“More Cowbell” isn’t the most-watched SNL sketch of all-time, but it might be the most famous. You probably know the whole thing by heart: “Yes, the Bruce Dickinson,” “the last time I checked, we don’t have a whole lot of songs that feature the cowbell,” “guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription… is more cowbell,” etc. (My personal favorite moment is the way Christoper Walken says “cock of the walk, baby.”) “More Cowbell” has been watched and analyzed so many times that it’s difficult to find anything new to say about it, but Chris Parnell, who plays Blue Öyster Cult vocalist Eric Bloom, offered a little-known fact about the sketch on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Parnell’s nickname while he was on SNL was “Ice Man,” which was not a Top Gun reference. Instead, it “both referred to the fact that you would execute a script sort of word perfectly, no flubs, but also you never, you famously never broke in sketches,” Meyers explained. He even kept it together during “More Cowbell,” a sketch where everyone, including Jimmy Fallon (of course) and Will Ferrell, giggled through their lines.
“I mean that’s really like the gold standard of not-breaking because I think when you go back and watch it, it seems like Will’s sole purpose in that sketch was to make his castmates break,” Meyers said, to which Parnell responded, “I think it was. I think it was. Christopher Walken and I did not break.” But! “There was a moment that the camera was not on me, and I knew it wasn’t on me, and I looked down at my guitar, and I smiled,” the Archer and 30 Rock star added. “So, I don’t know if that counts as a break.”
I’m still not sure how he didn’t break here:
That’s Emmy-worthy commitment to the bit.
You can watch the Late Night with Seth Meyers clip above.
