Having been inundated with 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live content these past few weeks, it’s time for me to weigh in. For the record, the best of these has been the new Questlove film, 50 Years of SNL Music; a superbly edited and comprehensively collected overview of the incredible line-up of musicians that have graced the 8H stage at 30 Rockefeller Center throughout the last half-century. The doc reminds us of how SNL was once less a popularity vehicle of pop culture’s latest flavor or a place for established acts to promote their latest releases, but a cutting-edge generational yawp from the edges of the comedy world and the alternative fringes of our musical landscape.
I was there from the beginning, totally by hero worship, as George Carlin was (and always will be) my man, and he hosted the very first show in the fall of 1975. I also got to see another favorite of mine at the time, Billy Preston, perform, and I was duly hooked. Over the next couple years into the early 1980s, SNL was the place for seeing new bands (Talking Heads), alternative artists (Patti Smith), and some seminal ones, too, that I was introduced to on the show, like the Band in 1976. However, this was mostly a vehicle to be blown away by something I had not seen (the B-52s) or heard before, and in some cases got to see live that I longed to see (Queen).
You have to remember, for a kid living in the sticks of Freehold, New Jersey in the seventies and early eighties, with no MTV, except for the occasional Midnight Special, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, or very rarely an Old Grey Whistle Test to bring the music into my living room, there was nowhere else to see new or seminal music – never mind experience it live.
So, for my contribution to this seemingly endless Saturday Night Live tributing, I present my favorite musical performances from the show that either changed my perception of bands/artists or introduced me to their brilliance.
10. Blues Brothers (April 22, 1978)
It’s hard to express the utter jaw-dropping experience of seeing my two favorite cast members of the original Not-Ready-for-Primetime Players, John Belushi and Dan Akroyd, open the show with a ripping version of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man.” The two men just exploded into these spastic dances – Belushi belting in a raspy Chicago bark and Akroyd blowing blues harp. No one in the audience at 8H or at home was prepared for this – in fact, the story goes that it was a last-minute substitute for a short-running show to have it as the cold-open (the first musical act to do so).
I needed more of this, and got it later in the year when Briefcase Full of Blues, a live recording from Hollywood’s Universal Amphitheater, was released. The clamor so great, the Blues Brothers actually went on a tour, which also marks the first time a spin-off from the show would make hay outside the show, something that would be part of pop culture for decades with movies starring cast members (Belushi in Animal House) or films based on popular skits (Wayne’s World).
Of course, in 1980, the now classic Blues Brothers movie hit theaters, featuring cameos by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, among others, and boasting the grandest of all car chases.
9. Frank Zappa (December 11, 1976)
I had no idea who Frank Zappa was before he performed on SNL, and it was, to say the least, mesmerizing stuff. Taking over every inch of the allotted space (and more), with the extended band and weird props sprawling outside the screen, Zappa meandered his way through “I’m The Slime,” from his 1973 album Over-Nite Sensation, which went on to be one of my favorite of his albums, that featured a TV screen with green slime pouring down on it as Zappa hilariously eviscerated the concept of broadcast television whilst appearing on it.
There was also a fully staged version of “The Purple Lagoon,” a piece of bizarre performance art cum jam that for a barely 14-year-old was quite the ocular ride. Zappa even resurrected a Mothers-era classic, “Peaches en Regalia,” from his 1969 album, Hot Rats – another record I now adore. Of course, none of this was remotely familiar to me then, but succeeded in putting Zappa’s name on my lips the following Monday at school, as I wondered who else had been infected by him.
8. David Bowie (December 15, 1979)
I did, however, know who David Bowie was three years later when he graced the stage, but like so many artists, I had not seen him perform. And, man, did he perform. Like Zappa, Bowie presented three songs, opening with his 1970 opus, “The Man Who Sold the World,” dressed (or captured) in what looked like a ceramic suit (PVC), and carried to the microphone by two alabaster-faced, black-clad figures with strange hairdos and blank expressions. Unable to move, Bowie brilliantly emoted with his hands and facial expressions, crooning the song from the deepest recesses of his voice. Unforgettable.
Fresh from his two-year experimental Berlin period with producer Brian Eno, Bowie’s homage to Dadaism (of which I knew shit about at the time), he added “TVC15” from his last L.A. recordings, Station to Station, and “Boys Keep Swinging” from his most recent album, Lodger. All this was a revelation to me and an introduction to a Bowie beyond what I had digested up until that evening into morning.
7. Counting Crows (January 15, 1994)
The early nineties was the last time I enjoyed the cast of SNL, and even though it was no longer appointment viewing, I found myself catching a show or two. However, on this night, I made sure to tune in to see a band my then-girlfriend raved about when handing me their album, exclaiming, “Someone made an album for you!” Then, she demanded I explain its lyrics. Unbeknownst to me, only weeks before, as Counting Crows played in NYC, the band’s manager whispered in the ear of SNL booker, Marci Klein (daughter of Calvin Klein), “Remember how cool it was when Saturday Night Live used to discover bands?” She did.
Listening to Counting Crows has always been a mere precursor to seeing them – the real way to absorb the band into your soul –and that evening was the first of an eventual lifelong infatuation with their live shows, which led me to inevitably interview lead singer, Adam Duritz, which led to our working together on a book project (still in progress) and a podcast (Underwater Sunshine). But on that night, it was just me, the TV, and a new band crashing into the dramatic “Round Here,” their debut album’s (August and Everything After) serpentine opener that seemed to levitate before my eyes. They followed it up later with their soon-to-be first hit, “Mr. Jones,” which sealed the deal. It was a magnificent introduction to the Bay Area band that would blow up after those few minutes on SNL.
Thirty years later, Adam told me, “It was all about that performance and that song and what we were, what we had planned and worked so hard to become.”
6. Devo (October 14, 1978)
My immediate embrace of new wave/punk can be traced back to the early days of SNL, and one of the first to penetrate was Devo, who appeared as alien as Bowie with the humor of Zappa and the hypnotizing effect of Counting Crows. The first of these performances was their cover of the Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction,” which comes on rhythmically quirky enough, but watching them move as if machines tethered to the floor dressed in bright yellow jumpsuits with cheap 3-D sunglasses was arresting. The drummer substituted mere playing for some kind of optical illusion, and a fuzz-tone guitar echoing the famous riff completely altered one of the most recognizable songs in rock history.
Devo was indeed a visual assault, as in only a few minutes, they presented their entire ethos (D-Evolution) and mythos (WTF was that?) at once, coming on less a band than consummate pseudo-thespians. Later in the show, coming back to rip through another song from their debut, Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, (which I ran to the record store to buy the next afternoon), “Jocko Homo,” the alien concepts of Devo was fully enveloped into pop culture.
5. The Rolling Stones (October 7, 1978)
A week earlier, the composers of “Satisfaction” showed up to tear up the stage with three songs from their latest album, Some Girls – a remarkable comeback for a band deeply into seventies excesses of rock decadence, challenged by punk, and left for the irrelevance scrap heap. The raucous gang that showed up that evening, however, was humming from the road, clad in loose-fitting bowery-thrift outfits unrepentantly stumbling through slip-shod grooves. Mick Jagger’s voice was hoarse and menacing, and his Gimmer Twin, Keith Richards reverberated degenerate chic.
Jagger did Jagger things – hopping, sliding, flailing his arms like a lunatic, running in and out of the lighted stage, grabbing guitarist Ronnie Woods’ nuts and licking his face. During “Shattered” (their eulogy for a rotting Big Apple), “Beast of Burden” (sex-begging at its most defiant), and “Respectable” (a barn-burn rocker in which the guitar strap barely hung onto the disturbingly skinny Jagger’s shoulder), the Stones aggressively reclaimed their mantle of purveyors of playful smut and roll.
4. Paul Simon and George Harrison (November 20, 1976)
It was always a treat when Paul Simon hosted (this was his second time), because he not only performed, but did comedy sketches and appeared in filmed pieces – and he was damn funny in them. But on this night, he put the SNL music moment on the map by bringing in ex-Beatle George Harrison (the first of the Fab Four to appear on the show). This was a shocker for two reasons – one, Harrison rarely did appearances, especially in the States, and, two, he hardly ever played Beatles songs. No Beatle (ex or otherwise) had ever dueted on another artist’s song, either.
Sitting on the front area of the small stage surrounded by the audience, the two legends sat on stools as if playing at a local downtown coffeehouse and opened with “Here Comes the Sun,” Harrison taking the lead vocal on his composition and Simon chiming in on the second. The two harmonized on the chorus as if they had sung together since their teen years – as Simon did so well with Art Garfunkel and Harrison expertly added to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Next, Simon began his song, “Homeward Bound,” and again the two traded verses and harmonized beautifully on the choruses, playing intricate, interwoven guitar parts throughout.
The mini set concluded with Harrison tossing off a bluesy ending off Simon’s folksy flourish, which brought a smile to the songwriter’s face and an explosive ovation from the stunned audience.
3. Sinéad O’Connor (October 3, 1992)
She rehearsed it just fine that afternoon, finishing her a cappella rendition of Bob Marley’s “War” by holding up a photo of a child refugee, the victim of systemic global violence. So, no one on SNL had the faintest idea that during Sinéad O’Connor’s second song that evening, dressed all in white with her signature shaved head above piercing eyes, she would hold up a photo of Pope John Paul II and tear it to shreds, throw it to the floor, and state, “Fight the real enemy.”
The furor was quick and vicious. America was unaware of the Catholic Church’s crimes in Ireland and across the world subjugating the rights of women to be empowered in the workplace, in marriages, in health care, and motherhood. No one understood then the horrors of the Church’s coverup of rampant pedophilia and child rape by priests and nuns. It did not matter; the entire nation was against her.
Except me, who had come through the fire as an ex-Catholic and followed Sinéad’s career intently over the past seven years. I was at the then-Garden State Arts Center when she refused to have them play the National Anthem, which caused an uproar two years earlier. But even I, whose bar for human behavior comes in painfully low, could not have imagined the hate and derision cast upon her. It was the bravest thing I had seen anyone do on television and remains so to this day.
2. Gary Numan (February 16, 1980)
When I think of Saturday Night Live, beyond the famous skits and classic characters, I always think of Gary Numan playing “Cars,” his 1979 hit from the album of the same name. I think of how alien he looked and how bizarre the sounds he was getting out of his keyboards were. It’s one of those Andy Kaufman moments (also what I think of when I think of SNL) where you’re not quite sure what you are watching is putting you on or genuine. The scowl on Numan’s face and the way the song ear-worms its way into your frontal lobe became the sounds – for me – of the future, the very near future, but one nonetheless that was coming to fruition live on my TV set.
It was surreal. That is the only way I can describe how I consumed this. I do not recall if I was under the influence or tired or merely jacked (as always) to hear what the musical guest had to offer, but Gary Numan playing “Cars” on SNL is a seminal moment in my understanding of where music was going in the dawning decade. And let me say, when things went that way – and fast – all I could think of was “Cars,” Gary Numan, and SNL.
As an addendum to this, all my friends could not stop talking about that performance for weeks, and what didn’t help was that no record store seemed to know what the hell we were talking about. Did we all have a collective hallucination? But it was true, because it wasn’t too long that “Cars” was everywhere, making it to the Top 10 of the Billboard charts, but I saw the future and the hit first on my TV, on SNL.
1. Elvis Costello and the Attractions (December 17, 1977)
A lifelong admiration for Elvis Costello began with he and his newly minted Attractions playing a spirited version of “Watching the Detectives” on SNL as their first song. Apparently, Costello did not believe “Less Than Zero,” another song from his debut album, was the right one to perform that evening, and on his own, stopped a quite shocked band (you can see it on their faces) before blurting out the yet unreleased “Radio Radio.” Snapping into action, the excited Attractions ripped into an incredibly furious version of the song that would eventually appear on Costello’s first album with them, This Year’s Model. (The debut had another backup band.)
This caught me by surprise, but as it happened, I knew it would be a big deal – and it was. Saturday Night Live‘s director and most of the camera staff had to work cold without previous blocking and follow the action live, which they did beautifully, if not haphazardly, which added to the thrill. But this caused more than a stir, leading to Costello – if not banned, which NBC denies – becoming persona non grata for nearly a decade on American television. For me and thousands of kids everywhere, Elvis became our hero that night, and after this evening, I did not miss buying any of his albums and saw him perform more than any other artist for the remainder of my twenties (not including Prince, which became silly after a while).
Like the Beatles will always be synonymous with playing on a roof, the idea of a musical artist using a live setting to control his performance has always come back to that night and Elvis, stating, “Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no reason to do this song, here… ‘Radio Radio!’” Bam!
Honorable Mentions
Joe Cocker (October 7, 1976)
Joined by (and dressed the same) John Belushi for a rousing version of “Feelin’ Alright,” Belushi made his bones doing a spot-on imitation of the mercurial Joe Cocker in performance, and to see them together was beyond surreal and hella fun.
Prince (February 21, 1981)
A couple of years later when I became obsessed with Prince, I looked back and realized I saw him for the first time on SNL – a killer one-song performance of “Party Up,” in which he blurts out the word “fuck,” uncensored, and slams the mic stand down at the end of his anti-war screed, then stormed off, followed as if conquering troops by his pre-Revolution band.
Tom Petty with Dave Grohl (November 19, 1994)
The Heartbreakers had just parted ways with longtime drummer Stan Lynch, and Dave Grohl was still grieving the death of Kurt Cobain and wondering what to do next. He filled in and crushed on “Honey Bee” and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” from Tom Petty’s just-released msasterwork, Widlflowers.
