Saturday Night Live Was Always About How to Live Without the Beatles

Lorne Michaels offers the Beatles $3000 to reunite on SNL

On April 24 1976, Lorne Michaels appeared on Saturday Night Live to offer The Beatles $3000 to reunite for a performance on his show. This was in response to a full-page ad in the New York Times offering them $1,000,000 to do a show in Shea Stadium (and/or elsewhere). 

Sid Bernstein's offer to the Beatles in the NYTimes

It was taken as a joke--and a running joke at that, since, when George Harrison showed up on SNL as a musical guest, one skit had Michaels explaining to him that he would only receive $750 for coming, since $3000 was for all four of them.

Very funny.

But watching the Saturday Night Live 50th reunion show this week, it struck me that the show's counter-culture roots tapped into a hunger born from the breakup of The Beatles. What do we do now?

Paul Simon with Sabrina Carpenter  "Homeward Bound"

The special began with Paul Simon (who once immodestly said that the two greatest living songwriters were both named "Paul"). Simon reminisced that he first performed "Homeward Bound" on SNL with George Harrison.

The ghost of George Harrison hovered over the SNL 50 opening

And the night ended with Paul McCartney (the other Paul) doing the final medley from the last album The Beatles recorded together (Abbey Road, not Let It Be--which was just the last one released).

And in the end, the love you take...

So, bookends (back to you, other Paul :-) ). 

Simon and Garfunkle's Bookends, 1968

I want to believe somebody putting the show together did this consciously, but it doesn't matter. There it is. And perhaps it would be even more remarkable if they didn't realize it, but it was so embedded in their thinking that it just happened.

SNL began in 1975, just as Saigon fell and the US had to face that it had lost a war. Watergate had left our faith in institutions shattered. And we were in a deep recession, with high unemployment and rising inflation.

The fall of Saigon, April 1975

In the 1960s, the Baby Boomers had rallied around The Beatles. The Beatles didn't just dominate the music charts; The Beatles defined the decade. Everything else--the British Invasion, the Second British Invasion, and all the other bands--including the Rolling Stones--were just copies (at least in the minds of Americans).

And then they were gone.

SNL from its very beginning was backward-looking. Maybe the most obvious example is how John Belushi took his new-found stardom to Animal House, in which the Boomers mocked--1962 from that distant vantage point of 1978. 

Double-Secret Probation!

In addition to casting Belushi, producer Ivan Reitman's original choices for the roles of Boon and Otter were Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, tripling down on the SNL cast. But weren't they just a little too old, even then? We were all too old for such college pranks--and what are the SNL skits other than college humor by people just a bit too old? Here we are, on the verge of adulthood. What do we do with our youth? And how, in God's name, will we ever replace the hole The Beatles left in our lives?

Even from 50 years on, it seems to be a question to which we Boomers have never found the answer.

Oh, yeah. Bob Dylan, too. But that's another story.

Subterranean Homesick Blues.
Look out, Kid, it's something you did...