The first-ever person to say “fuck” on Saturday Night Live: “I thought my career’s over”
As anyone would expect from a TV show that’s been on the airwaves for 50 years, Saturday Night Live has been prone to the odd incident, outrage, and controversy, but for the most part, the sketch series has tried its hardest to ensure that nobody, performer or guest, turns the air blue with an f-bomb.
Of course, it would be impossible to expect SNL to have remained fuckless for half a century when it’s been beamed into millions of homes worldwide as it happens, especially when the cast members, celebrity cameos, or musical acts are susceptible to bouts of improvisation, nerves, or idiocy.
For such an off-the-cuff production that thrived by flying by the seat of its pants, it’s a surprise that it took until the fifth season for someone to say “fuck” live on air. In a cruel twist of fate, it wasn’t even a cast member who got the dubious honour, but one of the house band.
Then again, Paul Shaffer wasn’t exactly camera shy and was known to partake in some skits himself, whether he was co-starring with Bill Murray’s Nick the Lounge Singer or lending his musical expertise to other scenes that needed someone who was a dab hand at instrumentals. He left SNL in 1980, but he’ll always be remembered as the first person to wade into the uncharted waters of profanity.
“It was an absolute mistake because it was a little improv,” Shaffer insisted on the Kenny Aronoff Sessions podcast, saying he was “not proud” of his milestone achievement. Alongside Murray and John Belushi, the sketch saw them playing The Troggs, with the group having a heated debate about the best way to record their second album, albeit “as a medieval band rehearsing for the king about to do a concert.”
“I was getting big laughs, and Al Franken in the middle between dress and air said, ‘You’re doing so well with those floggings. If you want to add a few more, be my guest,'” Shaffer recalled. “Well, he shouldn’t have said that because I got loose. I was saying ‘the flogging this’ and ‘the flogging that’. And then I slipped, and I said, ‘the fucking beat.'”
He instantly realised what he’d done, and the keyboardist was waiting for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. “My face went white,” he remembered. “I’ve seen the tape. Just, ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’ I thought my career’s over.” Fully expecting to be reprimanded or even fired, Shaffer instead received encouragement, with Laraine Newman telling him he’d “just made broadcasting history.”
Even the boss, Lorne Michaels, wouldn’t chew him out. “He said, ‘Well, you just broke down the barrier’. They knew I didn’t do it on purpose.” He got off a lot easier than the next guy to say “fuck” on SNL, that’s for sure, with Charles Rocket making the same slip-up the following year before being fired midway through the season, which was also the same year Prince became the first non-cast member to drop an f-bomb. Once the floodgates opened, it was hard to keep them closed.
