Song: “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”
A misunderstood song is perhaps most famous for cries of “More cowbell!”
When Blue Öyster Cult’s lead guitarist Donald Roeser (also known as Buck Dharma) was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, it got him thinking about mortality. He packaged up some of these thoughts by writing the 1976 classic about the inevitability of death, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”
Once rumored to be a song glamorizing suicide, when you read the lyrics, it’s clearly about a long life fulfilled, a love ending, and the acceptance that we have to be like the seasons — come and go naturally.
The progression through the lyrics is lovely and oblique, with the phrase, “Here, but now they’re gone” accompanying all three turns of life outlined in the song — the times have come and gone, young love has come and gone, and a life partner has led the way to the great beyond. As Dharma said, it’s “a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners.”
In early 2000, Saturday Night Live featured a skit with Christopher Walken as a producer named Bruce Dickinson who wanted Will Ferrell to play “more cowbell,” much to the band’s dismay. The real Bruce Dickinson was an archivist working on album reissues. He was credited as the reissue producer on a later version of the album featuring “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” which apparently is how he found his name in the sketch.
The actual producer of the song, David Lucas, explained later that the cowbell was his idea, as the song “needed some momentum.” He “just played four on the floor . . . not hard to do.” Dickinson got a kick out of it, and clients would later start calls with him by shouting for “More cowbell!”
- Interesting technical note — the cowbell on a good sound system off a good recording isn’t obtrusive, but compressed in a radio signal, it does tend to pop.
The song has appeared in numerous films and television shows, and remains a haunting song the band has never tired of playing.
Enjoy!
