John Belushi’s long-lost punk song
John Belushi is undoubtedly one of the most iconic comedy actors of the 20th century. Best known for his roles in Blues Brothers and National Lampoon’s Animal House, in addition to being an original cast member on Saturday Night Live, the Chicago-born comedian led a rock and roll lifestyle and made a lasting impact on American culture. Always full of surprises, in the early 1980s, Belushi recorded a punk song that remained buried for decades before being released back in 2015.
The SNL actor was no stranger to the world of music, performing a variety of R&B and soul classics with partner Dan Ackroyd in 1980’s Blues Brothers. Over the course of the movie, Belushi’s vocal talents were showcased, though they took a backseat to his impressive dancing abilities. The following year saw the comedian star in two blockbuster films, the fairly lacklustre rom-com Continental Divide and the disappointing Neighbors, which also stars his Blues Brothers counterpart, Dan Ackroyd.
Neighbors would end up being Belushi’s final film appearance before his untimely death in 1982 from a heroin overdose. The film follows the story of a feud between a middle-class suburbanite and his two neighbours. Although a hit at the box office upon its release, the project did not enjoy much lasting success and is only noteworthy for it being Belushi’s final effort.
It was with Neighbors that the strange tale behind Belushi’s attempt at punk rock began. After seeing noted punk and hardcore group Fear on New Wave Theatre, Belushi asked frontman Lee Ving to help him write a song for the soundtrack of Neighbors. The resulting track is a bizarre three minutes, which almost feels like an SNL parody of punk, akin to Fred Armisen’s Ian Rubbish character. Starting with Fear’s signature “one, two, three four, one, two, three, four”, the song starts to build in tension before Belushi’s vocals kick in and essentially just retell the film’s plot.
Apparently meant to accompany the movie’s end credits, Belushi and Fear’s weird collaboration never ended up being included in the final cut of Neighbors. Its exclusion was probably for the best; it is a fairly cringe-inducing corporate version of punk rock that would have added very little to the film and likely damaged the punk credibility of Fear. In fact, it was only in 2015 that the song was uncovered and released into the world by Ving.
According to the frontman, Belushi was apprehensive about singing the vocals himself, but Ving insisted, “I was quite militant on the punk-rock issue of being punk-correct in that I wasn’t looking forward to singing lyrics that I had written for someone else to sing that were based on a movie that didn’t touch my life”, he once said, “The lyrics weren’t authentic enough for me to sing them.”
Despite the poor quality of the song – and its exclusion from the film – the story of John Belushi’s brief flirt with punk rock does have a happy ending. As a consolation for Fear, Belushi pulled some strings to get them booked as musical guests on the Halloween 1981 edition of Saturday Night Live. Not only that, the ex-cast member also brought in a number of Fear fans so that the punk rock experience would be as authentic as possible. The anarchic result was that living rooms all over the US tuned into chaotic mosh pits and a stage invader grabbing the mic to shout expletives. The SNL producers quickly cut to a pre-recorded sketch, and Fear were served with a lifelong ban from appearing on the show. A fitting end to a bizarre tale.
