Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (4 page)

OK, so he comes from work, and she yells, ‘Harry, hurry, come upstairs.’ He goes upstairs. ‘Quick, take the two white tablets on the dresser and throw them inside my vagina. The doctor says we’ll be compelled to have sex or something.’ He does, and she shrinks back and he says, ‘What happened here?’

You use your face like you’re chewing something.

‘
I’m looking at your vagina, and it’s going like this.’ She says, ‘Oh my god, you threw in the Chiclets!’

Those are the two that come to mind. (laughs)

He’s been a Blues Brother, Ghostbuster, Miss Daisy’s son and Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute.

Legend of Comedy shouldn’t get tossed about nonchalantly, but Dan Aykroyd is certainly that, a living legend of comedy. He was one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on “Saturday Night Live” and a scene stealer at Second City Toronto in the early ’70s (yes, he’s Canadian, but we won’t hold that against him).

His interests include the paranormal and old rhythm and blues music, and he has parlayed his loves into a helluva career, co-writing the aforementioned “Ghostbusters” films, hosting a syndicated television program on the weirdly unknown and becoming Elwood Blues, brother to “Joliet” Jake, otherwise known as John Belushi.

“
There’s something classic about a tall guy and a shorter, heavier guy in black suits and hats that seems to work,” Judy Pisano, widow of John, told me. “It’s easy for you to believe you can be them—sort of like a costume like Superman.”

Corey: You have some pretty impressive dance moves. Where did you learn to dance?

Dan Aykroyd: I don’t know where that came from; I’m not sure. I guess that’s just the nature of the music itself. I sure didn’t do it in high school; I was a terrible dancer there. I started dancing when I started playing with Steve Cropper and Donald Dunn and those guys.

Corey: I’ve read some stories about the speakeasy you used to run during ‘Saturday Night Live.’

Dan: Yeah, 505 Queen Street. Prior to that, when I was on Second City in Toronto, we had the after-hours bar. Then, of course, we had a blues bar in New York City and in Chicago. We always had a bar. Now I’ve got seven of them—The House of Blues, of course.

Corey: Do you remember when you first discovered rhythm and blues music?

Dan: Yes, of course. It was in Ottawa, Canada, where I grew up. There was a beautiful club there. We used to go and listen to music and hang.

Corey: When did you get the nerve to get up there and start singing some of these songs?

Dan: I was about 16 when I hopped up and started to play harp. I really didn’t start singing until we did The Blues Brothers.

Corey: Do you still keep in touch with the guys from The Blues Brothers band?

Dan: Oh, yes. In fact, I played with them just a couple weeks ago for a benefit for the Alzheimer’s Fund in New York City and New York State. Yes, I played with Steve Cropper and Lou Marini and Alan Rubin. They were amazing.

Corey: If you had stayed on one of your original paths, criminology, where do you think you’d be today?

Dan: I would be an inspector, probably a deputy chief with the Ontario Provincial Police Department. Why not elevate myself to that field? Why not? I might have been a Mountie, like my grandfather.

Corey: You had a show a few years back about the paranormal…

Dan: Yeah, ‘Psi Factor.’ We ran four years on that in syndication, which is a pretty good run in syndication.

Corey: I’ve heard that you have an interest in that, that your family …

Dan: My great-grandfather was an Edwardian spiritualist, yes.

Corey: What do you think about dream analysis?

Dan: I think that the Carl Jungian school is extremely accurate and full of symbology and gives you a whole clue to living life. And if you dream and take Jung’s symbols, dreams can act as a forecast to what’s coming or a beautiful reflection of the past.

Corey: Do you still have dreams about John Belushi?

Dan: Not so much now, but certainly after he died, I did.

Corey: Did you take that as a good sign?

Dan: I think he was visiting me. He was troubled in those dreams. A soul intervention was done, and I think he’s crossed over now and he’s happy. I lost a friend on 9/11. She was on that first plane that went into the tower. I had a dream about her. She was all in yellow, flowing. I said, ‘Where are you?’ and she said, ‘I’m helping these other people across. They need help.’ She was just like that in life, and I really feel that she was visiting me.

Corey: You performed with John for years, and now you’re performing with Jim Belushi. Was it a little strange at the beginning for you with Jim?

Dan: It was a little strange for him because he didn’t think he could do it. I said, ‘Of course, you can do it. You Albanian-American guys from Illinois know how to sing the blues. Come on!’ And it turned out, he was just great in the show. We do the Have Love Will Travel revue, which is a more informal show than the classic Blues Brothers show. He is Brother Zee, the blood; I am Elwood, the legacy—as you probably know.

We do the classic Blues Brothers show, but it’s very formal presentation wise. There’s a whole tribute to John in there. There’s material that we don’t do in the Have Love Will Travel revue, which is in that classic show. There’s two concepts here going.

Corey: There’s some retired stuff that you won’t do again?

Dan: Yes, I think some of the songs that were really associated with John, Jimmy doesn’t really want to do because they were his.

Corey: Why do you think the Blues Brothers legacy has lived on for so long?

Dan: I think it’s accessible to some people. Everyone can look or feel like a Blues Brother. The music is fun. It’s happy. It’s uplifting. It’s all about a good time. People like an icon that represents a good time.

Back in 1984, three MCs and a Dave—Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald Mark McKinney and Dave Foley—met and combined forces in Toronto, eventually adding a token gay, Scott Thompson, to become Kids in the Hall.

A love of Monty Python spawned irreverent characters like Cabbage Head, an obnoxious lout who tries to gain the sympathies of women because of the fact that a bunch of the leafy vegetable forms the top of his noggin’; and the Chicken Lady, a freak show half-woman, half-chicken beast in need of a shrink—or at least Col. Sanders.

“
Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels saw the Kids and helped them produce a TV show in the States, which aired on HBO and CBS through 1995. The pay cable channel was an opportunity to get away with stuff that “SNL” could not, including a bit called “Dr. Seuss Bible,” which chronicles the crucifixion of Jesus via silly rhymes and colorful characters.

Like Python, the all-male troupe often transformed into female characters, some making better-looking women than others. I was lucky enough to chat with three of the Kids before they took their comedy on the road, and met them sweaty and smiling backstage at The Pageant in St. Louis.

Corey Stulce: Who do you think makes the best-looking lady then and now?

Dave Foley: Then, definitely me. It’s one of the few things the troupe agrees on is that I was the best in drag; that I was actually pretty. Now I don’t think any of us look that good in drag. We’re all a little older.

Corey: I just read an article about a new book coming out about religious parallels to the writing of Dr. Seuss and that’s something you guys played with a long time ago.

Dave: Wow, yeah, that was over 20 years ago.

Corey: Combining religion and comedy can be sort of dangerous. Did you guys get any backlash for the stuff you did?

Dave: Oh, sure. ‘Dr. Seuss Bible’ offended a lot of people. In fact, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) wouldn’t air it when we did it. It never aired in Canada. Even HBO was worried about putting it on the air. I’ve had a few things that didn’t run in Canada because they were religious. I had a monologue about how Christ was a bad carpenter. It was mostly me saying I had unearthed some artifacts that were apparently built by Christ and they were all lousy. They wouldn’t air that in Canada.

Corey: What did you think about the comparisons to you guys and Monty Python back then, and has your opinion changed at all?

Dave: My opinion has always been that it’s flattering to be compared to them. I think they are the Beatles of comedy. I like to think we’re a distant second-best to Python, and structurally we’re very different from them. Because we loved Python, we decided very early on that we would never do anything that felt like Python. All of our sketches have endings. We don’t do segues. Out of respect for them we went with a more traditional style.

Corey: Have you ever gotten any comments about your show from the guys in that troupe?

Dave: No, to the best of my knowledge none of them knows who we are. And I’ve met Eric Idle several times, and I don’t think he ever remembers me. And I’ve worked with John Cleese on ‘Will and Grace,’ and he had no idea who I was. In fact, the first day on the show I said, ‘I just want to get this out of the way: I’m a huge fan and very excited to be working with you.’ And he turned to the first assistant director and said, ‘Who is this? Do I have to be nice to him?’ And I said, ‘Only in the most perfunctory way, Mr. Cleese.’

Corey: I’ve been trying to read up on some of the new characters. What can you tell me about the Bartender, the sidekick to Bruce’s Super Drunk?

Dave: Not much. You’ve pretty much encompassed the entire character with that description. It’s a pretty thin characterization. I just try to look heroic with my cocktail shaker, that’s it. In fact, all the characters in that sketch are paper-thin.

Corey: Because you guys are doing a lot of new stuff on this tour, how would you say it compares with the last tour which was, what five, six years ago?

Dave: Yeah, six years ago. I think this is the best live show we’ve ever put on. I’m really happy with how all our new material has turned out. The crowds are really reacting well to it. I don’t think anyone’s missing the old sketches. For us it’s a lot more fun to do stuff that they haven’t seen yet.