Hot Rails To Hell

No comments? This is possibly one of the greatest 70's Hard Rock songs ever. Love the riff in the beginning.

The Blue Öyster Cult mythos is deep, and rich with arcane intellect, dark wit, cryptic imagery and mysterious references. The song "Hot Rails to Hell" has been a staple in the band's live set since its release on 1973s 'Tyranny and Mutation'.

Bassist, songwriter and sometime vocalist (including on this particular track) for the original BÖC lineup Joe Bouchard had this to say about 'Rails' and a NY Subway ride -- one which took place with the artist/ phantasm who created the band's first 2 album covers, as well as their ICONIC 'hooked cross' symbol -- Bill Gawlik:

Joe Bouchard on Gawlik:

Joe recalls specifically the invention of the band's iconoclastic logo as a mystical experience, at least for its shadowy creator...

"He spent a lot of time on it, several weeks, and he had pasted it on the wall in our living room. And he would stare at it for hours and hours, and he was so concerned about getting the curve of the logo just right, and I remember him debating how that should go for a long time.

I wasn't really in on when he was doing the album, but I do remember him actually working on the album cover in our living room for like weeks on end. It seemed like he was really obsessed with getting the logo just right. And then he was a lot of fun.

One of the reasons I wrote Hot Rails To Hell was because he asked me if I wanted to go to a concert in New York. And we were so poor we couldn't afford to park the car in the city, so we would park the car on the street in Brooklyn and then we would take the subway into the concert; it was this jazz concert with Lena Horne and one of these really radical sax players.

And so we went to the concert, and it was very intense, but coming back on the subway, I got this whole vibe that... you know, Phil King had just been shot, who was our agent at the time. They get that wrong on the internet. 'Phil King was a member of the band.' No, he was actually just a guy who was sort of our agent in the early days.

So I'm riding back on the subway with Bill Gawlik and it was just one of the more bizarre nights of my life, and I was thinking about Phil King who was living with us in the same house with Gawlik, and we were rehearsing in the living room, and Bill Gawlik is doing the logo on the living room wall, and it just came together."

Where did Gawlik end up?

"He was a taxi driver in New York, and you know, I haven't heard from him since. I do not know. He certainly was a character though. And so I lived in the house with him and Phil King was there, and I think Eric Bloom was there. The other guys, I think they were living in other places. Actually I think Allen Lanier was there too.

We had a big house in Long Island. It was a rehearsal place, and it was our place when we were not touring. I mean, touring back in those days, it was like any kind of club, anything we could get. Yeah, that's my knowledge of Bill Gawlik, but I haven't seen him since."

Gawlik is yet another mysterious piece of the long, enigmatic BÖC puzzle, and also happened to be a first-hand passenger on the Hot Rails To Hell.

Sounds to me like it's about a subway ride through New York City circa 1970...

Awesome rock!! Love u BÖC