ALSO: Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by Theresa , Monday, February 02, 2015, 00:15 @ Theresa

April 24, 1976. Lorne Michaels offers the Beatles $3,000 to appear on Saturday Night Live, as a gag mocking the full-page ads taken out in the New York Times offering the Beatles millions of dollars to reunite and play in Shea Stadium. Unbeknownst to Michaels, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney are in New York City at the time, and see the sketch airing live. They consider actually going to the studio, but decide they are too tired.

May 15, 1976. Lorne Michaels does the sketch again, this time offering the Beatles $3,200 (claiming he has “sweetened the pot”). This time, again unbeknownst to Michaels, all four of the Beatles are in New York City. Lennon and McCartney again consider going down to the studio and performing, but again decide they are too tired. However, this time Ringo Starr knocks on their door at 12:15 AM with a round of coffees (“from the awful all-night Hungarian deli on Bleecker,” he would later elaborate in an interview the next day) and George Harrison in tow. Years later in an interview with Playboy, Lennon says “I’d told Ringo about it, see, and we thought it was hilarious, but figured that was it and we’d missed the shot. When Ringo saw the second sketch, he decided to force our hand.”

Starr cajoles the other three Beatles into traveling down to 30 Rockefeller to “crash” Saturday Night Live. (Onlookers later claimed that when they entered the studio through a rear entrance, two interns fainted.) At 12:50 AM, they go on-air before the studio audience. Halfway through “Let It Be,” their second song, George Harrison yells to Michaels offstage that “after the third, we’ll just keep going if that’s all right.” Michaels quickly negotiates additional airtime with NBC (which gleefully capitulates) and the result is a spontaneous, three-hour live televised concert, famous not only for obvious reasons but for a host of its own idiosyncrasies: Lennon getting the hiccups during “Help,” McCartney playfully changing two lines of “Lady Madonna” to “where’s our three thousand, or our thirty-two/got to realize that now the cheque is due,” and Starr inviting the horn section of the Saturday Night Live band onstage “so we can do With A Little Help [From My Friends] properly.”

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