Song of the day for November 6 2023
Today’s song is Don’t Fear The Reaper (live version) by Blue Oyster Cult. Blue Öyster Cult land their biggest hit as “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” peaks at #12 in the US on this date in 1976. The song is not about suicide, but about reuniting with loved ones in the afterlife. The song is about the inevitability of death and the foolishness of fearing it and was written when Dharma was thinking about what would happen if he died at a young age. Lyrics such as “Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity” have led many listeners to interpret the song to be about a murder–suicide pact, but Dharma says the song is about eternal love, rather than suicide. He used Romeo and Juliet to describe a couple who wanted to be together in the afterlife. He guessed that “40,000 men and women” died each day (from all causes), and the figure was used several times in the lyrics, but this number was about 100,000 too low.
This song has also ruined Christopher Walken because of a Saturday night live sketch based on this song where he said “I gotta have more cowbell”
According to an interview people have walked up to him for years and repeated that line to him.
