One of TV’s most memorable pairings of rock music and comedy, Saturday Night Live’s “More Cowbell” remains one of the series’ most celebrated sketches nearly 25 years after it first aired and is widely considered to be Will Ferrell’s funniest sketch. For many of those years, fans were under the false impression that Ferrell shared a creative credit with another writer for the classic segment, but the Anchorman star set the record straight-ish.
As part of a conversation hosted by Interview Magazine, Ferrell yukked it up with current SNL fan-fave Bowen Yang about his career in general and his time on the longrunning NBC series more specifically. Speaking about having a steady comedy friends group through and after college, Yang addressed a comment Ferrell made about being better equipped for structure as opposed to improvised comedy. Here’s how this back-and-forth went:
- YANG: But I’m curious when you say that you do well with structure and not necessarily hustling. There’s a big server at SNL that has all the typed-out sketches from every single show, and it’s incredible. And weirdly, it’s the material thing that I’ll miss the most. It’s the access to documented comedy history. We were talking at work one day after a read-through, and we were just like, "I think Ferrell wrote ‘Cowbell’ by himself."
- FERRELL: Yeah.
- YANG: We had this discussion about the risks of writing solo as a cast member. People tense up at the table when they see it’s just your piece, but we were like, "You know who did it incredibly well was Will." And then we read “More Cowbell.”
- FERRELL: Well, according to Wikipedia, some playwright in Scotland or Ireland helped me. It’s so random.
Even though Will Ferrell had supposedly written the Blue Oyster Cult-riffing sketch with another person, it seems like Bowen Yang & Co. didn't put a whole lot of faith and appreciation in the mysterious other writer, since they all shared the belief that the Step Brothers co-star penned the segment himself, and were correct in that assumption.
For a full-cast show like Saturday Night Live where each writer and cast member are somewhat responsible for pitching both ideas and themselves as the perfect vessels to bring those ideas to life. As such, it can be far easier to work in pairs or trios so that numbers can be used to one's advantage. Ferrell clearly didn't require such add-ons, but what's the story there?
Who Was The Alleged Co-Writer Of The "More Cowbell" Sketch?
For an unclear number of years, the dedicated Wikipedia page for SNL's "More Cowbell" sketch didn't list Will Ferrell as the sole writer, but gave him partial credit along with a "Donnell Campbell."
As Ferrell himself hinted at, seemingly the most prominent Donnell Campbell in the world was a Scottish poet, playwright and historian who died in 2019 at the age of 79. (There are others who share the name that would seemingly have even less to do with sketch-writing tasks.) It's unclear exactly why that writer's name has been attributed to the cowbell sketch for all these years.
Could it be that Campbell was given credit for the sketch simply because his name is arguably the traditional surname that sounds the most like "Cowbell" itself? If his first name had been "Mo," this theory would be a lot stronger.
Will Ferrell On How Writing Helped Him On His SNL Journey
Despite the fact that Ferrell's writing credit was seemingly watered down in the public's eye, the actor himself was obviously aware that he wrote the sketch by his lonesome, and also performed it to the best of his abilities, even after the dress rehearsal performance didn't go as positively as the cast would have hoped. (Which reportedly led to Ferrell donning an even small shirt that he had to keep pulling down the whole time.)
Ferrell attributed the ability to pen that sketch alone to his writing background within the Groundlings comedy group, and compared it to the more calamitous improvisational nature of UCB. In his words:
Yes. I wrote it by myself, but that was the best part about the Groundlings. If you did UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade] in New York, your improv skills were just off the charts. I still don’t consider myself a very strong improviser, but we were forced to write sketches three to four times a week, so when I got to the show, I was like, ‘I know how to write for myself.’ It took away that anxiety of chasing down a writer, trying to form these alliances.
Whatever strategies Ferrell had in mind at the time when he was an SNL cast member, they clearly worked, since he became one of the show's most successful alums, sharing that space with superstars such as Bill Murray, Kate McKinnon and Mike Myers.
With less anxiety comes more comedy, it seems, with "More Cowbell" not only maintaining its popularity over the years, but also still being an example of a sketch that broke the most cast members. Chris Parnell is the only Repertory Player who didn't laugh on camera. (The Rick and Morty star did confess to smiling during an instant where he knew cameras were not on him.)
Perhaps expectedly, Christopher Walken himself also didn't break into laughter during the sketch, and quite convincingly argued his point that all he wanted in the world was more cowbell in "Don't Fear the Reaper." Ferrell later claimed that the sketch ruined Walken's life due to all the fans who yelled lines at him in public.
Ferrell clearly has no issues with fans yelling such comments at him, since he reprised Gene Frenkle for a live performance with Marc Anthony, and also brought the character back on SNL itself during the episode he hosted in which Green Day served as the musical guest. He humorously was not familiar with the song being performed, and unwittingly left the stage before it was finished.
Check out all the upcoming guest hosts and musical guests heading to Saturday Night Live's 30 Rock stage for the remainder of Season 50.
Plus, fans will no doubt see “More Cowbell” appear in some way, shape or form when the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary special airs as part of the 2025 TV premiere schedule on February 16.
