50 Years Ago: Lorne Michaels Offered the Beatles $3000 to Reunite
Today in 1976, the SNL impresario made a lowball offer to Paul, John, George, and Ringo
If three grand doesn’t sound like a lot of money, you’re right, it wasn’t. It was the union minimum at the time, and adjusted for inflation, it would be just $17,720 today. But 50 years ago today, Lorne Michaels made the offer on live television during the first season of Saturday Night Live. Here’s the video:
Here it is right here. A check made out to you, the Beatles, for $3,000. All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s $1,000 right there. You know the words — it’ll be easy.
If you want to give Ringo less, that’s up to you.
The gag here was that promoters had recently been announcing large sums of money for the band to reunite. A month earlier, promoter Bill Sargent offered the band $30 million for a reunion concert. By the end of the year, he had raised it to $230 million.
Lorne kept trying. A week after his first offer, he appeared again to increase his offer to $3200, plus free hotel accommodations. John and Paul were watching that episode from John’s place at the Dakota. They considered going to the studio but decided against it. George, however, showed up on the show a few months later. Lorne had to explain that it had to be all of the Beatles, so he wasn’t getting a quarter of that money.
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