When we last caught up with founding Blue Öyster Cult drummer/singer/songwriter Albert Bouchard, he was promoting the second installment of his ReImaginos trilogy, Imaginos II – Bombs Over Germany (Minus Zero and Counting). He closed out our interview with a tentative set of plans for the final installment, Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation. Now that the Imaginos saga is officially complete (at least musically speaking), we sat down with Bouchard again; this time to discuss the evolution of Imaginos III, how the story may continue outside of music, and his current relationship with BÖC. Pay close attention to these Secret Treaties of “Dominance and Submission”. Your life may depend on it.
Greetings Albert and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Albert Bouchard: I’m doing excellent! Very good. I just finished my core workout *laughs*.
Ready 2 rock!
AB: Yep, ready 2 rock *laughs*! That’s right.
I’d like to thank you for coming back on here. When we last spoke, you were still formulating ideas for Imaginos III. I recall the tentative concept being that of a compilation album with various bands covering BÖC songs. How did these ideas evolve between then and the subsequent release of this album?
AB: That didn’t work out exactly how I wanted it to, but it was fine. I did succeed in getting The Dictators to do a song. Of course, being a part of the band made it a little easier to convince those guys, “We gotta do this!” Originally, I wanted “Transmaniacon M.C.” to be Monster Magnet. Keith Roth, the singer from The Dictators, had put me in touch with Dave (Wyndorf) from Monster Magnet. I told him about it and he was all excited. I didn’t hear from him. I wrote back to him and didn’t get any reply. I was like, “Hmm, wonder what happened?”
Eventually, Keith Roth said he had some sort of medical issue that he wasn’t able to sing. He was embarrassed, I guess to tell me. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I said, “Maybe The Dictators should do it.” The whole idea was I wanted “Transmaniacon M.C.” to be heavier than the original. I wanted just a heavy, heavy track. At that point in time, when Blue Öyster Cult did it, there wasn’t that much heavy music. There was Black Sabbath and that was it. I was very happy with how The Dictators version worked out.
That’s a great point. Bands like BÖC, Sabbath, and a small handful of others were essentially making the rules in the early 70s.
AB: Yeah, there was no Metallica, or 1,000 imitators of Metallica, each one sounding alike. The palm muting thing got ridiculous *laughs*, but it was all well and good. For me, it was getting the right drum sound, making the drums heavy. That worked out well. I wanted Vanilla Fudge to do a song and that didn’t happen at all. When that didn’t seem like it was gonna happen, I approached Mark Stein about singing “Sole Survivor”. He couldn’t do it. He said, “I don’t have time. The Fudge is doing all this stuff.”, so I couldn’t do that.
I wanted BÖC to do something and of course, they were also busy. Don (Buck Dharma) said, “I just don’t have time.”, but Richie (Castellano) was like, “Yeah!” Richie *laughs* Mr. Excitement! He was totally into it. I asked him to help me write a song. Actually, I begged him. I was like, “Richie, help! The idea is good. The lyrics are not band, but it’s just laying there turd. I need you to pump it up like Guy Fieri. Just pump it up!” *laughs* He suggested some things and I was like, “That’s cool.” Then he said, “Maybe we should write it together.” I said, “Oh, that’d be great!”
We actually did it over FaceTime over the course of 2 weeks, working on mostly the lyrics. Getting the lyrics, honing them, getting the rhythm, the sound of it to be just right. Then, I have my solo band. They played on most of the record. Cyzon Griffin on drums, David Hirschberg on bass, Mike Fornatele on guitar, and my brother Joe and myself: That was our little core band. I taught the song to them and then I sent what we did at our practice session to Richie. Richie was like, “There’s a couple other things that I want to add.”, so he added that little Celtic melody in there, and he added that little prog rock thing. It’s like flipping the “Layla” riff around and playing it considerably faster *laughs*. For me, that was a breakthrough, to learn how to play a riff like that and nail it every time.
He said, “I don’t have time. I’m really slammed with all this Blue Öyster Cult stuff. I’m mixing something.” I can’t remember what. He was preparing for the 3 shows in September, the Times Square shows that I did doing the first 3 records. He was hard at work and said, “I can’t do a demo before you go into the studio.” “OK, well, maybe we just won’t do it right away. Maybe we’ll just figure something out.” That’s what he told me. 45 minutes later, he said, “So I just threw down some stuff quick.” Basically, what he threw down is the arrangement as it is now. We just learned it note for note, almost.
We just changed a few little things. Mike Fornatele had some suggestions to make it a little better, but it was essentially Richie’s arrangement that he put together in 45 minutes after he told me he didn’t have time *laughs*. He’s amazing. “Mountain of Madness”, that’s my favorite cut. Maybe because of how it came together so nicely. It didn’t look like it was gonna happen and it did and it was really good. That one I like a lot. I thought that should’ve been the single, but singles are not supposed to be 5 and a half minutes, I suppose *laughs*.
Richie’s the man! It’s funny you mention those 50th anniversary shows. I was going to ask how those went, considering this album features members of BÖC both past and present.
AB: It was fantastic. Cathartic. It felt like home. I had been waiting a long time to feel like that with these guys, to feel like we’re back to being good. I played with them before, ever since 2012 when I sat in with them for the 40th anniversary gig. Things kind of softened up. It was the reunion with Allen (Lanier) and Joe in Times Square at the Nokia Theatre. That was great for me, but it was still a little weird. Allen and I both felt like outsiders. We hadn’t played with them in so long. I hadn’t played with them in 20-30 years and Allen hadn’t played with them in 7-8 years. We were both like, wow, it’s kind of weird playing with these guys again.
He was very frail, so I had a feeling maybe…I said everything I wanted to say to him. I told him how much I loved him, just in case. I said, “You’re gonna get better. I’ll call you in a month or so and we’ll get together.” I did call him, but we never got together. That show was the last time I saw him alive. That was 2012. After he passed, then it became painfully obvious we don’t have much time *laughs*. There’s not all the time in the world anymore. It’s a long time to be holding onto a grudge. Allen passing away, that basically killed the grudge. It was over. It was like, “Let’s be how we used to be.” It seemed like it was harder than maybe it was, but after that, everything was cool.
I see them. I work with them on a regular basis, so it’s all great. That show was perfect. It was really good. While I was playing the show, I didn’t think about it, but it was kind of weird that Joe wasn’t there. I tried to get him to do it, but he was a little dug in on his attitude. I don’t know. Maybe he had a worse experience with them than I did, but I don’t think so *laughs*. It was pretty bad, I gotta tell you. The whole thing, getting kicked out of my band, you know? It was pretty traumatic. It took a while for me. After I got kicked out of BÖC, I started going to therapy. I didn’t continue it. I went for about a year and then I stopped because I was running out of money. This was before I had a health plan. There was no health insurance for Blue Öyster Cult back in the day. Then, I worked as a school teacher for 30 years and I basically have healthcare for life now. Now I can pay for a therapist *laughs*!
Part of the deal was seeing my part in it and trying to look at it realistically about what happened during that time period when they were concerned about me acting professionally and I was concerned about them as our family relationship was going south. I saw that as a problem and they saw me showing up late and stuff like that as a problem, which it was. I copped to everything I did and eventually they did too. It was all good. It took a while. Even when you say it and you go talk it out, you still have to take it into your body *laughs*. Your body keeps the score *laughs*.
Much like the other two albums in the ReImaginos trilogy, Imaginos III consists of reworked BÖC classics, as well as some new songs. How does this latest collection of songs connect to the Imaginos saga?
AB: The new songs in particular were songs that were inspired by Sandy (Pearlman). Some of them, like “Mountain of Madness”, was something he suggested I do. We had actually started writing it, but it never got that far. I had rewritten, just like I did with “Independence Day” on the last record, which was a song that Sandy started and then we never finished it, but I rewrote the lyrics to move the story forward a little bit, to add to the story. Sandy would write these things really not thinking about how they would connect. This is part of the Imaginos dream he would have. I tried to make it connect a little bit more because I didn’t have that ownership of the dream part of it. I just saw it as a story.
That was something I would disagree with Sandy on a lot in the beginning. He did not want to have any kind of chronology to the songs. They didn’t have to go in any particular order. Just how they sounded together, that’s all that mattered. It didn’t matter if “Astronomy” was the first song or the last song or the one in the middle. He didn’t care, but I thought it should have some sort of order only because…when you’re telling a story, you want it to have a dramatic arc where you get excited. Then, all of a sudden, you’re disappointed. Then, you’re excited again. That…what do you call it? I don’t know, “Dominance and Submission” *laughs*?
Tyranny and Mutation? Or perhaps ebb and flow?
AB: Yeah, ebb and flow! Your excitement and disappointment and excitement and disappointment. Imaginos III is really trying to tie all the loose ends together. What happened to “The Girl That Love Made Blind”? What happened to the mirror? What happens when everybody’s dead? Does the killing stop? I needed to somehow find a resolution and of course, the last song, “Buddha’s Knee”, you say, what happened? Does Buddha come back and become the ruler of the earth?
There’s nothing like that. It’s just the first song I ever wrote with Sandy, so I thought, given that these are all the songs that ever came out during Sandy’s lifetime, all of the songs that he wrote are on these 3 records. There’s a bunch of songs that he didn’t write, like “Il Duce” which fit with the World War 2 theme. On this one, there’s “Curse of the Hidden Mirrors”, which of course is Richard Meltzer making fun of Sandy’s mirror concept *laughs*. I took that and turned it into where Imaginos gets this idea that, “Uh oh, this mirror is bad news. I gotta do something with it.”
It’s funny because one thing that lured myself and so many other BÖC diehards into the Imaginos mythos in the first place was this loose concept of the listener creating the timeline. It was as if you and the band and Sandy were saying to us, “Here are the chapters. Now it’s up to you to put them in order.” It’s become the life mission of every BÖC fan!
AB: Yeah, that’s why Sandy eventually, when Columbia had released the record to not very good sales, putting it mildly…it did not even make the Top 200 albums at the time. It was pretty much a disaster, but they got to recoup all the money they spent on it out of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” *laughs*. Thanks Buck! You saved all of our asses with that one! I came to appreciate that idea of creating your own thing, but I think there’s still plenty of room. I can see songs on Imaginos III being on Imaginos II and songs from Imaginos II being on Imaginos III. In my mind, I’m sure there’s gonna be a boxset at some point.
There’s also the Imaginos comics. This is something that’s coming later this year. The ReImaginos comic will be out and available for purchase. It’s done basically. They just have to print it up and make sure the QR codes are going to the right place because not all of them are working quite right yet. So what happens is each page or 2 tells the story of a song. Then, there’s a QR code that takes you to that song. So while you’re reading that story and looking at the images, you can be listening to the music.
That’s cool! I like that concept.
AB: Yeah, it’s something that one of the founders of Deko, Bruce (Pucciarello), got this idea to make a comic that you could listen to the music while you were reading it. You could just QR code it to play it on your little tiny phone or whatever *laughs*. I really like that. Also, it feeds into…it could be an animated feature. It could be a videogame. It could be a lot of different things. You’re gonna have the music, you’re gonna have the story concept, and you’re gonna have the artwork. Right now, we’re working on the last 2 comic books, just tweaking the story and lining up the artists and all of that. Lots of great things!
If Imaginos were to be made into a feature film, how would you want it to be handled? Would you prefer it to be live action or animated in the vein of Heavy Metal?
AB: I never really thought it should be live action, but now with the CGI stuff, who knows what can really happen? Heavy Metal was the best that it could be at the time. I was a big fan of Métal hurlant. That’s basically where Heavy Metal, Mœbius and all of these people that wrote or drew for Métal hurlant, they created that movie. Métal hurlant was a French comic that I first purchased in Paris. I have all of them up until Heavy Metal. Of course, then Heavy Metal became its own comic book in the United States. I bought them for a while, but then. I don’t know. I haven’t really bought any comic books. Actually, when I first got my iPad, I used to get digital comic books.
I’ve been so busy. Things are popping here at casa Bouchard. I’ve been working on new songs for The Dictators. We recorded 5 tracks a couple weeks ago. We’re gonna do the vocals for them this weekend. In the meantime, I’m also working with Don Falcone for this Michael Moorcock record, and I’m doing loads of interviews for Imaginos III! After we finish The Dictators vocals, I’m gonna start practicing for the Imaginos show, the live gigs. I’ve talked about what’s next for the Imaginos thing. The other thing is the live show, which is something Sandy and I had talked about quite a bit.
I have 4 gigs coming up at the end of August and early September. The first one is August 30 in New York City at Sony Hall. Then, September 2, a few days later, we’re playing Annapolis, Maryland at Ram’s Head. On September 6, we’re playing again in New York, but in Pawling. We’re doing a Daryl’s House show. In September 7, we’re playing in Leesburg, Virginia at the Tally Ho. Right after that, I go on tour with The Dictators in Spain. That ends at the beginning of October, but then I have an acoustic record I’m recording with Knuckle Head, the French heavy metal duo. I’m doing an acoustic record in the middle of October.
Later in October, I believe, it hasn’t been confirmed, but there’s a possible Dictators tour at the end of October and November. And then, I’m going to take a vacation *laughs*. Travel around the country recording songs with different groups. I want to go to New Orleans. I have this great idea to do a bunch of BÖC songs with a Dixieland band. That’s one thing I want to do. Then I have some gigs playing with an Arizona band in December, out there in the west. I’m looking forward to that too. I’ll probably play a bunch of Imaginos stuff there too. Next year, who knows *laughs*?
In closing, how does it feel to close the Imaginos saga once and for all? Is it bittersweet, a relief, somewhere in between?
AB: It’s all of that. Bittersweet especially ironic that Sandy isn’t here to see this. I fully expected that I would have him help me with this stuff. When he was coming to New York back in 2015, he had a visiting professorship. He was going to teach a class at Stony Brook out on Long Island here. I knew that I was gonna be hanging out with him and that we could bring up this topic of finishing doing the last 2 versions of the thing, and possibly remixing the first one and doing it the way we always wanted to do it.
I thought that I would have him with me. Of course, I don’t. That right there is kind of bittersweet, but it’s also a relief. When ReImaginos made the charts and sold thousands of copies, I was like, “Woah! OK, I guess this is gonna be my life for the next 3 years.” *laughs* And it has been! It really has been. I’ve been doing a few other things. I worked on a Blue Coupe record which is coming out later this year. Actually, it’s gonna be out in August. Yeah, a new Blue Coupe record, and of course The Dictators.
I’ve been working with The Dictators this whole time too, but that’s been on the back burner. Now we’re ramping up The Dictators a little bit, just as I finally finish this thing. It is a relief that I can do some of this other stuff. I have a jazz album I wanna do. I have a bunch of things I wanna do. Serious songs about mental health and science and… good things *laughs*!
The new Albert Bouchard album, Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation, is available now on Deko Music. For more information on Albert Bouchard, visit www.albertbouchard.net.