He was the Schulich Distinguished Professor Chair at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, and from August 2014 held a Marshall McLuhan Centenary Fellowship at the Coach House Institute (CHI) of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information as part of the CHI's McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.
As a university student, Pearlman wrote a series of poems called Imaginos, whose characters and lyrics would feature in his later career.
In 1967, Pearlman hand-picked musicians for a rock band to perform the lyrics that he was writing, based on his Imaginos poems.
He dubbed the band "Soft White Underbelly" (from a World War II speech by Winston Churchill) and later changed their name to "Blue Öyster Cult".
Pearlman was considered an important figure in the development of both alternative and commercial American rock music, and for his intervention in British punk.
[7][8][9] The 1991 edition of Mark Garvey's Songwriters' Market, published in 1990, carried a listing that read as follows: "*SANDY PEARLMAN, INC., 245 Hyde St., San Francisco CA 94102.
"[10] In the late 1990s, Pearlman served as the founding vice-president of e-music.com, a subscription store for download-to-own online music and audiobooks that is headquartered in New York City and now owned by Dimensional Associates.
In 2009, Sandy Pearlman was appointed as an at-large member of the National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB) of the Library of Congress.
His production career was managed by Peter Shershin at Breathing Protection, Inc.[15] Pearlman was the recipient of 17 gold and platinum records.