It seems apt, given my age, to continue this series into the New Year with this!
'In which the world's braniest heavy metal band finally focuses its sound and winds up with, (besides the greatest Byrds knock off in history), a Really Big Statement on a Really Big Issue (which found its perfect context in an early scene in John Carpenter's Halloween, though Stephen King also made better use of it than your average oldies programmer does these days). There's something more chilling about the group's echoing Byrds-like, 'La la la, la la / La la la, la la' than its declaration that 40,000 die every day, which is proto-Jehovah's Witness crap that doesn't scare, (or convince) anybody.
Ultimately 'Don't Fear The Reaper' is rock and roll as naked lunch, where everybody sees what's on the end of every fork. That is to say, music that concentrates the mind every bit as effectively as the punch in the face its metalloid impact so much resembles.'
Dave Marsh - The Heart of Rock and Soul
# 997 in Marsh's chart of the best 1001 singles of all time. Reached # 12 in the American Billboard Chart in 1976.
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