Editing Blue Öyster Cult (section)

===Commercial success (1975–1981)===
The band's first live album ''[[On Your Feet or on Your Knees]]'' (1975) achieved greater success and went gold. Its success gave the band more time to work on a follow-up. The band members were able to purchase home recording equipment to record demos for their next album.

Their next studio album, ''[[Agents of Fortune]]'' (1976), was their first to go platinum and was again produced by David Lucas. It contained the hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", which reached number 12 on the Billboard charts and has become a classic of the hard rock genre. Other major songs on the album were "(This Ain't) The Summer of Love", "E.T.I. (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)" and "The Revenge of Vera Gemini". Having recorded demos of the songs at home before recording the album, the band's songwriting process had become more individual, with none of the songs featuring the collaborative writing between the band members that had been common on their earlier albums.  Although the album still featured their trademark hard rock with sinister lyrics, the songs had become more conventional in structure, and the production was more polished.  For the first and only time, the album featured lead vocals from all five band members, with Allen Lanier singing lead on the song "True Confessions." With Albert Bouchard singing lead on three songs and Joe Bouchard and Donald Roeser singing lead on one each, Eric Bloom ended up taking the lead on only four of the album's ten songs.

For the tour, the band added lasers to their light show, for which they became known. They were among the first acts to use lasers in performance.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.blueoystercult.com/History/history6.html|publisher=Blue Oyster Cult.com|title=The History of BÖC|access-date=September 14, 2008}}</ref>

Their next album, ''[[Spectres (album)|Spectres]]'' (1977), had the FM radio hit "Godzilla," and would become one of the band's better-selling albums, with other well-known songs like "I Love the Night" and "Goin' Through the Motions". However, its sales were not as strong as those for the previous album, going gold but not platinum, becoming their first album to sell less than its predecessor. It featured even more polished production, and continued the trend of the lead vocals extensively shared between members, although Allen Lanier did not sing lead. As with the previous album, Eric Bloom sang lead on fewer than half the songs.

The band then released another live album, ''[[Some Enchanted Evening (Blue Öyster Cult album)|Some Enchanted Evening]]'' (1978). Although it was intended as another double-live album in the vein of ''On Your Feet or on Your Knees'', Columbia insisted that it be edited down to single-album length. It was a resounding commercial success, becoming Blue Öyster Cult's most popular album and eventually selling over two million copies. It also revealed that while the band's studio work was becoming increasingly well-produced, they were still very much a hard rock band on stage.
[[File:Blue Oyster Cult 1977 publicity photo.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|1977 publicity photo with the 1971–81 lineup, L–R: [[Buck Dharma|Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser]] (bottom); [[Eric Bloom]]; [[Albert Bouchard]]; [[Allen Lanier]]; Joe Bouchard]]
It was followed by the studio album ''[[Mirrors (Blue Öyster Cult album)|Mirrors]]'' (1979). For ''Mirrors'', instead of working with previous producers Sandy Pearlman (who instead went on to manage Black Sabbath) and Murray Krugman, Blue Öyster Cult chose [[Tom Werman]], who had worked with acts such as [[Cheap Trick]] and [[Ted Nugent]]. It featured the band's glossiest production to date. It also gave Roeser, the lead vocalist on the band's biggest hits, bigger prominence as a vocalist, singing lead on four of the nine songs.  However, the resulting album sales were disappointing.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

Pearlman's association with Black Sabbath led to Sabbath's ''[[Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath album)|Heaven and Hell]]'' producer [[Martin Birch]] being hired for the next Blue Öyster Cult record. The album found the band returning to their hard rock roots, and although both of the Bouchard brothers and guitarist Roeser all got lead vocal turns, Bloom would sing the majority of the tracks. The result was positive, with ''[[Cultösaurus Erectus]]'' (1980) receiving good reviews. The album went to number 12 in the United Kingdom, but did not do as well in the United States. The song "[[Black Blade (song)|Black Blade]]", which was written by Bloom with lyrics by science fiction and fantasy author [[Michael Moorcock]], is a kind of retelling of Moorcock's epic [[Elric of Melniboné]] saga. The band also did a co-headlining tour with Black Sabbath in support of the album, calling the tour "[[Black and Blue (video)|Black and Blue]]".

Birch produced the band's next album as well, ''[[Fire of Unknown Origin]]'' (1981), which peaked at number 24 on the [[Billboard 200|''Billboard'' 200]], becoming the band's highest-charting album. The biggest hit on this album was the Top 40 hit "Burnin' for You," a song Roeser had written with a Richard Meltzer lyric. He had intended to use it on his solo album, ''[[Flat Out (Buck Dharma album)|Flat Out]]'' (1982), but he was convinced to use it on the Blue Öyster Cult album instead. The revival of the band's heavier sound continued, albeit with fairly heavy use of synthesizers and some noticeable [[New wave music|New Wave]] influence on a few tracks. It contained other fan favorites such as "[[Joan Crawford]]" (inspired by the book and film ''[[Mommie Dearest]]'') and "[[Veteran of the Psychic Wars]]", another song co-written by Moorcock. Several of the songs had been written for the animated film ''[[Heavy Metal (film)|Heavy Metal]]'', but only "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (which had not been written for ''Heavy Metal'') was actually used in the movie. The album marked a strong commercial resurgence for the band and achieved gold status, their first studio album since ''Spectres'' to do so.

During the tour for ''Fire of Unknown Origin'', Albert Bouchard had a falling out with the others and left the band, and Rick Downey (formerly the band's lighting designer) replaced him on drums. This marked the end of the band's original and best-known lineup.