Sandy Pearlman
Critic, Manager, Producer | 2016In 1943, Samuel Clarke Pearlman was born in Rockaway, Queens. He graduated in 1966 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he promoted concerts, and went on to graduate school. Pearlman was one of the first serious rock critics, writing and editing for the pioneering rock-culture magazine Crawdaddy. (He claimed to have been the first writer to use the phrase “heavy metal” to describe music.) However, he was best known as the producer, manager, and lyricist for Blue Öyster Cult. He produced and co-produced albums for the band from 1972 to 1988. With his longtime business partner, Murray Krugman, he produced one of the earliest albums considered to be punk rock, The Dictators’ Go Girl Crazy!, which was released in 1975; he also produced the second album by the Clash, Give ’Em Enough Rope, in 1978. Additionally, Pearlman was Black Sabbath’s manager from 1979 to 1983, and he managed other bands, among them the Dictators and Romeo Void. In 1981, he began collaborating with Blue Öyster Cult’s drummer, Albert Bouchard, on what was originally supposed to be a concept album that, after years of work, would become the Blue Öyster Cult album Imaginos in 1988. In 1986, Pearlman founded Alpha & Omega Recording, and he was a founding vice president of Goodnoise Corporation, an early company selling MP3 files online, which later changed its name to eMusic. Later in his life, he became a consultant and professor. He died in July 2016 at age 72.