Lorne Michaels Thought That Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi Would ‘Make Fools’ of Themselves as The Blues Brothers
While Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s sunglasses-clad musical duo Blues Brothers went on to star in their own movie, perform concerts across the country and inspire at least one truly baffling English beer commercial…
…it all began with a couple of appearances on Saturday Night Live. Aykroyd and Belushi danced and sang their favorite R&B tracks, with the help of a killer band and Scarface-levels of cocaine circulating throughout their bloodstream.
While The Blues Brothers are now an indelible part of the show’s early history, when the two comedians originally pitched the idea to producer Lorne Michaels, he was more than a little skeptical. As shared in the recent documentary Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music, the seeds of the Blues Brothers began with Belushi’s distaste for performing in those recurring bee costume sketches.
According to the book The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Visé, Aykroyd and Belushi had been playing “Blues Brothers” covers with the house band off-camera (even if some of the seasoned musicians weren’t thrilled about being joined by “amateurs”). But, even so, the pair couldn’t convince Michaels to let them play on the show.
But one night while Belushi was grumbling about the bee sketches (“Fuck Lorne. This is my last one”), Aykroyd suggested using the ridiculous get-ups as a way to get their musical act on the air. Their duo, and the band, would all dress as bees and play late blues legend Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee.”
As band member Tom Malone revealed in the documentary, years later, once Aykroyd and Belushi ditched the bee costumes for shades and dark suits, the band prepared an arrangement for a full-on Blues Brothers song to play on the show. But it ended up being cut. “Lorne said, ‘Frankly, I don’t see anything funny about the Blues Brothers,’” Malone recalled.
Even though Belushi and Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers were still allowed to warm up the crowd in Studio 8H, they very nearly gave up, believing that they were wasting their time trying to convince Michaels to let them play on the actual show. Things changed, however, when the readthrough of a Steve Martin-hosted episode ended up being “three minutes short.” Aykroyd and Belushi immediately asked Michaels to put the Blues Brothers on during the extra time. His response? “We have nothing worthwhile to put in those three minutes, you guys might as well make fools of yourselves.”
The act was a huge hit with audiences, so obviously the Blues Brothers didn’t make fools of themselves — that would happen 20 years later with the release of Blues Brothers 2000.