The wild story of The Blues Brothers’ only ever tour
As a new book about The Blues Brothers is released, let’s recount the tale of their 1980 tour. Announced at a time when public outrage about the film was growing, a 44-man, 21-date tour of America would only add to the hysteria.
Few films have divided opinion like The Blues Brothers did on its release back in June 1980. Although it has since become a cult classic and box office smash, at the time it was chastised as a symbol of Hollywood excess and rampant drug use. When a 44-man, 21-date tour of the United States was announced to promote the film, those accusations would only get louder.
The Blues Brothers faced controversy from the minute cameras started rolling. Filming in Chicago and LA was beset by delays and went almost disbelievingly over budget. The car chase scenes were extravagant, overblown and unlike anything that had ever been seen on screen before. They were also mind-bogglingly expensive. The movie’s final scene in Chicago’s Daley Plaza cost $3.5m to shoot, which at the time was reportedly more than any scene filmed in any city, ever. The total budget ballooned from a wildly optimistic $5m to $12m, then to $21.6m, and finally to $32m. Filming was due to finish in November 1979. It eventually concluded in February 1980.
The film’s delays and overspending couldn’t be put down to one thing alone. However, the fact that cocaine was more readily available than running water on set probably didn’t help. It was rife, and co-star John Belushi was the poster boy of Hollywood’s laissez-faire attitude to the drug at that time. He filled long waits between takes in a coke-addled haze. At one point, a thousand-foot film can was delivered to the set —missing film, but full to the brim of cocaine. Needless to say, it was for Belushi. On another day, a comatose Belushi had to be dragged out of his trailer to shoot a near-needless gas station scene with the British model Twiggy. He passed out immediately afterwards, and was carried back to his trailer. Director John Landis reckoned by halfway through the shoot, Belushi’s coke-fuelled tardiness had already delayed the film by three or four days.
The excess that The Blues Brothers became synonymous with didn’t stop when filming stopped. Early edits put the film’s runtime at over three hours, with Landis pushing to include a ludicrous intermission before the band’s final performance. Hollywood excess? Not a chance.
After chaos from start to finish of production, a nationwide Blues Brothers tour doesn’t sound like the smartest idea. But on 27th June 1980, that’s exactly what happened. This is the story of what went down during The Blues Brothers’ only ever tour.
THE seeds of the tour had been sown long before the opening night. The Blues Brothers had already played one-off gigs, both as a comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live and in a 10-night stand supporting the comedian Steve Martin at the Universal Ampitheatre in Los Angeles. For those performances, Belushi and his co-star Dan Aykroyd managed to piece together an all-star backing band that drew on all corners of America’s vast pool of blues talent.
They started by approaching Paul Shaffer, who was the de facto musical director for SNL’s in-house band. It meant the first few hires for The Blues Brothers band were straightforward enough. Steve Jordan, the SNL band member who would go on to play with Keith Richards and Stevie Wonder, joined as drummer. The well-attired SNL horn section of Lou Marini (saxophone), Tom Malone (trombone) and Alan Rubin (trumpet) soon followed suit, in their suits.
The rest of the band would prove a little trickier to hire. Struggling to find a guitarist who sounded sufficiently ‘bluesy’ enough, Belushi and Aykroyd sought the advice of blues sage Doc Pomus. He pointed them the way of Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, whose time spent playing with Howlin’ Wolf seemed more than enough by way of experience. They tracked him down to a run-down blues club in New York, and approached him straight after the show. Belushi offered Murphy $650 to join the band. When Murphy seemed hesitant, Belushi immediately upped the offer to $6,500. Murphy accepted. You can’t argue with those negotiation skills.
Tom ‘Bones’ Malone (now with added middle name) would help the Brothers complete a sparkling line-up. He had been performing with Stax house musicians Steve ‘The Colonel’ Cropper and Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn in another project, and implored Belushi to get in touch. Both were hesitant, again, but agreed after a) convincing them he was the real John Belushi and b) convincing them this was a serious project.
Their initial hesitancy would prove to be unfounded. When the Stax duo turned up at Belushi’s private studio for their first recording session, they were impressed. “He had the best collection of blues I had ever seen in my life,” Cropper said. “You have to take them seriously,” Dunn added, “because they’re serious about it. Just look at Belushi — he’s as serious as cancer.” In the studio, the Stax legends gradually coached Belushi from blues enthusiast to something resembling a professional vocalist.
The SNL horn section had yet to join the fledgling band in the studio. And there was a fair amount of trepidation prior to their arrival. They were classically-trained musicians who read sheet music; Alan Rubin had even studied at Juilliard. The Stax pair, meanwhile, were self-taught Memphis musicians who relied more on instinct and feel than scales and clefs. But when they started playing together, there was an instant chemistry. “There was something about this combination of such disparate elements, Duck and Steve’s Memphis shit, the horn section…” Marini enthused. “There had never been a horn section like that in a band like this. It was razor sharp.”
By the time the band’s run at the Amphitheatre arrived, they were as tight as any band could get. Producer Bob Tischler was putting together a live album from the band’s run, and reckoned he could splice together song snippets from any of the 10 nights. They simply didn’t miss a beat. The album that sprouted from this run of shows, A Briefcase Full of Blues, would hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 200. It has since sold more than 3.5m copies. Not bad for a comedy act.
With the exception of Steve Jordan and Paul Shaffer, the band all appeared as themselves in the resulting film. Jordan and Shaffer would return for the subsequent tour, whilst Murphy Dunne (keys) and Jeff Mironov (guitar) were also added to the sizeable touring band. In total there would be 44 people in The Blues Brothers’ travelling revue. Hollywood excess? Not a chance.
The tour was officially announced with a feature in Rolling Stone on 12th June. Starting on the 27th June, The Blues Brothers would play 21 dates across 13 US cities, including a closing week-long stand at LA’s Universal Amphitheatre. The band would play for two hours every night with no support act. Aykroyd and Belushi decided to forego their share of ticket revenue from the tour. Instead, it would all go to the band.
The tour announcement came at a time when studio executives were getting more and more concerned about the project. Early screenings had been disastrously received, and reports of the film’s chaotic shoot were bringing infamy to a movie that wasn’t even out yet. A planned week-long media preview extravaganza was pared back to two days to try and dampen the increasing hysteria. “Films like The Blues Brothers are aberrations,” ABC’s head of theatrical Bob Bookman told the New York Times. “It’s an example of Hollywood insanity: how can a comedy be that expensive?”
Yet the main worry for those on tour wasn’t the money being spent — it was Belushi. Or more specifically, his escalating drug use. He barely made it through filming in one piece, and came genuinely close to overdosing on at least two occasions. A Texan named Morris Lyda would serve as the road manager for the tour, but The Blues Brothers didn’t just need a road manager: they needed a Belushi manager.
Help came in the form of former Secret Service agent Richard ‘Smokey’ Wendell, who would at the very least fit in with the squadron of middle-nicknamed stars. He had arrived on the backhanded recommendation of the Eagles’ Joe Walsh. “You’re not going to like him,” were his parting words to Belushi. Wendell watched Belushi like a hawk, monitoring his movements at night and stopping various hangers-on from getting close to the co-star. “You’re right,” Belushi said to Walsh, “I’m not going to like him.”
Still, there was plenty of potential for more chaos on the road. Morris Lyda had arranged for Belushi to have a session with a vocal coach, so he could learn how to preserve his voice during two-hour sets and over 21 shows. He never showed up. Then, on the eve of the tour, Wendell delivered an anti-drug speech to the band: “If you’re wired, you’re fired.” Eyes rolled backwards, but at least this time it wasn’t down to the drugs.
By the time the tour began, the film had shrugged off early negative reviews and blown away predictions of box office failure. It grossed almost $8 million in its first week: already a quarter of the way towards recouping the $32 million outlay. It was a huge hit.
Aykroyd and Belushi cartwheeled onto stage for the opening show of the tour on Friday 27th June, in the band’s sweet hometown of Chicago. The reviews were scathing. “As blues dilettantes, they are mediocre in the extreme,” the Chicago Tribune’s pop music critic Lynn Van Matre hissed. “As entertainers, their contribution to the show is one-dimensional and amateurish, reminiscent of junior high schoolers trying to prove they have soul.” The review didn’t stop there. ‘Con artists’, ‘insultingly lame’, and ‘bozos’ were just a few of the insults hurled at Aykroyd and Belushi. Just like the movie, the Blues Brothers revue hadn’t got off to the best of starts.
On then to New York, and a show at the Palladium attended by Belushi and Aykroyd’s former SNL castmates. A New York Times review was the first to send some begrudging praise the Brothers’ way. “The Blues Brothers are by no means that bad,” it reads. The band is described as ‘first-rate’, and the show as an ‘affectionate, lightweight good time.’ A bootleg of the show, though muffled, suggests the band were indeed getting into their stride. In an interview with The Washington Post that week, the band’s bassist Duck Dunn seemed to agree it would take some time to perfect their live show. In a month’s time, he said, “this band will really be something. Right now, it’s a baaad band.”
Praise grew in Philadelphia on the third night of the tour. “Aykroyd and Belushi, decked out in their black suits and hats, white ties and shades, brought a sizzling, crackling 10-piece band to the Mann Music Center Monday evening,” wrote Edgar Koshatka in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “And convincingly proved that, if their screen popularity ever wanes, they’ll have little trouble drawing an audience purely for musical reasons.”
At the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, the praise was even more exultant. “The Blues Brothers put on a wild and exhilarating show,” reads the breathless Washington Post review. The group ‘staged an R&B party for two hours’, whilst their backing band was described as ‘the finest working in rhythm and blues today.’
Perhaps even more surprising than the glowing reviews was Belushi’s continued abstinence from drugs. For someone with the irrepressible energy of Belushi, waiting around on film sets simply didn’t suit him. He needed a release — and playing live gave him an outlet for that excess energy. “That made him a different person,” Smokey Wendell later reflected. “The downtime, when nothing was going on: that’s when he could get into trouble.” John’s wife, Judy Belushi, agreed. “There were a few nights when, after the concert, I went out with friends while John stayed in,” she said. “That was different.”
After a date in Saratoga Springs, a planned performance at Ohio’s Blossom Music Center on 7th July was cancelled due to staff strikes at the venue. It meant the next dates on the tour would be a pair of shows in Memphis: the hometown of Steve Cropper and Donald Dunn. Having already been accused of playing with ‘con artists,’ there was perhaps an added motivation for the pair to make sure the show stood up to scrutiny — and to the legend of the blues city. “The group may well be the liveliest band on the road today,” was the verdict in The Commercial Appeal. “The band, including former Memphians Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper, was brilliant, pushing and shoving each number until it was ringing wet.”
The tour was gathering pace, and so too was the film’s box office success. On 16th July, after three further shows in Houston, Dallas and Denver, Variety revealed that The Blues Brothers had grossed $25.7 million in just 24 days. It was officially a blockbuster. What’s more, its future reputation as a cult classic was also gathering pace. The Oakland Tribune reported audience members turning up at the sold-out Concord Pavilion shows in Jake and Elwood fancy dress. “Jake and Elwood Blues spoon-fed the partial cult-following all night,” read the largely positive review.
The band had a welcome week off before the tour ended with a week-long stand at LA’s Universal Amphitheatre, starting on 26th July. It was here where Bob Tischler would record the band’s third record — Made in America — which is sometimes unfairly painted as one Blues Brothers album too many. In truth, it suffers because of factors outside of the band’s control. Strong covers from previous albums were left out to maintain a record of original covers, leaving one or two questionable tracks in as filler. But ‘Do You Love Me’ is perfectly suited to the Brothers’ canon, whilst ‘Soul Finger’ and ‘Green Onions’ showcase the searing backing band at their very best.
Belushi was also struggling with the intensity of two-hour shows and a cartwheeling tour across the country. His voice was suffering (if only he had seen a vocal coach before the tour…), and the Los Angeles Times blithely reported that Belushi had stopped cartwheeling so much on stage. But he was clean for the first time in a long time, and perhaps that was a bigger win than anything else.
The film had cemented itself as a box office smash by the time the tour wrapped up. It had sold out venues across the country, won enthusiastic praise from America’s music scribes, and managed to dampen media outrage about the film’s excess. Belushi was even drug-free for the first time in a long time. However, although they didn’t know it at the time, The Blues Brothers had just played their final show together.
At the afterparty of that final gig, Belushi was handed a bag of cocaine by one of the many hangers-on. He retreated to a bathroom to take it. Wendell dutifully followed him. “C’mon,” pleaded Belushi. “Let me have a little.” Wendell said no. And since he was still on the clock, what Wendell said generally went. His time with Belushi was up, but his concern for the star would linger long after that final show. “If things get bad, just call me,” he told Belushi as they parted that night. They were eerily prescient words.
Without the release of live shows and the close surveillance of Wendell, Belushi soon slipped into his bad old ways. He started using again, and his drug habit escalated. It would all come to a head less than two years after that final show. On 5th March 1982 he was found dead at his LA bungalow, having overdosed on a lethal combination of cocaine and heroin. Belushi was 33.
It was a desperately sad end for someone who had come cartwheeling onto stage every night just two years earlier. Belushi had long been seen as a symbol of Hollywood excess, but his untimely death forced the film industry to recast its relationship with cocaine.
For a brief time, it seemed Belushi had also managed to rethink his relationship with the drug. The tour offered him an outlet for his insatiable energy, and with it, a brief respite from the addiction that eventually took him away — but not before he had given so much to the world.
The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic is out now on White Rabbit books.
