History of Don't Fear the Reaper

Debi

Owner/Admin
Staff
Joined
Sep 16, 2013
Messages
240,716
Reaction score
232,062
Points
315
Location
South of Indy
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/m...eepy-tune.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

When you hear the riff, something deadly is on the way. Blue Öyster Cult’s biggest hit single, “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” has been spooking film audiences for nearly 40 years, ever since its release in May 1976.
As punk and disco were gathering strength, “Reaper” was a surprise Top 15 hit (appearing on the album “Agents of Fortune”), but it was hardly in fashion: a seamless bit of macabre romance with an expansive arrangement, Byrds-style harmonies and lyrics about how death might not be the end. Rock ’n’ roll has offered plenty of terrible advice: Ignore your homework, stay out late, exceed the speed limit. But flying into the arms of the Guy With the Scythe took the creepy cake.
In the four decades since, the song has been tapped more than two dozen times in film, television and video games and has become a most pliable standard. It can be used to take us back to the era of flares and muscle cars, as in the time-travel comedy “The Spirit of ’76” (1990). With earnest, transcendental lyrics about the indestructible spirit “flying” onward after death, it can be something of a punch line — Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson toke up to “Reaper” in the sharp horror farce “Zombieland” (2009). At its most effective, however, “Reaper” scares us out of our pants, as in the body-strewn opening of the 1994 mini-series “The Stand,” adapted from Stephen King’s novel).

“I thought the song was unbelievable,” the director John Carpenter said. He used “Reaper” in his 1978 horror classic “Halloween.” It’s playing in the car as Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is being stalked by a masked lunatic. “We could have played against what was going on with a happy song,” Mr. Carpenter said, “but we chose that one. The thing is cinematic all the way.”
Blue Öyster Cult began (this) life in the late ’60s as a Long Island heavy rock band named Soft White Underbelly (the name changed in 1972). “Reaper” followed three albums of progressive rock with few moments of pop panache. (The 1994 comedy “The Stoned Age” features a profane debate over where “Reaper” fits into the band’s otherwise heavy oeuvre.) The song was born after the guitarist and co-vocalist Buck Dharma (real name: Donald Roesser) learned in his mid-20s that he had an erratic heartbeat.

22REAPER2-master675.jpg


“I was thinking about mortality,” said Mr. Dharma (who prefers to be identified by his nom du rock). “The whole idea of the Reaper was that if there was another sphere of existence, maybe lovers could bridge that gap if their love was strong enough.”
Mr. Dharma’s narrator tells his lover that “seasons don’t fear the Reaper,” so take the hand of the dude in black without trepidation. The mention of Shakespeare’s star-crossed Romeo and Juliet as “together in eternity,” led to condemnations of the song as pro-suicide. Mr. Dharma insisted that was not his intent. Likewise, the song’s claim that “40,000 men and women every day” shuffle off this mortal coil wasn’t to be taken seriously.
“I needed a number that would be the right number of syllables — 135,000 people, that wouldn’t fit,” he said via phone from the road (where the still active Blue Öyster Cult members are celebrating the song’s anniversary).
Make no mistake, though, the track was intended to produce the effect it had on Mr. Carpenter. “I like spooky stuff,” Mr. Dharma said. “I was very much into the horror genre.”
Before it appeared in “The Stand” mini-series, Mr. King excerpted lyrics from the song for an epigraph in the book. In 1996, a faithful cover by the Mutton Birds could be heard in Peter Jackson’s film “The Frighteners,” sealing the song’s reputation as a favorite of horror and fantasy masters. It is also featured in Robert Galbraith’s novel “Career of Evil,” (written under a pseudonym by J. K. Rowling).
Listen to “Reaper” in a snippet on a soundtrack, and you might miss the cowbell that drives it, along with a repetitive guitar line. That bit of innocent percussion was not lost on Will Ferrell, who in 2000 wrote a “Saturday Night Live” sendup of “Behind the Music,” the VH1 nostalgia documentary series then saturating the airwaves. We see the band cutting the track with a producer (played by Christopher Walken) who exhorts Mr. Ferrell’s earnest cowbell player to dominate the entire session (“Really explore the studio space this time”), to the other musicians’ frustration.
Photo
22REAPER3-master675.jpg

The band Blue Öyster Cult in 1976. Credit Michael Putland/Getty Images
“I don’t think it was making fun of the band at all,” the actor Chris Parnell said by phone. He played a version of Mr. Dharma in the sketch (although he is referred to as “Eric,” most likely the band’s sometime lead vocalist Eric Bloom). “It was much more a parody of ‘Behind the Music.’”
Still, “S.N.L.” put the ersatz Blue Öyster Cult in ’70s garb, mustaches and wigs, Mr. Ferrell’s gut protruding from his too-tight shirt. “More Cowbell,” as the sketch would soon be called, became one of the first super-memes of the new century.
In the post-“Cowbell” decade, the somber “Reaper” was suddenly fair game for comedies like “The Simpsons,” “Parks and Recreation” and, in an a cappella version, “Scrubs.” In the coming big-screen “War Dogs,” a dark comedy about gun runners, nursing-home residents are entertained by a guitarist singing a gentle “Reaper.”
“It had been used as a go-to creepy thing, but Will Ferrell pretty much sabotaged that,” Mr. Dharma said.
The band loved the skit and the attention. But Mr. Dharma acknowledges that he is relieved that the original intent of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” has not only been restored but also seems to be unstoppable: It was used in “Gone Girl” (2014) when Nick (Ben Affleck) realizes his wife has disappeared and in a murder scene in the Season 2 finale of “Orange Is the New Black.”
“It has survived the cowbell and retains its original vibe,” Mr. Dharma said triumphantly.
“That’s as it should be,” a semi-penitent Mr. Parnell said. “The song should stand on its own with its mysterious meanings.”
As the years have passed, “Reaper” has been put to another use. “It’s evolving into a eulogy,” Mr. Dharma said. “We play it now when people pass away. It’s the wheel of life. I want it played at my funeral when I go.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2016, on page AR24 of the New York edition with the headline: A Creepy Tune, Even With the Cowbell.
 
Lovin' It ! Saw BOC 3 times, all at a little theater ( The Star, Debi.) Got a mess of autographs as a teen, and the signatures are accompanied by a drawing of their Celtic Cross symbol. Years later I made small talk with the keyboard player at the Stars' hotel bar. Nice dude.
I heard this one in the grocery store last year. Just soft background music.:cool:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mokey and Debi
Lovin' It ! Saw BOC 3 times, all at a little theater ( The Star, Debi.) Got a mess of autographs as a teen, and the signatures are accompanied by a drawing of their Celtic Cross symbol. Years later I made small talk with the keyboard player at the Stars' hotel bar. Nice dude.
I heard this one in the grocery store last year. Just soft background music.:cool:
Well, they are now playing it at funerals....;) And lucky you to see them 3 times!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Paintman
Good times, having a cool local theater. Tickets were $22. Mow two lawns, see BOC, or, Aerosmith, The Kinks, Cheap Trick, Allman Bros., Beach Boys, Air Supply, Charlie Daniels, Tom Jones, oh and Tina Turner on The Private Dancer Tour:). Beatlemania..... lots of comedians....... My Bro. saw Crosby & Nash there in Davids first show right out of jail. Said His voice was "big and pure and clear." Still thinks he set a new bar that night.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Debi