Fifty years ago today, Lorne Michaels made one of the earliest—and most enduring—on-camera impressions of his career on Saturday Night Live.
Midway through the first season of what was then titled NBC’s Saturday Night, the show’s young creator looked straight into the camera and issued a plea to the biggest band in the world: reunite on his show for the modest sum of $3,000.
“All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs,” Michaels explained. “‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ That’s $1,000 right there. You know the words—it’ll be easy.”
The offer, of course, was knowingly absurd. The Beatles had already turned down far more lucrative reunion proposals. But in one of those strange twists of pop culture fate, Paul McCartney and John Lennon happened to be watching that very episode together from Lennon’s apartment at the Dakota—just a few dozen blocks from 30 Rock—and briefly considered dropping by.
According to former SNL production assistant (and Lorne Michaels’ cousin) Neil Levy, Michaels had a comic plan if they had turned up, forbidding them to go on because they didn’t bring their own guitars. “His whole thing was to have the Beatles there and not let them play,” Levy remembered in the book Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.
Lennon and McCartney didn’t show that night. But Michaels’ offer became a running gag.
The very next episode featured characters from the Muppets’ ill-fated “Land of Gorch” sketches—Scred and the Mighty Favog—offering to deliver the Beatles themselves in exchange for keeping their jobs. (Neither deal panned out; the Muppets would be gone by Season 2.)
A month later, Michaels returned with an update. “We’ve heard from the Monkees, Freddy and the Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon, the Cowsills, and Lulu,” he deadpanned. “But still no word from the Beatles.” He sweetened the pot to $3,200.
Then, in November 1976, the show finally landed its first Beatle. George Harrison appeared as musical guest and joined Michaels in the Cold Open to collect the promised money. Since Harrison was only one-quarter of the band, Michaels offered him $750. “Pretty chintzy,” Harrison replied.
All four Beatles never reunited on SNL—or anywhere else—but the show’s orbit would eventually include multiple members of the band. Ringo Starr and McCartney both made appearances over the years, with McCartney eventually delivering a memorable performance of “Hey Jude” during a 1993 stint as musical guest. He would later return to perform “Get Back,” and most recently, at the show’s 50th anniversary special, a medley from Abbey Road of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End.” (He’s set to return to the show again as musical guest for next month’s Season 51 finale.)
What started as a throwaway bit became one of Saturday Night Live’s first great running jokes—and a seminal moment in Lorne Michaels’ evolution into the show’s longest-running recurring character.
Watch the sketch as it originally aired at the top of this post.
There are no more Dick Ebersols, or Brandon Tartikoff’s, or Grant Tinker’s who understood programming as much as production. Each were visionaries and creative risk takers in their own right. Lorne Michaels is “cut” from this “cloth.”