
In the fascinating and engrossing new documentary on the music legacy of Saturday Night Live, the show’s creator/showrunner, Lorne Michaels, twice references how the musical guests who have appeared on the show each represent “a moment in time.”
It’s true. Watching the array of musical talent, and the variety of styles they brought to American television audiences, inevitably calls a longtime viewer back to individual moments from the show: the first time a singer made an indelible impression; a memorable performance from a favorite singer in his/her prime; the tours de force, and the crashes and burns.
For viewers who have been on board for some—or all—of the 50-year magic carpet ride that SNL has steered through the center of American culture, the film will likely supply a soundtrack to special times in a life, especially from youth when a band, a rapper, a pop star, spoke directly to a generation.
The film, airing on NBC tonight at 8pm, is called, in an homage to the traditional SNL music act introduction, Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. It is the work (a “jawn” in his native Philly) of Questlove (Ahmir Thompson), the virtuoso drummer of The Roots, who has carved out an increasingly impressive side gig as documentary film director. (The SNL doc is co-directed by Oz Rodriguez.)
Questlove’s first film, Summer of Soul, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. He also has a bio doc about Sly Stone set for release next month.
The SNL film is loosely divided into thematic sections: A rock section, a pop section, an “avant garde” section, a hip-hop section. What expands the impact of the music history is how frequently the music crossed over into comedy—often riotously funny comedy.
The film doesn’t try to showcase anywhere near a complete assemblage of the dazzling musical talent SNL has collected over half a century. But here’s a small sample of the performers who appear in brief clips, as opposed to the equally elite list of artists who receive extended attention:
Bruno Mars, Roy Orbison, R.E.M., Frank Zappa, Johnny Cash, Patti Smith, Ray Charles, Sting, A Tribe Called Quest, Cher, Queen, The Band, Pavarotti, Desi Arnaz (!), Rick James, Talking Heads, Lenny Kravitz, Philip Glass (!), Tina Turner, Ed Sherrin, Arianna Grande, Eminem, Aretha Frankin, U2, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan. (Not bad).
The show’s opening sequence is masterfully arranged mash-up of moments from the appearances of many of these stars.
An added appeal of the three-hour special is the inclusion of many performances that have not been easily available elsewhere. Much of the last decade’s worth of SNL music performances are accessible on Peacock and YouTube, and musical material from the show’s iconic first five years has been cleared for DVD sales and use on Peacock. But the music that filled the middle 35 years of the show has been largely unavailable. A chunk of the best of it is included here.
The show’s vital role in music history and in the careers of many music stars is cited in interviews from names as veteran as Mick Jagger and as contemporary as Billie Eilish.
Jagger: “What you’ve got is something that wouldn’t have existed if it hadn’t been for SNL. You’ve got this big, broad popular music library of performances of the period.”
Eilish: “I really can’t think of anything that’s as powerful and inspirational and huge as SNL is.”
Darryl McDaniels (Run-DMC.): “It was like validation for us.”
Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters): “To me, it was the most iconic television show of all time.”
When SNL started, Lorne Michaels says in the documentary, “We were following Watergate, the last helicopter out of Vietnam, the city is broke, the Church is being questioned. And so, everything seemed to be, if not crumbling, at least open to question. That kind of moment in time, we just came on and just did a show that we’d want to see. And music was a big part of that.”
The next thing we see is John Belushi as Beethoven at the piano, donning sunglasses and belting “What’d I Say?” as Ray Charles. (Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman accompany, as the Raelettes.)
The documentary honors how effectively SNL has integrated comedy into music. It includes a section on impressions, from Belushi’s spectacular Joe Cocker to Maya Rudolph’s Beyonce on “Hot Ones,” and Jimmy Fallon’s Jagger from his famous mirror bit.
And there are two Eddie Murphy classics: his James Brown, (in the “Celebrity Hot Tub”) and his Stevie Wonder killing it with Joe Piscopo as Sinatra, dueting on “Ebony and Ivory.”
Stevie: “I am dark, and you are light…”
Frank: “You are blind as a bat, and I have sight.”
In an interview for the doc, Murphy celebrates his SNL music impressions in perhaps his most relaxed and joyous recounting of his SNL tenure.
The show fills out some of these moments with backstories of how they came together. The Blues Brothers began when Belushi and Dan Aykroyd tried to sell Michaels on the bit, only to have him reject the idea, saying, “I see nothing funny in the Blues Brothers.”
But when an episode came up three minutes short, Michaels went to his two cast members and said (as quoted by music arranger Tom “Bones” Malone):
“We have nothing worthwhile to put in those three minutes. You guys might as well make fools of yourselves.”
They went on and sang (and danced to) “Soul Man,” and an act was born.
The show elevated the careers of many other artists. Michaels related how music mogul David Geffen called him about a new band he had signed. Michaels says, “He said, I don’t know what’s happening but last week they sold sixty thousand records and this week they sold 140 thousand, so something’s happening.”
After SNL, Nirvana was really happening.
Murphy recalled seeing Prince on the SNL stage for the first time. “He wasn’t Prince yet,” he says. He was soon after.
When Adele first appeared, most of the cast had no idea who she was, Bill Hader says, but they all stopped working on rewrites when they heard her rehearsing “Chasing Pavements.”
Michaels fills in some details:
“The whole country was watching for other reasons. It just happened to be that show that Sarah Palin was on. Adele went to the after-party. Then went back to the hotel, then to British Airways, 8 am flight. She said when they were on the runway, she checked her computer. She was at number 45. When they landed, she was almost to number one.”
Michaels has always been credited with looking to book the freshest, most groundbreaking acts, no matter if the show’s audience had any appreciation yet for alternate music forms. If it was new and promising, he wanted it on his show.
The section on the “avant garde” period captures a huge shift to wild, idiosyncratic acts like Sun Ra, The B-52’s and Devo. Grohl remembers being a kid and feeling he was weird, then seeing The B-52’s on SNL and feeling better because “they were weird too.”
The explosion of hip-hop brought a host of new artists to SNL, and that wave is covered in a substantial section. Questlove marks this prescient move in a montage that goes back in time, so you see just how early SNL was onto what was happening in music:
Nikki Minaj, 2011; Jay Z, 2010; Kanye West, 07, Outkast, 02; DMX, 00, Coolio, 96; Snoop Dog, 94; Public Enemy, 91; LL Cool J, 87; Run-D.M.C. 86. The list goes all the way back to a Debbie Harry-hosted show in 1981, when she introduced Funky 4+1. According to Sharon Greene (Sha-Rock) of the group: “That was the beginning of everything, the first time rap was performed on national television.”
The doc satisfies one obvious curiosity. How Irish singer Sinead O’Connor came to ignite international outrage during her 1992 appearance. The documentary devotes substantial time to it, filling in the backstory of her soaring acapella performance with a political chaser.
Michaels says, in a bit of understatement, “I remember it fairly vividly.”
O’Connor was straightforward about her commitment to social commentary in her work. As the show explains, she performed a version of Bob Marley’s “War” in dress rehearsal, holding a photo of a child, as she sang of the victory of good over evil. The staff thought the photo was an odd choice, but allowing artists room to express themselves was a credo at the show.
In the live show O’Connor finished the song and tore a photo of Pope John Paul II into eight pieces, in protest of the pontiff turning a blind eye to child abuse within the church—including, apparently, her own.
O’Connor’s act of protest left the entire SNL staff “freaking out,” according to longtime talent producer Marci Klein. In subsequent days they felt the heat of enormous backlash.
Michaels voiced displeasure at the time as his show took the brunt of the blame for not blocking that act from taking place, but in the documentary, after a long stretch of years, he has a more sympathetic take:
“Part of me just admired the bravery of what she’d done, and also the absolute sincerity of it.”
The incident underscored the distinction SNL has always worn like a badge of honor: It is live, anything might happen, and if you don’t watch, you might miss something memorable.
Like Elvis Costello stopping in the middle of his planned song and switching it up without informing the SNL staff.
Michaels remembers telling Aykroyd, “I think we’ve been hijacked.”
Costello wasn’t fully aware of what he’d wrought until somebody said to him, “You’ll never work on American television again.”
He did, and repeatedly on SNL.
Although much has been made over the years of artists who’ve supposedly been banned from the show, Michaels states, “We’ve never banned anyone. We’re way too crass and opportunistic. If something’s hot, we’ll go for it and have it on.”
The punk band Fear appeared in 1981, pushed by their biggest fan, Belushi. The result was a chaotic mix of loud music and bodies flying everywhere as hand-picked audience members slam-danced.
Ashlee Simpson embarrassed everyone when she was caught lip syncing on the show—she said she had a sore throat—after her band mistakenly slipped in the recording of her first number when she was starting her second.
Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine recounts a story of truly bizarre convergence as the anti-authoritarian heavy metal group appeared on a show hosted by then-recent GOP Presidential candidate Steve Forbes, a figure they scorned both for his politics and for how dull he was.
A confrontation arose over the band’s decision to hang an upside-down US flag on their amps. That was deemed unacceptable at NBC, but the band’s roadies tried to stick the flag back on with only seconds to go before they went on the air.
A bit of a scuffle ensued between the SNL unionized crew and the roadies. The union guys won. Rage played flagless but enraged. One band member decided to attack Forbes in his dressing room with the torn-up flag. Forbes was on stage, but his family members were in there, as well as the former candidate’s Secret Service detail. Rage wound up first locked in their dressing room and then deposited out on the street. No stage appearance for the farewells. (Morello didn’t pass on the chance to attend the after party, he recalls with glee.)
One live moment almost no one remembers fondly is when Kanye West turned a planned closing number into an anti-liberal political attack, while wearing a MAGA hat. As Kenan Thompson puts it, “The hat was loud.”
Of course, you can’t celebrate music on SNL without celebrating how effectively, and often hilariously, it was integrated with comedy. The big music + comedy moments are not missed.
These include Paul Simon in a turkey suit for a Thanksgiving show trying to sing a soulful version of “Still Crazy After All These Years” and two segments featuring one of the show’s most reliably funny music performers and hosts, Justin Timberlake.
Few fans of the show will forget the “Dick in the Box” and “Single Ladies” sketches. But Timberlake provides a valuable backstory on each, including how he convinced the Lonely Island troupe to take the music in “Dick in the Box” seriously, which only added to how hilariously it played and informed their later work.
He also tells of the lengths he had go to to convince Beyonce to accept the premise of three male back-up dancers in drag for the “Single Ladies” parody. Timberlake’s first pitch went nowhere. “She wasn’t havin’ it,” he explains. Then he put on the black leotard and heels and dropped into her dressing room to show her the look. Sold. And comedy gold.
Every SNL highlight package from recent years has had to include the least funny opening the show ever undertook: the first episode back after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York.
When he scripted Rudy Guiliani with the response to his own question, “Can we be funny?” Beat: “Why start now?” Michaels came up with the perfect joke to put the audience, in the studio and at home, at ease.
But the show began with music. Michaels’ long-time friend Paul Simon stepped up. He sang “The Boxer.” Michaels says, “There’s something about ‘The Boxer’ that’s about the resilience of New York City.”
As this extraordinary documentary makes clear, there’s also something about Saturday Night Live that’s about the sounds of New York City: the pulse of its energy, the rhythm of its movement, the beat of its drive and its heart.
Music has always been part of the city’s foundation, just as it has for the extraordinary show still made fresh and live from New York.
Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music airs tonight at 8pm on NBC. It wil also stream on Peacock.
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