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“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult is not only one of my own personal favorite heavy metal songs, but is among those selected by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the Top 500 rock songs of all time. The song is not only a romanticizing about Death’s inevitability, and his personification as the Grim Reaper, but also about premature death, suicide and eternal love (“Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity”). The song and the album it appeared on, “Agents Of Fortune,” came out in time for October and Halloween 1976. At that time there was a mysterious illness called Legionnaire’s disease and a swine flu epidemic scare in progress in the United States. The entire US population was to be vaccinated against swine flu beginning on October 1, 1976. The scare was unwarranted and what vaccine was distributed caused more deaths and illnesses from side effects than the disease it was intended to protect everyone against. I always thought the lyrics of “Reaper,” along with its wild and scary lead guitar solo
