The “made up” story that might have won Blue Öyster Cult their first record deal
Blue Öyster Cult are best remembered as mainstream rock radio staples of the 1970s, and perhaps by Millennials more for their connection to a certain Will Ferrell cowbell sketch.
Back in the early days of the band, however, when they were playing under the even more ridiculous name of Soft White Underbelly, this was a psychedelic weirdo outfit right up there with Frank Zappa and early Pink Floyd.
“Sitting on a Buddha’s knee,” began the lyrics to one of the band’s LSD-fueled 1969 tracks. “Feeding your crows / Where a minute’s worth a year / Or more, or more.”
Les Braunstein, who joined the group in ‘68 as its very temporary lead singer, would later describe meeting his new bandmates as being akin to encountering a bunch of “elves, playing among the trees”.
“When I turned up, they were taking a break and smoking up so I joined in,” Braunstein recalled in a retrospective for Classic Rock. “We got more stoned on the bus and then I entered their rehearsal room, with all the equipment squeezed in. They played and it sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before: powerful, good and electric. I got very paranoid. I felt so trapped inside the music I had to run outside.”
As good as they sounded to each other while all under the collective influence, Soft White Underbelly were still an unsigned band, and as of yet, their considerable ambition hadn’t been met with a strong assurance from the industry that there would be a place for them.
Then, according to Braunstein, the band’s manager, Sandy Pearlman, was able to pull some strings and convince an executive from Elektra Records—label founder Jac Holtzman—to come and see Soft White Underbelly play a gig at the Hotel Diplomat Ballroom in New York. Holtzman, who signed numerous heavyweights of all sorts, including Judy Collins, Love, The Stooges, and the Underbelly’s closest comparison point, The Doors, was cautiously optimistic. Nonetheless, the members of the Underbelly felt like it might help to improve Holtzman’s mood a tad, so songwriter Richard Meltzer supposedly slipped him a joint laced with horse tranquiliser.
This bold strategy could have sabotaged the whole night, but as Braunstein remembered it, Holtzman got into the groove of the music just as they’d hoped, so much so that “he jumped on stage, threw his arms round me and hugged me and said ‘You’re in the family boy!’ It was a very special moment”.
Braunstein thinks he might have helped seal the deal when he opted to conclude the performance by doing his best Jim Morrison impression, making up an acid-trippy story on the spot to add a bit of flavour to his on-stage character.
“I made up this story about going outside the Diplomat with a flower child space girl,” Braunstein said, “And then this dude arrives and she doesn’t like him so she pulls out these two long steel pins and I start screaming and she plunges them into her eyes.”
Holtzman might have briefly thought he had the next Doors on his hands, but when the drugs wore off and Soft White Underbelly entered the studio, that enthusiasm started to wear off quickly. Elektra Records shelved the band’s recordings, and when Braunstein was unceremoniously replaced as lead vocalist by Eric Bloom in 1969, all of his work with the band was scrapped entirely.
Eventually, after changing the band’s name three more times and jumping from Elektra to Columbia Records, the fully formed Blue Öyster Cult finally put out their debut album in 1972, to largely positive reviews. Whether that laced joint and Les Braunstein’s Jim Morrison impression had set them on the right path or a weird, unnecessary tangent remains open to debate.
