𝐄. 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 (FANPAGE)

“The Attractions and I were initially called to perform on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as a last resort. The Sex Pistols were unable to make it and the Ramones refused to do what they thought was selling out. I had never seen an episode in my life, as the programme had never reached British television. However, the wide broadcasting to an American audience seemed like a good move for the redefined band’s reputation. The Attractions were newly formed and this was the one chance we had to successfully expose them to new ears. Like Ed Sullivan was to The Beatles is what SNL could have been for us. In hindsight, the whole decision was made in a haste — the band and I had just barely escaped the claws of a rabid crowd at Asbury Park when news broke out about our upcoming television appearance. From the get-go the record company was already pushing us to perform a song from the last album — ‘Less Than Zero’, a song that with all things considered an American audience would understand the least from past work. I was thinking ahead, I had already dropped the weight of ‘My Aim is True’ but the record company seemed to have one foot in the past while we were pushing forward towards a future for the Attractions.
I had to get creative with how I expressed my resistance, so I started digging into the past to play the record company at their own game. There was a stunt that Hendrix had pulled in 69’ while on the Lulu Show that would be forever ingrained into my head. He halted his performance of ‘Hey Joe’ to play a rendition of ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ as Cream had broken up that week. It’s one of those moments that, when seen live, is burned into your memory. It was such a bold move, and that night I’d be paying homage to the man who did it first. The word ‘live’ was in the name after all, it’s not like they could prevent me from pulling such a thing. Once they’ve seen it you can’t go back from that. I put on a compliant front for when we got out on stage. I only let the band go one verse in before I cut it off and apologized to the audience. We dove right into ‘Radio Radio’, which hadn’t even been released prior to when we played it that night. Producer Lorne Michaels held up +