Today marks 30 years since the Tragically Hip joined the ever growing list of musical guests on Saturday Night Live.
The musical guests on the show change week to week, and have featured all sorts of Genres through the years, so lets look at some of the history.
Originally titled “NBC’s Saturday Night” the first episode aired October 11th 1975. Billy Preston and his band were the first musical act to hit the stage, performing their hit “Nothing from Nothing” followed by Janis Ian with a performance of “at Seventeen and “In the Winter” before Billy Preston ended the night with a performance of “Fancy Lady.”
Since then many artists and bands have performed on the SNL stage, and many have used the Live aspect to voice opinions.
The nature of doing ANYTHING live is it can result in some unwanted content, whether we’re talking about radio, television, or just on a stage.
On SNL, some of those include F Bombs (System Of A Down 2005,) shredding the American flag (Rage Against The Machine 1996,) and most notably Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II in 1992.
On March 25th 1995 Canada’s very own The Tragically Hip were set to hit the stage. After some assistance to calm their nerves, they opened with a performance of Grace, Too. But after a brief blanking out on the lyrics, Gord Downie started the song with “He said I’m Tragically Hip” instead of the songs actual lyric “I’m fabulously rich” which just kind of…worked. after that, most live performances of the song contained the Tragically Hip lyric instead, becoming sort of an unofficial lyric.
What was your favorite SNL musical guest?
