That'll do, cow

May 30, 2022 8:20 AM

"If Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, we should probably give him more cowbell!"

Check out @leigh_lyons' TikTok channel for more stunt drumming shennanigans.

posted by drlith (37 comments total)

How did the rumor start that Bruce Dickinson had anything to do with producing albums or liking cowbells? Was it in the SNL skit?
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:05 AM on May 30, 2022

How did the rumor start that Bruce Dickinson had anything to do with producing albums or liking cowbells? Was it in the SNL skit?

Yes, Bruce Dickinson was a fictional producer made up for the SNL "cowbell" skit that unfortunately shares a name with a pilot for Cardiff Aviation. This occasionally causes confusion since the Cardiff pilot also is somewhat of a musician himself. Whether or not this was an intentional tribute by the SNL writers is unknown, at least by me.

As for the video, not enough, you know.
posted by bondcliff at 9:15 AM on May 30, 2022 [15 favorites]

Yes, Bruce Dickinson was a fictional producer made up for the SNL "cowbell" skit that unfortunately shares a name with a pilot for Cardiff Aviation. This occasionally causes confusion since the Cardiff pilot also is somewhat of a musician himself. Whether or not this was an intentional tribute by the SNL writers is unknown, at least by me.

Ummmm, I honestly can't figure out if you're being sarcastic or not....
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:21 AM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

Apologies, my absolute amazement that "the guy from Iron Maiden is an airline pilot" sometimes gets the better of me and, while my explanation was correct, I said it in a sarcastic way. There was no "Bruce Dickinson" who produced the BOC album. Further reading here.

This is a total derail though. Carry on.
posted by bondcliff at 9:41 AM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

People here on MeFi know me to be a jaded snarkbucket.

But.

Could SNL have picked any. other. fucking. song. to reduce to a punchline?

"Don't fear the Reaper" is a sincerely moving song about mortality and fear of death. It was written when Donald Roeser had his first brush with mortality as a young man.

This fear - the fear of death - is responsible for SO MUCH WOE THROUGH HISTORY. What has been done (and continues to be done) as a result of denying that fear, hiding from that fear or giving in to that fear?



All our times have come
Here but now they're gone
Seasons don't fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are



Read those lyrics with open eyes and an open heart.

And the song! Catchy, to get you reeled in. The sweet overdubbed harmonizing. The A-minor key with it's melancholy and hope! And the guitar solo! Quoth a serious Musician friend of mine 'one of the greats of all time'!


GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
posted by lalochezia at 9:52 AM on May 30, 2022 [21 favorites]

Apologies, my absolute amazement that "the guy from Iron Maiden is an airline pilot" sometimes gets the better of me and, while my explanation was correct, I said it in a sarcastic way. There was no "Bruce Dickinson" who produced the BOC album.

Ok got it. Yeah I know Bruce Dickinson never produced Blue Oyster Cult. I'm not sure why SNL used his name. Iron maiden isn't even a cowbell band.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:56 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I once read a book by some anti-rock preacher guy (almost certainly Bob Larson, who made a specialty of this kind of thing during the Satanic Panic days) that said 'Don't Fear the Reaper' was about two teenage lovers making a suicide pact.
posted by box at 10:04 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Don't fear the Reaper" is a sincerely moving song about mortality and fear of death. It was written when Donald Roeser had his first brush with mortality as a young man.

Okay, but it also romanticizes two famous, fictional teenage idiots. And I say this as someone with NOLI TIMERE MESSOREM tattooed on her arm, in tribute to Sir Pterry.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:10 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

R.E.M. plays "Don't Fear the Reaper" [1995] [Archive mp3, no cowbell]
posted by chavenet at 10:11 AM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

"Don't fear the Reaper" is a sincerely moving song about mortality and fear of death.

It may have not been the first time I heard it, but I most associate it with the opening credits of the original "The Stand" miniseries back in 1994. You just hear the music as the camera pans over dead bodies on the base where the virus got out. Really effective.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:33 AM on May 30, 2022 [10 favorites]

Needs more in time cowbell.
posted by flabdablet at 10:42 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was in the elevator of a friend's apartment building and this man got on, saw my Blue Oyster Cult t-shirt and asked if I liked them. I said yes, because, well, I was wearing the T-shirt. He sort of chuckled and then this moment hung in the air and I was just thinking "please don't say it please don't say it please don't say it."

But then of course he said it.

"MORE COWBELL!"

I gave the most strangled, half-hearted laugh and then fortunately the elevator ride was over.
posted by edencosmic at 10:53 AM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Could SNL have picked any. other. fucking. song. to reduce to a punchline?

"Don't fear the Reaper" is a sincerely moving song about mortality and fear of death.

if there's an upside, it's that maybe, just maybe, folks might go looking beyond Reaper for other gems from the Cult of the Blue Oyster ... and other related high weirdness
posted by philip-random at 11:15 AM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

(Incidentally, Lydia Lunch and Clint Ruin's version of 'Don't Fear the Reaper' is totally about a suicide pact.)
posted by box at 11:15 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Major props for FPP title.
posted by davidmsc at 11:23 AM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

OK, lalochezia, fair point, fair point. But--and just stick with me here, man--you gotta admit, that song has a lot of cowbell. I mean, a lot of cowbell. A fuckin' shitload of that shit. And one might even ask oneself, one just might, how could they possibly add more cowbell?

But then the guy is like:

more

C̵̡̟̳̥̞̯̣͉̼̪͎̑͂̐͌̽̓͆̿͠͝͝͝͠Ǫ̶̪̮̟̦̟̘͔͖̪̓̈́̋̇͒̍̄͛̾̑͘̚͠͝ͅW̵̥͇̗̣̩̭̱͔̏̈̓̄͊̀̀͝͝ͅB̸̫͋̑͂̒Ę̵̧͔̯͙̜̤̞̤͇̯͉̞͓̟̃̄̏͗L̵͍̬̦̙̰̻͍̰͉̝͕̮̉͌̒̓L̵̛͎̲̭͙̻̫͔͙̻̱̱̭̲̽̅́͌̆̍̌̑̒̅̄̓̌͠

That's, like, "what if the whole universe is just an atom in the fingernail of another being who's wondering the same thing" levels of mindblowification, really.

hey, how long ago did we order that pizza? Seems more like five hours, man.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 AM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

> Could SNL have picked any. other. fucking. song. to reduce to a punchline?
> And the song! Catchy, to get you reeled in. The sweet overdubbed harmonizing. The A-minor key with it's melancholy and hope! And the guitar solo! Quoth a serious Musician friend of mine 'one of the greats of all time'!

This reminded me of the Christian Hand Song Breakdowns episode about this song. (con: some radio host yakkage but pro: fun to hear isolated tracks, anti-cowbell-skit rant, appreciation for music...)
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 12:05 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Breaking Down the Greatest Classic Rock Song w/ Buck Dharma
posted by philip-random at 12:30 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rick Beato, who I find very watchable, also broke down this song awhile back in an enjoyable way. I like Rick because in addition to being knowledgeable he is generally enthusiastic about the music he talks about.
posted by maxwelton at 12:46 PM on May 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Sorry, philip! Needs more Beato, apparently!
posted by maxwelton at 12:49 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well, this led me to The Flecktones at Montreal, 2018, so all is good. Thanks.
posted by Hobgoblin at 2:26 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: a jaded snarkbucket.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:27 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

This led me to REM playing Tusk, so thanks!
posted by sixswitch at 2:29 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Iron maiden isn't even a cowbell band.

And now I have the intro to Hallowed Be Thy Name stuck in my head with a cowbell instead of a church bell.
posted by automatronic at 3:51 PM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Bruce Dickinson was a bartender at Hammerheads in West Islip, Long Island, where BOC performed as Soft White Underbelly back in the day. /fakenews

Also I definitely remember the hearing that DFTR was about a suicide pact.
posted by Lyme Drop at 4:09 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also I definitely remember the hearing that DFTR was about a suicide pact.

except according to the guy who wrote it, it was about dealing with the shock of being told he had a serious heart issue that could potentially kill him.
posted by philip-random at 4:18 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Apologies, my absolute amazement that "the guy from Iron Maiden is an airline pilot" sometimes gets the better of me and, while my explanation was correct, I said it in a sarcastic way. There was no "Bruce Dickinson" who produced the BOC album.

He is actually real. He was actually a mid-level producer at Columbia Records of the 1990 reissue Blue Öyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune and was listed as the “re-issue producer” on the CD. In a hurry to make the sketch they pulled the wrong name from the record.
posted by jmauro at 6:35 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

Maybe it was selfish of SNL to feature the song in a sketch; but last time I checked there are not a lot of pop songs that feature a cowbell. Christopher Walken is said to be somewhat annoyed by the sketch as he often has people shout more cowbell at him or even bang cowbells at the end of his stage performances.
posted by interogative mood at 7:30 PM on May 30, 2022

"The Blue Oyster? I heard they have the best salad bar in town." ['El Bimbo' needle drop]
posted by bartleby at 8:50 PM on May 30, 2022

Maybe it was selfish of SNL to feature the song in a sketch; but last time I checked there are not a lot of pop songs that feature a cowbell.

Wrong, there are a lot of songs that feature the cowbell.
posted by jmauro at 10:00 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Given that I only really recognise the song because of the life the sketch has had, I think it's in that rare category of songs, like Never Gonna Give You Up or All Star, that secured their place in eternity by means other than being a classic, but then gave people a chance to evaluate it on its own terms.

Don't Fear The Reaper has outlived rock and roll.
posted by Merus at 12:48 AM on May 31, 2022

> It may have not been the first time I heard it, but I most associate it with the opening credits of the original "The Stand" miniseries back in 1994. You just hear the music as the camera pans over dead bodies on the base where the virus got out. Really effective.

Certainly not the first time I'd heard the song, but lordy was that a great application of it. Like you, hearing it brings that sequence to top of memory every single time since.
posted by davelog at 5:42 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

Don't Fear The Reaper has outlived rock and roll.

I kind of agree with that take. Here's a movie from 1994 called The Stoned Age set in the 1970s and one of the characters won't allow Don't Fear to be played in his car. I wasn't around when it first came out,but BOC was never thought of as a particularly well-regarded serious band in the 1980s and 1990s, so the SNL skit made perfect sense to use one of their songs.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:38 AM on May 31, 2022

BOC was never thought of as a particularly well-regarded serious band in the 1980s and 1990s

Were the '80s and '90s wrong about that?

On one hand, they had an unnecessary umlaut in their name, the lead singer named himself Buck Dharma, they have albums titled Cultösaurus Erectus and Club Ninja, and one of their biggest hits was about Godzilla. On the other, their songwriters included Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll.

Were they 'the thinking man's heavy metal group,' 'the American Black Sabbath'? Or did they damage their own legacy in the '80s and '90s, and The Stoned Age wasn't nearly popular enough to restore it? I guess it's probably both.
posted by box at 8:32 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mad props to jmauro for pointing out where SNL got the name from. That's bugged me for a while.

and Lyme Drop, thank you for the Hammerhead's reference.

I thought that long ago, when I checked for my home town in the Tour Dates of Yore I only saw one date at Hammerheads - June 19, 1980. I would have been 9, then, so not only was I eight years away from even listening to BOC, there was no responsible adult in my life who would have taken me to it.

Which, on further checking, I mis-remembered. There's June tour dates there in 1980-1982 when the place was called Hammerhead's. There's a Dec 1984 tour date when the place was called Key Largo. There's a Nov 1992 date when the place was called Chevy's Bel Air Cafe- which would have been an interesting aesthetic clash. I actually was back in my home town at that point, but it completely escaped my notice.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 2:13 PM on May 31, 2022

On one hand, they had an unnecessary umlaut in their name, the lead singer named himself Buck Dharma, they have albums titled Cultösaurus Erectus and Club Ninja, and one of their biggest hits was about Godzilla. On the other, their songwriters included Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll.

I consider all of this feature (as opposed to bug) ... except maybe Club Ninja; that's not a strong album. The argument I'd make is that they were a completely worthy and at times spectacular (if uneven) cultural force up to and including 1981's Fire of Unknown Origin, belting out the occult-infused (but only in a suburban sort of way) beautiful noise for all the world to hear. But after 1981, like many a 70s rock entity, they lost their way.

This 1981 live clip of Veteran of the Psychic Wars speaks eloquently to all of that. A. great song. B. eviscerating guitar solo c/o Mr. B. Dharma, undermined somewhat by C. dubious wardrobe choice on Mr. Dharma's part. Who do think they are? A Long Island bar band circa 1972?

More or less
posted by philip-random at 9:06 AM on June 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also I definitely remember the hearing that DFTR was about a suicide pact.

except according to the guy who wrote it yt , it was about dealing with the shock of being told he had a serious heart issue that could potentially kill him

Yeah I was confirming that there was a popular rumor about the song, not claiming definitive knowledge about its meaning, but thanks for the snark anyways, I guess.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:44 AM on June 4, 2022