Punk rock has a robust tra­di­tion of gross-out, offen­sive comedy—one car­ried into the present by bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly and Diar­rhea Plan­et, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unsta­ble L.A. band led by an obnox­ious provo­ca­teur who goes by the name Lee Ving. Like fel­low L.A. punks the Germs, Cir­cle Jerks, and Black Flag, Fear gets cred­it for pio­neer­ing a Cal­i­for­nia punk sound known for ado­les­cent brat­ti­ness and a total lack of pre­ten­sion to any kind of art­ful­ness or cool.

Like many of their peers, Fear rose to promi­nence when Pene­lope Spheeris fea­tured them in her 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, Part I. But before that sem­i­nal film’s release, Fear was dis­cov­ered by John Belushi, who first caught the band on a local L.A. music show called New Wave The­atre in 1980. He tracked down Ving, who tells Rolling Stone, “we had a cou­ple of beers and became fast friends.” At the time, Belushi was at work on his com­e­dy Neigh­bors with Dan Aykroyd and con­tract­ed the band to record a song for the film (his last before his death in 1982).

The film’s pro­duc­ers, Rolling Stone writes, “were appalled” by the song “and refused to use it,” so to make it up to Ving and com­pa­ny, Belushi pushed to have the band booked on Sat­ur­day Night Live on Hal­loween, 1981. The result­ing per­for­mance has become leg­endary for what hap­pened, and what didn’t, and led to Fear becom­ing, says Ving, “one of the esteemed mem­bers of the per­ma­nent­ly banned.” You can watch a clip above of the band play­ing “Beef Boloney” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Sax­o­phones” (intro­duced by Don­ald Pleas­ance), and just below see Ving in a clip from an inter­view show dis­cussing the ill-fat­ed gig.

Belushi stage-man­aged the band’s appear­ance, striv­ing for authen­tic­i­ty by bring­ing into the stu­dio what Ving calls “an actu­al punk rock audi­ence rather than just Mr. and Mrs. Mis­souri.” (That audi­ence includ­ed now-leg­ends Ian MacK­aye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, mem­bers of New York hard­core band the Cro-Mags, and Tesco Vee of the Meat­men.)  The result­ing mosh pit was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary for the typ­i­cal punk show. But, unsur­pris­ing­ly, “the real audi­ence at Sat­ur­day Night Live was scared to death,” says Ving, “They didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with all the may­hem.”

Dur­ing the riotous pro­ceed­ings, SNL pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol “got hit in the chest with a pump­kin,” some equip­ment was dam­aged, and dur­ing the final song, “Let’s Have a War,” an audi­ence mem­ber grabbed the micro­phone and yelled out “F*ck New York!” The pro­fan­i­ty freaked out NBC, who cut the broad­cast short and shelved the footage for sev­er­al years. The New York Post lat­er quot­ed an unnamed NBC tech­ni­cian as say­ing, “This was a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing no one got killed.” The paper also quot­ed a fig­ure of $400,000 for dam­ages to the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter set.

But as Bill­board report­ed two weeks lat­er, the fig­ure was total­ly erro­neous (sup­plied to the Post by Ving as a prac­ti­cal joke, as he says above). “We had to pay $40 in labor penal­ties. That was the extent of it,” said SNL spokesman Peter Hamil­ton. As for the shock to view­ers, it seems the net­work received “all of 12 com­plaints” after the broad­cast. Ving him­self found the over­re­ac­tion ridicu­lous, and NBC’s long shelv­ing of the footage—only recent­ly made avail­able in a trun­cat­ed version—a humor­less mis­take. “They seem to be… los­ing the sense of humor about the whole idea,” he told Rolling Stone, “I had a sense of humor at the whole idea of start­ing Fear. It was extreme­ly humor­ous to me, and I think John saw that humor.”

Indeed he did, but Belushi’s appre­ci­a­tion for Fear’s antics was ahead of its time. Now we can see, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. And we can also final­ly hear the long-shelved sin­gle for Neigh­bors that Belushi record­ed with the band.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Birth of the Blues Broth­ers: How Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi Start­ed Intro­duc­ing a New Gen­er­a­tion to the Blues

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

Tom Lehrer died last week­end, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into cir­cu­la­tion. He did­n’t both­er to con­tra­dict them, pub­licly claim­ing that he fig­ured they would “cut down on the junk mail.” That quip proved not just that he was still alive, but that his wit was intact. And it was his wit, com­bined with a facil­i­ty on the piano, that made him famous: mer­ci­less­ly sat­i­riz­ing every­thing from the Boy Scouts to Har­vard, his alma mater, to New Math to Vat­i­can II to World War III, his live­ly show-tune pas­tich­es became defin­ing pieces of Cold War-era com­e­dy — or in any case, defin­ing pieces of ear­ly Cold War-era com­e­dy.

A pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics for most of his career, he per­formed and record­ed music most­ly in the nine­teen-fifties and six­ties, begin­ning with his first con­cert, giv­en as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in 1950, and end­ing with anoth­er in Copen­hagen in 1967.

There was also an ear­ly-sev­en­ties coda in the form of a few songs writ­ten for PBS’ chil­dren’s show The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny and a per­for­mance at a George S. McGov­ern ral­ly. But by then, the frame of Amer­i­can cul­ture had shift­ed. “The Viet­nam War is what changed it,” Lehrer said in 1981. “Every­body got earnest. My pur­pose was to make peo­ple laugh and not applaud. If the audi­ence applauds, they’re just show­ing they agree with me”: an obser­va­tion today’s would-be satirists would do well to bear in mind.

Whether or not you have any aspi­ra­tions of your own in that tra­di­tion, you can lis­ten through the entire­ty of Lehrer’s record­ed work in the YouTube playlist above and under­stand why his com­ic star burned so bright­ly — and, through the near­ly six­ty years that have fol­lowed, nev­er quite burned out. Though clear­ly writ­ten in the spir­it of Eisen­how­er-era lib­er­al­ism, these songs (released by their author into the pub­lic domain a few years ago) don’t shy away from the absur­di­ties of what Lehrer him­self would not, with a straight face, be able to call the human con­di­tion. First test­ed out on cam­pus, they also devel­oped an ear­ly form of what we’ve come to think of as the “col­lege” sen­si­bil­i­ty in pop­u­lar music. In some sense, Lehrer nev­er left that way of see­ing the world behind — nor, like a true stu­dent, did he ever get around to fin­ish­ing his Ph.D.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Lehrer Releas­es His All of Catchy and Sav­age Musi­cal Satire Into the Pub­lic Domain

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.