Tag: Ruined

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 one iconic bit of percussion.

The cowbell.

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The hit song, a latter-day bit of psychedelia, infamously had a repeated cowbell on the track. In the sketch, which of course anyone reading this has seen, Christopher Walken’s supposedly legendary producer “Bruce Dickerson” keeps beseeching cowbell player Gene Frenkle (Will Ferrell, in a too-tight shirt) to play more emphatically: “I gotta a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.”

In Peacock’s “SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night” docuseries (via the New York Post), Ferrell, who wrote the “More Cowbell” sketch, opens up about how much Walken has come to resent the ubiquity of it. It all came out when Ferrell visited Walken when the actor was appearing 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 the curtain call and bang them,” Ferrell said. “It’s quite disconcerting.’”

For what it’s worth, Walken did not appear in the installment of “SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night” focused on “More Cowbell.” But he has separately said, “I don’t understand why it follows me around like it does…. It’s kind of run its course.”

Jimmy Fallon, who, bearded and spaced out played one of the Oyster Cult band members, elaborated that the extremity of the sketch was really pushed in the live, on-air performance far beyond anything they had attempted in the dress rehearsal. “[Walken] upped his game,” Fallon added. “He was almost doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken. He was talking like how no human being would talk, ever.”

For Ferrell, the sketch emerged organically from ruminations he’d had since the song came out. “I had the thought even as a kid, ‘What is the life of the guy playing the cowbell?’ I guess that was germinating for decades in my head.”

As far as the original track is concerned, 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 the producer David Lucas, claim that they played it. But lead guitarist and band co-founder Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser is a fan of “More Cowbell.”

“We all thought it was phenomenal,” Roeser told the Washington Post in 2005. “We’re huge Christopher Walken fans. I’ve probably seen it 20 times and I’m still not tired of it.”

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Every once in a while, a Saturday Night Live sketch becomes the talk of the town.

In the new Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Will Ferrell, along with other members of the cast and crew, look back at an April 2000 moment that had a major pop culture impact. With Christopher Walken hosting, Ferrell decided to try out a sketch he’d originally written for Norm Macdonald.

The sketch was a Behind the Music-style look at Blue Oyster Cult and the making of their hit, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”

“Christopher Walken added this thing where he gets all fired up and leans into it on such a level that I didn’t even expect,” Ferrell recalled.

The moment culminated in Walken’s iconic delivery of the line, “Guess what? I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell.”

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Jimmy Fallon, who appeared in the sketch amid his first season on the show, added, “You hope for one of these things. It’s like lightning in a bottle. It rarely happens, where you have a catchphrase that takes off.”

“If you do something on sketch TV and people like it and are applauding it and laughing at it the second or tenth time, that’s just a thrill,” said Dana Carvey, who also featured in the episode and watched the audience react to the sketch in real time.

Fallon continued, “I remember, coming off of that, it almost felt like we had went to camp together or something. We grew up together. We had just had an experience.”

“We were really unified by the fact that we had to pull this off,” Ferrell agreed. “But there was no telling that it would be a thing that would be remembered from this point on.”

The sketch did well on its first airing, but got even more attention when it was featured in the Best of Will Ferrell, released in August 2003. It took off in a way no one had anticipated.

“Teams at sporting events were now playing clips on the Jumbotron to get a crowd going,” Ferrell shared.

It became a mainstay in pop culture, being referenced and duplicated in different areas of media. “To have things that you’ve created that have this other life, it’s completely surreal,” he said. Ferrell has played the cowbell with a bunch of different acts as a result of the sketch, he added.

“I went to see Christopher Walken years later in a play he was doing and I talked to him backstage and he’s like, ‘You know, you’ve ruined my life,’ ” Ferrell revealed.

When Ferrell asked how, Walken responded, “Every show, people bring cowbells for the curtain call and bang them and it’s quite disconcerting.”

Learn more about the history of the late-night sketch comedy staple by watching SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, now streaming on Peacock.