Paul McCartney on Saturday Night Live (2026)

About this episode

The episode discusses Paul McCartney's appearance on Saturday Night Live and features various anecdotes related to rock music and the show's history.

For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live has been one of the most Important shows for rock music in the history of the nascent television medium. While, arguably, the most famous moment in the show’s history (and Tony’s favorite?) is RHCP’s multi-key 1992 version of “Under The Bridge”, there have been others. (Musical Guest The Ting Tings ripping up a photo of Colonel Sanders comes to mind.) Fortunately, just in time for NBC’s never more relevant, May sweeps season finale of SNL, they pulled in the big guns: RHCP! Oh s**t, Frusciante and Kiedis (LLC) are busy? Maybe (checks notes) Chad Smith is free? Might as well bring in noted Chad Smith lookalike Will Ferrel (“Elf”, Capitol One) to teach Chad how to host the show! Everyone knows Chad Smith’s best friend is Paul McCartney. So Chad called Sir Paul to see if he’d learn the bass part for the AI generated RHCP songs “Funky California Space Cadet” and “Santa Monica Ding-Dong”, as onetime Macca drummer Chris Whitten beat Flea’s ass in Hamburg. Where you ask? Why, under the bridge. When asked for comment, Flea replied, I don’t ever wanna feel, like when Chris Whitten kicked my ass.” Later that week, as longtime Macca drummer Abe…

People in this episode

Guest: Paul McCartney

Topics covered

• Saturday Night Live
• Paul McCartney
• rock music
• RHCP
• comedy
• musical performance

Keywords

• Paul McCartney
• Saturday Night Live
• RHCP
• Chad Smith
• Ingrid Michaelson
• rock music
• comedy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Saturday Night Live, RHCP, NBC

Books & works: Under The Bridge, Funky California Space Cadet, Santa Monica Ding-Dong, Cook Of The House

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