Live From New York - James H. Miller [195]
JOHN ZONARS, Music Coordinator:
I was in the control booth. I was the one who basically put the whole thing together, unfortunately. Essentially what happened was she was performing on the show with an orchestra on the first song she was doing, and the second song was a selection from a record that she had done a cappella. We rehearsed it that way on Thursday. Everything was all fine and well, and we got through it. She refused to tape a promo, which we all thought was really rude. And that was a difficult thing to handle, actually, at the time. On Thursday afternoons we always taped the promos, and Lorne was actually coming in and producing. These days the writers do it. But she refused to do it and left in a huff, and there was sort of blame cast around for that, which I was involved in.
Anyhow, I didn’t think much of it until Saturday afternoon when they came in to do their audio balance at five-thirty — “they” meaning the band and Sinead and her manager at the time, who I think has passed away. They came in, and the manager cornered me and asked me a very poignant question, which was, “When something goes wrong on the air, do you use the dress rehearsal performance?” I said to him, “It’s been known to happen for the West Coast, but for the live show, obviously it’s live. It goes out live, I think as far as like the central time zone.”
So then he said, “I want to change the second song to ‘War’ by Bob Marley. And she’ll do it a cappella. And there’s a very special thing she wants to do since ‘War’ is essentially about child abuse. At the end of the song she wants to hold up a photo of a child and make a statement about child abuse, okay?” So I went as far as to get her the photo of a child, talked to Lorne about it, talked to the director, basically tell him he’s got to zoom in on her and get a close-up of her with this photo. And when we did the dress rehearsal she sang “War” and held up the photo of the child and I think she said, “This is what we have to protect,” or something. The house was captivated. She’s giving this exhilarating performance by herself.
And then during the actual show, I remember I was in the studio watching her and I started feeling nervous and I thought that my nerves were due to the fact that since she was doing it a cappella, she was taking longer than she had at dress, and I was afraid that she was taking too much time. So I walked into the control room and just as I did, it happened — and I looked up at everybody, and they were all in shock. And they refused to turn on the applause sign after she ripped up the picture of the Pope. And I think that was the classiest move in the whole history of television — not cueing applause.
And then everybody was basically just in shock except for Lorne. Lorne was the only one that didn’t seem like completely out of his mind. One thing I’ve always respected about Lorne is that he has this real hard-on for any kind of censorship. He does not want anything to be censored. He wants things to happen as they happen.
The big issue at that point was, does she go on for the good-nights? Does she get up there and say good-bye with everybody like a legitimate cast member? And Lorne decided that she should, which is a decision that he got fucked for afterwards but I’m sure would stand by today. Because there she was, she went out and she did something extraordinary — and blasphemous in some people’s eyes — but he was able to maintain some kind of respect for her, some kind of respect for the whole process of the show by letting her do that.
LORNE MICHAELS:
I didn’t know it was coming. Here’s what