Nevermind the Occult: Blue Öyster Cult’s Founding Guitarist on 50 Years of Rockin’

When mystical New York rockers Blue Öyster Cult were selling millions of albums in the mid-’70s, and their singles “Burning For You,” “Godzilla,” and of course, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” were burning up radio like Beelzebub setting sinners ablaze, a cultish fanaticism built around the band. Fans read hidden meaning into their occult-tinged artwork and often cryptic lyrics, and, in era when hot rumors and mysterious imagery fueled the imaginations of music fans seeking a bit of vicarious danger in their lives, Blue Öyster Cult were the apple of evil in a garden of classic rock mediocrity. BOC were to the ‘70s what Ghost is to the current music scene, and are often cited by Ghost and other occult rock acts as a primary influence.

Of course, Blue Öyster Cult were hardly sorcerers of dark ritual, though for a solid decade, their blend of rock, psychedelia, prog, and pop made them an iconic force, and their unusual approach to melody and chord structure combined with tight, sometimes experimental musicianship was mesmerizing. The band started out as the jam band Soft White Underbelly, and over time and numerous name changes, they started solidifying their sound as Blue Öyster Cult in 1972.

“In our formative years, we had a band house, and we’d basically play live music,” says lead guitarist and co-founder Buck “Dharma” Roeser. “We practiced all the time, and we didn’t do much else but try to get our music to the point where it went somewhere. We were broke. We didn’t have any money. All we had was the band and wanted to lose ourselves in the music.”

Blue Öyster Cult’s unconventional themes over the years were partially the result of their album cover artists and song lyricists – which included Crawdaddy editors Sandy Pearlman, and Richard Meltzer, and later Michael Moorcock (who wrote lyrics for three songs including “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”). While they loved science fiction and horror, at their core Blue Öyster Cult were a hard-working band, not Satanists or maniacs. More than anything else, the eclectic tastes of the musicians and their desire to stand out from their contemporaries drove their majestic sound. “I would say we were self-consciously not in the same groove in the road as everybody else, or at least the people who followed fashion,” says Dharma. “Any attempt we made to follow fashion failed.”

The band rode a wave of success into the early ‘80s, but as new wave, disco, metal, and punk rock became more popular with the mainstream, Blue Öyster Cult’s sound became outdated, and while they continued recording albums on a semi-regular basis through the decade, in the ‘90s they took a hiatus from writing, though they continued touring and drew sizable crowds to their shows. They released a couple more albums, but after 2001’s Curse of the Hidden Mirror, they stopped releasing albums until 2020’s The Symbol Remains, a return to form that featured co-founders Dharma and Eric Bloom and proved that Blue Öyster Cult still had strong writing chops, even if they lacked a record-buying audience.

Blue Öyster Cult’s new album, Ghost Stories, is a collection of previously unreleased songs mostly written between 1978 and 1983, that were reconfigured and reconstructed with AI technology and some production tricks courtesy of guitarist Richie Castellano and producer Steve Schenck. In addition to capturing the band’s penchant for blending trenchant hard rock with pop hooks, Ghost Stories offers what might be the public’s last glimpse of a band that stood the weathered multifarious storms and remained one of the most authentic and enjoyable legacy acts from the classic rock era. Shortly before the album’s release, FretBuzz talked with Dharma about how jazz inspired his unusual playing style, his favorite guitars, the evolution of Blue Öyster Cult, how he has never thought of himself as a metal guitarist, and the process that led up to the creation of Ghost Stories.

FretBuzz: Your guitar style is very identifiable, which is an attribute of some of the best, more memorable players. You play heavy riffs but without an abundance of gain. And you have this atmospheric light touch, yet there’s still a core thickness to the sound. How would you define your guitar sound, and how did you sculpt it over the years?

 Buck Dharma:  As a band, we have a unique style, and when I play I know it sounds like me. I think most guitarists feel that way. As far as gain goes, I like to take it up to a crunch sound where it’s got some hair on it, when the volume control is all the way up, but it cleans up nice. I’ve got a couple of gain pedals on my pedal board, but they’re set low. I like a fat sound, but I don’t use a ton of gain. That’s where I live as a player.

FretBuzz: You have been called a pioneering guitarist and have been on bills with heavy bands, including Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper.

 Dharma: I know. I do get mischaracterized as a metal player. I’m certainly not. I like melody. My dad was a saxophone player and used to listen to a lot of sax players growing up. So, I tend to phrase some of my lead guitar parts the way a saxophonist would play.

FretBuzz: What jazz players were your role models?

 Dharma: I love John Coltrane, and Paul Desmond comes to mind as well as Wayne Shorter. I like trumpet players, too. I really like Maynard Ferguson, and I saw Chet Baker when I was about ten years old, and that made a real impression on me.

FretBuzz: When did you discover hard rock?

 Dharma: There was no hard rock when I grew up. I’m old. [laughs]. When I was a kid, I had a crystal radio and listened to doo-wop and R&B from this low-power station in Freeport, New York, which was the next town over from Merrick, where I lived. I was into the Top 40 during the Elvis era, and I liked that. But when the Beatles came on, that was mind-bending. Elvis was a celebrity and a showman, but the Beatles seemed like regular guys. Like a lot of aspiring recording artists, I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. All the girls in my high school were going nuts, and I went, “Well, I think I could do that. I think I could play that stuff.” They were great, but those songs weren’t that hard. When I first heard them I was in a surf band and I said, “Well, I’d like to get some of that.”

FretBuzz: You were a New York band, but you seemed to be influenced by progressive music coming out of England, King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Did they have any impact on your sound? You had prog elements, but at the same time, you were melodic.

 Dharma: The English music didn’t have a direct effect on us, but it was such a great and diverse time for styles of popular recording artists that we heard all kinds of things. The labels were signing everybody. It seemed like back in those days, there was a transition away from the label A&R people dictating exactly what gets recorded. You know? They were letting young bands just have at it and see what stuck. A lot of it did, and there were a lot of great, diverse styles that went into what became popular — more so than today, certainly.

FretBuzz: Did touring with Alice Cooper bring out the heaviness in your sound?

 Dharma: Alice Cooper didn’t affect our recordings too much, but he definitely influenced our stage performance. One of our first breaks was opening for Alice during the Killers tour. We played ten shows with him, and it was amazing to see how he mesmerized the crowd. Playing arena-sized crowds was very instructive and we learned about projecting our performance to a bigger audience.

FretBuzz: Did you practice guitar obsessively before you found your sound?

 Dharma: Yeah, at one point in my life, I did. I was going to engineering school in upstate New York with Albert Bouchard. We were in a band, and we covered a lot of Blues Project songs, which meant I had to woodshed the solos of Danny Kalb, who was an explosive rapid-note player for the time. So, I had to develop those chops and that required a lot of discipline. I played for hours and hours a day and it affected my schoolwork. I only lasted two years in engineering school, but I went on to become a musician, so I guess it paid off.

FretBuzz: Black Sabbath also started as a progressive blues band. At one point, they even had a sax player. Were they a major influence for you?

 Dharma: We were always fans of Black Sabbath. My younger brother, John, got me into them. But I think the comparisons only go so far. We were all into science fiction, horror, and mystical stuff in literature and movies – not so much in life. But that’s where our entertainment focus was. But, of course, the two bands sound very different.

FretBuzz: How did you end up touring with Black Sabbath in 1980 and did that contribute to people’s perception of you as a metal band?

 Dharma: For a brief time, Black Sabbath was managed by Sandy Pearlman, who is also our manager, mentor, and lyricist. A lot of the tone of BOC’s persona and songs came from Sandy’s idea of what Blue Öyster Cult should be. That’s how we wound up touring together. I didn’t think they’d be supporting us, but we swapped headlining spots on the Black and Blue tour, depending on which market we were in. But I don’t think we were happy with Sandy at that point. But I love Sabbath. I’ve always loved them.

FretBuzz: Blue Öyster Cult’s singles are much different than your deeper album tracks. Of course, you wrote the band’s three biggest hits, “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” “Burning for You” and “Godzilla.” Was the goal at the time to expand your fanbase by writing songs for the radio?

 Dharma: I was just writing songs the way I always did. And I know we always did our best stuff when we were true to ourselves. But when I wrote “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” it sounded to me like it was something that could get some FM album radio play. There was just something about it that was melodic, but still a little weird and very much BOC. But I didn’t think it was going to be as popular as it has become. I love the whole song, especially when it goes into an experimental place a little bit.

FretBuzz: Is there a story about “Godzilla?”

 Dharma: I was a fan of science fiction, and I always loved the black and white Godzilla movie with the overdubbed Raymond Burr intro that you saw every weeknight in New York City on [WOR- TV Channel 9’s] “Million-Dollar Movie.” We wrote that guitar riff in a hotel room in Dallas and I would say that was probably as close as I ever came to chasing radio because Godzilla is popular, and I wrote a song about it.

FretBuzz: What about “Burning For You?”

 Dharma: That came from [music critic and band collaborator] Richard Meltzer’s lyrics, and it’s probably the most sentimental thing that he’s ever written I think. He tends to write a lot of stream-of-consciousness and not off-the-top-of-his-head kind of stuff. But he really nailed it with that one.

 FretBuzz: The lyrics touch on an existential sort of longing for something you can’t have. Did that inspire your guitar parts? The riffs are simple, but the intro is memorable, and the harmonized part during the lead is iconic.

Dharma: I just play whatever seems to fit with the music. I play everything by ear. I’ve learned a lot about theory, but I don’t speak it. Maybe it comes out in my playing. I just know what I know, and I usually work with that. It’s not that I won’t take chances. I will. I’ll go out on a limb and saw it off, especially playing live. I don’t care if something doesn’t sound exactly like the way people are used to hearing it. I try to make it entertaining for me, and if the audience likes it, too, that’s a bonus.

FretBuzz: For your more powerful songs, did you tend to root your rhythms in traditional power chords and barre chords? Some of your music also seems to integrate different inversions and open chords. There’s a diverse sprinkling of styles and sounds that keep the music interesting and mysterious.

 Dharma: We all wrote, so you’re going to get all sides of the spectrum in there. [The late] Allen Lanier (1967-1985, 1987-2006) wrote on piano, and most of us wrote on guitar. Albert Bouchard (1967-1981) is a drummer, but he writes on guitar mostly. As a drummer, he had a different way of thinking about the guitar. We all like the jangly stuff and the fifth power chords. That might explain a little bit why, with BOC, our material is all over the place style-wise. We were never known for being locked into a specific kind of groove or rhythm.

FretBuzz: What was the band’s watershed moment?

 Dharma: Columbia Records took a chance with us on the [self-titled] first record [in 1972]. It sold about 100,000 copies the first year, and they were willing to put out another one. Tyranny and Mutation (1973) sold about 200,000. So we kept going, and Secret Treaties (1974) sold about 300,000. We didn’t get a gold record until our live album On Your Feet or on Your Knees (1975). So, they stuck with us, and we toured heavily, which is, basically, how we promoted ourselves. And, of course, by playing all the live shows, we really got the band’s muscles up.  We were really in good shape as a band, so by the time Agents of Fortune came out [in 1976] and we had a hit with “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” it validated our existence for the record company. But once you have that kind of success, you’re under pressure to have more. So that’s a double-edged sword there.

FretBuzz: What guitar players influenced you along the way?

 Dharma: I absorbed everybody that was out there. The obvious guys, of course, are [Deep Purple and Rainbow’s] Ritchie Blackmore and [Led Zeppelin’s] Jimmy Page. But [The Doors guitarist] Robbie Krieger was a big influence on me as well, and Jerry Garcia, and those guys are from bands that don’t sound anything like Blue Öyster Cult.

FretBuzz: You had a tremendous upward career arc through the years and released albums through the ‘80s. But there was some turmoil within the band. You fired Bouchard in 1981, and your eleventh studio album, Imaginos [1988] sold poorly and was your last record with Columbia. You didn’t release another album for ten years, yet you continued to tour through the ‘90s.

 Dharma: We have always been fortunate to make a really good living playing for our fans. So, when our style of recording went out of fashion, it didn’t bother us that much. The BOC catalog was so dense and deep, I was never bored playing what we had recorded.

FretBuzz: You returned in 1998 with Heaven Forbid, and then released Curse of the Hidden Mirror in 2001. Neither of which was well received. Was The Symbol Remains, which you put out in 2020, a triumphant return?

 Dharma: For us, it was. We worked very hard on that record. It was very important for us to make a good record after two decades, and I think we succeeded with that.

FretBuzz: Did you want to tap into a more contemporary sound with that album?

 Dharma: Only insofar as the current band, with guitarist and keyboardist Richie Castellano and [drummer] Jules Radino, needed to be enshrined and etched in stone – or plastic – as the guys we’re making records with these days. It was important that people heard that record to see that we weren’t dialing it in, and hear those guys get their due as members of Blue Öyster Cult.

FretBuzz: The new album Ghost Stories features new versions of previously written songs. How did that come together?

 Dharma: Most of them were pre-production demo tapes. They weren’t 24-track or 48-track studio recordings Most of them are 8-track tape recordings and a couple of them were mixed to stereo and they were originally recorded by our live sound mixer, George Durrini, at that time.  He was the source of the material because he had the tapes and carried them around from place to place. He moved two or three times since the days we made them. He gave us the digitized version of the tapes, and we went from there.

FretBuzz: Why did you decide to create an album of outtakes from between 1973 and 1983 and then use AI to remix them?

 Dharma: I like the songs and I’m happy to see them come out. I don’t think BOC has done anything that I wouldn’t want somebody to hear – at least I can’t remember anything that bad. Frontiers Records, which released The Symbol Remains was also doing the Sony Hall three-night live DVD and audio, and they wanted another record from us, and we didn’t have anything to give them until we thought about this. Once the idea was explained, they were on board with it, and I think they’re very happy with their results because it’s good.

FretBuzz: The process was complicated since those old tapes were unusable the way they were, and the reels had to be baked in an oven to allow the sound to be transferred to digital.

 Dharma: There was a time when everyone in the industry thought these analog tapes were a good formulation, but it turned out they didn’t have a lot of shelf life. They absorbed moisture and deteriorated. Some of those tapes were unusable and the recordings had to be fixed because they were just not good enough.

FretBuzz: How much of the material did you re-record?

 Dharma: I didn’t re-record anything. All my performances on that record are from that period. Richard Castellano, in his engineer phase, and producer Steve Schenk replaced some of the stuff that was too far gone.

FretBuzz: There are several covers on the album: The MC5’s “Kick out the Jams,” The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” and The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues.” Are those new recordings?

 Dharma: Everything on there is from those tapes. Nothing’s new. We liked the MC5. They were an underrated band, and if you’ve ever seen any of their live performances on YouTube, you can see how good they are. They should have been bigger. I think they got bogged down in the politics of the time a little bit. There was all the revolutionary stuff they were into, and some people didn’t like that. But “Kick Out the Jams” is a great song.

FretBuzz: What was your first guitar?

 Dharma: The first guitar I picked up was my Brother’s Stella acoustic that he got for Christmas. It was probably $20 at the time. I still have that guitar. I haven’t had it continuously, but it got sold to a co-worker of my mother’s when my mother worked at a defense company. Fast forward 25 years later. My mom gets divorced and hooks up with this same guy she sold the guitar to. So, I got the guitar back!

FretBuzz: What was your first electric?

 Dharma: The first electric I had was one that my dad found through a friend. My dad was a horn player, so he got me a premier jazz box [often played with horn sections] with two pickups, a pretty deep F-hole body, and no cutaways. I had flat wound strings on it and I’m a little guy, so it was just gigantic on me.

FretBuzz: That must have been difficult.

 Dharma: Yeah, it was, but I played it. And then I got one of the first Hagstrom Fender copies when Hagstrom started importing their guitars. I had that for a while. But my first real pro-level instrument was an SG Special with P90s. And then I got an SG standard, which I had for quite some time and modified quite a bit. It was red with a tremolo, and I replaced the Gibson trem with a Bigsby trem. Then later, I put a stop tailpiece on it. Then I put Bill Lawrence Pickups on it. Then, I had it painted white instead of cherry red. Then, that guitar gets stolen.

FretBuzz: Did you stick with Gibson?

 Dharma: I had a replica that was made by the Gibson custom shop, and I don’t carry that out now. I keep it at home.

FretBuzz: Did you play that much in the early days of Blue Öyster Cult?

 Dharma: I used it on all the classic BOC recordings. It was my primary guitar right up through Age of Fortune.

FretBuzz: What do you like about Gibson guitars?

 Dharma: I probably prefer the Gibson neck radius and scale length. I’ve got Fenders – a Telecaster and two Strats, and I certainly appreciate the single coil sound. In fact, about half the time, I play split coils with my Steinbergers.

FretBuzz: There’s a creamy sound to your tone. Does that come from using the neck pickup?

 Dharma: No, I usually use the bridge pickup.

FretBuzz: Can you explain how you get that classic BOC tone?

 Dharma: I usually roll off a little of the level on the tone control, but not all the time. I think my fingers have a lot to do with it. I’m very much into cross-picking.

FretBuzz: Isn’t that a style most often associated with country and bluegrass?

 Dharma: It’s something that I developed, and I generally don’t anchor my hand. I was watching Roy Clark on Hee-Haw and I noticed he barely touched the guitar when he was picking. That’s when I started working on cross picking, and basically being able to anchor my wrist with my forearm. And that became a big element of my playing.

FretBuzz: What was your most exciting or iconic experience in Blue Öyster Cult?

 Dharma: There have been lots of high points. The biggest show we ever did that we headlined was the ballpark in San Diego. Cheap Trick, ZZ Top, and Heart were on the bill, and we were just flying high. But I’ve enjoyed the whole ride, actually. It doesn’t matter whether it’s playing clubs or festivals. The club days were a lot of fun and I still like playing clubs. If there’s 400 people in a room, that’s enough. And we still get big crowds at festivals today, so we get the best of all worlds.

FretBuzz: Have you crossed paths with modern melodic metal band Ghost, who are heavily influenced by BOC?

 Dharma: Ghost, of course, because of the comparison. And what’s the fella’s name?  Who’s the king of the Ghost?

FretBuzz: Most of the players wear masks and are called Nameless Ghouls. The vocalist goes by Papa Emeritus, but he has gone through various generations of the name. Now he’s just Papa IV.

 Dharma: Oh, yeah? Interesting. From what I know, it reminds me of Alice Cooper more than Blue Öyster Cult.

FretBuzz: The theatrics are reminiscent of Alice Cooper, but musically there are definitely similarities with your epic, majestic approach to hard rock.

 Dharma: Well, we don’t own the sound, but if we influenced him and his band, he’s welcome to it. We played a festival last year where he was the headliner and I think they’re good.

FretBuzz: Will there be a full tour to support Ghost Stories?

 Dharma: No, actually, in our 50th anniversary year, we did about 75 shows, and last year we did about 30. I don’t know how many we’ve got booked now, but we’re definitely throttling back. I think our heavy touring days are over.

FretBuzz: We’ll let everyone know they should catch you before you’re gone.

ROAD SUPPLIES

Amps and Gear:

2-Crate Red Voodoo BV120HRs, split as stereo.

1 or 2 – BV412RVR 4×12 cabinets

Marshall JCM 900

Engl 530 preamp

Alesis Quadraverb

The Engl preamp is patched to the effect returns of the Crate or Marshall heads, which are used for power. If one cabinet is in use, it is run in stereo. For large stages, two cabinets are used, each running in mono.

GUITARS:

Steinberger GMT 7 – sunburst EMG HSBs in neck and bridge position with single coil in center position.

Steinberger GMT 7 – “Cheeseburger” EMG HSBs in neck and bridge position with single coil in center position.

Gary Jacobs custom

Martin Backpacker