Have you heard of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men? If not, you can’t say you know all of David Bowie’s groups. Fifty years ago, in his very first tele­vi­sion inter­view, Bowie appeared in the capac­i­ty of its spokesman, as well as that of “Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al League for the Preser­va­tion of Ani­mal Fil­a­ment.” “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant,” says the 17-year-old then known as David (or even Dav­ey) Jones, “but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.” Cliff Michel­more, host of the BBC pro­gram Tonight where this all went down in Novem­ber 1964, asks if such behav­ior sur­pris­es him, because, “after all, you’ve got real­ly rather long hair, haven’t you?” “We have, yes,” replies the pro­to-Bowie Bowie. “I think we all like long hair, and we don’t see why oth­er peo­ple should per­se­cute us because of this.”

The “we” to which he refers com­pris­es all the equal­ly mop-topped young dudes flank­ing him. Togeth­er, they would lat­er appear on anoth­er BBC pro­gram, Gad­zooks! It’s All Hap­pen­ing, as the group — this time musi­cal — the Man­ish Boys, per­form­ing their big num­ber, a cov­er of Bob­by Bland­’s “I Pity the Fool.” But accord­ing to the David Bowie FAQ, pro­duc­er Bar­ry Lang­ford had, for that appear­ance, pre­vi­ous­ly “insist­ed that David cut his 17” long hair,” result­ing in the brief for­ma­tion of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men and, con­se­quent­ly, “numer­ous news­pa­per reports… of course it was all a scam for some free pub­lic­i­ty.” What­ev­er his style — and he’s had a few — Bowie has clear­ly always known how to work the ever-reengi­neered pub­lic­i­ty machine. Some­times he’s done it by going with the flow, but only par­tial­ly, as we see here, where he and the Man­ish Boys sport rough­ly nine-inch hair rather than cuts to the harsh ear­ly-1960s stan­dard. Bowie, nev­er one of rock­’s ded­i­cat­ed long­hairs, can’t have found this too ter­ri­bly oppres­sive in real­i­ty, although when he returned to the BBC 35 years lat­er for a chat with the more stri­dent Jere­my Pax­man, he did so with a look that might have done the old Soci­ety proud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A defin­ing tele­vi­sion moment of my generation—Sinead O’Connor’s infa­mous rip­ping up of a pic­ture of Pope John Paul II on live tele­vi­sion after an a cap­pel­la per­for­mance of Bob Marley’s “War”—was as baf­fling to most as it was offen­sive to many. (O’Connor offered many elo­quent expla­na­tions for the act—most­ly ignored.) Not only did this strange form of protest effec­tive­ly send O’Connor into semi-obscu­ri­ty for the next twen­ty years, but it got her per­ma­nent­ly banned from Sat­ur­day Night Live by pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels. Michaels, it seems, didn’t so much object to her des­e­crat­ing the pope’s pic­ture. In fact, he has said he would have been fine with it… if only he’d known it was com­ing. He has called the moment both “a seri­ous expres­sion of belief” and “on a cer­tain lev­el, a betray­al.”

Michaels has banned many a per­former from the show, for many a rea­son. But most of all, it seems, Lorne Michaels hates sur­pris­es. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed, 23-year-old Elvis Costel­lo pissed Michaels off when he stopped his band dur­ing the intro to “Less Than Zero” and launched into “Radio, Radio” instead (above), a song he’d explic­it­ly been told not to play for its crit­i­cal take on mass media. Unlike O’Connor, Costel­lo would return to SNL when Michaels cooled down, 12 years lat­er, in 1989.

Leg­en­dar­i­ly bril­liant mess The Replace­ments hit the SNL stage in 1986 after the release of their first major-label album, Tim. They put on a respectably drunk­en, out-of-tune per­for­mance for their first song on the show, “Bas­tards of Young” (intro­duced by host Har­ry Dean Stan­ton).

So far, so clas­sic ‘Mats. But between this song and the next, “Kiss Me on the Bus” (above), it’s said they drank close to their weight in cham­pagne, and by the time they took the stage again—wearing each other’s clothes and stum­bling wildly—they were a com­plete­ly soused par­o­dy of them­selves. Fun­ny, right? Lorne Michaels was not amused. Singer Paul West­er­berg returned to the show as a solo artist, but the band nev­er received anoth­er invi­ta­tion.

Long before ston­er-rap­pers Cypress Hill got the SNL boot for smok­ing a joint onstage and trash­ing their equip­ment in 1993, abra­sive punk band Fear was said to have sparked a riot and caused $200,000 worth of dam­age to the set dur­ing their 1981 Hal­loween show appear­ance (above—introduced by host Don­ald Pleas­ance). Guests of John Belushi, who agreed to make a return cameo on the show on the con­di­tion that Fear come with him, their per­for­mances fea­tured typ­i­cal punk show antics, with row­dy audi­ence mem­bers smash­ing into each oth­er and storm­ing the stage. The N.Y. Post pub­lished an absurd­ly sen­sa­tion­al descrip­tion of the band’s appear­ance, cit­ing the $200,000 fig­ure and quot­ing an unnamed “NBC tech­ni­cian” as say­ing, “this was a life threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing that no one was killed.” Bill­board lat­er set the record straight, how­ev­er. Appar­ent­ly, the extent of the offense con­sist­ed of “some­body… yelling obscen­i­ties close to an open mike.” Pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol cut the per­for­mance short, and the show received “all of 12 com­plaints from view­ers.” As for all the sup­posed may­hem, Fear singer Lee Ving said, “all that hap­pened was that a plug got pulled out and a Hal­loween pump­kin was destroyed.” Nev­er­the­less, Fear would not be invit­ed back. Read more about that Fear appear­ance and Belushi’s love of punk rock here.

Belushi fig­ures in the per­for­mance of anoth­er musi­cian banned from the show—Frank Zappa—who served as both musi­cal guest and the show’s host. Zap­pa’s pompous atti­tude alien­at­ed most of the cast and crew in his first, and last, SNL appear­ance in 1978. Nerve names Zap­pa the sec­ond worst host in the show’s his­to­ry, cit­ing his “suf­fo­cat­ing air of smug­ness and uncon­cealed con­tempt for what he’d agreed to do.” Dur­ing the usu­al­ly chum­my clos­ing cred­its, “the cast mem­bers, oblig­ed to join him onstage, clus­tered near the edge as if fear­ing his per­son­al­i­ty might be con­ta­gious.” All but Belushi, who also joined Zap­pa and band onstage as Samu­rai Futa­ba dur­ing their third num­ber. As the clips above demon­strate, even SNL’s sec­ond worst host could still inject a good bit of wit and ener­gy into a show that’s often want­ed for both, not to men­tion the most well-rehearsed band in both avant-rock per­for­mance art and live tele­vised sketch com­e­dy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness