On October 11, 1975, Saturday Night Live made its debut on NBC. Featuring a fresh-faced new comedy troupe dubbed The Not Ready for Primetime Players, the first episode of the NBC sketch-comedy series featured comedian George Carlin as host and two musical guests, Billy Preston and Janis Ian.
More than 50 years later, SNL hosts are very involved in the show, kicking off with a monologue and appearing in multiple sketches. Some even do double duty as host and musical guest and still appear in the sketches.
But back in 1975, the show’s format wasn’t set in stone, and Carlin did his opening monologue—and then three more—without appearing in any sketches at all, according to NBC Insider.
On Oct. 11, 1975, the popular comedian delivered monologues about sports, the life of a dog, awkward phone conversations, and religion. Carlin became the only host in the show’s 51-year history to do four monologues while skipping the sketches.
By week two of that first SNL season, host Paul Simon appeared in sketches and performed seven songs on the episode, which aired on Oct. 18, 1975.
By the time Carlin returned to SNL nearly 10 years later, the format was set. The controversial comic not only delivered an opening monologue but he appeared in sketches with Billy Crystal and Martin Short on the Nov. 10, 1984, episode.
Carlin, who died in 2008 at age 71, opened up about that historic first SNL episode, telling the Television Academy Foundation that the original idea was to have rotating hosts on the show on a continued basis.
“But they wanted Richard Pryor, and he didn’t want to do that, and I think they wanted Lily Tomlin and there were problems, so they asked me to be the first host,” he shared. “I knew that I was stepping a little out of my world because it was sketch comedy. I had found out that long since, in the late ‘60s when I got hot that I really wasn’t a born actor.”
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Carlin revealed that he told showrunner Lorne Michaels during that first week that he didn’t want to appear in any sketches.
“I said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable, I don’t feel competent, let me do a number of monologues, just let me instead of doing a big opening monologue and then being in sketches. Let me do a lot of little monologues,’” Carlin recalled telling Michaels. “And he did, and it worked.”Carlin noted that when he did return to SNL in 1984, he was agreeable to appearing in sketches and felt that he was “really good” in them.
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That first SNL episode featured another rarity by showcasing two musical guests, Preston and Ian.
In an interview with NBC News, Ian, who performed her songs “At Seventeen” and “In the Winter” on the SNL premiere, noted that the Not Ready for Primetime Players were really “nervous” that night “because most of them had never done live TV.”
“I knew that George and Billy and I would be OK — George Carlin and Billy Preston and I — because we had grown up doing live TV, and I was told I would know a lot of the camera people,” she shared. “I wasn’t nervous because I had been doing this since I was 14, and I had done an awful lot of TV, so it was just another show. I think that the show’s success really — I know that the show’s success took everyone by surprise.”
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