Pretend all you know going into this sketch is that it’s just about a bunch of dads reuniting to play music. No genre. No spoilers. Only four boomers — Fred Armisen on vocals, Bill Hader on bass, host Ashton Kutcher on guitar, and musical guest Dave Grohl on drums — who are eager to use a daughter’s wedding as an excuse to get the old band back together. (“I hope Daddy doesn’t make too much of a fool out of himself up here,” Armisen’s character giggles from the stage.) That’s how Saturday Night Live teed us up during its February 6, 2010, episode, which, say, could’ve resulted in the quartet breaking into a Blue Jean Committee type of yacht rock or inoffensively bad Parrothead medley. But then … Armisen screams. He knocks over tables. Kutcher gets in a good glass-shattering kick. “When Ronald Reagan comes around / He brings the fascists to your town!” Oh, these were punks back in 1983. And their song is called “Fistfight in the Parking Lot.”
“It made me so happy that it finally got done and went on the air,” Armisen now says of the sketch. “It felt like, Now I’ve done everything I wanted to do on this show. I emailed Lorne Michaels the next day to say, ‘Thank you. That was really meaningful to me.’” Armisen, an admirer of the hardcore punk scene since childhood, named his fictional band Crisis of Conformity — he wanted the performance to be as if Suicidal Tendencies, Hüsker Dü, and Dead Kennedys were put into a blender. Like many popular SNL sketches, “Punk Band Reunion at the Wedding” had a few false starts before making the final cut, but the combination of Grohl’s musicianship and Kutcher’s commitment to silliness pushed the stylus over the groove. “It’s a love letter to all those bands I grew up on. It’s a celebration,” Armisen adds. “I’m thrilled it happened at all.”
I got the sense watching the 50 Years of SNL Music documentary that this sketch is pretty much your SNL magnum opus. Is that a fair characterization?
If someone like yourself is saying it, that’s really nice. If I came out of the gate saying that, it might be a little bit of a different tone. But if a “magnum opus” is almost like saying it’s a signature piece, then I’m all for it. It’s a reunion of everything in my life. Punk music has always meant so much to me, and SNL has always meant so much to me — it’s everything I love in one place. The musical guests on the show defined what I listened to when I was younger because back then, there wasn’t MTV yet, so all of my visual references came from SNL.
Tell me more about your punk bona fides. What would you consider to be your great awakening with the genre?
It might be more of a list, but one moment that opened my mind to the idea of punk was when the B-52’s played on SNL. I was a kid sitting in my basement, and it had such an impact on me. It was thrilling, yes, but it made me realize there were alternatives to all the other music going on. From there, it evolved into Devo, Talking Heads, and the Clash. It wasn’t just that I liked the music; it was something that helped me define a feeling. It was like, Whatever this feeling is that these bands are doing, it’s really setting me off. I’m still even on that trip now. It became such a big part of my life and one of my main focuses. It meant so much to me that I wanted to try to put it together in a sketch.
How long had the sketch idea been percolating before there was a meaningful effort to get it onto the show? Did you have to be patient?
A good way to do the math would be when the documentary American Hardcore came out in 2006. I saw it at the theater and really enjoyed it. Some of the people being interviewed were of the age where they would potentially have children getting married. They looked a little older and grayer. So I was like, Oh, they’re now at a point where they could be making a speech at a wedding. That type of music, really fast political music, didn’t match the image of someone of that age anymore because it’s all about youthful energy and political awareness. So I kept thinking, Wouldn’t it be funny to see someone performing that type of song as an adult with the same anger? The lyrics with a lot of those bands were more than just: “This is a revolution, and we’re the young people taking over.” There was this other thing going on of mentioning politicians by proper names. So I was like, What would that be like — to say “Alexander Haig” now? Somewhere in there, it became a sketch idea.
Is the phrase “fistfight in the parking lot” stemming from personal experience at all?
I was trying to think of a chorus that could depict something physical. Is it a mosh pit? No, that’s more like the ’90s. What could you say that isn’t too violent and not about weapons? I thought, Okay, “fistfight” — there’s not going to be any real damage. Something about “fistfight” seems dumb and light enough. I don’t know why I chose “parking lot.” You get that these people were trying to get physical about something; as opposed to, “I’m enjoying this fistfight right now,” it’s instead, “Look, there’s going to be a fistfight if you don’t knock it off.”
You had the benefit of Them Crooked Vultures as the musical guest that week, which secured Dave Grohl on the drums. Was there anything about Ashton Kutcher as the host that made you want to pursue it then?
The honest answer is that we tried it once with Jon Hamm and it didn’t click. We tried it at the table read, and it didn’t even make it to the dress rehearsal. Kristen Wiig was originally in it as another band member. It just wasn’t quite ready then. So we worked on another version of it, and because Dave was there, I was like, Oh, that’s perfect. We could actually play the song live. Ashton was game to do it and really cool about the inspiration behind it. He was such a good sport and so attentive to the sketch — he could tell that Dave’s microphone went out, and he moved his mic over to cover him, which is so punk.
I think that moment enhanced the sketch significantly. What’s more punk?
Absolutely. That’s what happens at those shows — if there is a mic that works. The fact that he was alert enough to be like, I got to do something about it, helped it so, so much. There’s actually a little Easter egg in the very beginning of the sketch. There’s a sandwich board for the couple that says “Cadena-Norton wedding.” It’s a reference to Black Flag’s Dez Cadena and Hüsker Dü’s Greg Norton. I wanted to pick names as little Easter eggs of famous people in the hardcore-punk scene.
Did you ever ask John Paul Jones to be the bassist?
It was always going to be Bill Hader. I’ll pick any opportunity to have Bill in whatever fake band I’m doing.
Were there any visual sources of inspiration for you in terms of the way you held the microphone and paced around the banquet hall?
That’s pretty much a mix of Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra. They were both singers who had a way to grip the mic where it’s almost like a pose: I’m ready to go, and I’m ready to fight. There’s something about it that’s very specific to hardcore punk.
What was the sense everyone had after the dress rehearsal? Was the kinetic energy there and the audience responsive?
It was hard to tell what the audience thought because all I was thinking was, Let me get this right. Let me make sure that I go into the cake this way. After the dress rehearsal, they took out a full verse. It wasn’t that bad of a … I mean, it was a major chunk of the song, but now that I look at it, I’m like, That’s how it should be. There was no need for a second verse. You get the joke enough that you don’t need a longer explanation of how the song goes. And also, what is a second verse, really? What does it really do? When you’re at a concert, great, we love the song. But if it’s a sketch, you could be like, Now what are you doing? You’re going into a second verse? It threw us off-balance to only do one verse, which is a good thing. The performance should look a little shaky and punk. That little bit of chaos is so much better than a well-rehearsed band. I’m thankful that it turned out that way.
How much confidence did you have diving onto the wedding cake?
That part was easy because it’s all soft and delicious. It’s like a nice little cushion. A yummy cake cushion.
Crisis of Conformity has a Discogs page, and let me tell you, getting a copy of that 7-inch ain’t cheap. When did you record the song in a studio?
About six months after that. This label Drag City put it out, and there’s a B-side. It’s a great label out of Chicago. If you look at the artwork, there’s a real photo of me back in the ’90s with my head shaved. I’m doing a bit — I was sort of pretending to be a singer of a hardcore band. But if you keep looking, there’s one other picture, and it’s Dave Grohl. He’s attending a show in D.C.
Another Easter egg about the song is that it appeared in the third season of Ted Lasso during a scene when the Richmond soccer players play dirty against their rivals on the field. I’d love to know what that call with Jason Sudeikis was like. He was clearly inspired!
That was the best because he treated “Fistfight in the Parking Lot” like a serious song. He was in the editing room and texted me, “Hey, can we use that song?” And I was like, “Oh my God, absolutely.” I couldn’t have said “yes” fast enough. His approach to it was great. Even all these years after SNL, I love that we all put each other in each other’s projects. We keep going.
Should I assume you get royalties for it?
Yeah, I suppose so. I’ve never kept track, even when I sell singles on tour. I’ve got to call Apple.
You said in the documentary that SNL affected your musical tastes and influenced the way you wanted to make art. In what ways did that end up manifesting in your work?
“Band Reunion at the Wedding” is a straight copy of a few things. Gilda Radner did Candy Slice on the show, and it’s the same idea in that you’re watching a performer in a sketch but she’s actually performing a song. So that was already like, Whatever this is, I would like to do that. Another one is less music but still the same idea: Molly Shannon used to do this stand-up character, Jeannie Darcy, where she’s in front of a brick wall. It’s a fake performer doing a sketch, but I was like, That’s a pretty cool idea. The other is an Eddie Murphy sketch where he was performing as a reggae artist. It’s a very political song, but he’s in this really conservative scenario. SNL had consistently presented this setup where I was like, It’s perfect. That’s the way I wanted to make stuff.
One of my favorite SNL stories is how John Belushi, years after leaving the cast, was able to use his influence to get Fear as a musical guest and help legitimize punk music to the masses. If you could do the same thing right now, who would you want to get up on that stage?
Otoboke Beaver, a punk band out of Japan. They’re really energetic, and the drummer is amazing. I’ve felt for a long time, They’d be so, so great on SNL.