John Belushi’s impassioned defence of The Blues Brothers band: “What the f*ck do these people think”
Short-lived and potentially dangerous it may well have been, but good lord, imagine being friends with John Belushi in the late 1970s.
One of the founding, and most talented members of Saturday Night Live, and a movie star in the making who hung out with some of the coolest people on the New York nightlife scene at a time when it was simultaneously sleazy and glamorous, Belushi partied as hard as you could possibly expect a celebrity to do with access to all the money, drugs and alcohol in the world.
Filming SNL in a blizzard of cocaine from 1975 onward, Belushi’s drug use quickly became a concern among fellow cast members, but the fact was his sketches and characters were the most popular on the show, including The Blues Brothers, the sunglasses-sporting musical group he formed with his buddy Dan Aykroyd for the show that eventually spun off into not just a real band but albums and a hit movie too.
The band made their debut on SNL in 1978 on a show hosted by Steve Martin, and quickly progressed to playing real-world gigs, including a stint opening for Martin later that year. They became so popular that they supported The Grateful Dead in 1979, and it was that year that the movie starring Belushi and Aykroyd began to take shape.
Belushi had already had considerable success on the big screen thanks to the massive hit Animal House, the chaotic comedy that sparked copycat behaviour (Toga!) across America, and the director John Landis was brought back for The Blues Brothers. There were immediate problems, however, as Aykroyd was not an experienced screenwriter and took months to deliver the script, while Belushi’s mammoth drug use meant weeks of delays, causing production costs to spiral.
In the end, despite the issues, the film, which co-starred James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Star Wars’ Carrie Fisher, was a success, and the pair’s look of sunglasses, suits and hats became a fancy dress staple for years to come. Belushi and Aykroyd had both borrowed their individual looks and styles from established blues players they had come across, and it was those influences that caused some accusations of making money from their predecessors. In 1979, the duo were interviewed by the Soho Weekly News, which put it to them that they were white men occupying prominent space in the blues, profiting off the years of work put in by Black artists.
Belushi was extremely perturbed by the accusation, responding to headlines like “Can Belushi sing the whites?” and “Why the Brothers ain’t go no blues” by saying, “Why would I do these things? The people watching me understand why I do it, and the band members do. The other people, there’s a certain amount of jealousy, I think, involved…. What the fuck do these people think I am, anyway?”
Upset at the notion that Black musicians were missing out on the payday generated by the albums, the live dates and The Blues Brothers movie, Belushi added, “I say on the record, ‘Buy as many blues records as you can’. I introduce my band, which is never done. I share the stage with each member of the group, which is never done. I have, Danny Akyroyd, you know, we all split everything right down the middle, I give the people, artists parts of the album. I’m putting them in a movie, you know? Nobody believes me! I’m not fuckin’ fantastic, but that’s not the point!”
The Blues Brothers band toured extensively in support of the film and released a ‘best of’ and live albums too. Although Belushi died of an overdose after being given heroin and cocaine by a friend in 1982, it didn’t spell the end of the group. In almost every decade since, some iteration of the band has appeared, including John Goodman stepping in for Belushi for the flop sequel Blues Brothers 2000, which was released in 1998. As recently as last year, a new album was released titled The Lost Recordings after a tape was found in one of Belushi’s old briefcases.
