In April 1976, the Beatles were six years into their solo careers, having split after their Let It Be album.
Yet, less than a year into his tenure as producer of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels had the balls to try and orchestrate a reunion on the show.
Speaking directly to the millions watching at home, he offered The Beatles $3000 ($17,000 today) to go on SNL and perform three of their classic tracks.
Little did he know that just 22 blocks away in New York City, Paul McCartney was visiting John Lennon at the latter’s Dakota building apartment.
The two Beatles were watching SNL (which starts at 11:30pm) and ended up “laughing their asses off” at Lorne waving the NBC-approved cheque at the camera.
According to Tom Doyle’s Man On The Run about Macca in the 70s, John said: “Wouldn’t it be funny if we went down? We should go down now and just do it?” They almost called for a cab, but considering the time of night and it was a day off, they decided to call it a night. Nevertheless, George Harrison showed up a few months later for the SNL cold open, trying to bag the cheque for himself.
Lorne drily tells Harrison in the clip: “I thought that you would understand, you know, that it was $3,000 for four people, that it would just be $750 for each of you. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I mean, you could have the full $3,000…” So as part of the skit, the Quiet Beatle agreed to an “extra $250” for saying “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”