The idea of an exhibit celebrating Saturday Night Live’s rich musical history wasn’t anything new.
Executive producer Lorne Michaels and his friend John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, had been discussing it for at least a few years. But talk didn’t turn into action until SNL staffers began preparing to mark the weekly NBC comedy show’s 50 years on the air, most notably with a Feb. 16 anniversary special.
“This 50th anniversary just seemed like the perfect time to make it happen,” says Amanda Pecsenye, the Rock Hall's director of curatorial affairs.
Photo: Outfit worn by Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO on Oct. 14, 1978. From the Collection of Mark Mothersbaugh.
“SNL: Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of Music” opens May 23 in the Rock Hall’s main exhibition hall. It explores music-themed comedy sketches and musical guest performances, some of them downright legendary, in a layout that mirrors the show’s format from cold open sketch to “goodnights” — when the cast, host and musical guest gather on the Studio 8H home base stage in New York City’s Rockefeller Center as the credits roll.
“We as a curatorial team met with key folks from NBC, from the SNL team, last summer and just started brainstorming,” Pecsenye says. “We’ve been collaborating with them up until now.”
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Photo: Guitar used by Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters on Dec. 16, 2017. Collection of Foo Fighters.
The exhibit’s “cold open” is an entrance to the main exhibit hall painted the same green as the hall outside Studio 8H and designated by a large lighted Saturday Night Live sign made for the show’s anniversary special set. Inside is a recreation of the home base stage, where visitors can snap a selfie.
The stage is flanked by two built-in cases. One houses a reproduction of the picture of Pope John Paul II that Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor tore up after her Oct. 3,1992, performance of Bob Marley’s “War” — one of the show’s most controversial moments — created by scanning SNL’s photos of the torn pieces. The other contains a denim shirt embroidered with the words “Saturday Night Live Band,” on loan from former house band and cast member Paul Shaffer, and a Dizzy Gillespie-style trumpet played by a member of Grammy-winning producer-composer Quincy Jones’s band when he hosted the Feb. 10, 1990 episode.
“He led … the SNL house band in a tribute performance to [South African anti-apartheid activist and future president] Nelson Mandela, who was getting out of prison the next day,” Pecsenye says.
Photo: Dizzy Gillespie-style trumpet played by Quincy Jones’s band on Feb. 10, 1990. Courtesy Rock Hall.
The next section displays the bulk of approximately 70 artifacts from sketches and musical guest stints, along with music-related video shorts. The selection runs the gamut from a cream suit jacket Ray Charles wore when he served as both host and musical guest on a 1977 show, to a red-and-white Christmas-themed Remo drumhead late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins pounded during the rock band’s late 2017 appearance, to the demure pink minidress pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo rocked for a 2023 rendition of “All-American Bitch” — one in which she climbed atop a fancy dining room table, stabbed a blood-red cake, and smeared it on her face and dress.
“It still has frosting marks on it,” Pecsenye says.
Photo: Dress worn by Olivia Rodrigo on Dec. 9, 2023. Collection of Olivia Rodrigo.
Cast wardrobes include Blues Brothers Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi’s black suits; the purple bathrobe that transformed Eddie Murphy into soul legend James Brown as host of the “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party” skit; and the gowns and dyed-to-match shoes Nora Dunn and Jan Hooks wore as the Sweeney Sisters lounge act.
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The “goodnights” section houses one of Pecsenye’s favorite artifacts: a T-shirt Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder opened his jacket to reveal at the end of a show that aired shortly after Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April 1994.
“On his T-shirt he had written with a Sharpie marker a ‘K’ for Kurt,” Pecsenye says. “I remember watching it live, when it happened, and it was very moving.”
Visitors can watch every SNL musical performance, including some that never aired, at seven touchscreen kiosks. A shortened version of the documentary Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music, directed by Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, will play hourly in the museum’s Foster Theater.
“Hopefully, there’s something for everyone in this amazing five-decade run,” Pecsenye says.
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