BOC's original keyboardist and 2nd guitarist, Allen Lanier, passed away April 14 of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) brought by years of smoking. He was 67. Lanier was a film school student when he began playing in the band in Stony Brook traveling all the way from the Big Apple to do so. Back then (1967), they were called Soft White Underbelly. When singer Les Bronstein left, Lanier suggested Eric Bloom take over. Bloom is only one of two of the original members still performing in the band. The other is Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser, the lead guitarist.
The band underwent name and personnel changes until they signed a contract with Columbia in 1971 as Blue Öyster Cult. The name came from their manager, Sandy Pearlman, who also co-wrote many of the band's songs. The whole Cult image of dressing in leather and singing sinister numbers with titles as "Transmanicon MC", "Dominance and Submission", "7 Screaming Dizbusters" and the like was Pearlman's idea--he was an avid reader and writer of occult prose and poetry. He handed out secret names to each bandmember but only Roeser used his up front--Buck Dharma. The distinctive hooked cross logo of the band came from Lanier. Supposedly, he came up with it while reading about alchemy and astology and took from the symbol for Saturn:
During the 70s, I was a Cult devotee and I spray-painted, chalked and drew thousands of these hooked cross emblems on walls, bridges, windows, desktops and sidewalks all over the greater Detroit metropolitan region. I saw BOC live five times including the infamous "Spectres" tour in '77 which remains the greatest rock concert I have ever seen and I saw most of the great arena rock bands of that time.
No band ever released their first three albums with anywhere close to the style that BOC did. Those three, now known as "the black-and-white trilogy," are ESSENTIAL documents of rock music. If you don't have them, you don't have any rock music.
But it wasn't just the visuals, BOC were great musicians and songwriters who tore open new vistas in rock music using harsh, dissonant chords years before punk rock claimed to have invented them. The band I was in did a number of Cult songs and I changed instruments as often as we changed personnel. "Cities on Flame" is a song I have performed live playing drums, bass and guitar at some point or other. The only other song I remember doing that with was Sabbath's "Supernaut." We wore black long before there was any such thing as goth and adorned ourselves with arcane medallions, did all kinds of drugs at gatherings where we would space out and listen to all kinds of bizarre music with lights flashing on the weird posters we hung on the walls, chased girls (sometimes literally). We were SO f-ucking bad, man!! Ah, those were the days, my friends. We thought they'd never end.
I liked Allen's image--always silent and brooding behind shades, never grabbing the spotlight. The dark, menacing one.
Allen also met Patti Smith through Sandy Pearlman and they wrote songs together and became lovers for a time. He appeared on a number of her albums. He also worked with the Clash so the cult did have an effect on punk in more than one way. Smith also sang on one BOC song--"Vera Gemini" off "Agents of Fortune." I also picked up something on vinyl--a band called "Beast" which was produced by Lanier. He quit the Cult in 1985 but rejoined two years later before finally retiring from music in 2006. In November of 2012, in ill health, he played with his old bandmates for a one-time reunion show which apparently went quite well.
On the song "I'm On the Lamb but I Ain't No Sheep" from the first BOC album, Lanier plays the greatest, baddest rhythm guitar lick I've ever heard. It had a great influence on my approach to playing electric guitar. I spent hours sometimes just playing it over and over again because it was an excellent hand and fingering exercise.
Thank you, Allen, and RIP to you, bro.
I saw them play this one live a number of times. The drummer, Al Bouchard, sings it but Eric always sang it live. I remember at the "Spectres" show, Eric getting the whole audience to shriek, "DOMINANCE!!!" During that one part in the song. I screamed it til my voice was hoarse for three days. Cthulhu bless you boys!
Blue Oyster Cult: Dominance and Submission - YouTube