Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has been added to the line-up of the star-studded SNL50: The Homecoming Concert spectacular being staged in New York on February 14 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of US TV institution Saturday Night Live.
Grohl holds the record for the most musical appearances on the satirical late night entertainment show, having performed on SNL 15 times since 1992. And his appearance at the Valentine's Day concert, being hosted at the storied Radio City Music Hall, will be of special significance for the 56-year-old musician because he'll be sharing the spotlight with a band whose appearance on the show back in 1980 gave him a glimpse into an alternate reality and changed the course of his life forever.
On the evening of January 26, 1980, the 11-year-old Dave Grohl sneaked out of his family home in Springfield, Virginia to hang out with his big sister Lisa, who was babysitting for a local family. Having packed the children off to bed at the appointed hour, Lisa Grohl was watching Saturday Night Live when her little brother showed up, just in time to see host Terri Garr introduce the night’s musical guests.
The B-52s, to young Dave, were odd, so alien to his understanding of what a rock band should be that they could have descended from Mars rather than Athens, Georgia. Vocalist Fred Schneider seemed to be speaking in tongues, the two big-haired women flanking him – one blonde (Cindy Wilson), one a redhead (Kate Pierson) – were shrieking and wriggling as if they had ants in their pants, and guitarist Ricky Wilson was playing using just two strings. Then, two minutes into their performance, Schneider and Wilson tumbled to the ground, and lay twitching on the studio floor like they’d been struck by lighting.
"I remember that moment like some people remember the Kennedy assassination," Grohl told me in 2009. "When the B-52s played Rock Lobster, honestly, that moment changed my life. The importance and impact of that on my life was huge. That people that were so strange could play this music that sounded so foreign to me and for it to be so moving ... growing up in suburban Virginia, I had never even imagined something so bizarre was possible. It made me want to be weird. It just immediately made me want to give everyone the middle finger and be like, Fuck you, I wanna be like that!
"But the B-52s thing really had an impact on me, because it made me realise that there was something powerful about music that was different. It made everything else seem so vanilla. I didn’t shave a mohawk in my head, and I still loved the melodies and lyrics in my rock ‘n’ roll records, but that sent me on this mission to find things that were unusual, music that wasn’t considered normal."
Speaking with UK music magazine Melody Maker, Grohl expanded on this musical epiphany.
"Those guitars! Two strings! How cool! Those drums! Slap slap slap! Dead easy! The women looked like they were from outer space and everything was linked in – the sleeves, the sound, the clothes, the iconography, the logo, everything. I think when you’re a kid, that’s what you’re after, a real unified feel to a band, and that’s what the B-52s offered. Their songs were so easy to learn, they got me into playing really easily. This was definitely the first thing after Kiss or Rush that totally absorbed me like that."
Alongside the B-52s, the SNL50 show will also features appearances from Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Devo, Post Malone and more. The show will be hosted by Jimmy Fallon, and streamed live on Peacock.
