Throughout their friendship, Dan Aykroyd had to find a balance between controlling John Belushi and letting him run wild.
There was no greater comedic wild man than John Belushi. A force on and off the screen, the guy stands as one of the most influential of his generation. And while we know this wasn’t always the best thing for others, his persona and charisma were unlike anything the world of entertainment had seen before. Tragically, Belushi himself would succumb to his addictions in 1982, but he still had a support system that wanted him to stick around forever, chiefly in Blues Brother-in-arms Dan Aykroyd.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Aykroyd remembered having to find the balance of keeping Belushi without being overbearing to the point he would turn on him. “I was pretty hands on and monitoring his behavior minute to minute — and then also letting the leash out a little bit, knowing that, if I pull too hard or resisted, he would head up into the trees. He’d be gone. And so, handled him very carefully. Tried to meter the control there, which is very hard when someone likes cocaine. Meter that control, try to hide a packet now and again, and make sure there’s enough around so we get through. Or make sure there are days when it’s not done, nights when it’s not done.”
But Aykroyd could only watch over Belushi so much. In March 1982 – two years after his stint on Saturday Night Live ended and The Blues Brothers crashed into theaters – Belushi died after being injected with a speedball (a combo of cocaine and heroin) following a night with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. The woman who delivered that dose, Cathy Smith, would end up serving time for second degree murder.
But no doubt the legacy of John Belushi lives on, both as a comedic tour de force and a cautionary tale. As Aykryod put it, “What he will be remembered for, we can’t change — and that’s the spectacular work that he did and the ignominious manner of his demise. So that’s all there. But I think what if you have to inform people about who he was privately: he was well read, he was warm, he was funny, he was magnetic. He was a true thousand-watt aviation lamp walking around.”
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