Recently Papa J and I have been going through the earliest seasons of Saturday Night Live, mostly just to watch the musical guests. There have been some great moments and some not-so-great moments, which I'll probably write more on later, but for this particular episode (Season 4, Episode 1) we decided to sit through the entire thing. This particular episode featured the Rolling Stones as both host and musical guest, and after the 67 minutes of chaos that it was, I fear I may never watch early SNL ever again. I'm afraid my fragile brain won't be able to handle it. Let me explain:
The episode opens with a monologue from at-the-time NYC mayor Ed Koch giving John Belushi a certificate of merit. John Belushi does a bit. It goes on for a while, but at least there's a clear joke, which probably makes this the peak of the episode, along with the commercial parody that follows it. Immediately after this, things get more and more off the rails and never recover. There's a parody of The Tomorrow Show where Mick Jagger is interviewed as himself, which isn't especially funny, but then again I've never seen The Tomorrow Show. There's also this really bizarre sketch about a refrigerator where Bill Murray and Gilda Radner spend about half the runtime making cracks (ahem) about an electrician's butt. The other two main sketches are even harder to follow; one is a sequel to the Olympia Café sketch (I didn't even know there were more than one of these) that goes nowhere and one is something called "Danger Probe" which is the final sketch of the night and was apparently written in a fever dream where nothing makes sense. There was also a "Schiller's reel" that was equally incomprehensible. This whole episode felt like it was being beamed in from another planet.
"Weekend Update" wasn't any better. I already like Colin Jost and Michael Che a lot, but seeing Jane Curtin and Bill Murray's complete non-chemistry behind the desk really makes me appreciate the modern "Update" so much more. Yikes.
The real pièce de résistance of the episode was, of course, the Stones' performance, which was just as bizarre and fun to watch as I had hoped. Mick is in front the whole time doing his thing, with Keith Richards and Ron Wood behind him. Ron plays with a cigarette in his mouth. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts are barely visible, and often barely audible. (The mixing isn't great.) What I love about this set so much is that within the span of three songs the band descends into complete nonsense. They start with "Beast of Burden", which is a great song, but the mellowness juxtaposes against Mick's stage theatrics in a funny way. After that they play "Respectable" which I had never heard before and which sounds like bad bar karaoke, and then they end with "Shattered" which is one of those songs that's just so hilariously bad that watching them play it is a joy. Mick's giving like 200 percent onstage while the rest of the band seems content to be running at 20 percent. He tears his shirt up slowly; he licks Ron's face and drunkenly hits him with his jacket, and Ron doesn't seem prepared for it at all. It's such a strangely amateurish performance to come from a band that's been one of the world's most famous for 12 or 13 years at this point.
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