On October 21, 1978, Frank Zappa hosted Saturday Night Live for the first and only time, after having appeared as a musical guest on the show a couple of years earlier. Upon taking the stage that evening, Zappa immediately informed the audience that he would be reading from cue cards and unenthusiastically recited one pre-written sentence before going completely off-script.
“God, I hope I’m good,” the rocker then joked, while interrupting his own monologue. From there, Zappa jumped the gun and got right into a performance of “Dancin’ Fool,” a song that he explained was about “an important social problem: disco.”
46 years ago today, Frank would take the stage of SNL for his first and last guest hosting stint. Pulled straight from the vault, check out his original monologue script for this 1978 show. Some may say he was banned for brilliance…
According to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s 2014 book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, Zappa began causing problems before the live broadcast. The rocker was reportedly giving people orders right out of the gate, and, as Al Franken recalled, he insisted on doing a sketch in which pumpkins would eat people’s faces. Obviously, something that complex couldn’t be pulled together on such short notice. Zappa also stumbled through a Coneheads sketch, laughing repeatedly and flubbing his lines:
Frank Zappa Hosted ‘SNL’ Once, and the Cast Apparently Hated It
In the 2002 book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, cast member Don Novello called Zappa’s episode one of the worst shows ever. As Novello tells it, the dress rehearsal didn’t go so well, and Zappa decided to make a joke out of blatantly reading his dialogue from the cue cards without telling anybody. Lorne Michaels, who famously doesn’t care for improvisation, was apparently really upset by the way things played out. And when Zappa bid everybody goodnight at the show’s conclusion, the cast noticeably kept their distance from him.
Some have suggested that Zappa’s staunch anti-drug stance may have factored into his behavior that night, and, interestingly, he does take a fake joint from Dan Aykroyd during the curtain call and stamp it out on the ground. While speaking with Stereo Review in April 1979, Zappa defended his SNL gig by saying, “It’s a very difficult thing to do; they never make it easy on anyone who hosts the show.” He went on to say that anyone who wasn’t used to acting on live TV wouldn’t have a prayer if they were in his position. Zappa further alleged that the cast and crew didn’t like him from day one and wanted to get rid of him.
Whatever the case may be, Zappa was never asked back in any capacity.
The post 47 Years Ago, This Disastrous ‘SNL’ Episode (Allegedly) Got Frank Zappa Banned From the Show appeared first on VICE.
