If you’re south of the age of 40, chances are that you probably think of Blue Öyster Cult as a joke band, or as a punchline to a joke. The reason for this is that most people are painfully aware of the classic and by now infamous 2000 Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell, which fictionalized the recording of the band’s biggest hit, “( Don’t Fear) the Reaper”. You know this as the “ More Cowbell” bit, in which Walken plays a fictional record producer, modeled after long-time producer and band manager Sandy Pearlman, who tries to coax Ferrell’s character to play his cowbell louder on the song. The ensuing popularity of this skit is such that, when I worked at a digital design agency in Toronto, Canada, in 2008, I knew a guy who actually had a “ More Cowbell” app on his new i Phone. ( The app would play a cowbell sound if you shook the phone, punctuated occasionally with Walken’s lines from the piece.) But there’s more to the band’s joke status than just an SNL parody. When I told a colleague at my current workplace, who is a year or so younger than me ( I’m 37 that I got the new, monster Blue Öyster Cult boxed set called The Columbia Albums Collection to encapsulate for this Web publication, he immediately started humming the “ El Bimbo” theme from the Police Academy movies. The reason? The name of the stereotypical gay biker bar depicted in those films when that music plays is called the Blue Oyster. I don’t know if the makers of Police Academy were making a comment on the Blue Öyster band with their naming of the bar (and I could find nothing while doing a cursory search of Google to make any sort of connection but all I know is that I had to start singing a few lines from “( Don’t Fear) the Reaper” back at my colleague before he understood. “ Oh. That Blue Öyster,” he said. Telling, there’s a line in the Blue Öyster Cult song “ Flaming.
This article is about the song by Blue Öyster Cult. For the EP by Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch, see Don't Fear the Reaper ( EP). For the album by Witchery, see Don't Fear the Reaper (album). ( Don't Fear) The Reaper is a song by the American rock band Blue Öyster Cult from their 1976 album, Agents of Fortune. It was written and sung by the band's lead guitarist, Donald Buck Dharma Roeser and was produced by David Lucas, Murray Krugman, and Sandy Pearlman. The song is built around Dharma's opening, repetitive guitar riff, while the lyrics deal with eternal love and the inevitability of death. Dharma wrote the song while picturing an early death for himself. Released as an edited single, the song was Blue Öyster Cult's biggest chart success, reaching 7 in Cash Box and 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1976. Additionally, critical reception was mainly positive and, in 2004, ( Don't Fear) The Reaper was listed at number 405 on the Rolling Stone list of the top 500 songs of all time. Contents 1 Background 2 Composition 3 Reception 4 Accolades 5 Other versions 6 In other media 7 Track listing 8 Personnel 9 Chart performance 10 Notes 11 References Background[edit] I felt that I had just achieved some kind of resonance with the psychology of people when I came up with that, I was actually kind of appalled when I first realized that some people were seeing it as an advertisement for suicide or something that was not my intention at all. It is, like, not to be afraid of it (as opposed to actively bring it about). It's basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners. — Buck Dharma, lead singer[3] The song is about the inevitability of death and the foolishness of fearing it, and was written when Dharma was thinking about what would happen if he died at a young age. Lyrics such as Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity have led many.
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