John Belushi Went Nuclear on ‘Blues Brothers’ Critics
Briefcase Full of Blues, the debut album from John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd performing as the Blues Brothers, went all the way to #1 on the Billboard charts. But critics weren’t necessarily kind to the effort — and not solely because Belushi and Aykroyd were less than accomplished bluesmen.
In Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude, Aykroyd’s new Audible Original oral history, Belushi sounds off on such criticism. In an exclusive clip released to Entertainment Weekly, Belushi gets his blues briefs in a bunch during a 1979 interview with music critic Steve Bloom of the Soho Weekly News.
Bloom confronted Belushi with criticism from multiple sources about the very existence of the Blues Brothers. “I have this stuff in front of me,” the journalist says in the audio interview. “Daily News: ‘Can Belushi Sing the Whites?’ The Real Paper: ‘Why the Brothers Ain’t Got No Blues.’ How do you respond to all of this?”
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At first, Belushi seems philosophical. “It’s just weird, you know? Why would I do these things? The people watching me understand why I do it, and the band members do,” the comic explained. “The other people — there’s a certain amount of jealousy, I think, involved. ... Why do I do what I do? First of all, it has nothing to do with ego, it has nothing to do with money, you know, or the need to be loved by an audience. I don’t have any of those feelings.”
I’ll put aside for a moment that Belushi likely did the Blues Brothers — at least in part — for all of those reasons. Besides ego, money and love from the audience, what else is there? But before Bloom could finish another question, Belushi really started to heat up. “What the fuck do these people think I am, anyway?” Belushi ranted. “I can’t fuckin’ understand why they would attack. … See, when they attack me, they attack the band, and I hate when they attack the band, because then it makes them look like schmucks for doing what they did for me.”
It’s not the band, Bloom said — it was Belushi. “You see, there’s a long line of cases where white musicians play Black music and make money while the Black musicians don’t make the money, supposedly.”
Now Belushi goes on the defensive. “That’s not the purpose of the Blues Brothers!” he protested. “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,” Belushi concluded, “but that’s not the point!”
Belushi was right — his performance wasn’t the point, and neither was giving shoutouts to more deserving artists. Here’s the point: While he revered the musicians that he put in the Blues Brothers movie and enlisted in his band, it was still his face on the film posters and album covers. And while it’s not exactly the comic’s fault, his homogenized version of the blues performed better on the charts than the authentic music he was covering.
In other words, just because Belushi didn’t like what the critics had to say doesn’t mean they were wrong.
