Label Columbia Records | ||
Released April, 1974
September, 1978
July, 1988
June, 1994
September, 2002 Length 6:28 (1974 studio version)
8:18 (1978 live version)
6:47 (1988 studio version)
8:45 (1994 studio version)
10:19 (2002 live version) Writer(s) Albert Bouchard, Joe Bouchard, Sandy Pearlman Producer(s) Murray Krugman & Sandy Pearlman | ||
"Astronomy" is a rock song by Blue Öyster Cult that has appeared on several of the band's albums. It was first published on their 1974 album Secret Treaties. Their second live album, Some Enchanted Evening, included a version with an extended guitar solo and a third version was included on the Imaginos album. It was also re-recorded for the band's Cult Classic collection in connection with the TV miniseries of Stephen King's The Stand. Most recently the song was included on the A Long Day's Night album.
Contents
Lyrics
The song is prefaced by a short piece of classical music arranged to sound as if it was being played on a music box. Members of the band recall that the sound engineer found the piece on a special effects disk and inserted it because he liked it. The band liked it too, and so it stayed. As of this writing, the piece is still not identified.
The song's lyrics are selected verses from a poem by Sandy Pearlman, the band's producer and mastermind behind their image, called "The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos". In the poem, which was later partially released under the BÖC moniker in the album Imaginos, aliens known as Les Invisibles guide an altered human named Imaginos, also called Desdinova, through history, playing key roles that eventually lead to the outbreak of World War I.
In "Astronomy", the character of Imaginos comes to realize his heritage and his role as the altered human. References are made to celestial objects throughout the song: "The light that never warms" being the moon, "The Queenly flux" the constellation Cassiopeia, "My dog, fixed and consequent" being Sirius, the dog star. The "Four Winds Bar" may be a reference to the Tropic of Cancer. All in all, it has Imaginos explaining his position as part of Les Invisibles.
Music video
A music video of the 1988 version was released by Sandy Pearlman in Britain. The video had no footage of the band playing, and instead focused on the story told by the song. Longtime BÖC fan and author Stephen King recorded a spoken narration for the video, which is as follows:
"Imaginos (performed by Blue Oyster Cult) - A bedtime story for the children of the damned. From a dream world, paralleling our earth in time and space, the invisible ones have sent an agent who will dream the dream of history. With limitless power he becomes the greatest actor of the 19th century. Taking on many ingenious disguises, he places himself at pivotal junctures in history, continually altering its course and testing our ability to respond to the challenge of evil. His name is 'Imaginos'".