If It's Any Consolation I Don't Begin to Understand

35 36 years ago tonight The Replacements played Saturday Night Live, drunkenly blasting through Bastards of Young and Kiss Me on the Bus from their classic Tim album. Besides being the single greatest performance ever on the show IMHO, Bastards of Young famously got them banned from SNL because Paul yelled "fuck" at Bob while going into the guitar break.

This has always been laughable to me - much like the Janet Jackson titty moment from Super Bowl whatever, the moment is only barely perceptible when the video is slowed down and absolute attention is paid to it. I still don't believe Lorne Michaels caught it and really thought it was so terrible; I've always assumed the incident was overblown in the name of Replacements mythology. You can get a beat-by-beat rundown of the "terrible incident!" HERE:

Sufficiently lubricated, the ‘Mats’ dress rehearsal set went off smoothly. The only hitch occurred during “Bastards of Young” — Bob was late coming in on the solo. Westerberg would make sure he didn’t miss his cue during the live broadcast.

Westerberg performed in a state of drunken insouciance. Several times during the song he walked away from the mic in the middle of a verse and casually strolled around the stage as if they were jamming in Ma Stinson’s basement and not to a television audience of eight million. “We just pretended we weren’t on camera,” he recalled.

As the solo break approached, Westerberg shouted toward Bob, just off mic: “Come on, fucker.” The epithet, delivered as he turned his head, slipped past the censors. “It wasn’t really something I planned,” he said. “It was more me saying to Bob, ‘Let’s give it to ’em with everything we got.'”

Jubilation followed the ‘Mats to the dressing room. Everyone agreed they’d delivered a momentous performance. Newly minted Replacements co-managers Russ Rieger and Gary Hobbib were busy shaking hands and slapping backs when there was a knock at the door. “An assistant told me, ‘Lorne Michaels wants to see you in the hall,'” said Rieger. “I’m thinking he wants to congratulate us.”

Instead, Michaels stormed up and began to berate Rieger loudly: “How dare you do this? Do you know what you just did to this show? Your band will never perform on television again!”

Besides, it was only seven years later that Westerberg played the show solo, so what the hell anyways?