tune finally got life when Albert brought in a basic backing track and Eric felt that it would be a great track to sing that lyric on. Eric suggested this to Albert, who began working on the idea. With input from the rest of the band, the song was a complete success this time around.

For our first issue, I will talk about the most recent album, Imaginos. The album was originally a solo project for Albert Bouchard; a project he and Sandy Pearlman had on the back burner for years during the BOC's arena days. When Albert left BOC, it became his full-time endeavor to bring this project to life.

Unfortunately after six years of labour, the financial support ceased and the future of the project seemed uncertain, but then the tapes were handed to Blue Oyster Cult to finish, and the result was released the summer of '88. Originally intended to be a double album, it was cut down to an hour's worth of songs (55.31 to be exact). So what were the missing pieces?

First is a revisited oldie upgraded and improved by Albert: A song off the St. Cecilia Album (Stalk-Forrest Group). "Gil Blanco County" was written by Allen Lanier with lyrics by Sandy Pearlman. For those of you who have the seven songs from this album, you will know this song, but the rest of you who have never heard these more obscure titles, "Gil Blanco County" is a country-ish song about a horse and rider - probably Imaginos in one of his many roles.

The second is a Christmas song written by Albert and, as the rest of Imaginos, lyrics by Sandy Pearlman. It's a very pretty song called "The Girl that Love Made Blind." It has a waltz feel and is very slow like a hymn or a child's bedtime song. Orchestrated by piano, keyboards, bass and drums, it reminds me of something you might hear in a christmas cartoon. Very different and very nice, but obviously wouldn't fit the BOC concept, so was therefore omitted from the final vinyl.

There are many more songs, would-be songs, and could-be songs from the Imaginos concept - Albert hinted it was to be a trilogy. Sadly a trilogy of which we'll never hear the remainder.