Christopher Walken says iconic “More Cowbell” ‘SNL’ sketch “ruined” his life

21 January, 2025

Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken told Will Ferrell that their famous “More Cowbell” Saturday Night Live sketch from 2000 ruined his life, the latter has revealed.

The sketch paid tribute to Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 classic ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’, with Walken playing a producer, Bruce Dickerson, ordering Ferrell’s Gene Frenkle to play the cowbell with more enthusiasm, to the chagrin of the rest of the band.

Over two decades on, Ferrell, who wrote the sketch, admitted in Peacock’s SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night documentary series that Walken came to resent it over the years – as he found out when he visited the actor – who was appearing in Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding In Spokane on Broadway – in 2010.

“I went to see [Walken] backstage, and he’s like, ‘You know, you’ve ruined my life… every show, people bring cowbells for the curtain call and bang them,” Ferrell said. “It’s quite disconcerting.’”

Walken didn’t take part in the instalment of the docuseries looking at the sketch, but has previously said, via the New York Post, “I don’t understand why it follows me around like it does…. It’s kind of run its course.”

Jimmy Fallon, who played another of the band members, said that the intensity of the live sketch was beyond anything they’d tried in rehearsals, explaining, “[Walken] upped his game. He was almost doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken. He was talking like how no human being would talk, ever.”

Ferrell said that the sketch came from thoughts he’d had since ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ first came out. He said: “I had the thought even as a kid, ‘What is the life of the guy playing the cowbell?’ I guess that was germinating for decades in my head.”

For their part, Blue Öyster Cult were fans of the sketch when it aired. Lead guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, who wrote and sang lead vocals on the song, told the Washington Post in 2005: “We’re huge Christopher Walken fans. I’ve probably seen it 20 times and I’m still not tired of it.”

As for Walken’s more recent activity, one of his biggest roles in the last few years has been that of Burt Goodman in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ thriller series Severance. Recently, he revealed that he has Severance DVDs sent to him because he doesn’t “have the equipment” to stream it.

The show’s second season premiered on January 17, almost three years after the first came out. NME gave it a five-star review, writing: “As things get all the more intriguing by the minute, Severance is a show best watched on high alert. For example, graffiti scrawled in the background reads ‘Who is alive?’

“By the time The Stone Roses’ ‘Love Spreads’ hits the soundtrack, with Ian Brown wailing ‘Let me put you in the picture / Let me show you what I mean,’ you’ll be begging for the Severance team to do the same. Don’t stress it, though. Enjoy the ride and let this unique show tease and titillate your brain until you finally submit.”

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