David Letterman appeared as a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night. It marked the television icon’s first visit to the Ed Sullivan Theatre since ending his 23-year run as host of the Late Show in April 2015.
At Letterman’s personal request, The National appeared as the evening’s musical guest. The band is currently on tour, but they made a special trip to New York to fulfill Letterman’s wishes. “This is the second time in my life that this has happened to me,” Letterman noted, as Foo Fighters previously interrupted a South American tour to play Letterman’s first show back from heart surgery in 2000. “Those two groups — I’ll love them forever,” Letterman declared.
Letterman previously gushed over The National in a YouTube video earlier this year, saying: “I wish I could be [frontman] Matt Berninger because there’s nobody cooler than Matt Berninger. I love The National… They oughta be in the Hall of Fame.”
During his multi-segment interview with Colbert, Letterman joked that he spends most of his days “Googling symptoms.” He also waxed nostalgic about the many great acts that played the Late Show during his tenure — while singling out Green Day drummer Tré Cool. “When you don’t have that in your life every night, you really, really miss it …but I was thinking about this: Green Day, whenever Green Day would be on, I was frightened by the drummer. Because whenever they would finish, he would charge the desk and lunge at me–to the point where I assumed he was kidding around or perhaps he actually wanted to hurt me. Looking back at that now. I just think, ‘Wow, what a great experience that was.'”
Watch Letterman’s full appearance and The National’s performance below.
