Victoria Jackson playing her “Boyfriend” song as a duet with Willie Nelson.
Billy Joel playing the glockenspiel as a celebrity guest on “Die Ost Deutsche Squaren” (or whatever it was called).
George Harrison and Paul Simon doing “Homeward Bound.”
Paul Simon playing “The Late Great Johnny Ace”
I’m thinking more of duets of people, espacially “big names” who don’t usually appear together, but there are others like the Billy Joel one that don’t quite fit that description. These are some of mine that come to mind – what are your favorites?
She sang “Them Heavy People” (wearing a fedora and trench coat) and “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” (in a gold catsuit, sitting on top of a piano). Eric Idle hosted and requested her specifically.
It’s the only time she’s ever performed in North America.
Ok, I just read the OP again (slower this time) and realized that my answer isn’t exactly what you were looking for, but it’s STILL my favorite SNL musical appearance.
Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain. There was a dark, frightening, anarchic element to that performance that makes it very memorable.
Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page fronting a string orchestra, playing that dreadful hacked-up remix of Kashmir. PD was jumping around like a spastic and made himself breathless about halfway through the song and it was all he could do to gasp out the rest of the lyrics. Ass.
Nirvana, appearing a few weeks before Cobain’s suicide. You could practically smell death on him. I remember specifically thinking, that guy is a goner.
During one of the Christmas shows in the 80’s, Robert Plant appeared with the HoneyDrippers, featuring Brian Setzer on guitar, and Paul Shaffer on keyboards. It absolutely rocked.
When Valerie Bertinelli guest hosted a few years ago, Eddie Van Halen sat in with the band and played Eruption if I recall correctly.
George Harrison and Paul Simon doing “Here Comes The Sun”. At the end, if you listen carefully you can hear Simon say, “What a beautiful song”, sort of to himself. Great moment. That was the show where Harrison came on to collect the $5000 that Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles for a reunion. There was a hilarious bit with Lorne telling George, “No, the $5,000 was for all four Beatles. You’re just one. You get $1250”.
The Halloween 1981 episode where the hardcore punk band Fear appeared. John Belushi, a fan of the band had asked the show to book them, in exchange for which he would make a cameo on the show. They brought about 20 slam-dancing, stage-diving skinheads with them, threw rotten pumpkins at the crew, and yelled “Fuck you, New York!” into the mic (although it wasn’t broadcast).
The Halloween 1981 episode where the hardcore punk band Fear appeared. John Belushi, a fan of the band had asked the show to book them, in exchange for which he would make a cameo on the show. They brought about 20 slam-dancing, stage-diving skinheads with them, threw rotten pumpkins at the crew, and yelled “Fuck you, New York!” into the mic (although it wasn’t broadcast).
Regarding Fear, what I recall from one of the “backstage at SNL” books (the title and authors of which escape me so take the reference for what it’s worth) is that they were booked by Michael O’Donahugh, who had signed on as the producer after Jean Doumanian’s fiasco. The fans were as well-behaved as you would expect from punk rock fans and there was no mention in the book of throwing pumpkins or profanity. The authors said something about a technical director seeing one of the slam dancers heading for a microphone and killing the power to the band, after which the fans calmed down and pretty much left in an orderly fashion.
Great musical moments for me from the show include k.d. lang singing “Johnny Get Angry” (I would seriously consider hurting someone for a copy of the tape) and Kyle McLaughlin singing the cattle drive song. The funniest music-related sketch I can recall was “The Sinatra Group” with Phil Hartman as Sinatra and guests including “Steve and Eydie,” “Sinead O’Connor,” “Luther Campbell” and “Billy Idol.”
Since half of the people posting on this thread are completely disregarding the intent of the OP, I will, too.
My favorite SNL musical moment was when Pearl Jam performed Porch. Eddie was wearing a T-shirt with electrical tape on it in the form of a coat hanger. Vedder was at his maniacal best, and it was cool that he voiced his opinion about women’s rights in one of the band’s first major network appearances.
OK, perhaps I do need to clarify. I’m NOT talking about the “regular” musical performances, where so-and-so was the official musical guest, that’s introduced by the host 2 or three times during the show, and maybe something weird happened, or you thought the performance was especially cool, or whatever.
I’m talking about unusual or unique pairings of musical performers, or performers maybe singing as part of a sketch, or maybe even a nonmusical performer wowing us all with a surprise show of talent. The once-in-a-lifetime, if you didn’t catch it you missed some history, you sat there with your jaw agape going “Wow, that was incredible”, nifty little surprises that you’ll never get to see again anywhere else, probably, but it must have been awesome/funny/charming to watch.
So I DON’t mean:
Elvis Costello cutting off the song he was supposed to do to do “Radio, Radio.” Sinead O’Connor ripping up the pope. “Kate Bush was really awesome this one time.”
I DO mean:
Mick Jagger’s surprise appearance with Jimmy Cliff.
Harrison and Simon, “Here Comes the Sun.”
Christopher Walken doing “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” for his monologue.
Eddie Van Halen sitting in with the band.
I wish I could think of some other examples of what I’m talking about, because I KNOW there have been more.
The problem is the musical part of the show has become so bland, some big star with a new single coming out, or a band that is getting a lot of buzz at the moment. Very little room for the kind of surprising little moments the OP asked for. How many of those kind of moments have there been since the early 90s, not many I’ll bet.
But by the OP, I’ll say Art Garfunkel and George Harrison doing “Scarbough Fair”, that was them right?
Ignoring the OP:
Desi Arnez doing “Babalou”, so unhip it was cool, and great to see him fronting a band and putting out that kind of energy even in his later years. Let’s see SNL get that creative with guests/ and or hosts these days.
Maybe they could get Orin Hatch to sing when John McCain hosts, naaah…
Yes it truly is … let’s examine the OP again, shall we? "I’m thinking more of (X), but there are others like (Y) that don’t quite fit that description. "
From this, some of us might have thought the floor was open to the various species of “memorable one-off SNL musical performances”.
So let me get this straight. Your “Memorable one-off SNL musical performances” thread has been somehow corrupted by all of our unacceptably mundane (to you), albeit memorable (to us), one-off SNL musical performances?
