How the Music Died IV

Welcome to the fourth and final installment in what I'm calling How the Music Died. Broadly speaking this series has focused on the rock 'n' roll usurpation that occurred between 1959 and 1969 by what rogue historian Peter Levenda has dubbed sinister forces and how this has in many ways paralleled a similar transformation in the American political scene. Part one focused on Buddy Holly and the bizarre, ritualistic aspects of his death in 1959. Part two was an examination of the legendary Don McLean song "American Pie" (from which this series gets it name) and how it chronicled the usurpation of rock 'n' roll as well as the American political system from the time of Buddy Holly's death till the Altamont Free Concert of 1969. In part three I explored the origins of the 1970s heavy metal outfit Blue Oyster Cult as a lead up to the following examination of a song they released in 1974 called "Dominance and Submission." The prior post may seem out of keeping with the rest of the series, but I felt it was crucial to look at certain aspects of BoC's background that have rarely been examined before getting to the song, which deals with the transformation the Beatles brought about in 1964 in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.

In part three the reader learned that BoC was not remotely as buffoonish in the early days as they would be during their peak years in the late 1970s. In point of fact, the early vision of the group was largely driven by manager/producer Sandy Pearlman, a man with more than a passing interest in the occult. In the mid 1960s he wrote a series of poems he called The Secret Doctrines of Imaginos which loosely revolved around an extraterrestrial intelligence from the star Sirius that had been attempting to co-opt humanity for centuries through a series of occult orders. As I noted in part three, this story line bears a remarkable similarity to various occult and metaphysical classics released in the 1970s such as The Sirius Mystery, The Magical Revival, and The Cosmic Trigger Volume I, all of which dealt with the so-called 'Sirius Tradition.' Pearlman would incorporate aspects of these poems into BoC's lyrics and image in the early years (BoC recorded a rock opera in the 1980s called Imaginos using Pearlman's Secret Doctrines poems after he had little input in the group).

Sandy Pearlman

We also learned that Pearlman and BoC hailed from Long Island, New York, an era that witnessed a major occult revival in the late 1960s and 1970s as BoC was coming up. If the early lyrics are any indication, BoC was certainly familiar with Long Island's dark side, which featured witch covens, outlaw motorcycle clubs, and even members of the notorious Process Church of Final Judgement. Speaking of the Process, there's seemingly a curious allusion to the cult on the album cover of 1974's Secret Treaties, that album which yielded "Dominance and Submission." BoC frontman Eric Bloom is seen on the album cover sporting a black cape (with a crimson inside) while holding four German shepherds on a leash. For those of you unaware, members of the Process regularly wore black capes and were accompanied by German shepherds when appearing in public in the 1960s. Levenda asserts that the Process was active in Long Island (or at least Brooklyn) in the early 1970s. What's more, Secret Treaties was released after fellow New York rocker Ed Sanders released his study of the Manson clan, called The Family, where he argued that there was a strong link between Manson and the Process. Thus, it seems unlikely that Bloom's attire was a coincidence.

this is a color version of the album cover found in the inner booklet of the CD;  note Eric Bloom (far left)'s cape and German shepherds

Secret Treaties is generally considered by fans to be BoC's finest hour. It featured two tracks, "Subhuman" and "Astronomy," that were adapted directly from Pearlman's Secret Doctrines poems. The album art work featured more allusion to the Secret Doctrines with its references to a fictional book Pearlman envisioned as part of the poems called Origins of a World War. The album title itself was in reference to the treaties human leaders had made with the Sirius aliens. The cover also depicts the band huddling around an ME 262, a Nazi fighter plane employed in he final months of the war. This is an allusion to the Nazi-glorifying single "ME 262" released off of Treaties.

Needless to say, the world Secret Treaties crafts, with its allusions to Sirius, Nazism, and the Process, is quite unique. With all of this in mind, let us now turn our attention to "Dominance and Submission," the third track off Secret Treaties, the final album in their Black and White trilogy. At the time of the album's release BoC had gained some degree of commercial success, but nothing close to what Pearlman and their label had envisioned. Pearlman had attempted to take two underground currents --garage rock and the occult, and wrap them up in mainstream heavy metal. This would theoretically produce something that was both artistic and commercial, yet BoC had come far from achieving either by 1974. Perhaps this produced some degree of bitterness in Pearlman. Increasingly I see the song "Dominance and Submission" as a kind of longing for the earlier, less corporate driven rock scene that would spur so much innovation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Pearlman co-wrote the song with drummer Al Bouchard and frontman Bloom, who had taken on a more prominent role in the songwriting at this point. It's actually Bouchard, probably BoC's most underrated songwriter (if BoC went into perpetual decline when Pearlman's influence waned, they turned into total shit when Bouchard was fired after the Fire of Unknown Origin album), who sings "Dominance and Submission" and its easily his best lead vocal performance with the group (despite Bloom being officially listed as the lead singer, every member of the group sang lead at some point, though Bloom and Buck Dharma usually got the call). According to this website Pearlman meant the lyrics to be an examination of the effects music, specifically the Beatles, had on higher consciousness.   Along these lines, Pearlman allegedly told NME:

"In 1963 I was being driven back from a New Year's Eve party when The Beatles came over the airwaves for the first time. It seemed so revolutionary in terms of consciousness that what is represented was a new factor in mass culture and '63 was the watershed. The song reflects the parallelism between revolutionary consciousness in the mass and how it affects the individual. The sublimated heat of rock 'n' roll, so, long suppressed, and driven underground, was being revealed and no one could stop it."

the arrival of the Beatles at JFK Airport for their first US visit in 1964

Pearlman seems to take a far more cynical view of the Beatles in the actual lyrics, however. The first verse of the song goes:

Oh yeah!

I spent ten years, half my life

Just getting ready, then it was time

Warpage in my fingers, radios appear

Midnight was the barrier, back in 1963

Each night the covers were unfolded

Each night it's Susie's turn to ride

While Charles, the one they call her brother

Covers on his eyes

Murmurs in the background

It will be time

Warpage is usually pronounced as warp-age, i.e. the act of warping. I suspect the narrator's fingers have been warped because he's taken up the guitar --hence, they've been warped into the hands of a musician. The narrator's fingers are being warped because radios have appeared every where and there's lots of good rock 'n' roll coming out of them.

The line "Midnight was the barrier, back in 1963" could be in reference to numerous things. The transition from 1963 to 1964 represented one of the pivotal cultural charges in the history of the United States. JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963. A little more than two months later --February 1, 1964 to be exact --the Beatles had their first number one single with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (With the Beatles, the group's second album, was actually released in the UK the day Kennedy was murdered). This represented a profound shift in the national consciousness --Before the public had been focused on the Kennedy administration's modern day Camelot. Now the Beatles and the British Invasion would take center stage. I've already written a bit about this transformation in part two of this series and shall address it further a little bit later. For now, I would like to consider another alleged change 1964 represented.

The Age of Aquarius is a concept that has gained much traction in the US since the rise of the counterculture and New Age movements in the 1960s. This concept holds that every 2150 years or so a new astrological age begins and with it comes profound changes in religion, philosophy and culture. The present astrological age is in Pisces and was defined by the rise of Christianity. The new age --the  Aquariun age --has supposedly been upon us for a century or more. Many now see it beginning this year, 2012 (due to the end of the Mayan calender), but various mystics have been hailing its dawning in one form or another since the beginning of the twentieth century.

One of the most curious individuals to take up the mantle of Aquarius was the legendary Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Jung became fascinated with the rise of flying saucer sightings in the twentieth century. He believed that they were a modern manifestations of mandalas and that they represented the dawning of a new global consciousness that was fast approaching.

"In the late fifties the Cold War was at its most frigid, with the massive glaciers of the USA and USSR ready to defrost in a nuclear meltdown. The schizophrenic planetary split between East and West sent the world's population into a global neurosis. In his patients, Jung discovered the mandala emerging from the unconscious as a sign of, and stimulus to, a new wholeness. Now the global unconscious was projecting these strange circular shapes. These flying mandalas were both an expression of the need for wholeness, and an aid in achieving it --meditation on the mandalas helped fuse the psyche into a new state of unity. 

"And just as the mandalas of Jung's patients presaged a new development in the process of individuation, the flying saucers seen across the globe were a sign that a massive change in human consciousness was on its way. Ten years before the Fifth Dimension had a number 1 hit with it, Jung was talking about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. UFOs, he argued, were an archetype heralding a great shift in human history."
(Turn Off Your Mind, Gary Lachman, pg. 138) 

Carl Jung

Miguel Serrano, the Chilean mystic that combined strands of gnosticism and Nazism, met Jung toward the end of the psychologist's life. According to Serrano, Jung believed that the Age of Aquarius would arrive in full in 1964. Jung also allegedly had a dream that was eerily prophetic of the rise of the Beatles and the profound change they would bring about.

"Jung, we remember, believed 1964 would be the start. He didn't live to see it, but that was the year Beatlemania went worldwide. The Beatles themselves never officially adopted the banner of Aquarius, but if anyone was the counterculture's vanguard for the new world order, it was them... Strangely, there's another odd connection between Jung and the Beatles. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung recounts a dream involving Liverpool --home, of course, of the Fab Four. In a dark, dirty city, which he knew to be Liverpool, Jung saw a round pool in the centre of a broad square. In the middle of the pool was a small island, ablaze with sunlight. On it stood a magnolia tree, full of fresh, red blossoms. Jung believed the dream represented his own situation. His break with Freud cast him into a dark, dangerous confusion. But he had been given a vision of beauty lying in the centre. Liverpool, he mused, is the 'pool of life.' 'The liver', he said, 'according to an old view, is the seat of life, that which 'makes to live'.' Through this dream Jung arrived at his notion of the Self as the archetype of meaning. Jung had his dream in 1927. Forty years later his face was on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's..."
(ibid, pgs. 335-336)

Jung on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's

Jung's views jive rather neatly with Sandy Pearlman's proclamation that "Dominance and Submission" revolves around a change in consciousness. Pearlman saw the Beatles as the trigger. Perhaps Jung did as well, after a fashion. Some may question whether Pearlman would have been aware of such a notion at the time, but according to Lachman Jung enjoyed a bit of a Renaissance in the 1960s and 70s with the rise of the counterculture. Certainly it wouldn't have been out of character for someone from that era with an interest in the occult, as Pearlman certainly had, to have read up a little bit on Jung.

"Dominance and Submission" features the character of 'Susie' prominently. Susie is a major enigma to BoC fans. She is referenced in several songs, but her significance has never been explained. She was a creation of Pearlman, who claimed that she was former girlfriend and later referred to her as "some mean bitch."

Her first appearance was in the song "Before the Kiss a Redcap," which appeared on BoC's self-titled debut. The lyrics to this song were supposedly inspired by real events that occurred at a biker bar called Conry's in Long Island where BoC was the house band for a time (the title apparently comes from an incident at Conry's when a biker stuck out his tongue, featuring a barbiturate at the tip, and asked Pearlman if he wanted a kiss). Susie also appears in another song on Secret Treaties, the breathtaking album closer "Astronomy." "Astronomy" was one of the poems from Pearlman's The Secret Doctrines of Imaginos, of which I've written more on in the prior installment in this series.

Whether Susie is actually meant to represent a real person is impossible to tell. The name Susie does have a strange link to Crowleyian sex magic, however. Susie is another variation on Susan, a name that apparently has its origins in the Middle Egyptian word "ssn," meaning lotus flower. Crowley and his disciples regularly used the lotus as a symbol for the vagina.

"The flower-strewn yoni of the woman participating in the mystical worship of the Chakras is symbolized by the lotus of 8. 16. 32 or 64 petals (the number of petals indicates the nature of the rite performed), and is emblematic of the First Flow-er or Ritu... 

"The symbolic correspondences are as follows: 

"Rtu=Blood (red, black)=Rite=the first Rite performed when a girl attains puberty and becomes the Flow-er. The Flower=Lotus=Yoni=the Cremation Ground where desire is finally extinguished, i.e. satisfied. Satisfied because, as Crowley observes: 'a perfect organism should leave no lust; if one wants to go on, it simply shows that one has failed to collect every element of the personality, and discharge it utterly in a single explosion.' The Cremation Ground is to be compared with the Cup of Babalon, the Red or Scarlet Woman into which the Adept expresses the last drop of his blood."
(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pg. 143) 

Some may object to Susie being a metaphor for the tantric possibilities of the vagina, but the character of Susie has typically shown up in songs describing bizarre sexual acts. I already gave an example from "Before the Kiss a Redcap." The song "Astronomy" has been interpreted by some fans to account for this character's first lesbian experience. The song "Dominance and Submission" itself has strong undercurrents of gay S & M, as shall be addressed a bit later.

In this context, Susie could also be a stand in for Crowley's Scarlet Woman. The Scarlet Woman or Babalon was itself frequently used a metaphor for both the mystical uses of the vagina as well as the practice of sacred prostitution. In the ancient world temple prostitute were said to be able to induce altered states and consciousness with their arts.

"The hieros gamos was the ultimate expression of what is termed 'temple prostitution', where a man visited a priestess in order to receive gnosis --to experience the divine for himself through the act of lovemaking... Moreover, this temple servant is, unlike the secular prostitute, acknowledged to be in control of both the situation and the man who visits her, and both of them receive benefits in terms of physical, spiritual and magical empowerment. The body of the priestess had become... literally and metaphorically a gateway to the gods."
(The Templar Revelation, Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, pg. 257)

Finally, Susie (at least in this song) could also be seen as a metaphor for the vibrant rock scene that was currently unfolding across the United States, hence "Each night the covers were unfolded." I tend to lean more toward this explanation, for reasons that shall be explained in a bit. For now, let us move on to the figure of Charles.

Of course the name Charles has a lot of associations with royalty. Probably the first major Charles was Charlemange, which means "Charles the Great." Other notables kings barring this name include Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, who oversaw much of the early Spanish expansion in the Americas, and Charles I of England, the suspected Catholic king that was beheaded in 1649 by the English Parliament. In some strands of Masonic tradition, especially among the French lodges, both Charles I and his ancestor, Charles Edward Stuart, are very important.

"The first officially recognized Masonic lodges in France were established in the 1720s, under the control of Grand Lodge of England. However, at this time there were already lodges in France, which owed their origins to the (predominantly Scottish) supporters of Charles I who fled to France around 1650. The history of Freemasonry in France has therefore been one of two distinct streams, those descended from the English lodges (which formed their own Grand Lodge in Paris in 1735) and those descended from the Scottish Lodges, with periods of mutual hostility alternating with attempts at reconciliation. The foundation of the Grand Lodge of France in 1735 represented a break with the English Grand lodge, the source of friction being precisely London's objections to 'their' lodges entertaining good relations with the Scottish lodges. 

 "Baron von Hund's creation of the Strict Templar Observance in the late 1740s represented a new development within Scottish Freemasonry. Von Hund claimed his authority derived from members of the exiled Stuart supporters in Paris, a circle centered around Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), the 'Young Pretender'. If true --and recent research tends to support his claims --his system would derive from the same circles as the already existing Scottish system."
(ibid, pgs. 366-367)

Charles I (top) and Charles Edward Stuart (bottom), two members of the legendary Stuart dynasty that has long been associated with Scottish Freemasonry

It should be noted that many branches of Freemasonry strongly dispute the Stuart dynasty's links to Freemasonry. Regardless, there's another curious phrase in this verse that could be read as an allusion to Masonry. Charles is described as having "covers on his eyes." This phrase reminds me of the Masonic concept of the hoodwink. Broadly speaking, the hoodwink is symbolic of the darkness an initiate into Masonry is suspended in until he 'receives the light' (i.e. the blindfold he is wearing is removed). On the other hand hoodwink can be seen as symbolic of the state of the uninitiated. The above link notes:

"Like the manner in which the candidate finds himself clothed, and the way whereby he finds himself rendered helpless and utterly dependent on his guides, the Hoodwink may be considered as a symbol of the weakness and destitution of the uninitiated. Initiation is a process of birth into a new world, or into a new relation, or into a new order of experience: relative to that new world into which he is about to enter, the candidate is like the babe unborn, a helpless creature lying bound in its mother's womb. Accordingly he is in darkness: not yet born he has no use of his eyes, and no light whereby to see if he could use them."

a Masonic hoodwink

Thus, Charles can be seen as a kind of initiate into the new world that is being ushered in. Perhaps this is why he is murmuring "It will be time." With this in mind, let us turn our attention to the second verse:

Susan and her brother, Charles the grinning boy

Put me in the back seat, and they took me for a ride

Yeah, the radio was on --can't you dig the locomotion

Kingdoms of the radio, 45 RPM

Too much revolution, then

Each night the covers were unfolded

Each night it's Susie's turn to ride

While Charles, the one they call her brother

Covers over his eyes

Murmurs in the background

It will be time

The description of Charles as grinning is most curious. When I started thinking of esoteric associations with grinning I kept coming back to the Cheshire cat of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Cheshire cat and the expression "grinning like the Cheshire cat" predate Carroll, however. The early Celts had cults based around around cat-gods. The Cheshire cat is thought to perhaps be a modern link to these cults. For instance, the Medieval St. Wilfrid's Church displays an image remarkably like Carroll's conception of the Cheshire cat. The Cheshire cat's grin is thought to have an especially grim origin as the Cheshire smile:

"In a similar sacrificial vein the 'Cheshire Smile' or 'Cheshire Grin' was a term once widely used in the area for death by the cutting of the throat from ear to ear or by hanging. The first instance of the 'smile' surviving in Cheshire is probably represented by the garrotted remains of Lindow Man or 'Pete Marsh', the Celtic sacrificial peat bog body thought to have been sacrificed in about 61 AD by local Druids in an attempt to avert the impending Roman attack on Anglesey (which came in 63 AD). Two other bodies have also been recovered, one on Lindow moss and a head on Worsley moss, both killed in the same way at about the same time. However, the term, as it survives today, comes entirely from the days of capital punishment and execution by hanging."

Carroll's Cheshire cat (top) and the grinning Cheshire cat of the Medieval St. Wilfrid's Church (bottom)

Is Charles the grinning boy thus a sacrificial victim? We shall see. For the time being, let us consider the state of rock 'n' roll the song is describing in this part ("Kingdoms of the radio/45 RPM/To much revolution then"). Another thing about the year 1963 is that it was the last year of relative anonymity rock 'n' roll had before it became such a pop phenomenon. Of course, most people don't associate the years of 1959-1963 with rock 'n' roll. Conventional accounts make it seem like rock had all but disappeared before the arrival of the Beatles, who resurrected it from the grave. Certainly rock did not generate the same type of national attention that it had before Buddy Holly's death in 1959, but it was still very much a focal point of youth culture.

"Grass roots rock persisted, laying the bedrock for what came next. There is no name for the local music of this period, roughly 1959-63, but some have called it 'protopunk.' It was very much a regional phenomenon: a band from Kansas or Minnesota might be popular over a nine-state area and have substantial hits that never made the national charts. The music was mostly instrumental --simplistic blues shuffles, often amped-up to murderous voltage and performed at frat houses and armories. The rare band with a vocalist usually featured raunchy R & B or maybe a Gene Vincent oldie. In California 'surf music' came along in the wake of Dick Dale. Again instrumental (the vocal harmonies came later), for some crazy reason surf music caught on in the Midwest, too, leading to rowdy milestones such as The Trashmen's 1963 anthem "Surfin' Bird." 

"I've often speculated about what might have happened if The Beatles had not come along, because by 1963 there was a raging regional rock scene in America that contained the seeds of a fantastic punk movement... 

"...1963 was a great year in American rock. In The Trashmen's home of Minneapolis, hundreds of local bands were knocking out brilliant, goofy novelty records, from "Liar Liar" by the Castaways to "Action Woman" by The Litter. In the Pacific Northwest, the Wailers were blasting audiences out of their skulls, and the first versions of "Louie Louie" were hitting the airwaves. John Fred & His Playboy Band were knocking 'em out in Louisiana with "Boogie Chillun" and the like. Down in Texas, Sam the Sham was getting ready to write "Wooly Bully." In fact, wherever you looked, the country was in ferment. 

"Why should this be so? Demographics, mainly. The baby boomers were in high school. The economy was thriving. Families were moving out to the suburbs, and Mom and Dad were buying their kids a guitar and drum kit and giving them a garage, where the could practice their Play Guitar With The Ventures. 

"The rock 'n' roll culture of the '50s, impromptu and short-lived as it had been, still taught the next generation that they could define their own idea of cool, and that they could do it through music. In fact, teen culture was thriving, with hot rod races, surfing competitions, slot cars, go-carts, teen fairs, and, for the precocious few, a glimpse into the tantalizing world of the Beatniks."
(Nuggets Volume I box set booklet, "Sic Transit Gloria... The Story of Punk Rock on the '60s," Greg Shaw, pgs. 18-19)

Needless to say, this was not a pleasing state of affairs for the record labels. Rock music was also a big part of youth culture --In fact, many kids preferred their own local music scene to the big acts of the day (a state of affairs that would continue throughout the 1960s). This only inspired even more kids to learn an instrument. And this led to more bands, and more records. And this meant that the figurative pie of the music market place was further and further divided up between the national and regional music scenes. Hence the reason why there was to much revolution then.

The Beatles changed all of that. They were the first true rock 'n roll superstars (yeah, Elvis had come before them, but much of Elvis' commercial success happened when he moved away from his early rock sound), the first in a series of mega-acts that would grab the public's imagination. And when this happened, people began to shift their focus away from their own local bands and back to the artists the big record labels wanted them to focus on.

This of course begs a lot of questions about the Beatles themselves. It is an article of faith among most Americans nowadays that the Beatles were a revolutionary force that permanently changed the cultural landscape. This is true of course, but not necessarily in the way that many believe. The Beatles are generally credited with inspiring the vast rock scene that developed in the US in the 1960s, but clearly that was not the case as the above quote makes clear. There were already dozens of successful regional bands across the country and more kids were taking up an instrument everyday.

There are of course any number of conspiracy theories on the web revolving around the Beatles. A common one is to present the Fab Four as a creation of the Tavistock Institute, for instance. An examination of the driving forces behind the Beatles' sudden rise to super stardom is well beyond the scope of this post, but I trust my readers known how to do a Google search on such topics. Be warned though: While there are a lot of suspect elements surrounding the Beatles, there's also a lot of bullshit attached to them by the modern conspiracy culture. The whole Tavistock angle is in itself highly questionable as the primary source for such theories seems to be the former MI6 officer John Coleman who comes off as a Bircher agent provocateur in his writings.

I will however make a few observations about the Beatles here that few would debate. For one, producer George Martin, who produced virtually everything the Beatles ever released except parts of Let It Be, is universally acknowledged to have made an enormous contribution to the sound of the Beatles. His arrangements and production techniques were instrumental in some of the Fabs' biggest hits, such "Strawberry Fields Forever." Over the course of this post and especially the prior installment, I've chronicled the massive influence that producer/manager Sandy Pearlman had over BoC's sound and image. Surely its not outside the realm of possibility that Martin also exercised such an influence over the Beatles. To their credit BoC was at least far more honest about the place of their producer in the songwriting process.

'Fifth Beatle' George Martin

The Beatles are generally credited with bringing a certain seriousness to rock that was lacking in the pre-1964 days. To some extent this was true --lots of pre-1964 rock didn't even have vocals, and certainly not 'serious' lyrics. On the other hand, America also had a vibrant folk scene breaking out regionally at the same time as the rock scene. Much of the folk scene in this era was very socially conscious. There was already a growing overlap between the folk and rock scenes even before the Byrds covered Dylan and Dylan himself went electric. It's quite possible that rock would have gone in more socially conscious direction, especially as the Vietnam conflict grew increasingly unpopular, even without the Beatles.

Finally, the Beatles are credited with bringing an experimental edge to rock music in no small part due to their use of psychedelic drugs. While the Beatles were certainly one of the pioneers in the field of psychedelic rock, a gerne that would eventually birth many of rocks most experimental subgernes, they were not the first to try and capture the psychedelic experience on record. On the flip side to a 1962 single released by a group called the Gamblers was a track called "LSD-25," which likely holds this honor. In general psychedelics had gradually being discovered by the American public since the 1950s and bands were already trying to capture the experience in music since the early 1960s. Again, I must ask: Did the Beatles inspire this wave, or merely ride it? By all accounts the psychedelic revolution was already well underway by the time the Beatles had their first number one hit in the US.

So perhaps it's not much of a stretch to say that the Beatles co-opted such strands, rather than inspiring them. This certainly seems to be the mentality of Sandy Pearlman in the context of "Dominance and Submission." With this in mind, let us now move on to the final verse:

It's past midnight said Charles the grinning boy

And looking at me greedily, said it's 1964

In Times Square now people do the polka

Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.

This New Year's Eve was the final barrier

Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.

We took you up and we put you in the back seat

Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.

From year to year we looked out for the venture

Dominance! Submission. Radios appears.

As noted above, I think Charles is a stand in for the Beatles and the British Invasion. Hence, he greedily ushers in 1964, 'the final barrier.' As noted above grinning, specifically the 'Cheshire grin or smile,' is associated with death by execution. Charles is thus greeting the death of the underground American rock scene, which is putting out to much revolution. The change is already taking place: In the prior verse kids were doing the locomotion, a reference to the oldie "Loco-Motion." Now the kids are doing the polka, which I suspect is a way of saying the kids are taking up the lame pop crap their parents listen to. The part about being put in the backseat is likely an allusion to how major record labels would control the music industry from there on out. The line "looked out for the venture" is about how the record labels periodically sign bands from a new scene, thus commercializing and co-opting it in the process. A venture implies risk, thus bands in such an endeavor are likely playing music outside the mainstream.

The song ends with a call and response section where singer Al Bouchard frantically proclaims "Submission" while the rest of the band chants "Dominance." The whole section has more than a hint of gay S & M, especially in Bouchard's rather flamboyant vocal performance. Superficially at least this section is meant to be symbolic of the record industry's rape of their artists. Fans of the Celtic Rebel, however, will undoubtedly take a more literal view of this section. For those of you unfamiliar with the Rebel's work, he has compelling argued that much of the entertainment industry is run by a homosexual cartel. At times, even mainstream publications have have alluded to such a state of affairs. Consider this 1995 Spy article (beginning on page 44) by Mark Ebner that outlines the influence several powerful homosexuals have on the entertainment industry.

Such a notion would certainly play into the Beatles context much of "Dominance and Submission" revolves around. At the time when the Beatles rose to prominence several of the major power brokers within the British music industry, such as producer Joe Meek (whose curious connections with Buddy Holly I wrote of in part one of this series) and manager Robert Stigwood, were homosexuals. According to this article from the South Florida Gay News the British music industry was littered with homosexuals in the 1960s, maybe even earlier:

"However, as much as American pop music has its roots in black culture, British pop music has always had its roots in gay culture. In England, pop was not just about catchy tunes, it was about sexuality, which, more often than not, meant gay sexuality. Forty five years ago, that was part of the Beatles' allure too. They had a gay manager. 

"That man, Brian Epstein, was the backbone of the Beatles. He was ever present wherever they went- a gay man who was a part of the most visible phenomenon the world has ever experienced. Back then, just being gay was illegal, but it didn't seem to matter too much anymore. Very quickly, on the heels of such stratospheric popularity, Her Majesty's government moved forward on legalizing homosexuality. Unintentionally perhaps, that could have been one of The Beatles’ greatest contributions and gifts to modern society. 

"By1966, the music business had acquired a very strong gay presence. The Beatles, The Who, and The Yardbirds had openly gay managers, and The Rolling Stones had one that seemed to be rolling both ways. In addition, Billy Preston often performed with them. Pop had become populated by gays. There were gay songwriters, producers, directors, and especially managers: Robert Stigwood with the Bee Gees, Vic Billings with the "Soul Diva"', and gay icon, Dusty Springfield, to name a few."

Joe Meek (top), Robert Stigwood (middle), and Beatle manager Brian Epstein (bottom) whom John Lennon reportedly 'experimented' with

In this context, the Dominance/Submission call and response may be symbolic of the price the Beatles paid for their rise to fame... Or perhaps the price BoC was about to pay themselves on their next album, the commercial breakthrough Agents of Fortune.

Can you say sellout?

Or did they pay the price? For the past 20 plus years BoC has been reduced to nonstop touring, playing any number dives across this country to keep going. Several buddies of mine actually saw BoC play the lobby of a Holiday Inn a few years ago down here for Bike Week. That's quite a fall for a band that was selling out arenas in the 1970s. Certainly it happens, but how can a group like Uriah Heep still sell out arenas (in Germany at least) while BoC is down to the Holiday Inn lobby? Maybe Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma simply need to get in touch with their inner neocon --It was certainly a wise career move for other 'rebellious' 1970s heavy rockers like Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Gene Simmons of Kiss and Joe Perry of Aerosmith.

And it is here that I shall finally wrap things up. My objective when I began writing these series of posts was to examine the importance rock 'n' roll has had in the twentieth century of the United States. As we have seen, the rise of rock 'n' roll was closely linked to the assassination of JFK and the rise of the Beatles. This is a point that two widely different artists, Don McLean and Blue Oyster Cult, have made over the course of two epic songs. Both saw America emerge from this pivotal period profoundly changed. McLean would go a bit deeper and chronicle the change that rock 'n' roll itself would undergo from the time of Buddy Holly's death in 1959 to the notorious Altamont Free Concert of 1969, though BoC also hinted at this. In this time frame rock would transform from a populistic underground current into a kind of corporate-backed religion before finally entering the 1970s as a harmless past time (at least as far as mainstream currents were concerned). The nation itself went through similar change during the same time period. Thus, we are once again confronted with how intertwined rock 'n' roll and this nation are.

images from the Altamont Free Concert, held by many to be the 'death' of the 1960s

I find this especially interesting when I consider the state of the nation and rock 'n' roll in this day and age. Many have written rock off as dead long ago. After all, it doesn't have anywhere the same influence on youth culture that it did 20 years ago. Now hip hop and slut pop are the culture makers, hence the reason thousands of 'truth-telling' blogs dedicate obscene amounts of time to analyzing every aspect of Jay Z and Britney Spears' public life. Certainly there is a reason for this --It goes without saying mainstream rock isn't what it used to be. Many corporate-backed rockers of old at least had some degree of talent. The same cannot be said of their current incarnation. So it begs the question: Has the record industry finally managed to kill rock? Has the music finally died, as McLean proclaimed in 1971?

A few years ago I would have said emphatically yes. But after listening to the Swedish stoner scene and the ever growing heavy psych scene on mainland Europe, I'm not so sure. In point of fact, there may be more great music being recorded now than in many years. Computers and the Internet have changed the game. Any band with a member or two that's relatively tech savvy can record great demos that sound professional. YouTube and various social media have made it easier than ever for a young band to gain exposure. What's more, the vast amount of music available for free on the Internet combined with the vast wealth of knowledge about it now available has turned people onto groups that they would have never taken the time to explore before. If anything, it seems more and more people are coming to the realization that we don't have to keep listening to the crap that the record labels want us to --There are other choices out there, and they're easier to find now than ever before.

And if there's hope for rock 'n' roll in this day and age, then perhaps there's hope for this nation, as well as the rest of the world, as well.

How the Music Died Part III

Welcome to part three of my rock 'n' roll series How the Music Died. This series has been a rough attempt at chronicling the profound transformation rock would go through between the years 1959 (when Buddy Holly died) and 1969, the year of Helter Skelter and the infamous Altamont Free Concert. The first two parts of this series, which can be found here and here, examined this transformation through the prism of the great Don McLean's "American Pie," quite possibly the most subversive song to ever become a hit single in this nation's history.

In part one I focused in on Buddy Holly's death, and the rich twilight language surrounding it. In part two I breakdown the lyrics of "American Pie" and explained their meaning with a special emphasis on the world of rock 'n' roll before Buddy Holly's death and after the Beatles rise in 1964. In this installment we're going to move away from McLean and his epic in favor of the 1970s heavy metal act Blue Oyster Cult and an especially curious song they released in 1974 known as "Dominance and Submission." However, before we can get to the song I need to do a rundown of BoC themselves, which will take up the rest of this post.

At this point I'm sure some are asking "How the fuck can you lob the great Don McLean and 'American Pie' in with the epitome of bloated 1970s arena rock" or something along those lines. And to be fair, there's no getting around the overwhelming suckiness of many of the Cult's big 70s singles, to say nothing of the albums they released in that era. After all, there's a reason why this band is most well known in this day and age for an SNL skit revolving around "Don't Fear the Reaper"'s use of the cowbell. If this wasn't embarrassing enough, there's "Godzilla" *shudders*.

By all accounts, BoC should have been awful throughout their entire career. After all, they were essentially nothing more than a biker bar band that was scooped up by a music critic-turned-manager/producer (Sandy Pearlman) who would guide their songwriting and image throughout BoC's heyday. Accounts of the early days I've read note that frontman/rhythm guitarist Eric Bloom could barely even play his instrument. I suspect this was true of most of the group outside of lead guitarist Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser (who allegedly played about all the guitars on the early albums), drummer Al Bouchard and maybe keyboardist/guitarist Allen Lainer, all of whom spent half a decade playing biker bars before the self titled debut.

Pearlman

While the band as a whole would grow as musicians over the years, it would always remain dependent upon outside songwriters, especially Pearlman. What's more, there was a dramatic decline in the quality of the BoC's albums once the group began to finally take the reigns from Pearlman after Agents of Fortune, their commercial breakthrough. Thus, BoC committed a lot of rock 'n' roll cardinal sins: they couldn't write their own songs without outside help, several members didn't play their own instruments on the early albums, and they were essentially a creation of their manager-producer. So yes, it would be quite easy to dismiss BoC as another bloated 1970s heavy rock group along the lines of Kiss, AC/DC, Uriah Heep, et al, and if not for the Black and White albums, this is all BoC would have ever amounted too. But shockingly, those albums were really, really good. BoC had a few things going for them that would make them far more interesting than their counterparts, even at the height of their suckiness.

the classic Black and White albums; mote the hints of sacred geometry in the first two (top)

For one, they were rather honest. Many rock bands over the years, including the Beatles, have been accused of being talent-less hacks propped up by their producers. BoC openly acknowledge, even celebrated, this state of affairs. Pearlman took songwriting credits on the bulk of their early songs and frequently dominated interviews sessions with the band. This kind of honesty has been one of the more amusing aspects of BoC over the years. When they finally became a full on arena rock band, for instance, they didn't pull any punches: Their sellout album was named Agents of Fortune. If this wasn't blatant enough, just look at the album cover:

What's more, BoC (or at least Pearlman) were rather clever, especially in the early days. This is first evident to many listeners in the sound of the Black and White era. Pearlman is on record as envisioning BoC's sound as the American answer to Black Sabbath. To be sure, BoC could lay down a fuzzy riff with the best of them and could churn out rockers like "Teen Archer" and "Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll" that were as guilty of 1970s hard rock excesses as any band of that age. But their overall sound was far more complex than the bludgeoning sludge of the legendary Birmingham group or even the bluesy stomp of Led Zeppelin.

In the 1990s music geeks would begin to refer to a certain type of music that was released roughly between 1968 and 1974 as 'heavy psych,' a label that may best describe BoC's Black and White sound. Heavy psych derived from the garage rock and psychedelia that rose to prominence in America from about 1965 to 1968. Several well known rock subgernes would emerge from this movement --heavy metal and prog almost immediately, and later punk rock (there was a vibrant 'proto-punk' scene in the intertwining years, especially around Detroit, which yielded acts like the Stooges). However, there were a lot of bands in the early 1970s --groups like Hawkwind, the Groundhogs, Captain Beyond, Atomic Rooster, Sir Lord Baltimore, Leaf Hound, Flower Travellin' Band, etc --that just didn't fit in to any of the after mentioned categories. On the one hand, these groups were just to raw and fond of feedback-laden guitars to pass for being prog. On the other hand, their music was just to trippy and retro to fit in with mainstream heavy metal or even proto-punk.

Hawkwind (top) and Sir Lord Baltimore (bottom), two great heavy psych outfits from this era

And arguably the great ambassador of this sound was early BoC. When the Cult went for an uptempo track, they played it fast and raw enough to almost capture the intensity of the earlier garage or later punk sound. Some will probably scoff at the notion of aligning BoC with the coming punk scene, but keep in mind Sandy Pearlman was a good friend of Lenny Kaye, the future guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. Kaye, a major American garage rock buff, was also one of the main visionaries behind the original Nuggets double album. Nuggets, which was originally released in 1972, would serve as many folks' introduction to garage rock as well as having a major influence on the punk rock scene that would emerge in a few years.

Pearlman himself would also be involved in the early punk scene: He was also a friend of Patti Smith and briefly considered the punk-poetess for BoC's then-vacant lead singer spot in the very early 1970s. None of the band were too hip on having a chick front the group, but they did ultimately set several of Smith's poems to music beginning with "Baby Ice Dog" on 1973's Tyranny and Mutations album. Smith co-write the hit single "Career of Evil" on the final Black and White album, Secret Treaties. All of this would of course go along way toward launching Smith's legendary solo career. Pearlman also managed and produced the influential proto-punk the Dictators and produced the Clash's second album, Give 'Em Enough Rope. If you're still not feeling BoC's lineage in garage rock and heavy psych and their vastly underrated influence on punk, and subgernes such as New Wave and goth, then dig former The Teardrop Explodes frontman Julian Cope's brilliant take on early BoC.

Patti Smith, regular BoC collaborator

So while BoC certainly had enough meaty riffs to satisfy early 1970s metalheads, they arguably rocked harder and rawer than virtually anything else from that era (at least on the Red side of Tyranny, anyway). Conversely, when BoC tackled mid to down tempo songs (which was pretty regularly), they managed to be as trippy and atmospheric as anything their prog counterparts were putting out at the time. What's more, there was a certain creepiness to be BoC's early sound that few, if any, bands were able to match then or now.

And this brings me to BoC's image and lyrical content. Anyone remotely familiar with the band is well aware of their widespread use of the occult in both. This was also largely due to producer/manger Sandy Pearlman, who by all accounts was quite interested in the occult. In 1966 Pearlman allegedly wrote a series of poems he dubbed The Secret Doctrines of Imaginos which were based upon his studies in anthropology and sociology, as well as his interests in science fiction and conspiracy theories. Wikipedia describes the story line thus:

"Although often referred to as a dream,^[1][49] the concept behind Imaginos is what Pearlman described as 'an interpretation of history – an explanation for the onset of World War I, or a revelation of the occult origins of it',^[37] which he crafted on elements of mythology, sociology, alchemy, science and occultism. This "combination of horror story and fairy tale"^[3] cites historical facts and characters, and is filled with literate references to ancient civilizations in a conspiracy theory of epic proportions, the subject of which is the manipulation of the course of human history. 

"Central to this story are Les Invisibles (The Invisible Ones), a group of seven beings worshipped by the natives of Mexico and Haiti prior to the arrival of Spanish colonists in the 16th century, identified by some fans as the Loa of the Voodoo religion.^[50] The nature of Les Invisibles is left unclear, though it is hinted that they may be extraterrestrials,^[37] or beings akin to the Great Old Ones in the works of H. P. Lovecraft.^[50] An interpretation of the lyrics of the song "Astronomy"^[51] by some fans suggests that the star Sirius is of particular astrological significance to Les Invisibles, with clues identifying it as their place of origin;^[14] it is during the so-called Dog Days of August, when Sirius is in conjunction with the Sun that their influence over mankind is at its apex.^[14] By subtly influencing the minds of men, the beings are said to be "playing with our history as if it's a game",^[37] affecting events in world history over the course of centuries. For the three centuries after European discovery of the New World, this game plays out as the desire for gold is used to transform Spain into the dominant power in Europe, only to be usurped by England in the 17th century and later, through technology,^[1] by other nations ('Les Invisibles')." 

Veteran conspiracy buffs will note that Pearlman's Secret Doctrines bear a remarkable resemblance to various occult and metaphysical classics released in the 1970s such as Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery, Kenneth Grant's The Magical Revival, and Robert Anton Wilson's The Cosmic Trigger Volume I (to say nothing of Wilson and co-writer Robert Shea's conspiracy satire The Illuminatus! Trilogy). All three works revolve around the concept of an extraterrestrial intelligence from or near the star Sirius that has been guiding humanity's development for thousands of years via various secret societies and occult orders. For more information on the so-called Sirius Tradition, check here and here.

Several major works of 1970s conspiracy culture Sandy Pearlman's vision predated

As noted above, Pearlman supposedly wrote these poems in the mid-1970s before any of the after mentioned works had been released. This would not be the first time that Pearlman's lyrics would prove to be eerily prophet of the zeitgeist of conspiracy culture, as we shall soon see. Over the years Pearlman would incorporate various aspects of the Secret Doctrine poems into BoC's albums, especially Secret Treaties (Eventually BoC would record a rock opera called Imanginos in 1988 entirely using these poems, but it was after Pearlman's influence was all but gone).

The name Blue Oyster Cult itself came from Secret Doctrines. In the Imaginos story line the Blue Oyster Cult were the servants of the 'Les Invisibles' (the extraterrestrials), a cult bent on helping their overlords achieve world domination throughout the ages. With such a pedigree, Blue Oyster Cult the band was given a rather apt logo (but not by Pearlman): a variation on Saturn's celestial symbol. The Roman god Saturn and his Greek counterpart Cronos have been linked to the Sirius Tradition that came to prominence in the 1970s.

"The Star of Horus is also the Star of Babalon --the seven-rayed star of the palnet Saturn (or Set) which rules Aquarius, the eleventh house of the Zodiac. Aquarius is the constellation through which the influence of Horus (the Sun) reaches man during thep resent Aeon. Saturn, therefore, is the power behind Venus, as Sirius is the power behind the Sun. These two great Stars (Set and Horus) are therefore symbolically identical, and in this way also is Venus transcended in Sirius, in a celestrial sense."
(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pgs. 51-52)

BoC's logo (top) and Saturn's celestial symbol (bottom)

Of course, the occult was hardly unknown to rock 'n' roll bands by the early 1970s, especially in heavy metal. But it was BoC's approach to the occult that set them apart from their peers. Black Sabbath's occult allusions were largely derived from comic books and Hammer horror films (at this point anyway) while Led Zeppelin (which did feature a very serious occultist in guitarist Jimmy Page) was far more likely to invoke Tolkien rather than Crowley. In Sandy Pearlman, BoC had an individual with both a serious interest in the occult, and a novel approach to incorporating it.

Blue Oyster Cult's self-titled debut took the occult out of the fantasy realms it had generally occupied in 1960s rock and placed it in a modern New York awash with amphetamines, motorcycle gangs and kinky sex. In point of fact, BoC's early image and lyrics would hint at several strands of modern conspiracy culture that would rise to prominence as the 1970s wore on. This of course begs the question of whether Pearlman's lyrics were purely coincidental, and if not, how informed he was by scenes happening around him in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Pearlman, along with the rest of BoC, famously hailed from Long Island. Long Island was actually the birthplace of the modern Wicca movement in America, at least officially. It occurred in 1969 when two followers of the legendary warlock Gerald Gardner would establish a coven there.

"...Raymond and Rowen Buckland, an English couple who emigrated to the suburbia of Long Island, New York, and brought the craft with them... To celebrate the move, the couple invited journalists from the Long Island Press and Newsday to witness a genuine Halloween Witches Sabbath. Dressed in black robes trimmed with gold, the couple led the reporters to their basement, fitted out with velvet drapes, candles and the inevitable pentagram. Then, stripping out of their robes, the Bucklands invoked the spirit of the autumnal equinox sky-clad."
(Turn Off Your Mind, Gary Lachman, pgs. 243-244)

Raymond Buckland, a major player in them odern Wicca movement and former Long Island resident

As the 1970s made the scene Long Island, specifically Brooklyn, would become one of the major hubs of New York City's budding occult scene. Much of this would initially be based around Herman Slater's Warlock Shoppe, a place that has gained some notoriety over the years. Rogue historian Peter Levenda (who has been accused of being the author of the notorious Simon Necronomicon; this accusation has also been made at Pearlman) actually knew Slater and the Warlock Shoppe from the early days:

"...I was friendly with Herman Slater, the proprietor of the store, and had known him since the days when he ran the Warlock Shoppe in Brooklyn Heights where I lived. As the fame and notoriety of his establishment grew --being covered extensively in the overseas press as well as by local newspapers and television shows --he began to attract an equally notorious clientele. The Process would hang out at the Warlock Shop, as well as the odd Satanist and witches of various denominations. The Shop is alluded to several times in Maury Terry's The Ultimate Evil as a hangout for people who knew more about the Son of Sam murders than they were telling."
(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pg. 253)

Herman Slater (right)

Veteran conspiracy buffs may be arching a few eyebrows right now. For those of you unaware, Levenda is referring to the Process Church of Final Judgement in the latter part of the above quote. The Process has been the subject of much controversy and speculation ever since Ed Sanders published his highly controversial 1972 Charles Manson expose' entitled The Family. More fuel was added to the fire when Maury Terry published The Ultimate Evil in the 1980s, a book revolving around the Son of Sam murders that also found links to the Process.

"Much ink has been spilled on the subject of the Process; Ed Sanders in the first edition of The Family links the Process with an amoebic network of death cults in California and from there Charles Manson; investigative journalist Maury Terry has linked them to Charles Manson as well as to the Son of Sam killings. The problem is that the linkages are there, but not enough to put a smoking gun in the hands of the Process itself."
(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pg. 298)

a Process altar

Ah, but that hasn't prevented many from trying. As the theory goes, the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, was actually a member of the New York branch of a splinter group of the Process. Serial killer Stanley Dean Baker, the notorious Arlis Perry murder and the murder of film producer Roy Radin (who was himself a resident of Long Island) have all been linked to this splinter group of the Process, sometimes referred to as the 'Four-P Movement.' Incidentally, the bulk of the shootings attributed to David Berkowitz happened in Long Island, especially Queens.

Another strange overlap between the Process and BoC is the fixation both had with motorcycle gangs. In the case of the Process, this fixation extended to individuals associated with them. The after mentioned film producer, Roy Radin, was said to regularly entertain outlaw motorcycle clubs at his Southampton, Long Island residency, dubbed the 'Ocean Castle.' The Process apparently saw them as storm troopers of a coming apocalypse.

"In California, through the 1960s, leaders of the Process Church of Final Judgement actively recruited from the ranks of Hell's Angels and Gypsy Jokers, calling the bikers 'agents of Satan.' One Processean, known to the faithful as 'Brother Ely,' actively rode with the Jokers for two years, before a rumble with Angels drove him out of San Francisco during 1969."
(Raising Hell, Michael Newton, pg. 261)

Charles Manson also recruited from the ranks of various LA-based motorcycle clubs. BoC was famously the house band for a biker bar named Conry's, located along the Hempstead Turnpike, a road that stretches all the way from Queens Village to the Suffolk County town of Babylon. Historically, the major motorcycle club along the East Coast was an outfit known as the Pagans (though they've apparently lost some territory to the Hell's Angels in the North East in recent years). The Pagans were long considered one of the 'Big 4' among motorcycle clubs, along with the Angels, the Bandidos and the Outlaws. The Pagans have apparently always had a heavy presence in Long Island. According to this website, the Pagans have generally kept their headquarters in Long Island, alternating between Suffolk and Nassau counties.

Pearlman would perfectly capture the world Sanders would present to the public a few months later and which Terry would take to new levels in the 1980s: a world teetering on the edge, being driven mad by strange drugs, Satanic cults and bikers of the apocalypse. The opening track off of BoC's self-titled debut, "Transmaniacon MC," with its allusions to the highly ritualistic Altamont Free Concert, the Hell's Angels, and it's proclamation of "Those who did resign their souls/Transmaniacon MC," captured this world as well as anything ever released, including the works of Sanders and Terry. Of course, Sanders was also a resident of New York and a member of the rock group the Fugs, so perhaps he and Pearlman had a meeting of the minds before BoC released their debut... though I've found nothing online indicating that Sanders or Pearlman knew each other.

And so that was the state of affairs BoC found themselves in 1972 at the onset of the Black and White albums. They hailed from Long Island, an area with any number of strange individuals and groups about --Gardnerian witch covens, outlaw motorcycles clubs, the Warlock Shoppe clique, even the Process. They had a manager with a unique vision --one that fused 1960s garage rock and heavy psych with commercial heavy metal sonically; and serious occult imagery with the decadent side of Long Island lyrically. It would all come together over the course of the Black and White albums, climaxing with 1974's Secret Treaties, long considered by fans to be BoC's definitive work. It was this album that contained the great "Dominance and Submission," of which we shall finally examine in the next installment.