20 Years Later: Watch Phish Make ‘Saturday Night Live’ Debut & Appear In Sketch With Al Gore In 2002

Phish made their debut as musical guests on Saturday Night Live on December 14, 2002. Two decades later, the appearance, which was hosted by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, remains the lone time the band has been invited to perform on the long-running late-night sketch comedy show.

Phish’s SNL was doubly significant as it was also their “first official performance together in over two years.” Prior to the live broadcast, Phish had last shared the stage together at a concert held on October 7, 2000.

Portions of what follows were excerpted from the JamBase 20 For 20 List Of Memorable Television Performances By Jam Acts that featured Phish’s performance whose anniversary is 20 years ago today.

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Weeks prior to taking the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York City on December 31, 2002, to formally end a two-year hiatus, the four members of Phish came together at another iconic venue in New York City. On December 14, 2002, the band performed at 30 Rock while making their only appearance to date on Saturday Night Live.

Phish played the typically allotted two songs on SNL, first delivering the debut of “46 Days,” a new Round Room song that would be part of opening night of the Hampton run that followed New Year’s Eve. The band’s classic “Chalk Dust Torture” was chosen for their second SNL song, but that was not the only time Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell, Mike Gordon and Jon Fishman showed up on the episode hosted by Vice President Al Gore.

As noted by Phish.net:

Phish appeared in the recurring “Jarret’s Room” sketch series, where Jimmy Fallon plays a college dorm room web-show host. In the sketch, the band was forced to hang out with Jarret and his friends after being involved in a car accident with one of them. Gore appeared in the sketch as one of the students’ professors. All four members of Phish joined in to play a snippet of “Contact” in the dorm room. Later, Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse cartoon parodied the ability of Charlie Brown and his Peanuts friends to transform and enliven anything (e.g., a dumpy Christmas tree) by just “waving their arms around a lot.” Phish appeared as the “transformed” version of Schroeder and his friends, who had been playing music themselves. During the cartoon, two pieces of “You Enjoy Myself” were used as the Peanuts characters danced around.

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As mentioned above, the four members of the band participated in a “Jarret’s Room” sketch and as part of the animated TV Funhouse installment that aired as part of the episode. “Jarret’s Room” featured cast members Jimmy Fallon as stoner college student Jarret and Horatio Sanz as his baked partner-in-crime Gobi. The pair first brought out the episode’s host, Al Gore portraying conservative professor Dr. Ralph Wormley Curtis, who chided the boys for not attending class. Then, Phish stopped by after running over Gobi with their tour van and viewers soon found out Sanz’s character has a special skill.

Jarret asked Phish to perform a song and the band complied. Fallon’s character then revealed Gobi is also known as “Zamfbeer, Master Of The Beer Can Flute.” Phish went on to play a bit of “Contact” with help from Zamfbeer.

During Phish’s New Year’s Eve concert on December 31, 2019, the band welcomed a special guest at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Announced as the pan flute player “Zamfir,” in reality Phish tour manager Richard “Dickie Scotland” Glasgow came onstage to play the pan flute, perhaps in a callback to their interaction with “Zamfbeer,” the self-proclaimed “Master Of The Beer Can Flute,” during their SNL appearance.

Watch the “Jarret’s Room” sketch and the “Zamfir” cameo at MSG in 2019 below: