“Seasons don’t fear the reaper,” Dharma sings. The track Dharma began to compose for BOC’s 1976 album Agents of Fortune turned out to be an epic suite of sorts built around the narrator’s reassurances to his beloved that death is not the end. I just thought about, is there life after death? Could lovers somehow reunite across the realm of living and dying? Is there something else out there, and can you come back?” It turned out to be not life-threatening at all, but it certainly got me thinking about it.

“I had just been diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia. “I wrote it because I was feeling mortal,” Dharma (born Donald Roeser) tells American Songwriter.

That’s when Buck Dharma, the band’s founder and one of its chief songwriters, endured what turned out to be one of the most fortuitous health scares in rock history. Such is the duality of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult’s riveting treatise on the potential of an afterlife.Īt the time of its composition, Blue Oyster Cult had been treading the fine line between hard rock and prog rock for close to a decade, achieving a cult (no pun intended) following and rising album sales, even as the possibility of a hit single seemed like a long shot. Yet it is now also a reminder of one of the funniest five minutes or so ever achieved on television.

It is one of the most popular songs of all time about death, that most somber of topics.

Dont fear the reaper lyrics