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Get to Know the Cult, and Not the Blue Öyster Kind
With no cowbell in sight
It is likely that for the majority of music fans, the mention of “The Cult” brings to mind the band Blue Öyster Cult, specifically for the song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” from their 1976 album Agents of Fortune. This was only solidified in the minds of even non-music fans with the famous Christopher Walken/Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live skit that launched the phrase “more cowbell” into the national vocabulary.
The majority of music fans are, sadly, wrong; The Cult are, in fact, a completely different band. They are a hard rock band formed in 1983 in Bradford, England; for reference, Bradford is 130 miles north of Birmingham (home of Judas Priest) and 80 miles northeast of Liverpool (home of a marginally more successful quartet that Alex Markham loves writing about). Throughout their heyday in the 1980s, the band consisted of Ian Astbury on vocals, Billy Duffy on guitar, Jamie Stewart on bass, and an ever-changing number of drummers.
They were (and are) a band that kept your windows down and your foot on the accelerator every time they came on the radio. To call lead singer Ian Astbury different is an understatement, but he was different in a way that commanded your attention every time you saw him. There’s a reason that when former Doors members Ray Manzarek and…
