Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Blue Öyster Cult at the Indigo, London, June 2017. Stone Free Festival 2017.

To have three major music concerts in London on the same day could have been either bad planning or the greatest thought since Woodstock, especially when the heat and potential to sweat ridiculously through the various band T-shirts and cloaked denim, the abundance of merchandise laying everybody’s arms down with expectation and joy all bundled up into one full experience; to have Guns and Roses and The Stone Roses play either side of the Westminster Capital and the legendary Blue Öyster Cult perform at the Indigo inside the O2 Arena, was perhaps, on reflection, a music marketing dream.

The last of the five bands on inside the Indigo and before the day was handed over to Sweet and Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow inside the main hall, was one that filled almost every available spare inch of space going, nowhere to be seen was there a sense of an opening in which the sweat could fall gracefully down to the floor and join those who had craned their necks and filled their emotions to the very brim during an afternoon of deep quality music.

In Blue Öyster Cult, there is a sense of Time, of legends colliding with forever and their banner that filled the screen, proclaimed that, proudly touring forever, a Faustian pact in which the Devil cannot win because of the remarkable and well earned status in which the group has attained. Touring forever possibly, what rarely happens is the band playing the first album in its entirety and the fans revelling in the sense of the historic, by performing this self titled and magnificent album inside the Indigo, Time was surely pleased, for special events call for the unique and individual to leave their mark on the world.

As the band performed tracks such as I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep, Stairway To The Stars, Before The Kiss, A Redcap and Workshop of the Telescopes there was no doubt just how special this set was, of course there would be a section of the huge crowd that would have been lost in the way the band picked this particular album to celebrate, just as there were those visibly moved by the fanfare and the reverie, but in the distinctive comes appreciation and for only the second time in their history, Blue Öyster Cult performed that seminal album with grace and absolute authority.

With the band finishing of their incredible set with a selection of songs that included Godzilla, Tattoo Vampire and Don’t Fear The Reaper, this was history shaking hands with a large group of people and saying broadly, you were there when. It was certainly fulfilling, history and the Blue Öyster Cult not putting a foot wrong as the Stone Free Festival 2017 inside the Indigo finished on the notes of giants.

Ian D. Hall