The song’s crucial line: ‘ Forty thousand men and women every day’ was a ball-park figure of how many people Roeser believed would pass away in any given 24 hours: “I had no way of knowing the exact numbers for sure, it was just guesstimate on my part.”Īnd the following reference: ‘ Another forty thousand every day – we can be like they are’ alluded to spirits being reborn in earthly form to replace those that had died? “And Patti Smith was in our circle at the time,” he adds, “but she didn’t sing on that particular track.” My general health is good again now, but the incident definitely provided me with some timely food for thought. “Of course, it did cause me to start pondering my own mortality. “I wasn’t what you’d call close to death, but a doctor did diagnose that I had a heart condition,” he says of that illness. The other is that Patti Smith supplies backing vocals on it. One is that an almost fatal health scare of his own had given him the idea for it. Roeser also puts paid to another couple of persistent myths surrounding … Reaper. “It’s not necessarily about suicide, but of course the Romeo and Juliet part was what made people believe that had inspired the song.” “They’re just a couple whose love – you assume – survives suicide,” he explains. With its lyrical reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet being ‘ together in eternity’, it’s easy to see why people might assume the song is about a suicide pact.
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