The Replacements’ legendary SNL performance on January 18, 1986 after which they were banned by Lorne Michaels.
(From Far Out Magazine UK): The Replacements performed ‘Kiss Me on the Bus’ whilst being completely out of their mind on drink and who knows what and then played ‘Bastards of Young‘—playing it entirely out-of-tune—during which frontman Paul Westerberg yells out a swear. If the band hadn’t already tarnished their TV reputation with the knowingly tough Michaels with their performances when Westerberg yelled “come on fucker” the nail was in the coffin for the NBC bosses. To make things even worse they returned to stage wearing mismatched iterations of each other’s clothing.
In a 2015 interview recorded for the Archive of American Television, G. E. Smith recalled that although the band had performed well for the early evening pre-taped dress rehearsal performance, one of their crew then smuggled alcohol into their dressing room and they spent the next few hours drinking (with the guest host, Harry Dean Stanton) while taking drugs.
According to Smith, by the time of the late-night live broadcast, the band were so entirely intoxicated that on their way to the stage to perform, Bob Stinson tripped in the corridor, fell over onto his guitar and broke it—a fumble that led to Smith loaning him one of the SNL house band’s spare instruments.
