Albert Bouchard was the drummer, songwriter, vocalist and co-founder of Blue Öyster Cult whose first three albums – Blue Öyster Cult (1972), Tyranny And Mutation (1973) and Secret Treaties (1974) – established an intelligently crafted strain of metal with a dynamic instrumental approach rooted in late 1960s psychedelia and lyrics that read like arcane poetry. Their unique music and mock-sinister image attracted collaborators such as Richard Meltzer, Jim Carroll, Michael Moorcock and Patti Smith, and fans as diverse as Mike Watt (Minutemen), David Tibet (Current 93) and Mark Perry (Alternative TV). Central to the group’s vision was their manager, producer and main songwriter Sandy Pearlman, a former Crawdaddy critic who urged them into contributing the music for his complex masterwork The Soft Doctrines Of Imaginos – a lengthy dramatic narrative and philosophical poem concerning the occult origins of the First World War.

When Bouchard was asked by the rest of the group to leave BÖC in 1981 he teamed up with Pearlman again and they began working together on the final draft of Imaginos. Promised to Bouchard as the portal to a solo career, the project was eventually handed back to BÖC – whose own career was now in decline. Critically acclaimed and hailed as a masterpiece by true believers, the 1988 version of Imaginos nevertheless bombed. Undeterred, Bouchard kept working on his own version, released this month as Re Imaginos.

Edwin Pouncey: Sandy Pearlman originally intended the 1988 version of Imaginos to be a vehicle for your solo career. What went wrong?

Albert Bouchard: There were several factors that were not Sandy’s fault at all. Columbia Records threw a spanner in our works because they did not want to put it out as an Albert Bouchard solo record, even though that was what the contract said. To make it worse they said, ‘No we're not going to do a double record, we're doing a single album.’ There were no CDs when I signed the contract back in 1982, so we proceeded to make a double record set that was about 60 minutes long but when they said it had to be a single record Sandy was forced to take off the two songs I wanted to be included, “The Girl That Love Made Blind” and “Gil Blanco County”. We would get into a lot of arguments while we were making this thing. I wanted a definite chronology to each song and have it be like a play or an opera with a clear story line. He did not want to do that, he would say, ‘No, it doesn't matter. The songs reference each other. Where would you put “I Am The One You Warned Me Of”? That could be anywhere in the whole sequence.’ We both felt that “Magna Of Illusion” had to be the last song, because that was where the Imaginos character had finally found the mirror that was going to cause world chaos in the next episode – the next double record set.

When I interviewed him in 1988 Sandy told me that “Les Invisibles”, a set of lyrics that he had written for Patti Smith, eventually “became the last song in the dramatic sequence”.

It is the last song on Re Imaginos because "Magna Of Illusion" was too much of a final ending. It needed a question mark at the end to lead into the next record.

How true is your interpretation of the songs on Re Imaginos to how Sandy envisioned them being performed?

The two of us started working on this together back in 1975. I wrote the song “Imaginos” on the same day that Donald Roeser called me up and played me the riff he had just written for “(Don't Fear) The Reaper”. After that Sandy started coming up to my apartment in the East Village and we wrote “The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle At Weisseria”, “The Girl That Love Made Blind” and “Del Rio’s Song” there. For those three songs we wrote the music and the lyrics together. He would say, ‘I just want it so that you can play them on an acoustic guitar’, like it’s not a big arena rock thing, it’s more intimate. I first heard the Imaginos story back in 1967, I had known Sandy for two or three months at that point, and one day he came over to the band house to work on the song he had written for us called “Buddha’s Knee”. After we had finished we sat around, turned out the lights, lit some candles and Sandy started telling this story.

Much later he would say to me, ‘Remember when I first told it to you? We were all sitting around, you guys were all stoned and staring at candles. That’s how I would like it to be.’

By the time we started making the record, though, I had a whole different vision of what I needed out of it, because at that point I was no longer in BÖC. Sandy also shared that feeling with me because he was very disappointed at what had transpired. He did everything he could to reverse the situation but they were like, ‘No, it’s better without Albert.’ So we both wanted revenge and we decided to make this huge, amazing sounding record together – instead of what we started out with, which was to make this more intimate multifaceted story. Something that people could listen to over time and always pick out something new.

How long had Sandy been working on the Imaginos concept?

It was before he met BÖC when he had the idea.

Did he ever disclose where he got the original idea from? Was this something that emerged from his intense reading of various fantastic fiction authors?

With the original story he was referring to a book called Giles Goat-Boy [by John Barth]. At first I thought that was what it was about, but when I eventually read the book I realised it was nothing like what he had told us. So when he came over to my house I asked him where he had got the idea. He told me that one of the main inspirations was HP Lovecraft. I said, ‘Oh, which of his books?” He said, ‘You know, the Cthulhu Mythos stories or At The Mountains Of Madness, any of those.’ It was just a general feeling he got when he read Lovecraft. At one point I actually wrote an instrumental piece called “At The Mountains Of Madness” thinking, maybe this could go in there? He just went, ‘Nahhh!’ I think he wanted it to be fairly oblique.

Do you think that it’s important to understand the structure of the story when you’re listening to the music?

Not really.

What were his expectations for Imaginos? Did he have ideas of it being staged or made into a film at some point?

I don’t think so because I was like, we have to have some kind of a storyline if we want to make it into something bigger. He’d just say ‘Nahhh I just want to have the story, I think it makes a great piece.’ I thought it could have been taken further, though, and I still think it could.

Now that you are back behind the wheel of the Imaginos project, what aspirations do you have as to how it should develop?

People were writing to me all the time to say that they love the original recording demos, but when can we see the official release of those? I would say I have no control over that because it got away from me and I may never have control of it again. Then people said to me, ‘Maybe you should record your own version of Imaginos?’ After a while I started thinking, well maybe I should. I’ve been doing a live stream once a month with my friend David Hirschberg and whenever we played the Imaginos songs people got excited. The month after we did our first Imaginos tunes I had double the amount of people watching. So I thought, wow, something just happened! That made me think there really is an interest in this and maybe I underestimated it. From what I’ve been told by my record label we’ve sold thousands of records and we’re number 18 on Amazon’s list of presale records.

It’s something that has obviously captured people’s imagination, and those who have been following the evolution of the Imaginos story down the years want to know and hear as much as they can. Is there a chance that the original demo tapes can somehow be secured?

I know where they are. They reside in the Huey Lewis World HQ in San Francisco, which was right next door to Sandy’s Alpha Omega studio. I thought Sandy had bought that studio but he was just renting it, so when he died his cousin sold off all the equipment and was left with all of these tapes. One day Huey Lewis’s sax player called me up and said, ‘Hey listen I’ve got all of these tapes with your name on them, some of them say Imaginos.’ I said, ‘What! OK.’ So I put them in touch with BÖC’s manager and he put them in touch with Columbia Records, because technically they belong to them. I did say, though, if nobody wants ’em, I will gladly take ’em.

So they might see the light of day some day?

Yeah, yeah. Now that I know where they are.

Can you tell me about the three songs that were not included on the original version of Imaginos? Firstly, “The Girl That Love Made Blind”. It has a very romantic feel to it that is strikingly different from the rest of the songs on the album.

That was originally the bridge section of “The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle At Weisseria”. When we were working on “Siege” I said to Sandy, ‘Maybe we should separate that, because it seems like such a shock.’ At the time I was thinking that “Siege” would be this big heavy rock tune, I mean it’s got Frankenstein in it! So we split it off into “The Girl That Love Made Blind”, which is a much softer sound. In the new version not only did I restore “TGTLMB” but I gave “Siege” the feel of a tango. I now think that it’s less heavy and more romantic. It’s sexy and it’s violent. Everything a tango should be.

So the two songs were originally composed as one sequence?

Yes, they have to be together. When the 1988 record came out and Sandy left off “TGTLMB” I said, ‘Why did you leave that off? You should have left “Imaginos” off.’ That version is terrible. It was terrible before BÖC got their hands on it and they didn’t fix it, they made it even worse. I have another version of “Imaginos” that we recorded that’s way better, it's on those tapes in Huey Lewis World HQ – but for some reason they went with that version.

“Gil Blanco County” is a pre BÖC song that you have included on Re Imaginos. Why was this to be on the original version?

I can see why Sandy left it off because he said, ‘Oh you’re just trying to make too much sense out of these songs.’ But here's my thought: he wrote “Gil Blanco County” back in the days when we were first called Soft White Underbelly and later Stalk Forrest Group, and what had happened was that his girlfriend and wife-to-be at the time, Joan Shapiro, went to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to look at the Mayan ruins there, and she got very sick. She was in this hospital in Oaxaca and they thought she was going to die, so he flew out there and brought her home. So that song is really about Joan in Oaxaca, and the line “bad oats in town” means a virus or sickness. That’s why in Imaginos his friends have to put him ashore from the boat because he was infectious, so he was being quarantined. Then the aliens come and nurse him back to health and tell him where the treasure is that he’s been looking for – which is in Oaxaca.

You have also included your version of the BÖC song “Workshop Of The Telescopes” that you have retitled “Black Telescope”. How did that get on Re-Imaginos?

I had all of the demos for the new album done and I said to the four musicians I work with, once you guys get this stuff learned we’re going to go into the studio and cut all the tracks live in two or three days. So then I started making demos for the next record [in the Imaginos trilogy] called Bombs Over Germany. I did “Black Telescope” and suddenly it was like, Hey! This would sound better on Re Imaginos, because the sea is such a big factor in many of the songs.

The first released song in the Imaginos saga was “Astronomy” from BÖC’s 1974 album Secret Treaties. It has since been covered numerous times, but can you tell me anything about its origin?

There’s a place that's not too far from Stony Brook University in New York called Port Jefferson and Sandy used to have a house near there. There’s a big bay there with a huge beach where people walk their dogs. The beach is on the South shore with tons of white sand, but the beach on the North shore is all rocks, with oysters, clams, crabs, fish and seaweed – it’s sort of a nasty beach, but it’s also kind of cool. I always thought Sandy was referring to that beach on “Astronomy”, it just seemed like the right place. Sandy grew up in Smithtown where there’s maybe two local bars that have music, so the location he was referring to was probably Port Jefferson where all the Stony Brook University kids went, especially when the drinking age was 18 back then. Sandy would go there and I think that’s what gave him the basic idea for “Astronomy”.

Could this also be the origin of the Four Winds Bar that he refers to in the song? Was there a place with that name?

Not that I know of, but he had this whole thing, like in the song “Les Invisibles” he refers to the old custom of saluting the four quarters, the four corners or the four winds. It could also be an occult thing. Back in the 19th “entury, when Imaginos was supposedly happening, there was a great interest in the occult. I had always thought that when he says in “Astronomy”, “And don’t forget my dog...”, he was talking about a real dog, until I was recording it with him. He said, “Nooo, it’s Sirius, the Dog Star.” OHHHHH!!! I learned a lot when I was doing that record with him, it was the most time we ever spent together. The new version of “Astronomy” has the introduction that Sandy wanted... well, almost. He originally wanted to go up to a convent and get the nuns to sing harmony and do hand clapping behind me while I sang the song. Nuns, singing quietly in harmony and hand clapping, that’s it.

On the Re Imaginos sessions we’d done a demo of the four of us playing “Astronomy” and it sounded great. It was just like BÖC except with acoustic guitars. Later I was going for a run and when I was running I thought, oh wait a minute, I remember now what Sandy wanted, he wanted a whole different intro. Anything he asked me to do, that I could remember I didn’t do at the time, I did for this version. Part of it was to do with how I wanted revenge about the original version and how I had been treated, and wanting the album to be a springboard for my solo career. That has pretty much all gone now. I don’t care about my solo career. I can play anywhere at any time I want to, I have plenty of money and there’s no need for revenge any more. My main reason for doing this is to honour my friend and do it the way he wanted.

What did you learn from working with Sandy?

One thing that he taught me – which took a long time to get – was, it’s more important as a creator to have people being enthusiastic about your work. To have a small, really enthusiastic audience rather than a huge amount of people who are mostly nonplussed about what you’re trying to do. That way you don’t feel the need to please everybody. I think that helped me take more chances with my music.

Does Imaginos continue to haunt you?

[Laughs] Yeah, I suppose it does. I really like the song “Imaginos” now. I didn’t like the original version, I always felt, this doesn’t sound like what Sandy wanted in the beginning. A song like “Imaginos” is really supposed to sound like a campfire song, and I think I’ve achieved that on this one.

Albert Bouchard’s Re Imaginos is released by RockHeart/Deko.

Read Edwin Pouncey’s guide to occult rock in The Wire 390.