Five years ago, Saturday Night Live spoofed the making of Blue-yster Cult's "(Don't Fear) the Reaper." The laugh line: Guest host Christopher Walken, playing a superproducer, tells the band, "I've got a fever, and the only prescription is … more cowbell!" But unlike other SNL one-liners -é"You look mahvelous!" "Isn't that special?" - "more cowbell" didn't catch on instantly. It incubated online for years, only recently reaching the mainstream as the ultimate universal inside joke. Here are the memorable moments in the catchphrase's rise.
MAY 2000
The editors at Geek Speak Weekly start the Cowbell Project, dedicated to listing all rock songs that feature a cowbell.
FEB 2003
A band in Rochester begins calling itself More Cowbell after seeing the skit online.
AUG 2003
Saturday Night Live: The Best of Will Ferrell, including the Blue-yster Cult skit, is released on DVD.
JUL 2004
"More cowbell" is entered into the Urban Dictionary. Definition: 1) something everybody needs more of. 2) a remedy.
JUL 2004
The Sports Guy - aka ESPN's Bill Simmons - adds the phrase as the tagline for his online column.
AUG 2004
Busted Tees rolls out one of the first More Cowbell T-shirts. It becomes a best-seller.
OCT 2004
"I hear about it everywhere I go," Walken tells the Orlando Sentinel.
OCT 2004
Wilco covers "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" for the first of many times.
JAN 2005
The New Yorker mentions the phrase in an article about CollegeHumor.com.
JAN 2005
"I've seen [the skit] 20 times and I'm still not tired of it," BéC guitarist "Buck Dharma" Roeser tells The Washington Post.
MAY 2005
Queens of the stone age performs on SNL - with Will Ferrell on cowbell.
- David Goldenberg
credit Ziggy/MoreCowbell.tk
credit Walken, Wilco: Corbis; Roeser: AP
START
Even More Cowbell!
