Anyway, my favorite Costello is Lou Costello. Elvis Costello is a very distant second.
Posted on 12/17/2023 8:31:51 PM PST by nickcarraway
Elvis Costello gave shape to his own budding career with a rebellious move on Saturday Night Live, switching mid-song into a diatribe against corporate-controlled broadcasting -- and getting himself banned from the show for a dozen years.
Thing is, Costello was never supposed to be there in the first place, and he's admitted he got the idea from a legendary classic rocker, not the punk scene.
The Sex Pistols were actually booked for the Dec. 17, 1977, show, but couldn't make it. That opened the door for Costello, whose debut, My Aim Is True, had just come out in the U.S. Allegedly, Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had mismanaged their visa applications, so Costello's drummer, Pete Thomas, sported a T-shirt on SNL that night that read, "Thanks, Malc." The show's producers also reportedly approached the Ramones about filling in, but they refused. ("We don’t substitute for anybody," Joey Ramone wrote in this autobiography, Commando.)
Costello and the Attractions were touring the area at the time and agreed to perform. His new label tried to tell him what to play on the show -- namely, his latest U.K. single "Less Than Zero." But Costello felt that the song (about a particularly vilified English politician named Oswald Mosley, leader of the Union of Fascists) wasn't likely to resonate with Americans.
So, a few bars in, Costello stepped to the microphone on live television and said, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there’s no reason to do this song here." The Attractions then launched into a scorching version of "Radio Radio," creating a decades-plus rift between Costello and SNL.
But the last-second switch wasn't inspired by the punks whom Costello was being lumped in with. In fact, he said it was a similar 1969 stunt by Jimi Hendrix that served as inspiration. "They’ve run that clip forever," Costello later told Details, "and every time anybody does anything outrageous on that show, I get name-checked. But I was copying Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix had done the same thing on the Lulu show, when he went into an unscheduled number. I remember seeing it and going, ‘What the hell’s going on?'"
Elvis Costello wasn't invited to appear on Saturday Night Live again until 1989. It was another 10 years before he felt confident enough to directly reference his moment of rebellion, when he rushed the stage during SNL's 25th anniversary special while the Beastie Boys were playing "Sabotage," ordered them to stop and then launched into a raucous version of, you guessed it, "Radio Radio."
Ultimately, the Ramones were never given another shot at playing Saturday Night Live. The Sex Pistols eventually did appear a year later but, by 1978, they were imploding, and the original group would never tour again. Meanwhile, Costello said he came away from the experience less than impressed with SNL. "Maybe something got lost in translation," Costello wrote in the liner notes of This Year’s Model's reissue, "but none of the humor seemed nearly as 'dangerous' or funny as they seemed to think it was -- or perhaps they were just having a bad show."
Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michael had his own steely response that fabled night, reportedly holding up his middle finger the entire time Costello and the Attractions performed "Radio Radio."
“ The Sex Pistols eventually did appear a year later”
No they didn’t.
I remember watching this.
Elvis Costello was a bit prickly early on in his career.
Anyway, my favorite Costello is Lou Costello. Elvis Costello is a very distant second.
Costello doing Radio, Radio, and Zappa doing I’m the Slime with Don Pardo, are two SNL music bits I still can’t believe happend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdtGo2Ib9oI
I am the slime from your video
Oozing along on your living room floor
Maybe in an alternate universe?
Who’s on SNL first?
Lol. Yeah. That’s it.
Zappa was way ahead of the herd, with that song.
Sounds like he was mad as hell and didn’t want to take it any more
HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE!?
LOLOL
One day we came across "My Aim is true - Elvis Costello" and we totally lost it, one of the rare times where you laugh so hard you can't breathe.
It seems silly now, but my God, it was hilarious. It was insane, like a cross between Elvis and Abbott and Costello, and the guy looked like a total dork. I think about it now and it was a pretty brilliant marketing idea for attention, although I never bought the album
Not sure what the point of the post was/is... but Elvis/Declan was and is to this today a leftist. Johnny Rotten/Lydon is MAGA inclined, and Johnny Ramone was always, in contrast to Joey, of the right.
That’s a great album.
L
Determined to make the performance as authentically punk as possible, Belushi reached out to associates in the D.C. area and had them bus up for the taping.
“He wanted 15 to 20 people,” Ving explained, “but they stopped in Baltimore and Philly before they got to New York and arrived with 35, 40 people.”
That evening’s Saturday Night Live was hosted by Halloween star Donald Pleasence, but it was Fear who stole the show. The band rocked through songs “Beef Bologna” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Saxophones” while their loyal fans went nuts on the studio’s floor. Suddenly, frenzied mosh pits were taken out of the dark, sweaty clubs and shoved directly onto TV screens across America.
“The real audience at Saturday Night Live was scared to death,” Ving admitted, noting that his band’s fans took over. “They didn’t know what was happening with all the mayhem.”
The punk fans became unhinged, breaking production equipment, throwing a pumpkin into the chest of SNL producer Dick Ebersol and, in one particularly chaotic moment, grabbing a microphone and screaming expletives on live television. The latter offense was the final straw, as the network cut away to a prerecorded Eddie Murphy sketch.
“The main NBC guy was at home watching with his wife and freaked out, calling the station saying, ‘Go to stock footage. Cut, cut, cut!” Ving recalled.
Fear’s antics earned them a lifetime ban from SNL, something Ving admitted he took pride in. “They swore that night they’d never rebroadcast our footage,” the singer revealed. “As a result, I have become one of the esteemed members of the permanently banned.”
Read More: 40 Years Ago: John Belushi Brings Fear to ‘SNL’ and Mayhem Ensues | https://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-belushi-fear-snl/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
“Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michael had his own steely response that fabled night, reportedly holding up his middle finger the entire time Costello and the Attractions performed “Radio Radio.”
He sounds like a real jerk this Lorne Michaels. No wonder Mike Myers used him as a model for Dr. Evil. There was nothing offensive about the song
Yeah, I’ve listened to it later on and he’s a great writer
With or without a lifetime band, what are the chances Fear ever would have played on SNL again?
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