Friday, April 19, 2002 | 9:24 a.m.
What: The Blues Brothers featuring Dan Aykroyd & Jim Belushi.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts.
Tickets: $30, $55, $65.
Information: (702) 785-5000.
Comedy partnership can be a precarious arrangement. Once the perfect comedic foil is found, be it straight man or wacky sidekick, it is nearly impossible to duplicate the success.
John Belushi was Jake Blues, the short and chunky frontman of the Blues Brothers. Dan Aykroyd was Elwood Blues, the tall, thin briefcase-toting sidekick, who defied the laws of thermodynamics with his state of perpetual motion once the music began.
The duo created the Blues Brothers, a "Saturday Night Live" skit that became a pop-culture phenomenon and sold millions of records. The act also spawned a cult movie in 1979, which, along with "Animal House" and "Caddyshack," is a comedic rite of passage for most teens. With their black shades, fedoras dark suits and white shirts, they created a look that redefined cool.
But when Belushi died of a drug overdose on March 5, 1982, Aykroyd was convinced that the Blues Brothers had died with him.
"I really thought the act was over and I thought that was the last I'd be seeing of this type of music," Aykroyd said in a recent phone interview from Santa Monica, Calif.
Today, 20 years after Belushi's death, Aykroyd has proven himself wrong, as the Blues Brothers make a rare concert appearance performance Saturday night at the Aladdin Center for the Performing Arts.
There have been other concerts by the Blues Brothers -- some with just Aykroyd and the band -- mainly at Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues openings (both restaurants/clubs of which Aykroyd is an investor), and the occasional charity event.
But when the Aladdin made a sizable financial offer to bring the band to Las Vegas, it was impossible to decline, said Jim Belushi, who has taken over for his late brother, John, portraying Zee Blues, the long-lost younger brother of Jake.
"I think Danny has really enjoyed playing with me and the band," Belushi said in a recent interview from Los Angeles. "Before it was more like, 'We've got to do this show, we've got to do this show,' and it all had kind of a purpose. But after playing with us this last year, I think he's really having fun. He's in a place ... where it's safe for him and it's fun for him, so we decided to do it.
"This is a big debut for us."
Band back together
Aykroyd first approached the younger Belushi with the idea of performing as a Blues Brother around 1995, for a benefit show in Ottawa, Canada, to raise money for Carleton University, where Aykroyd attended in the late '60s and early '70s.
"I said to Danny, 'I don't really sing the blues. I do light opera. I did 'Pirates of Penzance' for a year. But the blues thing I kind of left for you and John," Belushi said. "And he said, 'Well, you better learn. I want you to play this show, I want to raise money. You are the blood and you have the right to step up and be this frontman for the Blues Brothers, and we are going to raise money for organizations all over the globe."
That's all the convincing Belushi needed. He put together a blues band, The Sacred Hearts, retaining top-notch session musicians who would jam Monday nights at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. He and the band practiced. And then they practiced some more.
Soon Belushi had an agent for he and The Sacred Hearts and they were playing club shows all over the country, in addition to performing as the Blues Brothers' band whenever Aykroyd had an opening or charity show to attend.
Occasionally, John Goodman would perform with the Blues Brothers as well -- schedule permitting -- as Mighty Mack, a bar owner-turned-blues singer.
But now the spotlight is squarely on Belushi, just as it was his brother.
"I kind of look at the Blues Brothers as if it were 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' It's a role that people can play, but Jack Nicholson won the Academy Award for it and really created that role," Belushi said. "John really created the role of Jake Blues. But I can play brother Zee. I can still enter the play as a character."
With Aykroyd's blessing.
"Jimmy (has) the same kind of appeal onstage that his brother had, I guess because he's the blood brother and just the way they move and sing and relate to the audience -- that blue-collar, cigar-smoking persona," he said. "Here we are 20 years after the partner's gone and the act still goes on and the records are still selling in stores, and we're being booked for these public and corporate events all the time now. And I have a lot of fun doing it -- more than I ever thought I might.
"Without John I thought it wouldn't work, but then when I realized the strength of the music, playing it alone, just being me out there as the frontman, I realized this music is really going to carry us a long way."
In the beginning ...
The Blues Brothers have come a long way since serving as a throw-away act that "Saturday Night Live" producers used to warm up audiences during the show's inaugural season in 1975-76.
Even when Jake and Elwood made their first "SNL" appearance dressed in bee costumes while performing a cover of James "Slim Harpo" Moore's "I'm a King Bee," the gag was more about the outfits and song than the Blues Brothers themselves.
But Aykroyd said both he and John Belushi knew there was something to the characters they created late one night in a Toronto speakeasy he managed a year or so before they joined "SNL."
Second City roots
"(Belushi) came in one night after a Second City performance and I was playing some blues records and he said, 'What is that? Wow, that's great!' and I said, 'That's a local blues band. John, you're from Chicago, that's the home of the blues. He said, 'Well, I'm into heavy metal.' And I said, 'Well, you teach me about heavy metal and I'll teach you about the blues,' " Aykroyd said.
Howard Shore, who would serve as the first musical director on "SNL" and who won an Oscar for composing the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack, happened to be in the club that night and heard Aykroyd and Belushi talking.
It was Shore who suggested the two should start a band and call it the Blues Brothers.
"Once that was planted, it was all over," Aykroyd said. "I subsequently came down to New York, prior to being hired (for "SNL") and talked about it and formulated it. And after we were hired for the show, we did the act."
And now, all these years later, Aykroyd is still amazed at the legacy he and Belushi began.
"I'm impressed every day when I walk into our House of Blues stores by how much the merchandise flies out of the store with the line drawing of John and I on it, the Blues Brothers. That brand, that mark, is really, really effective," he said. "Here, 20 years later, Jimmy and I are out there with the live shows ... we have the old records still selling in stores and we're contemplating doing a new record.
"And also we're going to bring to Vegas very soon a Blues Brothers revival show, probably with really good imitators. We're in discussions to do it on the model of the Legends show that exist there already."
Of course, both Aykroyd and Jim Belushi are saddened that John Belushi is not around to see what he helped create.
For the 20th anniversary of John Belushi's passing, both his brother and Aykroyd took time to reflect on the legacy the actor-comedian left behind.
Aykroyd said on March 5 this year he was in L.A. and visited a house were John had lived and then dropped by a coffee shop to reminisce about his friend.
"It's an ignominious way that he died, but certainly if you look back at his work, it's one of the greatest comic legacies of all time," he said. "And I just count myself fortunate that I had eight years with him, where we were, you know, creatively intimate."
Jim Belushi, who just returned from a vacation to the Martha's Vineyard home he recently purchased from John's widow, Judith Jacklin Belushi, said he watched an NBC special commemorating his brother's death.
"I saw (the show) and I was just blown away," Jim Belushi said. "I had forgotten just how ... funny he was and what a great actor he was. It was really lovely to see that, after 20 years, how that material and those characters and his spirit and image hold up 100 percent." I did 'Pirates of Penzance' for a year. But the blues thing I kind of left for you and John."
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