Classic Rock 93.9

Blue Öyster Cult’s classic tune “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” was the subject of a now legendary Saturday Night Live sketch in 2000, which featured Will Ferrell on the cowbell and host Christopher Walken as producer Bruce Dickinson, who keeps demanding “more cowbell” during the recording session. Well, BOC guitarist Buck Dharma is now sharing how it affected the band and their live show.

“It’s been a 25-year journey with the cowbell and riding that horse,” Dharma tells Vulture in a new interview devoted to the sketch. “I can’t complain about any of the history and what’s happened. It’s all good.”

Dharma says when he watched the sketch for the first time he felt relief.

“Relief that it was funny and relief that it wasn’t too cruel on the band,” he says. “SNL had done some rather cruel things about Neil Diamond and other artists over the years, so I was happy it was actually hilarious. While it poked fun at Blue Öyster Cult, it wasn’t mean-spirited at all.”

And believe it or not, the sketch resulted in the band adding, you guessed it, more cowbell to their live shows.

“For 20-odd years, we didn’t use a live cowbell for our shows and never considered it,” he says. “We had to play the cowbell because there was just no getting away from it.”

He adds, “I’m grateful that as significant as the sketch is – because after 25 years, it still is – it didn’t kill the song, its original intent, or its original mood. … So I’m glad the sketch didn’t kill the song and didn’t make it one big joke.”

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The Dio greatest hits compilation The Very Beast of Dio Vol. 2 is being reissued on vinyl.

The two-LP set, which has been out of print for nearly 10 years, is due out Jan 31. It will also be available on CD.

The Very Beast of Dio Vol. 2 was originally released in 2012 and includes selections from the final four Dio albums — 1996’s Angry Machines, 2000’s Magica, 2002’s Killing the Dragon and 2004’s Master of the Moon — as well as a song called “Metal Will Never Die,” which was frontman Ronnie James Dio‘s final recorded track before his death in 2010.

Vol. 1, which spans the first six Dio albums, was released in 2000.

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Queen’s Roger Taylor is defending the Band Aid charity after it received criticism for its decision to release a 40th anniversary remix of the charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

The original “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was spearheaded by Bob Geldof and released in 1984, featuring a collection of U.K. stars that included U2‘s Bono, Sting, Phil Collins, Duran Duran and Paul Young. The song was later revived in 1989, 2004 and 2014, each time with artists who were popular at that moment.

The remix mashes together vocals from the different versions of the song over the years. But when it was announced, Ed Sheeran, who appeared on the 2014 version, wrote on Instagram that if he had known about the remix, he would have denied Geldof permission to use his vocals. He cited an Instagram Story by Ghanian-English musician Fuse ODG, in which Fuse wrote that such all-star charity projects “perpetuate damaging stereotypes.”

Taylor has now taken to social media to share how he feels about being on the single, and he can’t understand the criticism.

“Proud to be a part of this. It’s probably one of the greatest moments in rock ’n’ roll history actually having an effect on the world!” he shared on Instagram next to the Band Aid 40 logo. “How anyone can criticise such a magnificent and charitable project, which continues to save so many lives from famine is beyond comprehension. They need their heads examined and their values readjusted. #bandaid40.”

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On This Day, Nov. 27, 1970 …

The Beatles‘ George Harrison released his third studio album, the triple album All Things Must Pass, which would go on to spend seven weeks on top of the Billboard Album chart.

The record, co-produced by Phil Spector, was Harrison’s first full-length album following the breakup of The Beatles and featured guest appearances by Harrison’s Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr, as well as Eric Clapton, Billy Preston and others.

All Things Must Pass contained the #1 single “My Sweet Lord,” which made Harrison the first former member of The Beatles to score a solo #1 in the U.S. The track, which was released as a double A-side single with “Isn’t It a Pity,” also went to #1 in several other countries, including the U.K. and Australia.

A commercial success for Harrison, the record has been certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA.

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If you’ve ever thought that Billy Corgan looks a lot like comedian Bill Burr, well, you’re not alone. According to The Smashing Pumpkins frontman, though, there may be a real, biological reason for that.

As Corgan shares on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, his stepmother once raised the possibility that Burr could be one of his stepsiblings.

“She goes, ‘I think [Burr] might be one of your father’s illegitimate children,'” Corgan recalls. “‘Bill Burr might be one of the children that your father sired in his days being a traveling musician.'” 

Corgan adds that, as much as Burr might look like him, he thinks Burr looks even more like his father. What’s more, Corgan says that his father once told him he had a half brother who was named Bill around the same age as him. Corgan is 57, while Burr is 56.

“This is all totally true, I swear to God, bottom of my heart, cross my heart, hope to die,” Corgan says.

As compelling as all this might be, though, Corgan is skeptical he and Burr really share a father.

“It’s my belief at this point, ’cause I’ve sat on this story for 10 years, that I don’t think Bill Burr and I are related,” Corgan says. “I think it’s just one of those things.”

Burr, meanwhile, hasn’t made any comments responding to Corgan, though he did share a link to the podcast on his Instagram Story.

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The surviving original members of the Grateful Dead just revealed that a 60th anniversary reunion was in the works prior to the October death of band member Phil Lesh at the age of 84.

Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart shared the news in an interview with CBS Mornings, taped just five days after Lesh’s death, with the trio noting that Lesh was supposed to take part in the interview as well.

“I was hoping that we could play with him again one more time,” Kreutzmann shared of their bandmate, “so that was my sadness on that one. Because I know he wanted to play with us again, too.”

“We were kicking it around,” Weir said of the idea of playing together again. “We were gonna get together and, and kick some songs around tomorrow.”

All three musicians confirmed there was some discussion about the four of them coming together to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary in 2025, but it likely won’t happen now because of Lesh’s death.

“We just don’t have enough to put a band together right now,” Weir said, with Kreutzmann adding, “Well not the three of us,” although he suggested if they did it would have to be with guest musicians.

“I was hopin’ that we could do it for the 60th. Would be fun,” Kreutzmann said.

“We were gonna see where it goes. But we were just gonna play the four of us. And now there’s only three of us … that’s different,” Weir said. 

The interview comes ahead of the Grateful Dead’s latest honor: they are set to receive the Kennedy Center Honors in December. They will also be celebrated as the 2025 MusiCares Person of the Year in February.

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Michael McDonald is letting everyone know that he has the ability to laugh at himself.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the Doobie Brothers singer tells the magazine how he felt about a scene in the 2005 Judd Apatow-directed movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin that basically makes fun of him.

In the scene in question, Paul Rudd loses it on his boss Jane Lynch after video of McDonald performing “Yah Mo B There,” his 1983 duet with James Ingram, keeps playing on the TV sets in their electronics store.

“If I hear ‘Yah Mo B There’ one more time, I’m going to yah mo burn this place to the ground,” he says in frustration.

“I have to be honest, I thought it was hysterical,” McDonald tells the mag. “When you get to a certain point in your career and your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value might come in handy. And that was that moment for me.” 

But it seems Rudd may have felt bad about making fun of McDonald.

“Paul Rudd actually stopped me in the airport, and we were both rushing to different flights,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer shares. “And he goes, ‘I hope you weren’t offended by my performance in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not. It was great. I still laugh about it when I think about it.’”

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A rare handwritten letter by John Lennon to Eric Clapton is set to go up for auction in Spain in December.

International Autographs Auctions Europe SL will auction off the eight-page document from the 1970s, which seems to be a draft of a note in which The Beatles legend writes of a new band he wants to start and personally asks Clapton to join.

In the letter, Lennon describes the project as a “nucleus group” featuring musicians like Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner, Nicky Hopkins and Phil Spector, and says that Clapton’s addition would “bring back the balls in rock ‘n’ roll.”

The letter was written during the time when Clapton was infatuated with George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd, and Lennon suggests the new band would help relieve some of the pressures he was dealing with. Clapton eventually married Boyd after she divorced Harrison.

Although Lennon never names the group in the letter, he was likely referring to the Plastic Ono Band, for which Clapton was one of the rotating members. 

The auction is set to take place Dec. 5. More info can be found at autographauctions.eu.

In other Beatles news, Capitol Records has announced a collaboration between The Beatles and the clothing company Online Ceramics for a new capsule collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of the band’s arrival in America. The collection is available for preorder now.

Plus, a special screening of the new documentary Beatles ’64 will take place Dec. 5 at the Paley Center for Media in New York, with the film’s director, David Tedeschi, and others on hand for a panel discussion following the screening. Beatles ’64 will stream exclusively on Disney+ starting Nov. 29.

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Timothée Chalamet does his own singing and guitar playing in the upcoming Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, and apparently he had to learn a lot of the Dylan catalog to be ready for the film.

In a new featurette shared by Entertainment Weekly, producer Fred Berger shares just how extensive Chalamet’s preparation was for the role.

“There are 40 songs in the movie that he performs,” Berger says. “On guitar, on harmonica, and singing live take after take after take.”

The clip features behind-the-scenes footage of Chalamet performing as Dylan, set to his take on the Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone.”

“It was important for me to sing and play live,” Chalamet says. “Because if I can actually do it, why should there be an element of artifice here? And I’m proud that we took that leap.”

His co-star Elle Fanning said she had “goose bumps,” watching Chalamet at work, noting, “You can see how much love, and how hard he’s worked and how much he cares about getting this right.” 

The clip also features footage of Boyd Holbrook performing as Johnny Cash, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Ed Norton and Pete Seeger.

“It’s a movie about music that is unadorned and authentic,” the film’s director, James Mangold, adds. “You could feel the thing working for everyone.”

A Complete Unknown hits theaters Dec. 25.

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Sammy Hagar turned 77 in October, and it sounds like he’s pretty OK with aging.

“I love 99% of it, I really do,” he tells People. “There’s something about being a little bit complacent in your old age saying, ‘Nah, I already did that.’”

According to Hagar, the older you are, the better decisions you make.

“In my 40s, I spun more wheels. I spent more energy on [things] that I didn’t do than I do now on things that I do, and it’s just such a waste,” he explains. “I wasted so much time and energy and money and things I could have done for other people. The older you get, I’m just more directed, so I don’t bite on things. I don’t waste people’s time.”

The rocker, who recently announced dates for The Best of Both Worlds Las Vegas residency, insists it’s “kind of cool being old.”

“I’m healthy. I’m still active,” he says. “I still walk on the beach. I still work out. I still sing. I still run around and dance. I still chase my wife around the bedroom.”

Hagar says he’s had thoughts on retirement for the past 10 years, but once he gets on a stage that all changes.

“I get insecure in between shows, in between tours, and I think, ‘Gee, do I still have it? Can I really still do all that?’” he says. “And I get out there, and it’s like it’s riding a bike or having sex.”

And speaking of getting on a stage, Sammy and Van Halen’s Michael Anthony performed during the halftime show of the Las Vegas Raiders vs. Denver Broncos game Nov. 24. The rocker has now shared pro-shot footage of the performance, featuring “I Can’t Drive 55” and Van Halen’s “Right Now.”

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