‘Saturday Night Live’ Rocks: 25 Greatest Musical Performances

Queen: September 25th, 1982

No wonder Wayne and Garth were fans. Queen frontman Freddie Mercury had recently blown out his voice in a fight with his boyfriend, but he still managed to pull off “Under Pressure” and a show-stopping “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The band stopped touring four years later due to Mercury’s failing health, leaving SNL as Queen’s final U.S. performance with the legendary singer.

Sun Ra: May 20th, 1978

In a move that would be almost unfathomable today, SNL let avant-jazz legend Sun Ra and his Arkestra close out Season Three; dressed like space-traveling pharaohs, they delivered a free-form mind warp. “The Tonight Show would have Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1987. They would wait until there was no danger at all,” said Lorne Michaels about SNL‘s early years. “We were just putting on the music we were listening to.”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: November 19th, 1994

For his fifth of eight SNL appearances, Petty was down a Heartbreaker, as he had recently fired drummer Stan Lynch. But he ended up with a pretty good replacement in the form of Dave Grohl, whose band Nirvana had met their tragic end just seven months earlier. Grohl brought headbanging thunder to “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and “Honey Bee.” 

“I even discussed with Dave about joining the band,” said Petty. “And he wanted to, but he had his own solo thing developing at the time, the Foo Fighters. And, of course, he would rather have done that.”

Funky 4 + 1: February 14th, 1981

In a truly historic moment, Saturday Night Live presented the first performance of rap music in the history of national network television. At the request of host and hip-hop evangelist Deborah Harry of Blondie, the Bronx’s deliriously fun Funky 4 + 1 introduced Middle America to group chants, hot-potato-passing rhymes and a DJ running the show – though the band actually ended up rapping over a prerecorded track. “The people on the show were so nervous,” Blondie guitarist Chris Stein said. “I remember trying to explain to them how scratching worked. Trying to verbalize what that is for someone who has no idea, it’s really difficult.” 

Prince: February 21st, 1981

A 22-year-old Prince exploded onto SNL with a high-octane performance of “Partyup,” bouncing, spinning, sliding, playing a wild guitar solo and then slamming down the mic and storming offstage. “I was blown away,” said producer Jean Doumanian. “He was just the most original act I had seen in a long time.” Unfortunately, Prince would be overshadowed by cast member Charles Rocket, who uttered his infamous on-air “fuck” during this very episode. 

Patti Smith Group: April 17th, 1976

Only in the Seventies: On a night when
Gerald Ford’s press secretary, Ron Nessen, hosted, Smith brought the punk scene
brewing at CBGB to 30 Rock. Soon Gilda Radner would be spoofing Smith with her
punk character Candy Slice. “My band thought it was hilarious,” said
Smith.

Mariah Carey: October 27th, 1990

Carey was just three years out of high school in
Greenlawn, New York, when she hit the SNL stage. Dressed like she was on her way to the mall,
the singer effortlessly performed a pyrotechnic version of her debut Number One
hit, “Vision of Love,” and the lung-bursting “Vanishing.”
She would play on the show three more times over the years, and cast member
Cheri Oteri honored Carey with an impression in 1998.

Ray Charles: November 12th, 1977

Host Ray Charles didn’t just demonstrate his deft comic chops alongside Dan Aykroyd’s Tom Snyder and the cast’s whitewashed singing troupe “the Young Caucasians”; he made the show his own. Joined by members of his Fifties horn section and his backup singers, the Raelettes, Charles did rollicking takes of “I Can See Clearly Now,” “What’d I Say” and “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” and led an end-of-show jam along with the cast as a joyous send-off.

Kanye West: May 18th, 2013

“I’m a minimalist in a rapper’s body,” West declared around the same time he made his fifth appearance on Saturday Night Live. It’s one of the most devastatingly- intense performances ever delivered on the show by a major pop star. West stomped through “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” from his brutal new album, Yeezus, backed by a band shrouded in darkness as stark images of barking dogs and flashing price tags were projected behind him. The next time he was featured as a musical guest, in 2016, he reportedly called the SNL crew “white motherfuckers.” 

LL Cool J: October 24th, 1987

In 2013, Kenan Thompson parodied LL Cool J as “the most lowdown, hardcore cast member of NCIS.” That was sort of ironic, since his 1987 musical-guest appearance remains the greatest hip-hop moment in the history of the show; the 19-year-old LL stormed through his hard-hitting “Go Cut Creator Go,” backed by two DJs, Cut Creator and Bobcat, whose behind-the-back scratching wowed the studio audience. 

The Replacements: January 18th, 1986

The Minneapolis punk misfits manufactured a legendary
feat of career suicide. After boozing it up backstage with host Harry Dean
Stanton, they stumbled through “Bastards of Young,” then switched
clothes before coming out to attempt “Kiss Me on the Bus,” during
which frontman Paul Westerberg yelled “Come on, fucker” at guitarist
Bob Stinson, who obliged by mooning the audience. The chaos led to the band
receiving a lifetime ban from Lorne Michaels. “We were trying to do
whatever possible to make sure that was a memorable evening,” Westerberg
said.

The Rolling Stones: October 7th, 1978

Riding the huge success of their blockbuster LP Some Girls, the Stones hosted the show and performed three of that album’s songs in one feverish 13-minute segment. Mick Jagger was in an especially playful mood, leaning over to lick guitarist Ron Wood. “I had my eyes closed for a few seconds and suddenly I felt this wet, warm thing slurping on my face,” said Wood. “It was Mick’s tongue. I tried to kick him, but he was too fast.” 

Pearl Jam: April 11th, 1992

A few months after nirvana’s appearance, their Seattle peers brought their own vision of grunge to SNL, playing heroic versions of their hit single “Alive” and “Porch.” Eddie Vedder even got in an election-year dig by wearing a no bush ’92 T-shirt. “Me and a buddy went in one of the rooms and got loaded in honor of John Belushi,” said guitarist Mike McCready. 

Nirvana: January 11th, 1992

The week they knocked Michael Jackson from the top of the Billboard charts, Nirvana squalled through “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the punk rant “Territorial Pissings,” complete with an instrument-trashing finale. During the closing credits, Kurt Cobain kissed his bandmates on the mouth “just to spite homophobes.” Said drummer Dave Grohl of playing SNL, “That’s when I knew it was nuts.” 

Tina Turner: February 2nd, 1985

Introduced by host Alex Karras as “the
First Lady of American popular music,” Turner performed a shimmying “What’s
Love Got to Do With It,” a darkly dramatic “Private Dancer” and
an explosive “Better Be Good to Me.” She even appeared in a skit as a
love interest of Martin Short’s giddy nerd Ed Grimley. “In a dress rehearsal
for an Ed Grimley scene, Tina Turner’s top slipped, and she kind of flashed us,”
Short recalled. “That was one of the great moments.”

Rage Against the Machine: April 13th, 1996

Seconds before Rage blasted through “Bulls on Parade ” – the heaviest performance in the show’s history – a battle broke out between SNL stagehands and the RATM road crew over an upside-down American flag the band hung as a prop. “As soon as we’re offstage, the show’s producer, Marci Klein . . . informs our tour manager that there will be no second song,” said guitarist Tom Morello. “No cozy wave goodnight at the end, no hugging [host] Steve Forbes. It’s just, ‘Get out of the building right now.'”

The Band: October 30th, 1976

Fellow Canadian Lorne Michaels wanted the Band on SNL in the run-up to their legendary farewell concert, the Last Waltz, and even offered them a hosting gig. “I told him we wouldn’t want to host the show,” recalled Robbie Robertson. “We weren’t really that funny.” Instead they became the first band to play four songs on SNL, closing with a rendition of “Georgia on My Mind.” “And a few days after that,” wrote drummer Levon Helm, “Jimmy Carter was elected president.”

Devo: October 14th, 1978

In the Eighties, Devo would become MTV stars. But in 1978, they were still New Wave outliers from Akron, Ohio. Lorne Michaels got a look at their yellow jumpsuits and twitchy stage presence and decided their robotic cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was not ready for late night. Michaels only acquiesced when the band’s manager offered a future performance by his more famous client Neil Young as bait for booking Devo. “We went from playing in front of 200, 300 people a night to 3,000, 5,000 people a night,” said bassist Jerry Casale. “We had to stop the tour and rebook it after Saturday Night Live.”

David Bowie: December 15th, 1979

Bowie was in his Berlin phase when he made this
iconically weird SNL appearance, blending
pop, punk, fashion and gender roles. He took the stage alongside unknown
performance artists Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi, sang “TVC15” while
wearing a dress and heels and walking a stuffed pink poodle, then put on a
freaky headless marionette get-up for a rendition of “Boys Keep Swinging.”
“We didn’t have to do anything but be ourselves that night,” says
Arias, who did choreography and provided backup vocals alongside Nomi. “People
still come up to me on tour and say, ‘You changed my life.'”

Sinead O’Connor: October 3rd, 1992

“I was
stunned,” said Lorne Michaels of the single most controversial moment in SNL history, “but
not as much as the guy from the audience who was trying to charge her.” In
a performance that garnered more than 4,000 phone calls to NBC, O’Connor
delivered a chilling a cappella rendition of Bob Marley’s “War,”
changing the line “fight racial injustice” to “fight sexual
abuse,” and then tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II. O’Connor later
admitted that viewers might’ve missed the significance of the act, a protest
against incidents of sexual abuse in the Irish church that emerged years before
similar scandals hit the U.S. “It’s very understandable that the American
people did not know what I was going on about,” she said later. 

Elvis Costello: December 17th, 1977

Costello was a 23-year-old punk upstart when he
performed one of the most infamous acts of rebellion ever launched against a
demanding record label. According to the singer, Columbia Records “insisted”
he perform his understated new single “Less Than Zero” for his
American debut. Instead, Costello played about 10 seconds of the song, screamed
for his backing band the Attractions to stop, and burst into “Radio Radio,”
a protest against sanitized media that hadn’t even been released yet. “The
confused and indignant faces behind the camera were the funniest things we’d
seen all night,” Costello wrote in his memoir, “and we laughed all
the way to the bar if not the bank.”

Neil Young: September 30th, 1989

After nearly a decade of experimental music and commercial flatlining, Young came thrashing back with a kinetic, distortion-soaked performance of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” looking like a heavy-metal scarecrow and setting the stage for a career rebirth. “I had my trainer, and we just lifted weights and I did calisthenics [in my dressing room] to get my blood to the level it would be at after performing for an hour and 25 minutes,” said Young. 

U2: November 20th, 2004

As part of the promotional blitzkrieg for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the band performed the soaring “Vertigo”
and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” with Bono miming a
head butt (or, as he called it, “a Glasgow kiss”) into the SNL camera. The real
magic happened during the closing credits when the band completely broke from SNL tradition,
performing its classic debut single, “I Will Follow,” as Bono
wandered into the studio audience and embraced a tearful Amy Poehler. “My
whole body blushed,” Poehler wrote, “and I almost died from
excitement.”

Simon and Garfunkel: October 18th, 1975

SNL‘s second episode featured a historic reunion, the first TV appearance by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel since their 1970 breakup, and the first time they had shared the same stage in three years. The duo’s performances of “The Boxer,” Scarborough Fair” and their new single “My Little Town” were striking in their intimacy, at once raw, awkward and friendly. “So, you’ve come crawling back,” Simon taunted. In response, Garfunkel deadpanned: “It’s very nice of you to invite me on your show.”

Fear: October 31st, 1981

Saturday Night Live has frequently brought new underground sounds to a wider audience.
But no one was prepared for the mayhem that erupted when John Belushi and
writer Michael O’Donoghue invited L.A. hardcore punks Fear to perform. They became pied pipers to what a New York Post headline dubbed a “riot.” Led by Lee Ving’s bluesy vocal chops and snarky asides (“It’s great to be here in New Jersey”), Fear blurred through a convulsive performance of songs like “Beef Bologna” as dozens of authentic punks (including members of Minor Threat, Cro-Mags and Negative Approach) slam-danced, swarmed, stage-dove and screamed things like “New York sucks!” and “Negative Approach is gonna fuck you up!”

“The real audience at Saturday Night Live was scared to death,” frontman Lee Ving told Rolling Stone. “They didn’t know what was happening with all the mayhem. The camera people were trying to protect their cameras. Dick Ebersol, who was stage manager, got hit in the chest with a pumpkin.”

Ebersol darted into the control room and promptly had director Dave Wilson re-run the Eddie Murphy prison-poetry short film Prose and Cons right as the band was launching into their third song un under five minutes, “Let’s Have a War.” The bloody loogie crossed the boundaries of “edgy” late night programming, introduced living rooms to punk’s unique style of dancing and reveled in the anarchy of live television.

“As a result,” said Ving, “I have become one of the esteemed members of the permanently banned.”