12/8/2022 0 Comments Blue öyster cult the reaperInstances of record burning aside, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” nevertheless transformed Blue Öyster Cult’s career. ![]() Diagnosed with an irregular heart rhythm, he was “contemplating my own mortality, and I thought, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be great, even if you died, that your love would survive?’” The reason? Many misinterpreted the song as being about suicide – something Dharma dismisses. There was a public outcry.”ĭharma – aka Donald Roeser – is telling Uncut about the backlash that greeted the band’s 1976 breakthrough single, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”. “Were church leaders taking our records and burning them? Yeah. “We got tarred with the whole devilry thing,” remembers Blue Öyster Cult’s singer Buck Dharma. “Nothing like The Byrds”, apparently… Words: Jaan Uhelszki The collection unsurprisingly includes the band’s signature hit, ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’, and in this piece, originally published in Uncut’s November 2010 issue, the band discuss the writing and recording of their “trans-awesome” tune, perhaps the spookiest FM staple ever. It’s all been done before somewhere.The Columbia Albums Collection, the new 17-album boxset from Blue Öyster Cult, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2013, and out now. All these plagiarism suits really bother me, actually. I said, ‘Well, you’re welcome to it because you did a nice variation on it.’ I was totally awed by the Police. “Sting was very nice and said that he ripped off ‘Reaper.’ He kept the rhythm, but he changed the melody around, so it wasn’t a real steal. “I saw the Police live and went backstage,” he says. Over the years, music fans have noted a similarity between “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and the Police’s 1979 hit “Message in a Bottle.” Dharma reveals that Sting himself graciously owned up to the lift. ![]() “They cut out the big guitar break in the middle. They came through righteously.”ĭharma admits that he wasn’t terribly enthused about the single edit, aimed at AM radio. There was no big promo push, but once it took off, our label, Columbia, got records out. “Gradually, though, FM stations started picking up on it. “We’d never had a hit, so we didn’t know what a hit was,” Dharma says. Once they finished recording, the band regarded the song as a strong album track, but they had no idea it would become their first hit, let alone their signature song. We had no idea people would latch on to it.” “David was a famous jingles guy, and he came up with that. “I didn’t have it on the demo, and we didn’t record it with the band,” Dharma says. One pass and I had it.”Īs for that driving cowbell, it was an afterthought that Lucas sprung on the band. “Usually, I comp my leads, but the ‘Reaper’ solo just flew. The guitarist used his own ’69 Gibson SG for the song’s searing leads, which he played in one take. For the intro guitar riff, Dharma borrowed Krugman’s Gibson ES-175 and ran it through a Music Man 410 combo. “They played beautifully and put a real sheen on it,” he says. But BÖC are eclectic, so we decided to record it.” Recording at New York City’s Record Plant, the band stayed closed to Dharma’s demo arrangement, trimming only a few bars in select spots. “ Eric Bloom is our major belter he would sing the rocking stuff. “The only reticence was that it wasn’t as heavy as our other material,” he says. ![]() I had to figure out the story, the payoff, and where the bridge would be.” A Fever For Cowbellĭharma recalls that the band and its producers – Sandy Pearlman, Murray Krugman, and David Lucas – liked his demo. “So I had that down, but the rest of the song took eight weeks. The open G is played on the upstroke, and it just spins out while the other parts move,” he reveals. While working on the song, he crafted the guitar riff into the song’s recurring musical motif. “That was my premise, that there is something after death – you didn’t have to fear it, and love could stay strong.” “I thought of a couple that is reunited on this other plane of existence after one of them dies,” Dharma says.
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