NOTE: This is a pre-production transcript and may not match the final show precisely.
[INTRO]
Hey, Cousinnn! It’s the next episode of How Good It Is, and today, we’re joining a Blue Oyster Cult. Let’s go, Jenna…
[HGII]
Hi there! I’m Claude Call, and I’m proud to be amongst you. And do I have trivia for ye? You bet I do. I’d like you to tell me what this song:
[LOVE IS STRANGE clip]
Has in common with this song:
[PILLOW TALK clip]
Got that? What does “Love is Strange” have in common with “Pillow Talk”? Don’t think too hard and it might come to you. And if it doesn’t, I’ll have the answer near the end of the show.
So before I dive into “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” I think I need to get a little bit into the band first.
Blue Oyster Cult—and by the way, that’s properly spelled with a diaresis over the O; that’s the two dots thingy—first formed in 1967 at Stony Brook University on Long Island. At the time the band comprised Donald Roeser, the guy we usually call Buck Dharma, as the lead guitarist, drummer Albert Bouchard, Allen Lanier on keyboards, Jeff Kagel (aka Krishna Das) and Les Braunstein singing vocals and bassist Andrew Winters. They were holding a jam session at Stony Brook when rock critic Sandy Pearlman heard them and offered to be their manager and creative partner. At the time, they called themselves Soft White Underbelly, a name they got from Winston Churchill’s description of World War Two Italy as “the soft white underbelly of the Axis Powers.” Pearlman was able to get the band gigs and he helped them get contracts with Elektra and then Columbia Records. Over the next couple of years there were some lineup changes and, after a bad review in 1969, they started experimenting with different names for the band, eventually settling on Blue Oyster Cult in 1971.
Where does a name like that come from? You ask. Well, I’m glad you did ask because I’m here to tell you, Cousin. Remember I told you that Sandy Pearlman was their creative partner. That means that he was providing a lot of lyrics for them, and giving them poetry he’d written to see what they could do with it. In this case, the phrase comes from something that Pearlman called the Imaginos Cycle. If you’re a fan of the group and that word sounds familiar, you’d be right: Imaginos was explored pretty heavily on their 1988 album of the same name. In that poetry cycle, the Blue Oyster Cult was a group of aliens who had come to Earth to help guide human history. The band members weren’t necessarily thrilled with the name, but they went with it. You know, for the time being. We’ve got an album to put together, boys.
That said, in 1976, Pearlman did an interview with ZigZag Magazine in which he claimed that the band’s name was just an anagram of the phrase “Cully Stout Beer”, but of course that was long before Imaginos came out. Whose idea was it to put that diaresis over the O? Mmmm…depends on whom you ask. Most people say it was Allen Lanier, but songwriter Richard Meltzer claims it was his idea because of the Wagnerian aspect of Metal music. That story doesn’t make a ton of sense, given that they were the first to do it and other bands such as Motorhead and Motley Crue did it afterward.
And while I’m at it, let me share with you the origin of the band’s “hook and cross” logo which appears on all of their albums somewhere. That was designed by another student at Stony Brook named Bill Gawlik in 1972 as part of his Master’s thesis. It’s essentially a mashup of multiple images from both Greek and Roman mythology, including that of Kronos, the father of Zeus and king of the Titans, and the alchemical symbol for lead. It also resembles the symbol for Saturn, who is the Roman god of agriculture. And it’s also similar to the symbol for lead that you’ll find in alchemy, lead being a—wait for it—heavy metal. So Bill Gawlik really put a ton of thought into this relatively simple-looking design.
Now, on to the song. Perhaps the biggest misconception about it is that it’s about suicide, largely because of the verse mentioning Romeo and Juliet, but in fact there’s a broader theme going on here. The song is more about the inevitability of death, and how foolish it is to be afraid of it. Buck Dharma had been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, which got him thinking about his own mortality and what might happen if he died at a relatively young age. He genuinely thought at that time that he might not live very long. In an interview he explained that when you’re young and you get news like that, your mind starts running away with you. Would he be reunited with his loved ones in the afterlife? This is where the story comes from. It’s the surviving of death in terms of your spirit. Your spirit will prevail. He always viewed it as a love song wherein the love transcends the physical existence of the partners. In fact, Dharma was rather surprised when he heard that people think the song encourages suicide, but he also conceded that a lot of their lyrics are more deep than obtuse, and how a person interprets them wouldn’t necessarily match up with their intention.
To my mind, part of that misinterpretation comes from the line citing “40,000 men and women every day”. Dharma was more or less guessing at the number of people who die in the world on any given day. This turned out to be a vast underestimate; the number is more like a HUNDRED and forty thousand. But if people are reading it as a suicide statistic, then it’s a vast OVER estimation; given that even today, where there are many more people in the world, suicide rates are in the realm of about 7000.
The weird research I wind up doing for this podcast, I tell you what. Someone looking at my search history is gonna have me committed. Anyway.
According to an interview with Performing Songwriter Dot Com, Dharma said, [quote] “The second verse is the one that’s caused all the trouble all these years. ‘Valentine’ is a metaphor for mortal love. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ I used as an example of a couple who had faith to take their love elsewhere when they weren’t permitted the freedom to love here and now. What I meant was, they’re in eternity cause they had the faith to believe in the possibility.” [unquote]
Now, the recording itself has an interesting sound, from that opening riff to the overall sound of Dharma’s vocals. The band was recording at The Record Plant in New York City, and they were in that studio for the first time. The riff was recorded using a guitar belonging to producer Murray Krugman, which was run through a Music Man 410 combo amplifier. Dharma’s vocals were recorded with a tube microphone made by Telefunken, specifically the U47 model which had been discontinued in 1965. More recent versions of the U47 use solid-state circuitry, whereas this one used a vacuum tube inside. This is a mic you have to turn on and let it sit for 15 minutes while the tube warms up. It’s a bit of a pain to deal with, but there’s a reason that mic was so popular with vocalists. Frank Sinatra owned his own U47. The Beatles recorded vocals with the U47, as did Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and Tony Bennett, among others. It’s a wonderfully warm microphone that does fabulous things to your voice. The tradeoff, of course, is that nowadays they cost several thousand dollars, whereas the radio-grade mic I typically use for this show is more in the realm of $400. Finally, just using Buck Dharma to do the vocals was a bit of a change that affected the overall sound. Dharma has a softer voice in general compared to their usual vocalist, Eric Bloom, who has more of an edgy sound. Dharma’s voice plus the U47 mic and a studio that’s considered to be “very dry” because of all the padding on the walls makes for a truly lit up sound despite the relatively quiet voice.
Also of note is that there was some trickery going on with the drums as well. The snare drum track was gated and fed back into the studio, where it played through a speaker facing upward, which had another snare sitting on it. A microphone was suspended over this to get the snare/speaker combination. Then this sound was combined back with the original snare track. Likewise, the hi-hat cymbal was tweaked by putting it through a delay and then piping it into an echo chamber.
Now, if you’re familiar with the famous Saturday Night Live sketch about this song, then you know of course there’s a cowbell being played here. For the three of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, in April of 2000 the show did a skit with Christopher Walken playing a record producer named Bruce Dickinson. In the skit he’s more than just a producer, he’s a super-producer. Will Ferrell played a fictional band member named Gene Frenkel, whose job it was to play the cowbell on the record. Every time Ferrell would play the cowbell too loudly, the band would complain, but Walken’s character would insist that the song needs more cowbell. It sounds weird when it’s deconstructed like this, but the performances actually sell the bit. Now, I’ve already told you that Gene Frenkle was a fictional character, but the funny part is that there really is a record producer named Bruce Dickinson, but he didn’t work on “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” That would be David Lucas, who in fact was the person who came up with using the cowbell to tie the whole thing together. Bass Player Joe Bouchard’s brother Albert, who is a percussionist, was brought in to play the cowbell as an overdub. Albert thought it was kind of crazy, but he complied, putting a lot of tape on the cowbell so it would give off that dull bonk rather than the reverberating ring that you usually get from a bell. Joe Bouchard said in an interview with the Washington Post that the cowbell really made it work. Weirdly enough, David Lucas has said that he was the one playing the cowbell, but so does guitarist Eric Bloom.
So, how loud was the cowbell? Well. If you listen to it on vinyl or a CD at home, it’s pretty unobtrusive. But radio stations do a little audio processing known as “compression”, which flattens the dynamic range of records and gets the soft stuff to sound as loud as the loud stuff. And when a radio station compresses any song with cowbell in it, that cowbell really pops out of the mix. And by the way, Buck Dharma had no idea that the “More Cowbell” sketch was coming, but to this day he thinks it’s hysterical. He’s said that sometimes it gets a little old for him, but he figures it’s got to be ten times worse for Christopher Walken. The real-life Bruce Dickinson says that sometimes he gets a little bit of ribbing about it, especially from Iggy Pop, who will call him up and open the conversations by saying “More Cowbell!”
There is a single version that runs three minutes and 45 seconds, which eliminates most of the instrumental middle section, where the album track runs 5:08. The single spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at Number 16 for two weeks in November of 1976. It was also a Number Seven record in Canada, but the single failed to chart in the UK. However, in 1978 the album track was released and the song went to Number 16 in the UK and Number 17 in Ireland. In 2017 it reached Number 11 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, a chart where the date of release often has little to do with the date the record charts. Also in 1976, Rolling Stone Magazine named “Don’t Fear the Reaper” as their Song of the Year, and has the song listed among their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In addition to being a Billboard hit and a staple of classic rock radio, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” has made its way into dozens of other pop culture media. Stephen King quoted some of the lyrics in his novel The Stand, though he did make an error in his transcription. The song itself was used in two different adaptations of that novel. It appears in several video games, at least one episode of The Simpsons and in several other television shows, and it’s worth pointing out that it’s in the 1978 film Halloween, in the scene where Laurie and Annie are in a car and being stalked by Michael Myers. It’s the song playing on the car’s radio. What’s notable here is that it’s the only licensed song in the entire film.
As far as covers go, Second Hand Songs Dot Com lists about 80 of them. Of the ones I listened to, most of them aren’t especially notable, but I’ll share a couple of them with you here.
[HEAVEN 17]
In 2005 the English synth band Heaven 17 did a pretty faithful cover in their own style, which I rather like. I have to admit that this one came as a surprise to me because I thought Heaven 17 had broken up, but they do re-form again once every now and then.
And here’s a fun one: in 1987 the Goo Goo Dolls recorded a rather punky version of the song for their debut album, with bass player Robby Takac on vocals. He explained that initially they thought it would be funny to play the song at about five times its normal tempo, stripping out pretty much everything but the three-chord structure. Here’s a clip of their version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper”…
[GOO GOO DOLLS]
But they discovered that by doing that, it allowed them to work on cover songs they liked and find a way to make it their own. Sometimes pranks don’t work out the way you expect, huh.
[BRIDGE 2]
And now, it’s time to answer our trivia question. Back on Page Two, I asked you what this song
[LOVE IS STRANGE clip]
“Love is Strange”, from 1956, has in common with this song:
[PILLOW TALK clip] “Pillow Talk”, from 1973.
You may have noticed that I was careful about not identifying the artist on either of these songs. “Love is Strange” was made popular by Mickey and Sylvia in 1956, and of course it had a little resurgence in the late 80s because of the film Dirty Dancing. “Pillow Talk,” on the other hand, was a hit for an artist who also bore the single name of Sylvia. But the fact is, both of those Sylvias are the same person, Sylvia Robinson. And if you know anything about rap music, then the answer is Yes. She’s also the founder and CEO of Sugar Hill Records, making her the Mother of Hip-Hop. But to get back to the songs: “Love is Strange” was written by Bo Diddley, though the writing credit has his then-wife Ethel Smith on the labels. It was all based off a guitar riff originated by Jody Williams, which has turned up in a few other songs as well. Now, having said that, Sylvia Robinson has claimed that she and Mickey Baker wrote the lyrics, but we can afford to split the difference here, because Mickey and Sylvia used…mostly different lyrics and that spoken segment near the end.
Now, in the mid-60s, Mickey Baker got sick of the music industry and moved to Paris. Sylvia Robinson stayed behind and formed All Platinum Records, which did have a few hits over the next ten years or so. But in 1973, she co-wrote “Pillow Talk” with Michael Burton and sent a demo to Al Green, hoping he would record it. But by this point Green was moving away from that whole sexy sound and getting more in touch with his religious side, so he turned it down. That’s when Sylvia decided to record it herself. And with that proto-disco sound, coupled with her moaning and heavy breathing, she beat Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” to the punch by two years. Or, perhaps she paved the way for Donna Summer. A lot of stations played the song but cut it short, before this part:
[PILLOW TALK coda]
Despite that, the song went to Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Soul Singles Chart.
[OUTRO]
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