John Belushi Confronts ‘Blues Brothers’ Critics in Never-Before-Heard 1979 Interview, Refutes Claim He Was Capitalizing Off Blues Music as a White Man
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director A never-before-heard 1979 interview John Belushi gave to music critic Steve Bloom of the Soho 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. “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?
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