#Blue oyster cult don't fear the reaper tv

Saturday Night Live did a hilarious skit about us called More Cowbell and the phrase has since become part of the English language. None of us can quite remember who played it. It was obvious we didnвЂ™t have a clue what was going on, but it was funny вЂ“ and certainly didnвЂ™t stop the song being a hit.ДonвЂ™t Fear the Reaper has a cowbell all the way through it, which is quite unusual. We stood there like idiots, blowing it on national television. So when it came to the middle section, it just wasnвЂ™t there. What we didnвЂ™t know was that they were going to use the single version. WeвЂ™d never done lip sync before but figured that we didnвЂ™t need to rehearse since we knew the song so well.

#Blue oyster cult don't fear the reaper tv

Shortly after it came out, we landed a slot on the Merv Griffin TV show, a popular talk show. The original version, however, had a totally different вЂ“ and very long вЂ“ middle section that was cut out for the single. Now the phrase 'more cowbell' has become a part of the language It was very close to how the finished thing sounded. Donald brought Reaper to rehearsals on a demo heвЂ™d recorded himself. But by 1976, when Reaper came out, we all had home studios and would write on our own. Everyone would pitch in, either in the basement or the living room, meaning songs were written en masse. When we started the band, we all lived in one house in Long Island, New York. People ask: вЂњDonвЂ™t you wish you had more songs as popular as that one?вЂќ I donвЂ™t see it like that. ItвЂ™s become the song that weвЂ™re most known for. I want it played at my funeral on a loop. I wonder how many people have been buried to it. At concerts, we tend to dedicate it to people who have recently passed on, musicians and such. The songвЂ™s really about accepting the inevitability of death. I didnвЂ™t research it вЂ“ and it turned out that I was about 100,000 out. The line вЂњ40,000 men and women every dayвЂќ was my wild guess about how many people in the world die daily. вЂњRomeo and Juliet are together in eternity,вЂќ I sang, but I wasnвЂ™t suggesting that people kill themselves to find out what itвЂ™s like. I sang about Romeo and Juliet as an example of a couple who have successfully gone to the other dimension, but I got a lot of grief over it because everyone thought I was promoting suicide. I imagined a couple: one of them dies but is able to come back for her lover, and they go to this other place no one knows about. The line '40,000 men and women every day' was a wild guess about how many people in the world die. DonвЂ™t Fear the Reaper is basically a love song that imagines there is something after death and that, once in a while, you can bridge that gap to the other side. I was 22 and had just been diagnosed with an irregular heart condition, which got me thinking about dying young. The riff actually came first and the opening lines вЂ“ вЂњAll our times have come / Here but now theyвЂ™re goneвЂќ вЂ“ just spun into my head fully formed.

I never dreamed it would become such a famous song, or that the riff would be played by every kid trying out a guitar in a shop. At first, I thought DonвЂ™t Fear the Reaper would be played on album-oriented radio, like all our other songs.

We were happy in our niche and certainly never thought of ourselves as a pop group. We wrote romantic songs with historically based themes. Donald вЂBuck DharmaвЂ™ Roeser, singer/guitarist/songwriterД«lue Г–yster Cult were a cult band.