New SNL Book Gives The Band Short Shrift

For possibly the first time ever, I was in absentia for a Saturday Night Live season premiere. Therefore, there will be no updates to the SNL Band pages until next week. I have been told there is a new image of the band in the main titles, and we usually update that as well as going through and changing the hard date references as far as certain musicians' longevity.

BTW, I did purchase Tom Shales' and James Andrew Miller's "Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live" (Little, Brown & Company; $25.95 list). Had I read the caveat early in the acknowledgements regarding the decision to concentrate on the comedy element of the show and leave reportage of the music of the show, house and otherwise, to others, then I probably would have waited for paperback. Which is a shame because the book nicely fills in the gaps since the last major treatise on the show's behind-the-scenes history was published back in 1985, giving us coverage of such show landmarks as the ascent of Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman, the Andrew Dice Clay and Sinead O'Connor incidents, and the tragic deaths of Gilda Radner, Hartman and Chris Farley.

The only music department employees to speak on the record are the show's inaugural music director, Howard Shore (who has more of an influence on what kind of show SNL was conceived as than some may think), and musician-turned-actor Paul Shaffer. Shore had some revealing thoughts on the types of musicians that populated the early SNL band, and we learn that the band actually scored some coke on air during a commercial break once, but that's about it. Cheryl Hardwick is mentioned only sporadically, and then mostly in the context of being Mrs. Michael O'Donoghue, although Victoria Jackson remembers her input on the "I Am Not A Bimbo" song. Shore and Dan Aykroyd also speak on the formation of the Blues Brothers Band with most of the musicians being procured through Tom Malone.

A major work, to be sure, but if the band and the music is your thing, skip it.