A never-before-heard 1979 interview John Belushi gave to music critic Steve Bloom of theSoho Weekly News has been released for the first time as part of the Audible audio documentary “Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude” (via Entertainment Weekly). The interview, conducted three years before Belushi’s death in 1982, finds the comedian pushing back against critics of The Blues Brothers, the musical group Belushi and Dan Aykroyd founded in 1978. The group became popular due to their recurring sketch appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers.”
During the 1979 interview, Bloom read Belushi headlines from articles that criticized The Blues Brothers for being a group in which two white men were capitalizing off a music genre fundamentally tied to African American history and spearheaded by Black artists.
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“It’s just weird, you know?” Belushi said in response to the critics. “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. … 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.”
“What the fuck do these people think I am, anyway?” Belushi asked about his critics. “I can’t fucking 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.”
Belushi appeared to be alluding to how The Blues Brothers often included Black artists as members, even though it was headlined by two white men. Bloom told the comedian that most of the critics of the band were “attacking” Belushi specifically because “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.”
“That’s not the purpose of the Blues Brothers!” Belushi fired back. “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 fucking fantastic, but that’s not the point!” Belushi concluded.
“Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude” premieres exclusively on Audible on July 25, nearly 50 years after the duo’s earliest appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in 1976. Narrated by Aykroyd, the audio documentary features commentary from multiple collaborators who contributed to the band and the films. Head over to Entertainment Weekly’s website to hear more from the unearthed Belushi interview.
