Tonight’s SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration opened with a surprise Paul Simon/Sabrina Carpenter duet and closed over three hours later with another Paul. Paul McCartney, who we just caught in a pop-up show at the intimate Bowery Ballroom this week, has been a musical guest on the series four times — in 1980, 1993, 2010, and 2012. He also appeared on the 40th anniversary special and in several comedy segments on the show (remember The Chris Farley Show?) over the years.
Tonight Sir Paul returned to Studio 8H for the first time since that 40th special and he played the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers”/”Carry That Weight”/”The End.” His last appearance as an episode’s musical guest was in 2012 when he performedwith the (now currently reactivated) surviving members of Nirvana.
Watch McCartney’s Abbey Road medley live from New York below.
SNL‘s 50th anniversary means it’s also been nearly fifty years since McCartney and John Lennon almost staged a spur-of-the-moment reunion on the show. In 1976, Michaels offered the Beatles $3,000 to appear during the first season. Here’s Lennon recounting it later in Playboy:
“Paul and I were together watching that show. He was visiting us at our place in The Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired… He and I were just sitting there, watching the show, and we went, ‘Ha-ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we went down?’ But we didn’t.”
(They didn’t.)
Here’s a dramatic reenactment with Aidan Quinn as McCartney and Jared Harris as Lennon from the 2000 VH1 movie Two Of Us by Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Michaels upped the offer to $3,200 a few weeks later, and George Harrison jokingly argued with him about the fee in a cold open that fall.
On tonight’s show, along with the musical performances that also included Miley Cyrus with Brittany Howard and Lil Wayne with the Roots, there were also a few recurring musical sketches.
The Lawrence Welk Show parody returned with Fred Armisen as Welk, Will Ferrell as Robert Goulet, and Scarlett Johansson, Kim Kardashian, Kristen Wiig, and Ana Gasteyer as the Maharelle Sisters.
A new digital short featured Andy Samberg, Bowen Yang, Sarah Sherman, Chris Parnell, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Will Forte, James Austin Johnson, Taran Killam, Beck Bennett, Kenan Thompson, and Kyle Mooney in an ’80s-synth-pop-style music video about how everyone on the show had anxiety.
Sabrina Carpenter sang with Heidi Gardner, Sarah Sherman, Ego Nwodim, and Marcello Hernandez in another Domingo sketch, which also had Bowen Yang, Andy Samberg, Kyle Mooney, and Beck Bennett (and Pedro Pascal and Bad Bunny as Domingo’s brothers).
Adam Sandler played a sentimental song, “50 Years,” with a lot of inside baseball SNL references.
And John Mulaney led one of the Broadway medley parodies that air in episodes he hosts. This one celebrated NYC (and its drugs) through the decades and featured Pete Davidson, David Spade, Maya Rudolph, Adam Driver, Andy Samberg, Alex Moffat, Paul Shaffer, G.E. Smith, Nathan Lane, Chloe Fineman, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, Sarah Sherman, Devon Walker, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, James Austin Johnson, Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, Nick Jonas, Taran Killam, and Ana Gasteyer.
Other surprises included a rare public appearance from Jack Nicholson, the first-ever SNL contribution from Meryl Streep, and a joke from the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards in an audience Q&A segment before a punchline delivered by Zach Galifianakis.
Saturday Night Live also just put its entire first episode (from Oct. 11, 1975) on YouTube. They’ve come a long way from the “Lazy Sunday” video takedowns. You can watch that below.