Interview with John Shirley on his new novel, media, and Blue Oyster Cult!
By: Eric Compton | Published: Thursday, November 13, 2025
Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Shirley, widely known to music fans for his work crafting lyrics for the legendary band Blue Oyster Cult, is back in the spotlight promoting his newest novel. Shirley, a pioneer of cyberpunk fiction and writer for television (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Spawn) and major intellectual properties (Batman, Constantine, Halo), has released 'The Silver Revolver' through independent publisher Rough Edges Press, an imprint of Wolfpack Publishing.
Released in paperback and digital editions on October 14th, the book is a hard-boiled, modern Western featuring a quick-on-the-trigger ex-con taking on the violent drug cartel that murdered his son.
Shirley recently joined Eric Compton, host and creator of the influential blog and podcast Paperback Warrior, to discuss both the new novel and his place in rock history as a lyricist for one of the most enduring rock bands of all-time--Blue Oyster Cult.
Check out the ninety minute interview with John Shirley on Paperback Warrior! Link: [YouTube]
Shirley, an lifelong fan of the quirky New York act, first discovered their enchanting sound in the early 1970s at a concert in Central Park.
"It was an outdoor show, part of a free rock show put on by the city. And I don't even remember who else played, but I was really struck by them. I was struck by the intelligence of the music. It's the intelligent man's hard rock band. And also, the guitar player, Buck Dharma (real name Donald Roeser), was striking from the get-go. So I was caught up, and I immediately got their albums when they became available. And you could get the lyrics with the early use of computer printouts, and they would send them to you in a big envelope of computer printouts. They were in like a roll. I would unroll that and listen to the albums and read the lyrics and say Oh, God, is that what he's saying? That is bizarre. And it was really imaginative, bizarre stuff. And sometimes very touching, you know, Last Days of May and so on", recalled Shirley.
In a rare occurrence, Shirley's fandom intimately connected him to the band in a surprising way. Shirley's first novel, Transmaniacon (1979) was an homage to the band's opening track, Transmaniacon MC, from their eponymous debut album. That book, and Shirley's influential cyber punk novel City Come A-Walkin' (1980), caught the attention of singer-songwriter-poet Patti Smith, who co-wrote lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult tracks like Career of Evil, Baby Ice Dog, and The Revenge of Vera Gemini. Shirley explains City Come A-Walkin' as a type of early gateway into the inner-sanctum of Blue Oyster Cult.
"This book caught Patti Smith's attention, and her guitar player read it. So I was kind of like an off screen name that they knew. And then I had a mutual friend connected to the Mondo 2000 scene, which was sort of...well, if you don't know what that is hard to describe, but it was very cyberpunk. Early use of...like...using computer technology to think about trans-humanism, and using it to meditate with and so on. And we were also all about sexual freedom, and all kinds of borderline edgy things going on the forefront of wild stuff in those days in technology. And they were also friends with the Blue Oyster Cult, because several of their members of the Mondo 2000 - there was a magazine called that - were friends with them. And so they heard that they were looking for a lyricist. And one of the Mondo 2000 people said...well...how about John Shirley? And they said...oh...he's that guy that wrote the novel."
By the late 1980s, Blue Oyster Cult had entered a sales lull plagued by the commercial pop of Club Ninja (1985), and the excessively produced, overstaffed album Imaginos (1988). The band countered by submerging themselves into a recording hiatus for ten years, with the only interruption being two original tracks on the Bad Channels soundtrack (1992), and a re-recording of existing material in 1994, Cult Classic. In 1996, the band signed with an independent U.S. company called CMC International (now defunct) and needed a writing spark for their new album, Heaven Forbid.
Shirley explains, "I sent a big pile of lyrics, having already been writing lyrics for my own stuff, but I wrote new stuff for them (BOC), sent it to them. I didn't hear from them for two years. And then suddenly...and I thought they'd passed on everything...and then suddenly this Heaven Forbid album was about to come out. They wrote to me and said, so what do you want to do about this? Got to join ASCAP or BMI because we're using a whole bunch of your lyrics in this album. And I was like...God, you could have told me about two years ago, dude. But they just sprang it on me. And I was very happy. It's a thrill to hear...you know...the guy who sang Don't Fear the Reaper and Burnin' For You...these hit songs...to hear him sing words that I wrote. I was really moved by that. And I was like their slave forever after that."
Shirley, Roeser, and Eric Bloom co-wrote four of Heaven Forbid's eleven tracks, and Shirley and Roeser teamed for another four songs, including the emotional melodic track Live for Me, a song that Shirley described as very melancholy.
"I think I swiped the line, Live for Me, from a movie. I don't recall which one, but somebody was dying and they said to somebody else, live for me. And I was really struck by that. I thought, that's a great sentiment from a dying person. That inspired me to write these lyrics. And it's about this guy who loses his brother to a drunk (driver), who hits his brother's car and his brother lives for a little while afterward. And then as he was dying, he said that to his surviving brother. And it's from the surviving brother's viewpoint. And you get a sense that the ghost of the brother who's passed is in the background, you know, enjoying the fact that his brother is living life for him in a sense and kind of cheering him on. But it's also very melancholy", explains Shirley.
Shirley, who would return to co-write eight tracks on the band's 'Curse of the Hidden Mirror' (2001) and five tracks on 'The Symbol Remains' (2020), illustrates the band's influential legacy and live presence on two of heavy metal's premier bands.
"If you listen to 'On Your Feet or on Your Knees' (1975), you know that album captures their live presence during that great period, when they were really rising and people were going crazy for them as a hard rock band. And that album, in my opinion, also basically created Megadeth and Metallica. The kind of convergence of guitar sound that they did. And that album was copied by bands after that, a lot of bands, but especially Megadeth and Metallica. And Metallica, you know, those guys are fans of BOC. They did a cover of the song Astronomy."
Check out the ninety minute interview with John Shirley on Paperback Warrior
John Shirley's newest novel, The Silver Revolver, is out now on Rough Edges Press.
Blue Oyster Cult's seminal live recording, 50th Anniversary--Third Night (Live), is out now on Frontiers Records. You can catch the band's domestic string of 2025 dates now, and see the band live February 23-27, 2026 on the Rock Legends Cruise.
John Shirley – https://john-shirley.com Blue Oyster Cult – blueoystercult.com Rock Legends Cruise - https://rocklegendscruise.com/rlc13/ Paperback Warrior – paperbackwarrior.com Wolfpack Publishing – wolfpackpublishing.com
About John Shirley: John Shirley has published over 84 books, including the Eclipse Trilogy, City Come A-Walkin', and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Black Butterflies. Shirley has written 23 song lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult. His work spans novels, short fiction, television, film, music, and comics.
