Posted in: NBC, Peacock, TV | Tagged: Eddie Vedder, pearl jam, saturday night live, snl
SNL50 Concert: Eddie Vedder Honors Gilda Radner, Norm Macdonald & More
SNL 50: Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder covered Tom Petty's "The Waiting" and honored Gilda Radner, Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald, and others.
There is already a whole lot to love about tonight's SNL50: The Homecoming Concert, as the big weekend celebration for the 50th anniversary of NBC's Saturday Night Live gets underway. In fact, we're already seeing the high bar that's been set for Sunday night's big primetime three-hour celebration. In so many ways, one of the special highlights of the night came when Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder took the stage for a cover of Tom Petty's "The Waiting" and a nice nod of respect to Elvis Costello's "Radio Radio" moment from 1977 before launching into Pearl Jam's "Corduroy." If you didn't catch Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (which you definitely need to do), what went down was that Costello began performing "Less Than Zero" before shifting gears on-air and performing "Radio Radio." But it was Vedder's performance of "The Waiting" that really hit hard because he also used it to remind all of us of some of the big names that the SNL family has lost over the years: Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman, Tom Davis, music producer Hal Willner, writer Michael O'Donoghue, Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald, and John Belushi.
"I was thinking about all the people that… that could be here… that we'd be missing… we will be missing tonight. Like, I'll just say one word… one name. And just think… imagine. If she were here. Gilda. Gilda Radner would be here. She would not miss… this," Vedder shared before continuing with the names of other departed SNL family members. "Phil Hartman. Tom Davis. The genius, Hal Willner. Michael O'Donoghue. Chris Farley. Norm Macdonald. John Belushi." From there, Vedder shifted his focus to Belushi, adding, "He's in our hearts. In your hearts. So it feels like you could pull him down to be here. 'John, the gang is all here.'" Here's a look at the clip (courtesy of LateNighter):
