(Credits: Warner Brothers)
It’s not often an argument can be made that an iconic rock band ruined the life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars. However, everyone’s favourite tall-haired octogenarian, Christopher Walken‘s claim that a song written by a very famous band has been the bane of his existence for the last 25 years is pretty legitimate. In fact, Walken has been so open about how this song has inadvertently followed him to all corners of the Earth that the band itself admitted it feels sorry for the poor guy.
In 2000, Walken did something he’s done seven times in his illustrious career: hosted Saturday Night Live. The sketch comedy institution has always been the perfect vehicle for Walken to get a little weird outside of the confines of a major motion picture, and he’s never passed up the opportunity to do so. However, on that fateful night, Walken took part in a sketch that he had no idea would catch on like wildfire all over the globe.
“More Cowbell” was presented as a faux Behind the Music VH1 documentary, which showed 1970s psychedelic hard rock pioneers Blue Öyster Cult recording their hit song ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper’. A pre-movie fame, Will Ferrell played the entirely fictional cowbell player Gene Frenkel, a man determined to make sure his ridiculous instrument was heard above all others. Walken played the eccentric producer who, for some ungodly reason, loved the sound of the cowbell so much that he consistently encouraged Frenkel to play it louder and more vigorously.
The sketch built and built in preposterousness until the punchline, which saw Walken utter the immortal words, “Guess what? I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!” It was received rapturously at the time and is widely considered one of SNL’s best sketches. However, nobody – not Ferrell, not Walken, and certainly not Blue Öyster Cult – foresaw that it would become the primary thing Walken was asked about any time he encountered a fan in the wild. Ferrell even claimed that Walken once told him the sketch had “ruined his life,” and the Anchorman star couldn’t quite tell if he was joking.
Amusingly, though, the band were just as synonymous with “More Cowbell” as Walken – although they sympathised with the Oscar-winner. “Yeah, absolutely, we’re stuck with the cowbell just like him, you know?” guitarist Buck Dharma told Let There Be Talk in 2020. “But as bad as it is for us – I mean, it’s not so bad, people used to bring cowbells to the show. And people can’t play the cowbell, I got to tell you, there’s a reason why percussionists get paid – because they can play the cowbell.”
“Be that as it may,” Dharma continued, “as much as we have to deal with the cowbell, I feel sorry for him – with the length and depth of his career, that people come up to him and say, ‘More cowbell!’”
So, there you have it: you never know what’s going to be the thing that haunts a legendary actor everywhere he goes. It could be a bad performance, it could be a box-office disaster – or it could be the silly line he said in one short sketch that took on a life of its own.
It’s all hugely ironic, too, because, as Dharma explains, the song wasn’t even overly heavy on the cowbell. He chuckled, “We tried to discourage people from playing the cowbell, and it’s funny – back in the day, we never played the cowbell live. It wasn’t until that sketch came out that we felt obliged to actually play the cowbell part, so now we do.”
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