Questlove talks about making the music for 'Saturday Night Live'

Quest I still remember seeing Billy Preston perform on the first Saturday Night Live October 11, 1975. Technically he wasn’t allowed to watch TV, but his parents were Soul Train Devotees who wanted their son, then four, to absorb “everything musical,” he said. To get him ready for his 1 a.m. start time, they woke him up at 12:30…as the brand new Lorne Michaels sketch was airing. “Back then, Weekend Update was a two-part thing, then the musical guest would do two songs after, and then (again) just before 1 a.m., like the last thing of the night” , the musician, born Ahmir Thompson, explains to roller stone. “And so, while waiting Soul Train To come, I watched the music act on Snl perform. And that’s how I got drawn into the system. »

Snl would become one of Thompson’s passions, but his devotion was more personal than professional until 2021, when Michaels asked him if he was interested in directing a special of the show’s music for the 50th anniversary this year. Thompson was fresh off a grand jury and audience award at Sundance for Summer of the soul and instantly said yes. On January 27, NBC will premiere Thompson’s three-hour documentary Ladies and gentlemen…50 years of SNL musican intensely researched look at how music has shaped the show and vice versa, featuring former and current members, longtime employees, and dozens of musicians who have played on its stage.

The film builds on a dizzying number of moments that are equal parts dark (Paul Simon on the first post-11/11 show), surreal (Sinéad O’Connor ripping up a photo of the Pope) and revolutionary (funky 4+1’s The 1981 appearance was the first hip-hop performance on national television). With access to full audio from inside the control room from numerous performances, Thompson takes the viewer inside some of the series’ craziest moments, delivering voyeuristic voyeuristic thrills like hearing producers scream when Kanye West almost walks off stage.

Thompson, who jokes that he’s “not in my phone days yet,” mirrored more than 900 episodes to prepare for the film. “I watched every day without fail,” he says. “Three to seven episodes every day.” What began as compiling the show’s 50 best performances has blossomed into exploring almost every aspect of music on the show, from skits and music-centric digital shorts to impersonating famous musicians and artists appearing on the series to host or in cameos.

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“I started to realize that there are even more iconic sketches and musical moments in the series without the artist,” he said, quoting the Wayne’s World The theme song, musical performances by Eddie Murphy and King Tut by Steve Martin, among others. “Half of SnlExistence, music is involved… I had to beg for an extra hour (of programming). »

After watching 81,000 minutes of Snlinterviewing dozens of participants and directing this definitive documentary, here are Thompson’s five biggest takeaways.

Lorne never banned anyone from the show

On Halloween 1981, at the request of John Belushi, La Punk’s band, Fear, hit a national audience with one of Snlthe loudest performances. To the band’s biggest band and producers’ dismay, hundreds of punks invaded the show, stage diving and slam dancing their way to television notoriety and leading to the urban legend that Michaels banned the group of the series.

The first thing I wanted to investigate and dismantle was the idea of the performance of fear. I wanted to go to (Mount) Rushmore of all the taboo performances in the show and look under the hood. It was my number one. If you listen to various urban legend tales from the show, I felt like these punk guys came in and fucking almost set this whole building on fire. Lorne captures it brilliantly (in the doc) when he says, “We’ve never banned anyone – we’re too crude and opportunistic.” We know the benefit of this moment even if it is controversial. » Learning that Fear was just good old American entertainment (and) a band that came in, did their two songs and left immediately; There was no rioting or structural damage. But the myth of it all is what built the thing.

Elvis Costello’s prickly reputation is exaggerated

In December 1977, Costello upset Snl Lrass by cutting the intro to “Less than Zero”, the song his label wanted him to play, and asking his band to instead play “Radio, Radio”, a track which took the marketing radio. For Thompson and others, he burned the tradition of Costello as a “difficult” artist. Thompson would see a different side of Costello in 2013 for the roots“ joint album with the musician, Wise ghost.

Having worked with Elvis Costello, we talked about all the Elvis Costello “taboos”. Halfway through the process, I was like, “Wow, I didn’t expect you to…” and I was, like, stalling, and he was like, “Yeah, being a regular guy?” And I was like, “Well, you’re kind of the poster child for the struggling artist.” What you basically discover is just the intense, abrupt way he stops the song – he does it in such an intense, Nicolas Cage, world-about-to-end way. He didn’t have to do that. He could have been like, “Guys. I hate this song. 1, 2, 3.” This moment defines the legend. It served him well. (When we were recording the album), he too was laughing and laughing about the fact that people thought he was this troublemaker from Renegade. He’s just like, “No, I didn’t like the song, so I changed it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed_24ndzkeo

Someone should have had Sinéad O’Connor’s back

The show’s most infamous performance occurred in 1992, when Sinéad O’Connor stunned the audience into silence following her cover of Bob Marley’s song “War”, tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Although she was widely denounced and ostracized at the time, her performance is now considered courageous and revolutionary as much as it was shocking.

In 1994 the roots were ‘exiled’ to the UK in our early days, we lived in London for five years, using this as a center for working in Europe. We would do three to four weeks in each territory. Sinéad O’Connor was one of the very first co-signers of the roots before she had a hit, when she just heard about this group on Geffen who made a dope record that one of her friends gave it to him. We became friends and hung out every time we went to Ireland. Back when we were like hip-hop engagements, playing a nightclub with only 80 people there, she was one of those people front and center.

It’s three or four years after her Snl ordeal, which greatly affected her. She hid quietly, and from time to time, coming from the shadows. For me, I wanted to give her a moment of justice by turning this narrative around because she was really catching some useless strays during this whole time. And I love the fact that Al Franken really nipped it in the bud and said (in the movie), “Yo Dawg, she was right.” It was such a vindicating moment for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrkdwxmvl68

Ashlee Simpson wasn’t the only one who freaked out during her lip sync

Most fans of the show have seen Ashlee Simpson’s 2004 performance, arguably the greatest musical flub in the show’s history. (Simpson blamed vocal nodules that prevented her from singing live.) Thompson’s film goes more in-depth on the incident than ever before, broadcasting the panicked audio dialogue from inside the control room during the performance .

Even though I didn’t come in the door getting the result I wanted, I really wanted to investigate the Ashlee Simpson incident. I got something better, although it wasn’t the story I thought I was going to get.

I wanted to reach out to everyone who has ever taken bullets for a performance. And so instantly, I contacted Lana Del Rey and Ashlee Simpson. Both, naturally, not knowing what kind of storyteller I am, refused and I understand. “It’s something I want to put behind me. I don’t want to be known as the person who messed up Snl. “I think if I just leaned harder and gave them the ‘my goal is true’ perspective, maybe I could have pushed a little further, but I got it.

Oz Rodriguez, my co-director, was like, “I know for a fact that the producer’s mic is also included on the audio thing. And you need to hear the response from the control room when this was happening. » That opened another door, which is: ‘How do you react in real time behind the scenes when something goes wrong in a live show?’ How is prepared Snl When does this happen? And to hear the control room panicking – to hear them screaming “What are we doing?!” I don’t know!” – I compare it to two teenagers who stole their parents’ car and went merry and the car goes down the hill and you don’t know how to stop it.

In my mind, Snl is such a well-oiled machine, very calm, cool, collected, in the way that Marsellus Wallace pulp Fiction Said to Sam Jackson: “Relax. I have this. I’m sending Wolf. So hearing them in a moment where they were panicking was very intriguing to me, because nothing fascinates me more than coming to Snl One Saturday and sit in the audience and look at the ecosystem and wonder how one plus one is going to equal two. It’s the best choreography ever to sit back and watch them come up with stuff in real time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwjcfbmw0yo

Yes, Kanye West Blew the Show — But He Also Expanded Its Boundaries

The film dissects two surprisingly different Kanye West moments: his 2016 performance that transformed what Snl The performance felt like a late-night critique of Maga, wearing the MAGA hat, “liberals who bully you” who put away many in the cast who were on stage with West.

I had Carte Blanche on this and as a storyteller you ask your subject, “Is there a person or something I shouldn’t bring up?” And at the time of filming, that’s when Kanye Loose-Cannon-Gate was at its highest. No one wanted to touch Kanye with a 10-foot pole, which was difficult for me because I didn’t want to elephant his contribution to the show. He is single-handedly responsible for this new canon of creativity in which now you no longer have to play behind the fake station. You can make musical visual statements. You can almost almost make a video of your song’s performance. And I was having a hard time finding someone who was willing to record and talk about it.

Ego Nwodim was the gift that kept on giving, as it’s his first day of school. (Kanye’s Maga appearance was Nwodim’s first show after joining the cast for the 2018 season.) I wanted to know: “What’s it like to be on stage when someone goes rogue and you have to find a way to get Irish out of the picture. “To get his first-person account of what it’s like to be hijacked by someone and you’re on their radar because it’s happening.

Questlove talks about making the music for ‘Saturday Night Live’