"I have to keep going. Like Richard Pryor, when he caught on fire, he ran down the street and kept running, and that kept him alive...I feel I've reached that pinnacle of success. If it all just went away tomorrow, I've done it."
It was the perfect partnership. John Belushi was a squat,overweight Albanian from Illinois with sinister eyebrows. Dan Aykroyd was a rangy but lumpy Canadian who was half English and half French. Together they became America's best-known soul singers. Comics turned musicians--but never quite not comic--they dressed up like two old hipsters in black suits and stiletto ties, spoofed some old Sam and Dave bits, and christened themselves Jake and Elwood--the Blues Brothers. The act brought two albums and tours and a film, at its peak generating $1 million a day. With its success there was a deepening friendship. Aykroyd and Belushi bought adjoining homes on Martha's Vinyard, helped each other with business deals, even created an interconnected pension plan. They also discussed, often and in detail, their funerals. In March, after Belushi died in Los Angeles, Aykroyd was there, as promised, for the send-off. He buried his friend in engineers boots and army pants, with three cigarettes and a $100 bill in his pocket. He also, for the burial, escorted the hearse in a style he knew Belushi would appreciate--outlaw black leathers and his bike.
His getup was criticized in some quarters. And in the months following his Belushi's death and the scandal surrounding it, there were rumblings about Aykroyd as well. He had been unhinged by his friend's death, they said in some quarters; he was engaged in bizarre behavior, trying to reach John on the phone.
Aykroyd, talking here publicly after keeping a long and wary distance from the press, denies that there is anything peculiar in his actions. But he does speak of Belushi in the tones a lover might use in speaking of a very special relationship, in romantic, even grand terms. "It was one of the great friendships of the decade and it will go down as such", he says.
He can also joke. "What's blue and sings alone?" he asks. "The answer is...Dan Aykroyd."
The condition of loner is not, as it happens, unknown to him. Nor would he deny a certain independent and fun-loving outlaw streak--akin, in a way to wearing leathers to follow a hearse.
Born in Ottawa thirty years ago, Dan Aykroyd was the eldest son of a high-ranking Canadian official who believed in both the work ethic and Mother Church. Aykroyd had trouble with both. He bounced from school to school and in his teens was expelled rom seminary. ("Late-night vandalism, skipping mass, fucking off," he once explained to Rolling Stone. "The Fat Mouth in Primary School...losts of corporal punishment as a kid...deserved.")
He even studied criminology in college. He had a happy life in Canada running an after-hours place, Club 505, which, he still claims, was the "best bootleg joint in Canada." He broke into comedy at Toronto's Second City and, at the invitation of Lorne Michaels, whom he had met at his club, joined "Saturday Night Live" in the days when it was the brightest show on television.
At "S.N.L.," in the midst of more flamboyant and easily typed actors, such as Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi, he was the utility player. A writer as well as a performer, he had a cast of characters, many with a trace of menace under their nearly normal looks: he was a panicky Tom Snyder; a paranoid, duplicitous Dick Nixon. He was a Conehead. He was, with Steve Martin, a "wild and crazy guy." But it was with Belushi, even before the creationof the Blues Brothers, that a special friendship began. It may have been because the two could be so different: Aykroyd often gentle and deferential, Belushi eager to precipitate a food fight. It may have been because, in their backgrounds they were very much alike. Belushi, like Aykroyd, was from a strict Catholic background, where, it was said--though never confirme--his father beat him. And in both, following the strictness, came a rebellion, a rage.
Whatever, Belushi trusted Aykroyd.
"He's Mister Careful and I'm Mister Fuck It," Belushi once said. "I can't always figure him out, but whenever I'm with him, I feel safe."
Aykroyd was interviewed on the set of his new movie, Dr. Detroit by Allan Sonnenschein, who was also the co-author of last month's article "The Last Five Days of John Belushi. Aykroyd talked about his relationship with John Belushi--and his life as an actor. A film Aykroyd had been planning on doing alone before Belushi's death, Dr. Detroit is the sort of spoof his partner would have enjoyed: the story of a college professor, mild-mannered and virtuous, who, in order to save himself from the Mob, assumes the identity of a Chicago pimp. It's an exhausting role, a role which Ayrkoyd had been working for months, but he was, on the set, ever courteous, never the star. Approached one day by an elderly extra who said he hadn't seen Aykroyd's work, Dan was gracious in his reply. "I've done some late-night television," he said.
A man of varied interests, he spoke with us of many things: motorcycles, cars, space travel, the occult. Music was a particular passion.. A carton in his dressing room including a crate filled with hundreds of cassettes, classical to country and western. And while he shrugs off his own talents as a harmonica player in the Blues Brothers, calling himself "the George Plimpton of blues harp," professionals say otherwise. Dan Aykroyd, a musician on the set told us, could play harp with any blues band in the world.
There was also a discussion of death in our talks. In the past year, in addition to Belushi, Aykroyd lost two grandparents and an old high-school friend. The pain of death, particularly Belushi's, has stirred him for the first time in his life, toward a role as activist. He has become a director, with his brother Peter and Belushi's widow, Judy Jacklin Belushi, of the John Belushi Memorial Foundation, which will assist social welfare agencies in the war on drugs. He also plans on devoting time to the Scott Newman Foundation, a like-minded organization named after Paul Newman's son, who lost his life because of drugs.
The interview took place over many days, in many locations, including Aykroyd's office bungalow, where a moosehead--Belushi's gift--hangs on the wall.
Aykroyd was always frank, always open, never performing for an audience. There was no subject he refused to discuss. After the interview was completed, he voiced only one concern. "Do you think I came off as a cool and flip guy?" he asked. He did not.
PH: How do you think we should remember John?
Aykroyd: I think we should remember him for his work and how great it was. We should remember him as a great artist, as a great strategist and businessman, as a soulful, warm human being who loved to impart that to people. As someone who had a gruff, rough exterior. And someone who could be taken advantage of very easily because he was so trusting.
I have so many personal memories of him. I slept at the foot of his and his wife's bed when I first came to New York. When he came up to my family's farm to meet my parents, he got out of the car as my father was walking down the front steps and jumped up and did a flip for him! It was like, "Here I am. I'm Dan's friend. I'll do anything you want." He made me laugh harder than anyone else. He was a guy I danced with. I remember little things about him every day, and they're all favorable. I get a smile out of him every day. And I just miss him a lot and...I don't know, you can't dwell on it, you have to go on. Life and death are intertwined. There's a very, very slender thread that separates the two. John and I used to enjoy quoting a Ring Lardner line: "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse." During the last summer we were together, we wore skull pins on our shirts or blazers or jackets or whatever. We always had a skull pin on. And we sort of knew, between the two of us, that it wouldn't last forever, that we wouldn't be together forever. That one of us might go before the other. John knew about my love of motorcycles and knew that I was a kind of risk-taker, and I knew he was the same. When he died and it finally sank in, it was just like...I doffed my hat to him, "Farewell comrade." He was a wrangler, an adventurer.
PH: Do you think John was hanging around with the wrong people at the end?
Aykroyd: The people he really liked were worthwhile people. I'm not going to name names, but they were at the pinnacle of this industry--the best in music, rock-n-roll, films, and television. These were John's real friends, the people who were most worthwhile to him. And he would never have gotten into his drugged-out condition with them. Some of these vermin he was hanging around with at the end were talentless, worthless individuals with no specific skills or contributions to make to this world. And John could really be a monster, an out-of-control monster with them. He had to be straight with the people he held in esteem. He was respectful and more lucid in conversation and much more together when he was around people he respected. The reason he was with these other people is because they allowed any behavior.
PH: You had no idea that John was being injected with drugs?
Aykroyd: No idea. I was really surprised when it came out that he injected himself, because I know he was not that good a mechanic. He wasn't capable of that and didn't like needles at all. Even when he'd get a B-12 shot in a movie, he winced. He had to have a needle put in his knee once to drain some fluid, and that put him through terrific pain and agony. Blood tests and all that stuff, really bothered him. But I guess there was something about Cathy Evelyn Smith that was soothing. I guess she had a nurselike quality about her that made it easy for her and him to do this act together.
PH: Did you ever meet Cathy Smith?
Aykroyd: I don't remember ever meeting her. I'm sure that John knew what would happen if I'd known what she was giving him, and so he probably kept her far away from me.
PH: What would have happened if you'd known?
Aykroyd: I could have gone either way. The fact of the matter is that I loved John so much that I wanted to share every experience with him. If he'd taken me into his confidence about these drugs--if he's said, "This is something we have to try together. This is what makes it. This is what makes junkies junkies. This is what the Blues Brothers is about--we have to experiment with this. You've got to join me"--I might have said, "Okay let's do it>" Not to have a good time, not to get high, but just, "Okay, John, if you want me in on this, fine." Or I might have said, "You're crazy, I'm going to slap this away from you now, you're coming with me." So I don't know. I'm not sure. It would have depended on how he approached me. He could be a real charmer. My last conversation with him went like this:
Aykroyd: John, when are you coming home?
Belushi: I'll be home Thursday or Friday, I'm not sure yet.
Aykroyd: Well, you really should come home; we should go up to the Vinyard. And then I have something else I want you to do.
Belushi: What's that?
Aykroyd: The biggest favor you'll ever do yourelf. A captain in the United States Navy has asked John Landis [the director of Animal House and The Blues Brothers] and you and me to join them on a cruise with the Twelfth Fleet from San Diego in two weeks. John, I want you to come with me on that cruise. I want you to come back to Massachusetts. I want to sit down and discuss and plan the next five years. And them I want you to come with me on that cruise and spend a week on board a ship, change the life-style that we both know right now. Will you do that for me?
Belushi: Well, that would be very hard for me to do.
Aykroyd: Why, John? I think it's very important that we do this.
Belushi: Because I get seasick.
Then he handed the phone over to Bernie Brillstein,our agent. I said, "Bernie, don't you think that John and I could use a break to just clean up our minds and bodies and psyches?" Bernie said, "I think it's a great idea." Bernie hung up; I called him back ten minutes later. John had left the office and Bernie said, "Well, John's agreed to do it. He's going to go on the cruise with you and he's going to be home Friday."
That's the last time I talked to John. That was the last conversation.
And then the last time I heard his voice was the day after. He called in and got my answering machine. When I played it back, he sounded really tired and like he hadn't been sleeping. And he said he was coming home that night. So I thought, "Thank God." And of course that night was Thursday night, and he died Friday morning.
I was all set to jump of the plane to go get him. I had spent the night before talking with his wife, Judy, talking about getting him home. He had been completely straight for the longest time. Completely clean. But then he felt depressed about working on this latest project. And going to Hollywood, with all that it offered, really made him a little outrageous. I will always feel that I was one day late. That I could have done something, you know?
All I can say is that my intentions were to get him back to the feeling he was in during the last summer we spent together, and that was just enjoying the outdoors and exercise and fresh air and good diet and each other's company. And the joy of knowing that we were away from the scene we had to live in much of the year but really didn't like that much--the high-pressure, executive world of show business. We truly took our leisure time that last summer and it was a great time, because we didn't need anything. We were clean and lived on lobster and beer and that's about all.
PH: People were saying that after John's death, you turned into a recluse, started wearing John's clothes and calling him on the telephone. Is there any truth to this?
<>Aykroyd: It's half true. I do wear John's clothes. I have shirts and jackets of his that I wear. But our clothes wer always interchangeable. When we did our Blues Brothers shows, I would get into his jacket and pants and he would get into mine. "Hey, these pants are too short." "Oh, we'll do the show anyhow." It didn't matter. I like having a T-shirt of his to remember him by, you know? John had some nice clothes. John had good taste in everything--music, people. Not drugs, though. I don't think he had good taste in drugs. I don't think he bought the best. Too bad he didn't go out on the best.
But about my behavior. Yes, I wear John's clothes, yes, I take long rides on my motorcycle alone, and yes, I spend long periods of time alone. No, I don't get up from the dinner table and go and call John on the phone. If I was going to communicate with John, I wouldn't use the telephone, I'd use the Ouifa board. I do believe in the other world; I believe in phantasms and phantasmic gaps where ghosts might get caught between one dimention and the other. I think there's something to all that. You only need to look up the American Society of Psychical Research in New York and ask for one of their monthly journals and you can see that there's a very real science devoted to this study. So I wouldn't use the telephone; I'm not that stupif. I would use a psychic medium or a Ouija board. The Ouija board really works. I've seen evidence of it.