page_title: Imaginos
section_title: Concept and storyline
hierarchical_section_title: Imaginos / Concept and storyline
caption_attribution_description: This picture is an artist's impression showing how the binary star system of Sirius A and its diminutive blue companion, Sirius B, might appear to an interstellar visitor. The large, bluish-white star Sirius A dominates the scene, while Sirius B is the small but very hot and blue white-dwarf star on the right. The two stars revolve around each other every 50 years. White dwarfs are the leftover remnants of stars similar to our Sun. The Sirius system, only 8.6 light-years from Earth, is the fifth closest stellar system known. Sirius B is faint because of its tiny size. Its diameter is only 7,500 miles (about 12 thousand kilometres), slightly smaller than the size of our Earth. The Sirius system is so close to Earth that most of the familiar constellations would have nearly the same appearance as in our own sky. In this rendition, we see in the background the three bright stars that make up the Summer Triangle: Altair, Deneb, and Vega. Altair is the white dot above Sirius A; Deneb is the dot to the upper right; and Vega lies below Sirius B. But there is one unfamiliar addition to the constellations: our own Sun is the second-magnitude star, shown as a small dot just below and to the right of Sirius A.
context_page_description: Imaginos is the eleventh studio album by the American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult. It was released in 1988, and was their last recording with their original record label, CBS/Columbia Records. The album took nearly eight years to complete and was originally intended to be the first in a trilogy of solo albums by Blue Öyster Cult drummer and songwriter Albert Bouchard. Bouchard was fired in August 1981, and CBS rejected the album in 1984, but a re-worked version was eventually published as a product of the band. Many musicians contributed to the project over this eight-year span, including Joe Satriani, Aldo Nova, and Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, but some band members were barely involved in the recording process. Thus, Imaginos is often considered more as a project of producer and lyricist Sandy Pearlman than as a true album of the band.
  Imaginos weaves scripts and poems by Pearlman, dating from the second half of the 1960s, into a concept album and rock opera about an alien conspiracy that is brought to fruition during the late 19th and early 20th century through the actions of Imaginos, an agent of evil.
context_section_description: Imaginos was envisioned as a rock opera to be published as a trilogy of double albums, with a storyline encompassing about two hundred years of history, from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. This album represents an abbreviated version of the first volume of that planned trilogy, but with the songs arranged out of order, rendering the story harder to comprehend. Even when the song lyrics are analyzed in the chronological order that was devised by the authors and is followed in this section, the narrative progression is scarce and the content often difficult to decipher for the casual reader. However, thanks to various comments in interviews by Pearlman and Bouchard, and the extensive sleeve notes by Pearlman that were issued with the original release, it is possible to reconstruct the story to a great extent.
  Although often referred to as a dream, the concept behind Imaginos is what Pearlman described as "an interpretation of history – an explanation for the onset of World War I, or a revelation of the occult origins of it", which he crafted on elements of mythology, sociology, alchemy, science and occultism. This "combination of horror story and fairy tale" cites historical facts and characters, and is filled with literate references to ancient civilizations in a conspiracy theory of epic proportions, the subject of which is the manipulation of the course of human history.
  Central to this story are Les Invisibles (The Invisible Ones), a group of seven beings worshipped by the natives of Mexico and Haiti prior to the arrival of Spanish colonists in the 16th century, identified by some fans as the Loa of the Voodoo religion. The nature of Les Invisibles is left unclear, though it is hinted that they may be extraterrestrials, or beings akin to the Great Old Ones in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. An interpretation of the lyrics of the song "Astronomy" by some fans suggests that the star Sirius is of particular astrological significance to Les Invisibles, with clues identifying it as their place of origin; it is during the so-called Dog Days of August, when Sirius is in conjunction with the Sun that their influence over mankind is at its apex. By subtly influencing the minds of men, the beings are said to be "playing with our history as if it's a game", affecting events in world history over the course of centuries. For the three centuries after European discovery of the New World, this game plays out as the desire for gold is used to transform Spain into the dominant power in Europe, only to be usurped by England in the 17th century and later, through technology, by other nations ("Les Invisibles").
  The principal story begins in August 1804, with the birth of a "modified child" called Imaginos, in the American state of New Hampshire. Because of the astrological significance of the place and time of his birth, Imaginos is of particular interest to Les Invisibles, who begin investing him with superhuman abilities while he is young. Unaware of his true destiny or nature, the young Imaginos finds out that he is apparently able to change his appearance at will and to see the future ("Imaginos"). As the child becomes an adult he finds himself affected by wanderlust and, billing himself as an adventurer, sets out to explore Texas and the western frontier, arriving in New Orleans in 1829. It is there that he has a vision imploring him to travel to Mexico in search of an artifact "lost, last and luminous, scored to sky yet never found". Imaginos joins the crew of a ship traveling to the Yucatán Peninsula, but while passing through the Gulf of Mexico, the ship encounters a freak storm of which his visions failed to warn him ("Del Rio's Song"). The ship sinks with most of its crew, and Imaginos, half dead, washes ashore and is left for dead by the other survivors. As he lies dying "on a shore where oyster beds seem plush as down", Imaginos is addressed by a symphony of voices who identify themselves as Les Invisibles. Imaginos' true nature is revealed to him, and he is informed that the circumstances of his ent
caption: The star Sirius A and its companion Sirius B, the possible home of 'Les Invisibles'[14]
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