You may not know the key of A minor when you hear it, but you certainly feel it. A song written in A minor has an unstable and unsettling presence, a weight, an undertow. Many A minor songs are so familiar, we’ll mention them only by title: “Angie,” “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Smooth Operator,” “Rhiannon,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” “It’s Too Late,” and the most A minor of A minor songs, Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”
“Reaper” narrates the tale of a couple who are “together in eternity,” and the song seems eternal as well. It became a hit 45 years ago but has never disappeared from pop culture. Last year, it had 50,000 spins on terrestrial and satellite radio. An industry source estimates that it generated more than $637,000 in revenue in 2020, not including album sales. Every few years, it turns up in another Hollywood movie — usually the scary ones. And an assortment of bands has covered it in a catalog of styles: country “Reaper,” blues “Reaper,” punk “Reaper,” dance club “Reaper,” and even two-identical-twins-play-it-on-harps “Reaper.” Few songs have ever been this durable and flexible.
In April 2000, Saturday Night Live’s “I need more cowbell!” sketch, starring host Christopher Walken as producer Bruce Dickinson, and cast members Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, and Horatio Sanz as Blue Öyster Cult, turned the song into a ubiquitous one-liner and eventually a Twitter meme. But it had already been in the bloodstream of pop culture for three decades. “Reaper” and the word meme even share a year of birth, 1976.
In the 1978 film Halloween, the song plays in the background when Jamie Lee Curtis and Nancy Eyes share a joint in the front seat of a Monte Carlo, unaware that Michael Meyers is following them. The same year, Stephen King quoted it in the epigraph of his fantasy novel The Stand. “Reaper” became a screen staple, especially for B-movies: the 1994 TV miniseries adapted from The Stand, Scream (via a cover by Gus), The Frighteners (via a Mutton Birds cover), Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween, Zombieland, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, War Dogs, 12 Monkeys, Miracle, Gone Girl, and the Executioner’s Song miniseries about Gary Gilmore, not to mention Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Actually, Stephen King misquoted the song; he heard the line “Come on, baby” as “Come on, Mary.” It wasn’t the last time the song’s imagistic lyrics were misunderstood: it’s sometimes interpreted as pro-suicide, a theory that makes little sense once you hear Donald Roeser, who wrote it, sang it, and played its epic guitar solos, explain its genesis. For all its foreboding, minor-key eeriness and mystical whirlwinds, it is, Roeser says, a love song.
Blue Öyster Cult were a hard rock band from the New York area whose first three albums were full of fanciful lyrics about drug deals gone bad, goblins, mummies, Lucifer, and Nazi bomber pilots. They had a reputation as “the thinking man’s metal band” — Patti Smith collaborated on some of their songs, and rock critic Richard Meltzer also contributed lyrics, which gave them cachet — and had amassed great reviews. In Creem, Lester Bangs said they had “all the equipment necessary to become the best band in America,” and Mike Saunders of Phonograph Records said they had “the potential to match the recorded work of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.” BÖC had everything a band needs, except the two most important things: an identity and a hit single.
All five band members wrote and sang lead, so there was no frontman to give BÖC a focus. Unlike Black Sabbath, it wasn’t clear whether they were mocking or embracing the wizards and warlocks fantasy culture that took hold after 1965, when Ballantine published J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in mass market paperback. And then there was the band’s name. “Cult” had a scary resonance in the Seventies, so soon after the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders committed by members of the Manson Family, and the decorative umlaut in the name puzzled people, though it subsequently caught on as an in-joke among rock bands, including Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, Hüsker Dü, Spin̈al Tap, and, turning the knob to 11, Möngöl Hörde.
By 1976, Blue Öyster Cult were focusing more on hooks and melodies, which had never seemed important to them. As Ken Tucker noted in a Rolling Stone review of Agents of Fortune, the album that included “Reaper,” they also put “less emphasis on absurd, crypto-intellectual rambling.” The album even had sax solos, for Lucifer’s sake! Coincidentally (or not), it was released two weeks after the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. America’s red, white, and blue bicentennial was dotted with Gothic black.
There’s a short list of hard rock songs that are beloved even by people who hate hard rock: “Back in Black,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” “Runnin’ With the Devil,” and “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” It was also said to be one of Gary Gilmore’s favorite songs, which scans in terms of chronology: the song reached #12 on the Billboard singles chart in November 1976, two months before Gilmore was executed. It’s been slowed down beautifully by Denmark + Winter, and sped up by the Goo Goo Dolls, who played the 5:08 song in a snappy 2:17.
To understand the undying appeal of “Reaper” on the occasion of its 45th anniversary, GQ talked to Don Roeser, whose stage name is Buck Dharma, his ex-bandmate Albert Bouchard, Saturday Night Live cast members, a cowbell specialist, and more than a dozen musicians who’ve covered the song – plus one who tried, but couldn’t. Here’s the story of the only rock classic inspired by cardiac arrhythmia.
Don Roeser, guitarist and songwriter, Blue Öyster Cult: You can call me Don, if you want. It’s kind of weird, having an alter ego. Sometimes I blame Buck for stuff Don did.
Albert Bouchard, ex-drummer, Blue Öyster Cult: How deep do you want me to go? You want to geek out on the song?
Roeser: There was a time when Blue Öyster Cult was living in band houses that we’d all rent. Then that stopped, and I moved in with my girlfriend Sandra, who became my wife. We had a house in Melville [Long Island]. I had just gotten a TEAC 3340s four-track recorder. These days, it’s easy to record multiple tracks on a phone or laptop or iPad, but back then, it was a fairly new thing.
Bouchard: A lot of bands that later became huge opened for us: Bob Seger, Aerosmith, Heart, Kansas, Styx, all acts that sold more records than we ever did. We felt we were at a point where if we had something even half-way commercial, it would be successful. So we were thinking about making a really good, polished record.
Roeser: It started with just the guitar riff, the iconic guitar riff. I recorded it, because I knew it was good.
Bouchard: In the fall of ’75, Don called me and said, “I wrote this riff, I think it’s pretty cool.” He played it for me, and I thought it sounded a little bit like “Teen Archer” [from BOC’s second album, Tyranny and Mutation]. I said, “Oh, you took that riff and put it in A minor.” A week later, he gave me a cassette that I played on my Walkman, and he’d put a beautiful minor melody over the top of that blank canvas of a modal background. And in the lyrics, was answering himself, which was sort of an innovation. He was having a conversation with himself, which is one of the reasons it’s such a powerful tune.
Roeser: I had an idea that I wanted to write a love story about transcending death. I was 22, and I had a heart arrhythmia, which developed in my late teens. I thought I might not live much longer. A cardiologist said, “It’s not something that’s gonna kill you.” But dying had been on my mind.
So I thought of writing a song about, well, what if one of a couple dies? Is it possible to cross that divide of the mortal coil and reunite somehow? I was writing about characters, but insofar as it related to me personally, it was about me and Sandra. I was thinking about her when I wrote it.
My sensibilities are a little more radio friendly, a little more pop. I grew up with Top 40 radio and R&B radio. I like to rock, but I also like music with sentiment.
Bouchard: I was like, “Don, this is a hit!” He said, “Ehh, I don’t know. Does it even fit the band?” Everybody in the band agreed with me, except for one guy. I’m not gonna say who, because he always denies that he was against it.
Roeser: Eric Bloom didn’t think it was right for Blue Öyster Cult. The band was formed around Eric as the high-energy, menacing lead singer. He didn’t think it was the way the band should go, put it that way.
Bouchard: Oh, Don already told you it was Eric? Yeah, Eric said, “He’s writing this about Sandra, his wife. I don’t want any songs about wives.”
Roeser: Eric has come to like the song (laughs).
Bouchard: The single rose up the charts quickly. It was released in early summer, and by the end of the summer, it was on every station, it seemed like.
Roeser: FM radio went for it pretty quickly, and then it started to cross over into AM, which was still the pop radio format in 1976. We started to draw better. We sold out the smaller venues and moved into the big ones.
Bouchard: Suddenly there was some recognition for the band. And we had a lot more money. I bought a house, paid cash. I bought two cars. Three years later, the house is gone, the cars are gone. One was stolen, the other I lost in the divorce. It all came out to nothing [laughs].
Roeser: After the proceeds started rolling in, the first foolish thing we did was buy a bunch of lasers. The oscillating mirrors took what would be a dangerous amount of light and diluted it to something that wouldn’t hurt you. It’s too bad you can’t do it during concerts anymore.
Jeff Tweedy, singer and songwriter, Wilco (who frequently play “Don’t Fear the Reaper” live, but have never recorded it): As a song, it has its own shape. It doesn’t have a direct antecedent. It almost doesn’t have a direct descendent either. That’s a pretty high bar to aim for, as a songwriter. I aspire to that. Anytime I hear that song, I’m reminded, Oh shit, somebody can do that. It can be done.
Bruce Watson, guitarist, Big Country (who released a faithful cover in 1993): It’s a love song. Whoever wrote it was so in love with another half, they didn’t want to part from them.
Mandi Perkins, singer, Denmark + Winter (who slowed it to a dirge in 2016): It’s totally a love song, but a bittersweet love song. The music, the guitar line, the melody — it’s an all-around fantastic song.
Chris Collingwood, singer, Fountains of Wayne: It’s not classically crafted. It’s not a brilliant melody — it’s not even a brilliant guitar riff. It’s more than the sum of its parts. It pushes you into a dream state.
Noko, guitarist, Apollo 440 (who put out a techno pop version in 1995): It’s like the best Roger McGuinn song Roger McGuinn never wrote. It’s a Byrds pastiche, really. It’s got a beautiful, chiming quality that goes ‘round and ‘round. A great record, but it’s virtually all I know about Blue Öyster Cult. I couldn’t name any other song they’ve done.
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: I was nine years old, and it was on the radio a lot in the St. Louis market. At that time in my life, I was really confused about things when I listened to the radio. It’s hard to believe, but they played Peter Frampton so much that I thought he was a DJ. They announced his name so often that I was like, “He’s the guy playing the records, right?”
Mandi Perkins, Denmark + Winter: It was written before I was born. It’s almost menacing, but because it’s so melodic, it isn’t scary as much as it is beautiful-scary.
John Wheeler, singer, Hayseed Dixie (who released a bluegrass version in 2017): The first time I heard it, I was probably seven or eight years old. It absolutely creeped me out. It was like the first time I saw Bambi, which I hated because the mother gets killed right at the beginning. My father thought he was taking me to a happy Disney movie. I cried the whole way home. I was pissed off at him for weeks.
To be honest, even as a grown man, the words really creep me out. It’s one of the darkest songs I’ve ever heard. But the whole idea of making death and dying into something erotic was revolutionary. I mean, maybe Bambi is a good movie, too. I just think it’s abusive to show it to a five year old.
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: It taps into an icy kind of feeling, like the hand of death touching your shoulder.
My first memory of the song came from one of my cousins, who was a little older than me, maybe a teenager at the time. At family gatherings, she’d gather the younger kids and scare the shit out of us by talking about the occult. She told us she was calling Steve Nicks because they wanted to talk about the Rapture. My cousin was a maniac. She had a knack for terrifying, and that song was vividly a part of her shtick. She’d play it and say, “You’ll go crazy if you listen to this song.” The middle section scares me still, to this day.
Chris Collingwood, Fountains of Wayne: When I was a kid growing up north of Philly, guys would hang out in the parking lot, getting high and blaring shit from their Camaros. It was a little scary walking to my car at the end of the day. For a long time, I viewed it as the music Bad Kids listened to. Then when I got my first car, I realized I liked the power of that song when you play it really loud. It’s always the first track I play when I get new headphones.
Chris Parnell, cast member, Saturday Night Live: The cover art and the name of the band seemed so mysterious, maybe even demonic.
Martyn Ware, singer and producer, Heaven 17 (who interpreted the song as dance pop in 2005): I didn’t rush out to buy it, to be honest. In 1976, I was more interested in Devo and Blondie. I wasn’t a massive fan of smoothed-out rock. But I’ve become more of a fan of it since. In the wake of punk, a lot of Seventies music has been characterized as dinosaur rock. And I think that’s wrong. It was a time of great creativity and experimentation in songwriting.
Lydia Lunch, singer (who did a punkish version in 1991): I can’t say that Blue Öyster Cult were in my Top Ten.
Camille Kitt, singer and harpist, the Harp Twins (who did, yes, a translation for harp in 2012): One of our favorite quotes is “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity,” by William Penn.
Kennerly Kitt, singer and harpist, the Harp Twins: This song is that message, just in musical form.
Robby Takac, singer and bassist, Goo Goo Dolls (more punk from 1987): In 1976, I was living in a suburb of Buffalo, in my parents’ basement. When I was about 18, Goo Goo Dolls got together, just kids making punk rock, a much different band than we are today. We played “Reaper” at a bunch of shows because folks sang along and had a great time, and I happened to know the chords — at least, most of them [laughs]. We thought it was funny to play the song five times as fast. There was a little bit of “kill your idols” mixed in there.
Noko, guitarist and keyboardist, Apollo 440: It’s obviously a Goth song. It’s a Gothic romance, isn’t it? It’s about love transcending life and death, that whole hot potato. That’s been done a million times, from Shakespeare and Bram Stoker, onwards.
Martyn Ware, Heaven 17: I love the mystery of the song, and the Gothic imagery. It has an epic quality.
John Wheeler, Hayseed Dixie: It doesn’t embrace or celebrate death, but it almost makes it erotic. I think that’s the first Goth song. The Sisters of Mercy would not exist if it wasn’t for “Reaper.”
Mandi Perkins, Denmark + Winter: It’s so rich, lyrically. There are so many ideas interwoven. When you think of Romeo and Juliet, you think about dying young. If you look at it superficially, it’s kind of like a suicide song — not that it’s permissible to commit suicide, but it’s telling kids there’s something romantic about dying young. I know the song is from the Seventies, and they were doing all sorts of crazy things back then!
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: I guess in those days, you didn’t think about what kind of liability or responsibility you’re going to have after the fact. But it absolutely reads as a PSA for suicide. “Just try it. At least once.” [laughs]
Roeser: The second verse [“Romeo and Juliet/Are together in eternity”] is the one that causes so much trouble. I used Romeo and Juliet as an example of a couple who had faith to take their love somewhere else. They’re in eternity because they had the faith to believe in the possibility. It never occurred to me that people would think “Reaper” is an advertisement for suicide.
Robby Takac, Goo Goo Dolls: I have no idea what the song is about, man. I’ll be honest. I’m not even sure we knew the words. In fact, I’m sure we didn’t know. I made them up.
Brian Wecht, keyboardist, Ninja Sex Party (soaring balladry from 2019) : Before I started doing music full-time, I was a theoretical physicist. To me, the message of the song is, we have what we live and nothing else. It’s fair to call that deep.
Chris Collingwood, Fountains of Wayne: It sounds to me like somebody saying to his beloved, “Let’s die while our love is pure.” Maybe that’s not deep. But there’s not a single word in the song that sounds out of place.
Vic Fuentes, singer and guitarist, Pierce the Veil (hard rock, 2010): It’s about a guy who died and he wants his girl to be with him. She can’t handle life without him. In the end, they’re reunited. He’s trying to tell her, Don’t be afraid of death. It’s going to be amazing, because we’ll be together. It’s so heavy. There’s a lot of love going on in this song about death.
Bouchard: It’s the most upbeat death song ever!
Eric Gales, blues singer and guitarist (who regularly plays the Reaper blues live): Not everybody looks at death as a scary thing. We all got to see it at some point, so we might as well welcome it in when it’s time. That don’t mean go and rush your time.
Bouchard: Every song was a band collaboration, even though everybody in the band didn’t get songwriting credit. I wanted to split everything equally. That was what the Doors did. I thought it was a good idea, because people wouldn’t be pulling for their song, just to make money. Don was one of the ones who didn’t want to split anything when he wrote it. Though when he put something in [someone else’s song], he would be okay with splitting the publishing and the credit.
Roeser: Was there animosity towards me? I don’t think so. I mean, maybe. [laughs] Everybody wishes they’d written it, but that wasn’t the case. So, ehh, what are you gonna do?
Bouchard: On the next album, everyone started chasing the hits, myself included — although my idea of a hit was more like Steely Dan, and that didn’t go over so well. It’s the “careful what you wish for” syndrome.
Roeser: Everybody wanted to write a hit and it wasn’t everybody’s strength, so maybe the mystique of Blue Öyster Cult got diluted in that quest. We didn’t have another hit until “Burnin’ For You” [also written by Roeser] in 1981.
Bruce Watson, Big Country: It’s almost like they’re two or three different bands. You’ve got “Godzilla” and “Cities on Flames,” the heavier sci-fi things, and then you’ve got “Reaper” and “Burnin’ For You,” which are radio-friendly.
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: It’s an anomaly within their own catalog, partly because of the vocal delivery. The softness of the vocal delivery is one of the things that makes it so effective.
Roeser: We sold our publishing to Sony ATV in the Nineties. I still get the writer’s share of the money, but not the publisher’s share. I like to hear covers of “Reaper.” But I wish somebody had a hit with it.
Mandi Perkins, Denmark + Winter: I started the project of Denmark + Winter with Maggie Martin, [Vice President, creative marketing] at Sony Music Publishing. I take some of their catalog songs and expose them to a new generation — songs by Sting, or Martin Gore, or Blue Öyster Cult. I create a new master [recording] for the licensing team at Sony. They license it, and then they have [income from] the publishing side of the song. We introduce the song to a new audience, and they generate a whole new income stream for the song. Everybody wins.
Brian Wecht, Ninja Sex Party: With our original songs, we’re a comedy band. But with cover songs, we take them seriously. Atypically, we hired a string quartet to play with us. Doing a comedic version of it would feel disrespectful.
Vic Fuentes, Pierce the Veil: The challenge was, how do we make this a punk song? It was a bigger undertaking than we had anticipated. The song is so complex, and the lyrics are out there — it’s almost “Bohemian Rhapsody” status, as far as epic songs go. We shaved off some time by bumping up the tempo by a few BPM, at least.
Lydia Lunch, singer: It made sense to record the song as a duet with J.G. Thirlwell [aka Clint Ruin]. Our version is bombastic – we made it into a rock opera of romantic desperation. It’s clearly the best version of the song ever.
John Wheeler, Hayseed Dixie: The point of Hayseed Dixie is to demonstrate that hard rock and country are both working class music. Whether it’s Bon Scott singing “Highway to Hell” or Hank Williams Jr. singing “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” they’re singing about the same road. So we approached “Reaper” as, “What would this song sound like if the guys who did it were from East Tennessee?” It’s an old school bluegrass arrangement, played on hillbilly instruments, treated with a fair amount of reverence.
Noko, Apollo 440: When we recorded it in the ‘90s, dance music and rock music were polarized into two camps. With Apollo 440, there’s always been an almost guilty-pleasures aspect to what we do. We’re rock kids, that’s what we grew up listening to, and we were cheekily bringing bits of that back for the dance generation. I’m a guitarist, but we decided on principle that we didn’t want any guitar on our version. It’s two Roland Juno-106’s with the filters sweeping in and out. Add a bit of delay, and you get the same chime-y guitar quality as the original. But we broke our own rule because I did a bit of a feedback solo on the bit in the middle of the song.
Mandi Perkins, singer, Denmark + Winter: I did the recording with Andrew Blunda of the band Fastball. We decided to do a slow, mysterious, dystopian version. I tried to make my voice gentle and soft. I think my version’s scarier than their version.
Camille Kitt, singer and harp player, the Harp Twins: I’d call our version “haunting and peaceful velvet rock.”
Mandi Perkins, Denmark + Winter: Males are usually the ones that make crazy declarations in songs. It’s the male that’s protecting you or saving you: Don’t be scared. Don’t fear the reaper. Don’t fear the dark. I felt quite powerful saying those words, because now I’m comforting someone. I’m doing the job of what a male vocal would do.
Martyn Ware, Heaven 17: Strangely enough, the idea of covering the song came to me in a dream. I had to sell the idea to [Heaven 17 singer] Glenn Gregory, who wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. He thought I was mad, in fact.
I thought we could do a more contemporary arrangement, with a rhythm track similar to House music. It’s a big guitar-rock number, but it has beautiful, haunting cadences and counterpoint. It’s provocative for us to cover it. We still get people asking, “What the fuck is this? Why are you bothering?”
Even when we were recording it, Glenn wasn’t that keen. When he saw the reaction we got from people, of course, he claimed all the credit. Singers! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. [laughs]
Roeser: I think the most faithful and enjoyable version is Big Country’s. They did a really nice job.
Bruce Watson, Big Country: We did almost a verbatim version, but without keyboards and without the middle section.
Vic Fuentes, Pierce the Veil: It’s almost like two songs in one. In the bridge, you’re literally starting a new song.
Roeser: In the bridge, I tried to evoke the actual metaphysical event that happens. That’s what the instrumental section is doing, it’s setting the stage for the curtains blowing and the candles blowing out. The guy shows up and spirits his lover away to this other place.
Noko, Apollo 440: I’ll tell you what sorts the men from the boys: how you treat the middle section, the Gothic symphonic bit. Heaven 17 completely ignored it on their version. But almost everybody else used the dark, atonal Gothicness of it and tried to celebrate that.
Eric Gales, blues singer and guitarist: When they get to that bridge, it sounds like you’re walking into a scary house of some sort. It sounds like the music for some scary dungeon game.
Bruce Watson, Big Country: We just went, “No, we ain’t touching that middle section.”
Robby Takac, Goo Goo Dolls: I’m sure we gave the middle section a whirl at some point, but we were more concerned with having a blast and driving around in our van.
Bouchard: The song’s a little scary, especially when it goes to the middle section. “What’s going on here? Did it change time signatures? Is it changing keys?”
Chris Collingwood, Fountains of Wayne: We started doing a cover of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” for a soundtrack, I don’t remember what movie it was. When we got to the middle bit, I don’t know what happened. Maybe we got too drunk. We couldn’t deal with the middle part. Rock that involves that much counting, it’s hard for me.
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: As many times as I’ve heard and played it, I have a difficult time counting the middle section. That’s all I think about, the whole song.
Bouchard: What you have to realize about the middle section is that the emphasis is on the two. That’s why it’s weird. But it never changes time signature. It just sounds like it does, because who plays on the two all the time?
John Wheeler, Hayseed Dixie: We still play the song live quite a bit, and every bastard in the audience knows exactly what the song is, from the first riff. That’s the mark of an iconic song — if the first riff sticks to the roof of your brain: “Help!” or “Back in Black” or “Free Fallin’.” I’ve never written anything that recognizable, and that’s why I’m in a cult band.
Bruce Watson, Big Country: It became a regular part of our set. When people shout for more songs, we like to turn the night into a party atmosphere. Everybody knows “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”
Eric Gales, blues singer and guitarist: The majority of the people in the crowd know exactly what I’m playing when I start it up. You hear the roar. My wife is the percussionist in my group. When I get into the verse, LaDonna starts the cowbell part and they really go crazy. A sea of people with their hands up in the air, and everybody’s yelling.
Bouchard: When I rejoined the band in 1985 [after leaving in 1981], I changed the arrangement. Back in 1976, Don said, “Play it like Mike Clarke” — the drummer in the Byrds. Clarke played the classic white-boy beat, bass drum on eighth notes. But by ’85, MTV was really big – Flock of 100 Haircuts and all that – and the beats were all four-on-the-floor disco beats. So when I rejoined, I did the disco version. I thought it was great, but nobody in the band liked it. “What the fuck are you doing???” That was a short-lived experiment. [laughs]
I’ll tell you a story. We played in San Pedro on that tour, which is where Mike Watt and his buddy in the Minutemen, D. Boon, saw us. Years later when I was talking to Watt, he said, “I saw Blue Öyster Cult. You weren’t playing with them. They had some disco guy.”
I said, “No, that was me.” He goes, “You might’ve been playing with them, but it wasn’t you.”
Roeser: I suppose you have to talk about the cowbell, to talk about “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” I wasn’t there when they recorded it. It was [co-producer] David Lucas’ idea. He and Albert both say they played it. They could both be right, I don’t know.
Bouchard: Three people claim they played it: me, David Lucas, and Eric Bloom. Eric was the guy who usually played percussion on the records. He probably would’ve done a better job than me. But David asked me to do it.
A short while ago, I was talking to David, and he said, “I played it. Nobody else was there.” I said, “David, you’re thinking of “Tenderloin” [a song from the same album]. You put a cowbell on it when I wasn’t there.” He goes, “There’s a cowbell on ‘Tenderloin’?” “Yes, and you played it.” He’s like, “….Shit.” Eric gave up claiming he played it. He knows he didn’t.
Chris Collingwood, Fountains of Wayne: When I tweeted about “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” people were like “More cowbell!” It’s a funny joke, but the cowbell is not really mixed very high in the song. You can barely hear it.
Roeser: We mixed it low — it wasn’t “Mississippi Queen” or “Time Has Come Today.”
Bouchard: I thought the cowbell was a silly sound to have on a serious song. When we were mixing, I kept telling [engineer] Shelly Yakus, “Turn it down. Turn it down.” He said, “If I turn it down any more, it’s going to be inaudible.” Which would’ve been fine with me.
Bruce Watson, Big Country: I think the cowbell should’ve been louder. In fact, I think they should take everything off it and have only the vocals and cowbell.
Chris Kattan, who played Roeser in the Saturday Night Live sketch: It was one of those songs frequently played in a friend’s car during high school or at a kegger. It was unique, compared to a lot of other classic rock songs from the mid-Seventies. I had a fondness for it, even before the cowbell sketch.
Lydia Lunch, singer: We didn’t use a cowbell because it’s the dumbest instrument — dumbest non-instrument — ever invented. I don’t think we missed the fracking cowbell.
Camille Kitt, the Harp Twins: We perform it live all the time, and it’s a huge hit. We also include a cowbell skit to pay homage to the classic Christopher Walken “it needs more cowbell” SNL skit.
Kennerly Kitt, the Harp Twins: I’ve been gifted a ridiculous number of cowbells from fans. It’s kind of my thing now.
Vic Fuentes, Pierce the Veil: We were like, “We can’t screw this up. We have to figure out how to do the cowbell.” At the end of the song, there’s a little Easter egg: my brother is our drummer, and he was playing the cowbell. You hear him continuing the cowbell after the song is over, and our producer yells at him to shut up.
Brian Wecht, Ninja Sex Party: I played the cowbell. It’s all quarter notes.
Dan Avidan, singer, Ninja Sex Party: I just show up and sing. I don’t want the responsibility of the cowbell.
John Wheeler, Hayseed Dixie: We did not put any cowbell on it. One, it’s a cliche. Everybody knows the Saturday Night Live skit. Two, people would think we were making a joke out of it.
Roeser: I didn’t have Saturday Night Live on. My wife’s mom called and said, “Donald’s on television.” We saw the tail end of it, and somebody recorded it, so we saw it later. I’m dying to ask Will Ferrell how he thought of the sketch, because it’s so ridiculous.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: There was a magic element, regarding the chemistry with Will and the rest of the cast. Christopher Walken’s delivery is so separate from us. It feels like two worlds: Will and us, and then Christopher Walken, who always seems like he’s visiting from another planet when he does sketch comedy.
Roeser: They looked at a greatest hits compilation, which is where they got the name Bruce Dickinson. He wasn’t the original producer of the record. As far as the costumes, they copied it pretty faithfully.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: The sketch was tried out previous to Christopher Walken hosting. They tried it with Alec Baldwin in the Walken role. It wasn’t even chosen for the show. Walken’s performance at the read-through table had a lot to do with the sketch getting chosen in the first place.
But it didn’t do nearly as well at the table read as it did on air. We all thought it was funny, but I don’t think anyone had any idea it would become a comedic anthem.
Chris Parnell, who played Eric Bloom on Saturday Night Live: At the table read on Wednesday, the sketch was just called “Recording Studio.” I played the lead singer of the band, but we found out later that it wasn’t the lead singer who sang that song. Given its placement in the show [as the last sketch], I guess there wasn’t an expectation it was going to be popular.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: If they think a sketch is going to be huge, they make it the first sketch of the night. It was also in a corner of the studio they call the Death Corner, because the studio audience can see it only on the TV monitors. It’s not an easy place to get laughs.
Brian Wecht, Ninja Sex Party: The premise is very funny, but what sells the sketch is the performances. The acting is 95 percent of it. They’re really not making fun of the song.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: After dress rehearsal, Will came up to me and said, “Hey Kattan, when you say your line ‘Don’t blow this for us, Gene,’ I want you to push me really hard.” I have some strength, even though I have the appearance of an ant. I pushed him hard enough to fall backwards, and that’s when his belly fell out of the shirt even further. Jimmy [Fallon] laughed, and that’s when the dominoes of character breaking happened. Walken never broke. He’s visiting from another planet, so he doesn’t understand.
Chris Parnell, Saturday Night Live: Walken is a big part of why the sketch is so funny, because he has such an unusual delivery. And Will himself is insanely funny, with a shirt riding up over his belly and his insistence and belief in the cowbell. It was sort of absurdist, but it worked. And people enjoyed, as they often do, that the cast was breaking character and laughing. But Christopher Walken is so dedicated to it. He never broke, which made a big difference.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: I don’t even think I knew there was a cowbell in the sketch, to be honest. But that’s the beauty of it. It took something that really is not very much and blows it up to make it important.
I broke character slightly. I smirked. You can see the right side of my mustache raise up. I was embarrassed, and I accidentally looked at the monitor, and saw that behind me, Jimmy was laughing.
Chris Parnell, Saturday Night Live: It was very hard to not laugh, with Will up in my face, looking like he did.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: After the show, I walked into the writer’s room and Adam McKay, the truly brilliant Adam McKay [co-writer of Anchorman and Talladega Nights], who wrote a lot of stuff with Will, was watching the cowbell sketch again. He said, “God, I can’t stop watching this.” That was the first tipoff that the sketch might become a classic.
Derek Zimmerman, brand manager, Latin Percussion: We are the world’s preeminent percussion manufacturer. On our price list, we have 69 different cowbells, different sizes and pitches. Why does the world need so many cowbells? Because there are a lot of different styles of music. We sell about 60,000 cowbells every year. That’s a lot of cowbells.
The “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” cowbell sounds like the Black Beauty to me. It’s the cowbell that outsells all the others. On SNL, Will Ferrell played a Black Beauty Senior.
We have some novelty cowbells that reference the sketch and say “More cowbell!” on them. We’ve made bells for Will – he has a Cancer for College foundation, and when they do an event, they order custom graphic cowbells from us, with graphics embedded into the metal.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: I’m wondering where that cowbell is now. I’m sure it’s worth something.
GQ has learned, through a source who insisted on anonymity, that the cowbell is still the property of the SNL props department.
Chris Parnell, Saturday Night Live: People have definitely yelled “More cowbell!” at me, but usually from a distance. It’s never a good idea to run up and scream at somebody. And somebody gave me a book of photos of cowbells, as strange as that sounds. I don’t think I held on to it for long.
Derek Zimmerman, Latin Percussion: Some drummers like the “more cowbell” joke, and some don’t. A serious drummer sometimes gets tired of hearing it.
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: When I do standup shows, or when I’m in a Rite Aid or a Trader Joe’s, somebody will yell, “Hey, more cowbell!” That’s fine with me. But speak it, don’t yell it. Everyone who was in that sketch hears something about it on a daily basis. Christopher Walken probably can’t stand it by now.
Roeser: A couple of times, venues have introduced us with the cowbell sketch, and then we play. It’s something we learned to be at peace with. I hope Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell are too, because we’re all cursed with it. It’s a horse collar around our neck. I feel sorry for Walken, who’s had such a long and wonderful career. And that’s all people say to him: “More cowbell.”
Chris Kattan, Saturday Night Live: It would be nice, maybe on the next anniversary show of Saturday Night Live, to all dress up in the same costumes. Not to perform the sketch again, but just to stand there and see the response. I’m not sure I could fit into the pants and the above-crotch area, but everything else would fit just fine.
Roeser: I want it played at my funeral, which I’ve said to anyone who would take care of my interment or my remains. Maybe not played over and over, but certainly on a playlist that repeats. It could be the theme of the ceremony.
I’m still surprised how it resonates in the culture. Everybody thinks about dying. We’re all gonna die. So it’s almost a romantic take on it. Maybe thinking about dying is creepy, but it’s actually meant to be comforting. It imagines that there’s something else out there, in the way we imagine heaven. I hold open the space that heaven could be real, that we’re not just dust when we perish. If I get to heaven and they’re playing “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” then I’ll duck walk in there.
Bouchard: Even though I don’t get a piece of the “Reaper” money when people cover it, or “Godzilla,” I still make plenty of money. It’s not a problem. All four of us are doing pretty well. Even if I didn’t have a New York City teacher’s pension, I’d be doing fine.
Robby Takac, Goo Goo Dolls: I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t fear the reaper.
Lydia Lunch, singer: Hell no. I’ve had fear for maybe 20 seconds in my life. I cause fear. If you want to know about death, four people died not long after I covered their songs: Tom Petty, [Walter Becker of] Steely Dan, Gregg Allman, and one of the Eagles [Glenn Frey]. I had to cover “Hotel California,” because I hated it so much.
Bouchard: I don’t fear the reaper. Nope. If it’s all to end tomorrow, hey, I did some stuff. We are remembered by what we do. And what we do is a reflection of our soul.
Noko, Apollo 440: As time goes on, the reaper is more a cogent issue. But all you can fear is having wasted time. “In life we are in death” [a line from the Requiem Mass] and all that.
Kennerly Kitt, the Harp Twins: Fear the reaper? Nope!
Camille Kitt, the Harp Twins: We know where we’re going!
John Wheeler, Hayseed Dixie: I’m reasonably convinced that the God of Abraham is a fiction. Whether there’s some universal connectedness where we’ll all meet, I will find out soon enough. Mythologies and fairytales are fun, from the point of view of, “This is what people used to think, before they figured out what germs were.” If I’m wrong and I do happen to meet the God of Abraham, I’m prepared with my 95 Theses [Martin Luther’s 1517 jeremiad against the Catholic church, which led to the Reformation].
Jeff Tweedy, Wilco: I fear the reaper on a daily basis. It’s my number one obsession, in terms of songwriting. Not death itself, but trying to figure out how to square your mind with that awareness. It’s a challenging thing to figure out how much to fear and how much to live in denial of that fear. That is something I strive to make peace with almost on a daily basis, absolutely.
Dan Avidan, Ninja Sex Party: I played it on the way to my granddad’s funeral, and it was comforting. The voice is soothing. The melody is beautiful. It makes death sound and feel very natural, and therefore nothing to be scared of. My granddad was a scientist, and when he was alive, he always said, “From the moment you’re born, you start dying.”
Roeser: My wife considers it a romantic song. It’s always had a special place for the two of us. We’ve been together for almost 50 years.