April 5, 2000 was a momentous day in comedy history. That night, “Saturday Night Live” paid tribute to Blue Oyster Cult’s 1976 jam “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and an iconic piece of percussion.
The cowbell.
The hit song, a latter-day slice of psychedelia, had an infamous repeated cowbell on the track. In the skit, which of course everyone reading this has seen, Christopher WalkenSupposed legendary producer “Bruce Dickerson” continues to implore cowbell player Gene Frenkle (Will Ferrellin a too-tight shirt) to play more emphatically: “I must have a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.”
In the Peacocks”SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night” docuseries (via New York Post), Ferrell, who wrote the “More Cowbell” sketch, opens up about how much Walken has come to dislike the ubiquitous. It all came to light when Ferrell visited Walken when the actor appeared in Martin McDonagh’s “A Behanding in Spokane” on Broadway in 2010.
“I went to see (Walken) backstage, and he’s like, ‘You know, you’ve ruined my life… every show people bring cowbells for curtain calls and hit them,’ Ferrell said. “It’s pretty disturbing. “
For what it’s worth, Walken did not appear in the segment of “SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night” focused on “More Cowbell.” But he has separately said, “I don’t understand why it follows me around the way it does… It’s kind of run its course.”
Jimmy Fallon, who played one of the Oyster Cult band members bearded and disheveled, elaborated that the extreme part of the sketch was really pushed in the live performance on air far beyond anything they had attempted in dress rehearsal. “(Walken) raised his game,” Fallon added. “He almost did a Christopher Walken impersonation. He talked like no human should ever talk.”
For Ferrell, the sketch arose organically from ruminations he’d had since the song came out. “I had the idea even as a kid, ‘What’s the life of the guy who plays the cowbell?’ I guess it germinated for decades in my head.”
As for the original track, there are conflicting accounts of who actually played the cowbell, which was overdubbed into the recording. At least two members of the band, as well as producer David Lucas, claim to have played it. But lead guitarist and band founder Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser is a fan of “More Cowbell.”
“We all thought it was phenomenal,” Roeser said Washington Post 2005. “We’re huge Christopher Walken fans. I must have seen it 20 times and I’m still not sick of it.”
