Original Blue Oyster Cult keyboard/rhythm guitar player Allen Lanier passed away yesterday. Such a great underrated band



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2013-08-15 12:59 by keefriffhard4life.

Yeah, I just heard about this. Huge loss, and he was a great musician. One example that springs to mind is his piano playing on Jim Carroll's Catholic Boy album, especially on I Want the Angel:

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keefriffhard4life
Original Blue Oyster Cult bass player Allen Lanier passed away yesterday. Such a great underrated band

Hi keef - Allen played keyboards and rhythm guitar not bass in Blue Oyster Cult. Very sad news. I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s. Saw them quite a few times around this time whenever they came to London. A really great band. RIP Allen.

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Silver Dagger

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keefriffhard4life
Original Blue Oyster Cult bass player Allen Lanier passed away yesterday. Such a great underrated band

Hi keef - Allen played keyboards and rhythm guitar not bass in Blue Oyster Cult. Very sad news. I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s. Saw them quite a few times around this time whenever they came to London. A really great band. RIP Allen.

sorry i'm a big fan of B.O.C. too. the press release i read had him mentioned as the bass player but i checked and he doesn't play bass. funny thing the only article i can find that says he played bass is the first one i saw

Maybe out of respect to him you could change the thread title.

Saw them several times in the 70's when I was in high school. They always put on a good show & there were several good albums. A show a few years ago was still enjoyable but Allen was definitely missed. RIP

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Silver Dagger
Maybe out of respect to him you could change the thread title.

done. like i said no clue how that slipped past me or the editor of that article for that matter. i just listened to SECRET TREATIES last week too

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keefriffhard4life

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Silver Dagger
Maybe out of respect to him you could change the thread title.

done. like i said no clue how that slipped past me or the editor of that article for that matter. i just listened to SECRET TREATIES last week too

Secret Treaties is such a great album. Dominance And Submission, ME 252, Astronomy - all absolute stone classics.

r.i.p. it was the end of july and there was a show on VH1 that had buck dharma on from BOC and i was thinking of all of the albums and shows back in the seventies.good band .

I saw him with Blue Öyster Cult in a good concert in 1993.

RIP Allen Lanier

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

And she wrote lyrics for Vera Gemini on Agents Of Fortune.

We were talking about BOC here just recently. I'm a huge fan -- agree with Silver Dagger about "Secret Treaties" but even their later albums always had some stellar tracks. Lanier was sort of their connection to the mid/late 70s NYC scene via Patti Smith and all that. Accordingly he developed a nice heroin habit -- I know his health caused him to leave the touring band a few years back but don't know the details nor does it matter. He contributed to some great music with his keyboards and second guitar. In the Soft White Underbelly he wrote a lot but dried up in the BOC days. Nonetheless he came up with these two tracks -- sort of off the BOC grid but I love them.




True Confessions




In Thee



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-08-15 17:57 by Wry Cooter.

Lanier was pretty devoted to Patti. He stayed with her and nursed her back to health after she took that fall off the stage in '77 and messed herself up. She wore a neck brace for a couple of months.

Her rising back from that near-death incident is why she called her next album "Easter."

I never heard "In Thee" before, but I read that it was his farewell to Patti, who left him for and eventually married Fred Smith of the MC5.


Sounds like a Gary Lewis song to me.

Secret Treaties is an all-timer. BOC a much underrated band with an incredible musical dynamic and lyrics I think only the band understood. I vaguely remember a note on the Secret Treaties album that noted you could send away to the band for the album's lyrics. This, of course, was pre-Internet.

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MrHappy
Secret Treaties is an all-timer. BOC a much underrated band with an incredible musical dynamic and lyrics I think only the band understood. I vaguely remember a note on the Secret Treaties album that noted you could send away to the band for the album's lyrics. This, of course, was pre-Internet.

Right. I did that, and received an envelope jammed with (then) blue computer paper, with holes along the edges that had lyrics from their albums printed out. Pretty stark.

BOC also had their own logo, which was kind of mysterious, sort of an upside down question mark with sides. A story about them in CREEM talked about them being badgered by a Jewish activist who claimed that it was some sort of coded proxy for a swastika.

Look at the artwork on Secret Treaties...they seemed to be going for some sort of unexplainable mystique.

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Silver Dagger

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

And she wrote lyrics for Vera Gemini on Agents Of Fortune.

She also wrote the lyrics for the great ballad Debbie Denise on Agents. I didn't even realize it until I read the credits last night to see if Allen had co-written the song. He didn't, but did contributed a beautiful keyboard part.

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Silver Dagger

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

And she wrote lyrics for Vera Gemini on Agents Of Fortune.

Vera Gemini - haven't thought about that one for awhile, but it's a great song, with Patti adding vocals, too. Will have to dig out the old lp tonight and give it a spin in memory of Allen

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andrewm

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Silver Dagger

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

And she wrote lyrics for Vera Gemini on Agents Of Fortune.

She also wrote the lyrics for the great ballad Debbie Denise on Agents. I didn't even realize it until I read the credits last night to see if Allen had co-written the song. He didn't, but did contributed a beautiful keyboard part.

And the fifth Beatle - Murray The K - co-wrote This Ain't The Summer Of Love on that album.

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Silver Dagger


And the fifth Beatle - Murray The K - co-wrote This Ain't The Summer Of Love on that album.

Great song. It was originally done by noted rock writer Don Waller--who in '76 was writing for LA fanzine Back Door Man-- with his group the Imperial Dogs. I didn't know Murray had a hand in it.

-RIP
Allen
Lanier

Thank you for the great music you gave us, you will live forever through it.

Saw BOC in the early 80's in Orlando at "The Rock Super Bowl" with UFO, Firefall, Cheap Trick, and Heart.

Dave from Molly Hatchet joined BOC onstage for a rocking version of "Roadhouse Blues" and they had that great robotic Godzilla that breathed fire behind the stage. One of the BOC guys rode a Harley onto the stage. Lots of fun ......

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger


And the fifth Beatle - Murray The K - co-wrote This Ain't The Summer Of Love on that album.

Great song. It was originally done by noted rock writer Don Waller--who in '76 was writing for LA fanzine Back Door Man-- with his group the Imperial Dogs. I didn't know Murray had a hand in it.

Yeah, the Imperial Dogs version is pretty great and quite different from the later BOC version. I didn't realize either that Murray Krugman was Murray the K. That seems strange. Anyway, the BOC version basically changes the verses, musically and lyrically, and retains the chorus.

I could be mistaken, but I believe the co-write for the marvelous "This Ain't the Summer of Love" goes to BOC co-producer Murray Krugman (along with vision-man Sandy Pearlman), not Murray the K, whose last name was Kaufmann. They did have some pretty cool lyricists -- Pearlman, Patti Smith, Helen Wheels, Michael Moorcock, and the great R. Meltzer.

Glad to see Allen and the amazing Blue Oyster Cult getting some love today.

You're right, Wry, that the credit is Murray Krugman. I didn't bother to check Silver Dagger's Murray the K claim but it definitely seemed odd. Yeah, they used some great lyricists. It's funny that Meltzer the iconoclast wrote something like Burning for You. I love that song but it's pretty conventional, lyrically, by his standards. Mind you, "time to play b-sides" is a great line.

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Wry Cooter
We were talking about BOC here just recently. I'm a huge fan -- agree with Silver Dagger about "Secret Treaties" but even their later albums always had some stellar tracks. Lanier was sort of their connection to the mid/late 70s NYC scene via Patti Smith and all that. Accordingly he developed a nice heroin habit -- I know his health caused him to leave the touring band a few years back but don't know the details nor does it matter. He contributed to some great music with his keyboards and second guitar. In the Soft White Underbelly he wrote a lot but dried up in the BOC days. Nonetheless he came up with these two tracks -- sort of off the BOC grid but I love them.




True Confessions




In Thee

Love True Confessions. Agents of Fortune is a terrific album all the way around. But all anyone remembers is DFTR.

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UGot2Rollme

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Silver Dagger

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loog droog

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Silver Dagger
[I'm sure Patti Smith will be very upset as they were an item in the mid 70s.

They were indeed. In addition, Lanier co-wrote and played on "Elegie," the last song on Horses, while Smith wrote lyrics for some BOC songs like "Career of Evil" from Secret Treaties.

And she wrote lyrics for Vera Gemini on Agents Of Fortune.

Vera Gemini - haven't thought about that one for awhile, but it's a great song, with Patti adding vocals, too. Will have to dig out the old lp tonight and give it a spin in memory of Allen

Allen wrote the music and Patti wrote the lyrics for Kimberly too:







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-08-16 17:24 by seitan.

Kimberly is my favorite Patti Smith song -- forgot about that.