No two concerts are ever really the same.
For each show, Blue Öyster Cult lead singer and stun guitarist Eric Bloom creates a new set list.
“I write the set list about a half hour before we go on,” Bloom said. “And I also change the set as we go if I feel that things aren’t going the way I think it should. For instance, if when I wrote it and the vibe of the audience seems a little different as the show is moving along, I’ll give a hand signal or a whisper in somebody’s ear and I’ll play a more upbeat song or a jam song if I feel the audience would like to hear that kind of thing – just the vibe I get from the crowd.”
Hard rock and heavy metal legends, Blue Öyster Cult will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles. Also appearing is Canadian power ballad band April Wine.
“We love playing an old theater like that. There are a few places like that across the country that we just like playing,” Bloom said. “You get a good crowd of people who like to hear what we do. And the Midwest is a good place for our kind of music, for some reason.”
Along with Illinois, Bloom said Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have been good “for us and bands like us.
“The Chicago area has always been a good hotbed for us, going back to our earliest days,” he said.
Known for hits including “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” “Godzilla” and “Burnin’ For You,” BÖC will be “playing stuff that fans would like to hear” at the Arcada, Bloom said.
Some performances, such as shows at state fairs, will have a mix of long-time fans along with those who are not as familiar with the band’s music in the audience. But when BÖC plays at a theater, those buying tickets are fans that know the band’s catalog of work, he said.
“This kind of show, people are coming to see just us, so I can dip into the material a little bit more and dig a little bit deeper and play some deeper tracks,” he said. “That’s a good thing for me because we can play some songs we don’t normally play. And I think the fans appreciate that too.”
While he writes a new set list each show, Bloom said there is a “sort of framework” to the task.
“Obviously people want to hear the hits, so we play them. But I do try to keep it fresh and change it up a little bit on a regular basis,” Bloom said. “Once in a while we’ll dig deep. There are the very very hard core fans that would like to hear certain songs, and I’ll pay attention to that.”
As far as new songs go, band members are “always writing,” he said. But that doesn’t mean a new album is in the near future.
“No telling when or if anything new will come out,” he said. “There is no label interest. These days the music business is in disarray for bands like us. There’s no label interest for bands of our ilk. The only thing that could possibly happen would be a self-done Internet kind of thing.
“If you look at the trades these days, there’s no bands like us on the charts. And it would be very unusual for classic rock acts like us to get any traction,” Bloom said. “So if you want to take three, four months to just go off the road to make a record, it’s very difficult to think that you might get some commercial success with it.”
For more than 40 years the band has been on the road, performing for fans. Bloom said it is difficult to attribute BÖC’s longevity to anything in particular.
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“We had a long road getting off the ground. The first record we opened for Alice Cooper in 1972 and then we started doing better and better and a little bit better each year. By the fifth album we had a hit,” he said. “That’s motivation to keep going.”
By the mid-80s, things began to slow down.
“We had 12 years of constantly doing better and better,” he said.
Then there were some quieter years as some members left the band, and others returned. While the things quieted down in the ’90s for a time, “from the mid-90s going forward, we’ve been doing pretty well again,” he said.
“So, I can’t really complain. Buck (Dharma, lead guitarist and vocals) and I just get along fine. Never had a fistfight. Get along pretty well, and we’re just glad to be out there playing.”
The only downside to what the band does, he said, is the travel.
“If we could advance 500 years into the future, when they have matter transmission like in Star Trek, it would be a wonderful thing,” said Bloom, an avid science fiction fan. “Go to concert venue, play a show then go home to sleep in your own bed and not have to go through TSA, check bags, fly all day and change planes and get picked up and go to a hotel, etc. That’s the downside of the day. The playing of the show is really the best part.”
Even though it has been 15 years since the infamous Saturday Night Live “Behind the Music: More Cowbell” skit, the band still encounters people who proclaim, “I gotta have more cowbell.”
“I’m sure we get not as much as Christopher Walken gets it or Will Ferrell gets it. But we get it plenty. It doesn’t really bother us,” Bloom said.
The skit is a fictitious look at the recording of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” in which Walken’s record producer character urges the band to include more cowbell in the song.
“Will Ferrell wrote that sketch himself. It’s really a phrase of genius,” Bloom said.
Once while boarding a plane, a flight attendant who realized the group was Blue Öyster Cult said, “Oh, you’re that cowbell band,” he said.
“It’s been very good for us. No complaints,” Bloom said. “I was reading ‘Auto Week’ one day and it was saying ‘this car accelerates this way, but the interior wasn’t up to par and it needed more cowbell.’ So actually the phrase has crossed over into regular society.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance reporter for the Beacon News.
When: April 24
Where: The Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $39-$79
Information: 630-962-7000; http://www.oshows.com
Blue Öyster Cult and April Wine