Ladies and Gentlemen, 38 Key Musical Moments on ‘S.N.L.’

From the age of the 8-track to the time of TikTok, the “Saturday Night Live” stage has adapted to (and subsequently outlived) every musical trend in the last half-century. From its early days as an extension of a young creative team’s edgy tastes (Sun Ra, Tom Waits, Ornette Coleman) to its current station as a state-of-the-pop-union address, “S.N.L.” can break a musical guest or destroy them, providing no shortage of in-studio tensions, national controversies and unforgettable magic. Here are 38 landmark moments.

Oct. 11, 1975

Billy Preston

On the show still known as “Saturday Night,” the inaugural musical guest was the keyboard authority Billy Preston, who played a supremely funky version of his No. 1 hit “Nothing From Nothing.”

Oct. 18, 1975

Simon and Garfunkel

The tumultuous relationship of Simon and Garfunkel was briefly mended for their first performance in three years: intimate and austere versions of “The Boxer,” “Scarborough Fair” and “My Little Town.”

April 17, 1976

Patti Smith

A fierce appearance from Patti Smith gave the suburbs a rare glimpse of the bustling East Village punk underground.

Oct. 2, 1976

Joe Cocker

An amenable Joe Cocker performed “Feelin’ Alright” alongside his doppelgänger, John Belushi, who had long been impersonating the singer’s elastic grimaces and stiffly demonstrative stage moves.

Nov. 20, 1976

Paul Simon and George Harrison

The “S.N.L.” creator Lorne Michaels couldn’t convince the Beatles to reunite on the show but Paul Simon did manage to get George Harrison to duet for a convivial version of “Here Comes the Sun.”

Dec. 17, 1977

Elvis Costello

Peeved that Columbia Records insisted that he play his mid-tempo new wave gem “Less Than Zero” for his U.S. television debut, Elvis Costello stopped the song after six seconds. He apologized and blew into a raucous and caustic attack on broadcasting, “Radio, Radio.” His fakeout stunt, borrowed from a Jimi Hendrix appearance on the BBC, got him banned from the show for more than a decade.

April 22, 1978

The Blues Brothers

The pet project of Belushi and castmate Dan Aykroyd, the Blues Brothers, moved from warming up “S.N.L.” audiences to actually making it on air. Two white comedians doing straight-faced blues and soul covers would soon become a sensation with a No. 1 album and a hit movie. A live Blues Brothers show is still performed five times daily at Universal Studios Orlando.

Oct. 7, 1978

The Rolling Stones

The hosts for the Season 4 premiere were the Rolling Stones, who naturally brought the rock ’n’ roll circus with them. The band partied hard all week, censors fretted about Mick Jagger’s crotch and Keith Richards was cut from sketches after he couldn’t remember his lines. By airtime, Jagger’s voice was shot but still managed to bring some danger when he licked the guitarist Ron Wood on the mouth during “Respectable.”

Oct. 14, 1978

Devo

Flailing around robotically in their “safety yellow” jumpsuits, the new wave mutants Devo played their angular cover of the Rolling Stones “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” rocketing the band to larger venues and radicalizing no small number of suburban misfits.

Dec. 15, 1979

David Bowie

Restrained in a plastic tuxedo, David Bowie hit the stage with the striking downtown singer Klaus Nomi and performance artist Joey Arias, setting the stage for the art-damaged, androgynous new wave ’80s. “We didn’t have to do anything but be ourselves that night,” Arias told Out. “People still come up to me on tour and say, ‘You changed my life.’”

Feb. 14, 1981

Funky 4 + 1

Invited by the host and “Rapture” hitmaker Debbie Harry of Blondie, the Funky 4 + 1 became the first hip-hop group to perform on national network TV, rapping their giddy funk bomb “That’s the Joint.”

Oct. 3, 1981

Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart brought out a surprise guest, Tina Turner, to duet on a high-octane, kick-filled “Hot Legs,” an early step in her fabled comeback.

Oct. 31, 1981

Fear

At the behest of John Belushi, “S.N.L.” booked the caustic California hardcore provocateurs Fear. A gaggle of rambunctious punks — including members of Minor Threat and Cro-Mags — turned 30 Rock into their personal CBGB, slam-dancing, stage-diving, screaming a four-letter word into the microphone and essentially introducing the concept of “moshing” to middle America. “The real audience at ‘Saturday Night Live’ was scared to death,” remembered the frontman Lee Ving.

Sept. 25, 1982

Queen

Even though the Queen frontman Freddie Mercury had strained his Earth-shattering voice earlier that day, the band managed to churn through naturally triumphant versions of “Under Pressure” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The band retired from touring and Mercury died in 1991, making this the classic quartet’s final performance in America.

Jan. 18, 1986

The Replacements

The Minneapolis college rock icons the Replacements got drunk, secretly cranked their amps, played sloppily, swore and — in the case of the bassist Bob Stinson — mooned the crowd. “Rock ’n’ roll doesn’t always make for great television,” the frontman Paul Westerberg said in the band biography “Trouble Boys.” “But we were trying to do whatever possible to make sure that was a memorable evening.”

March 22, 1986

Philip Glass

During his tenure with CBS Records, the Minimalist composer Philip Glass had a brief crossover moment into the pop consciousness with albums of short, glistening pieces like “Glassworks” and “Songs From Liquid Days.” He became the only contemporary classical composer to serve as musical guest.

Sept. 30, 1989

Neil Young

After a turbulent decade experimenting with rockabilly, electro-pop, country, synth-rock and blues, Neil Young rejuvenated his career with a muscular, explosive performance of “Rockin’ in the Free World” from his upcoming 19th album, “Freedom.”

Jan. 11, 1992

Nirvana

In the very same week that Nirvana replaced Michael Jackson atop the Billboard album chart, the band — clad in T-shirts of underground sludge bands like Flipper and the Melvins — brought their uncompromising bluster to the “S.N.L.” stage. When they unleashed peals of feedback and gleefully destroyed their instruments at the end of the hardcore tantrum “Territorial Pissings,” it was the Champagne bottle crashing across the hull of the 1990s.

Feb. 22, 1992

Red Hot Chili Peppers

The guitarist John Frusciante mutated the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ breakout ballad “Under the Bridge,” playing it in a fanciful, experimental style — much to the surprise of his bandmates. Said Anthony Kiedis in his biography, “Scar Tissue,” “I felt like I was getting stabbed in the back and hung out to dry in front of all of America”

May 9, 1992

Bruce Springsteen

Twenty years after his debut, the publicity-shy Bruce Springsteen finally gave his first-ever performance on U.S. network television to support the commercially underperforming albums “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town.”

Oct. 3, 1992

Sinead O’Connor

To protest the Catholic church, Sinead O’Connor concluded her stormy a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” by tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II that had belonged to her mother. NBC was inundated with phone calls, Madonna threw barbs and O’Connor was pelted with boos at a Bob Dylan tribute concert held 13 days later.

Jan. 15, 1994

Counting Crows

After performing an impassioned version of the jangle-grunge ballad “Round Here,” the four-month-old debut album from Counting Crows, “August and Everything After,” rocketed up the charts, becoming a seven-times platinum phenomenon. Said frontman Adam Duritz, “You dream about being a rock star but you don’t necessarily think it’s going to happen like that.”

April 13, 1996

Rage Against the Machine

In protest of the billionaire host and Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Rage Against the Machine draped their amps with upside-down American flags before playing the scathing military-industrial-complex dissection “Bulls on Parade.” The band was not allowed to play its second song and was asked to leave 30 Rock. “‘S.N.L.’ censored Rage, period,” the guitarist Tom Morello said. “They could not have sucked up to the billionaire more.”

Oct. 23, 2004

Ashlee Simpson

Expecting to perform the title track to her debut, “Autobiography,” the ascendant pop star Ashlee Simpson instead became the center of a lip-syncing controversy when the wrong vocal track was cued up. As her band attempted to recover, Simpson did a little jig before walking off the stage entirely. “What can I say?” the host Jude Law quipped at the show’s end. “Live TV.”

Nov. 20, 2004

U2

Instead of the Saturday Night Live Band playing the usual closing credits theme, U2 churned through “I Will Follow” with Bono wandering around Studio 8H to play with the camera, straddle an audience member and embrace an absolutely overjoyed Amy Pohler.

May 14, 2005

Queens of the Stone Age

To cover the percussion part on the churning retro-riffer “Little Sister,” Queens of the Stone Age recruited a shimmying Will Ferrell to reprise his role as Gene Frenkle of “More cowbell” fame.

Oct. 18, 2008

Adele

The runaway success that Adele had experienced in Britain hadn’t been replicated in the States. That is, until her first “S.N.L.” appearance, which coincided with the night Sarah Palin had a much-ballyhooed cameo — the most-watched episode in more than a decade.

Oct. 2, 2010

Kanye West

During the ambitious era of his “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album, Kanye West reimagined the “S.N.L.” stage as a white cube gallery, an empty container for the rapper and more than two dozen dancers. Turning that performance space into a personal aesthetic playground would become more common in the following years in performances by Rihanna, Katy Perry, Halsey, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo.

Jan. 14, 2012

Lana Del Rey

The newcomer Lana Del Rey delivered an icy, alienating, warbly performance that befuddled and enraged parts of the internet, even earning a Kristen Wiig parody the following week. However, Del Rey got the last laugh when her cool, remote, Lynchian aura ended up powering a successful, still-vibrant career.

March 29, 2014

Sam Smith

Already a hitmaker in England, the soul-pop crooner Sam Smith broke in America after a spellbinding performance of the yearning one-night-stand ballad “Stay With Me.” “No one knew who I was,” Smith told Entertainment Weekly. “It was the scariest moment of my life so far.”

Oct. 7, 2017

Jason Aldean

After the deadliest mass shooting in American history occurred during a Jason Aldean performance at a Las Vegas festival, the country superstar opened this episode with a spirited cover of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

April 7, 2018

Cardi B

Around two minutes and 30 seconds into Cardi B’s run through of “Be Careful,” the camera panned out slowly, showing that her performance doubled as a pregnancy reveal.

Sept. 29, 2018

Kanye West

For his seventh appearance, Kanye West performed “I Love It” dressed as a giant Perrier bottle. However what made headlines occurred after the cameras stopped rolling, when the rapper donned a MAGA hat and delivered a pro-Trump monologue.

Sept. 28, 2019

Billie Eilish

Inspired by Fred Astaire’s gravity-defying moves in the 1951 film “Royal Wedding,” Billie Eilish — with two sprained ankles — performed her No. 1 hit “Bad Guy” in a rotating box.

April 11, 2020

Chris Martin

With the country under coronavirus quarantine, Coldplay’s Chris Martin beamed in an acoustic performance of Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm” for the all-remote first episode of “Saturday Night Live at Home.”

Oct. 10, 2020

Jack White

After the country superstar Morgan Wallen was videotaped partying in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in defiance of Covid-19 safety protocols, and his appearance was canceled by “S.N.L.,” Jack White stepped in as replacement. He delivered old-time-rock-’n’-roll fury with “Lazaretto” and a medley of Beyoncé’s “Don’t Hurt Yourself” (which he helped write) and the White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit.”

Oct. 2, 2021