Aykroyd looks back at 'Blues Brothers,' Chicago
The next time you stumble across an old picture from John Belushi's funeral in 1982, look for Dan Aykroyd. He'll be hard to miss.
He rode in the motorcade to the church on his motorcycle, looking forlorn and stunned. While other pallbearers at that Martha's Vineyard service wore dark suits, he wore a black, oversized leather Chicago police officer's jacket, with a blue and white Chicago flag patch on the sleeve.
Which, of course, wasn't coincidental, Aykroyd said recently. "It was my full intention to honor John and where he came from."
Belushi, the son of Albanian immigrants, spent his early years in Chicago until moving to Wheaton, Ill. But Aykroyd, who grew up in Ottawa, Canada, has something of a leading role in Chicago cultural history as well.
For the 30th anniversary of "The Blues Brothers," in which he played stoic Elwood Blues to Belushi's Jake Blues — brothers on the run from Nazis, the police, rednecks, the military — we talked with Aykroyd about his connections with the city. He spoke in his familiar speedy-and-steady, rat-a-tat voice. Here are a few highlights:
On Chicago and "The Blues Brothers":
"Our story (Jake and Elwood get their band back together to raise money for an orphanage) came from a newspaper story. The story was that the city was going to levy taxes on orphanages with schools located in them. So this is where we came up with this idea of dealing with state and religion, because if you look at many Catholic populations, in Chicago, and in Canada, where I'm from, the two are pretty linked. I think we used that as a starting point, then dealt with other cultural characteristics and figures.
"Certainly when we were there, (the film) was spoken of as this great event, and the city, of course, became a character alongside all those great musical numbers and beautiful musicians, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown. The antagonists are the state, and (director John) Landis did a great job — Chicago looks as good as Paris the way he treated the architecture and drawbridges and the grit of some of the factories on the South Side....
"It wasn't perfect, but to this day if you have someone who has never been to America before, (that film) might provide them a lot."
On the scandal when Mayor Jane Byrne was photographed with Belushi and Aykroyd, wearing the actors' Blues Brothers hat and glasses:
"It looked gangster to people. And it was this stereotypical image of Chicago that people didn't like and they jumped on her (after the photo was leaked to Us magazine). But that was all misunderstood. The inspiration for the costume was IRS agents, Hasidic diamond merchants. Not so much Chicago."
On the Blues Bar:
"When Second City switched companies with the Toronto company, which I had been a part of, I moved to Chicago. I lived there with John Candy. I was with Gilda (Radner), too. I fell in love with Chicago and loved being a resident. I explored the blues culture and would go to Checker Board Lounge and blues clubs on Halsted. I absorbed the culture.
"And at that time there was this bar on Wells, near Second City and the Old Town Ale House. It was yellow and had been one of the few houses to survive the big fire. So when we came out to make the movie, we found the lease on the place was up. So John and I took the lease and basically opened this (unlicensed) tavern."
This story was originally published June 19, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Aykroyd looks back at 'Blues Brothers,' Chicago."