This is an effective chronicle of one of the key threads that wove together around pop culture in the mid and late 1970s. I’ve read Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s Saturday Night multiple times so I recognized some of the anecdotes…but this story only intersects with SNL and the author manages to start with the childhoods of Aykroyd, Belushi and Landis to build out the key players as they cross paths and connect around this pivotal moment in comedy. I also really enjoyed the anecdotes specific to the making of the film; the author does a great job of digging into the production and fleshing out the day to day of a production that ballooned out of control. There was a lot of lightning caught in many bottles in the late 1970s and this book does a great job of chronicling the stories around one of those bottles.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

Who doesn’t love The Blues Brothers. A fitting tribute to our two leading men and a great book outlining the soundtrack that we all grew up with. For every film buff.

Daniel de Visé can't do everything that this book's title promises, but it's not his fault. Any recounting of the epic friendship between the stars of THE BLUES BROTHERS will be weighted toward John Belushi, and as de Visé observes that is how Dan Aykroyd prefers it. Much of the biographical content is about Belushi, but Aykroyd still comes across as the glue of their shared SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE years and the prime mover behind their greatest silver screen collaboration. In order to tell the saga of Jake and Elwood, de Visé first has to dive into Belushi's background, the Chicago comedy scene, and the overlap and eventual competition between SNL and National Lampoon. He's particularly strong on the influences on the film's look - who knew the Dick Tracy comic strip would be so important? - and its music, which led to a backlash against the film in some quarters. And he covers the tortured production history, with the film's budget and the behavior of its star spiraling out of control, with admirable thoroughness. The film's surprising staying power only heightens the impact of Belushi's early death. THE BLUES BROTHERS remains his greatest legacy, and this book does the movie justice.

The Blues Brothers is a book by Daniel de Visé about the movie of the same name, and the band, and its two founders, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Mostly, though, it’s about the comedic, talented and self-destructive force that was John Belushi. It’s chock full of detail, from the obtuse to the titillating.

Dan and John created the Blues Brothers as characters on Saturday Night Live. They were part characters and part guest band. John wasn’t a great singer and Dan wasn’t a great harmonica player, but they used deadpan humour and a great backing band to make an iconic act.

I watched the movie The Blues Brothers many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Car crashes, great music, iconic quotes (“We’re on a mission from God”) and a manic story line made for a great movie. Late and way over budget, the movie was a smash hit.

This book follows John from childhood through his comedic beginnings at Chicago’s Second City, where he met Dan, through their short SNL career and on to John’s movie career. It is far more about John than Dan, probably for several reasons: John was the more outspoken of the two, Dan doesn’t like the limelight, and John’s story is over while Dan’s continues on.

The book is fascinating. I learned a lot about John, and the book shows him as a far more nuanced person than the popular image of a loud, funny, drugged-out guy who was Bluto from Animal House and Jake from The Blues Brothers. For example, I had no idea that he was a football star in school before he took a hard left into comedy.

The Blues Brothers does talk about the movie – the challenges of getting it approved, the many filming obstacles and adventures, and its critical “failure” and commercial success – but the book is really about John. And that’s okay.

I have been a fan of The Blues Brothers since it hit theaters. In my opinion, it remains one of the best movies of the 1980's. I was aware that the characters were created on Saturday Night Live and that was all I really knew about how the film came to be. Looking back now, I guess I just assumed that it was something that Lorne Michaels gave his blessing to like Wayne's World or the Coneheads movies. That wasn't necessarily the case. As a matter of fact, it was quite a fight just to get the characters on the air!

As I dove into this book, I learned the backstories of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It was interesting to walk along side them on the road as they rose to fame. I also loved reading about the other now famous names that they worked with prior to coming together at SNL, how they landed their gigs at 30 Rock, and the idea that eventually became The Blues Brothers.

The book does a fine job of also giving readers a look at the personal lives of Belushi and Aykroyd. It was hard to read about the struggles that Belushi had with drugs. I was unaware of the steps that he had taken to try to break free from them. Sadly, we all know that he eventually succumbed to them.

Making a movie is certainly not an easy thing. Throughout this book, you will learn how an idea led to a huge script that had to be cut down, how the amazing musicians were put together, and how many of the great R&B singers came to be a part of the film.

Blues Brothers fans will love this because of the familiar stories and the ones they haven't heard. There is a good mixture of both. There were plenty of stories in the book that will make me watch particular scenes in the film a bit more closely because of things it revealed.

I truly enjoyed the book and will be rushing out to get a hard copy of it when it is available March 19, 2024. You can preorder it on Amazon now if you wish.

I want to thank NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this before it was published. I look forward to my next read!

I have really enjoyed this book. It weaves the story of the Blues Brothers from Belushi and Ackroyd growing up in Chicago and Canada, follows each path through their skit days to getting on at SNL, then moves onto their movie careers. I loved the movie and being able to learn the backstories was very enjoyable.

It contains a cast of well known comedy characters and how all their careers were intertwined. The amount of work all of them put into developing beloved characters and how they got to where they are today was fascinating. I would recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of that era of comedies.

Some of my best memories of my youth come from The Blues Brothers. Watching them play on SNL, the movie and the many many many quotes that came from it. “Do you have this in Miss Piggy?” Or “We’re on a mission from God”
Add to that that I live in Chicago, and this book had huge expectations for me. It met them!

This isn’t just a “making of a movie” book, it’s a book about John, and Dan, and the way they came together to be comedy brothers and then make this fantastic film.

Due to John’s life, I knew a lot about it, but I didn’t know much about Dan and this filled in a lot of questions I’d had. I learned a lot about both of them and how all of it came together.

Well researched, well written, and tons of gossipy details! This one is a lot of fun and, again, being from Chicago, I know a few people who will be finding this in their stocking.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, all opinions are mine.

"The Blues Brothers" by Daniel de Visé is an enjoyable, and at times heart-breaking, look at the creation of the Brothers themselves to the timeless film. de Vise does not write this through the eye of a gossip reporter. He tells the story as it happened. He relates Belushi's drug habit without judgement but makes it clear how horrific this problem was. The reader gets insight into the film making process in the 1970's as well. Reading how some of the memorable scenes were created brings a smile too. One can't help but get angry at how producers like Lorne Michaels enabled the drug scene that killed Belushi. de Vise makes it clear there was a lot of enablement. This is a great read for fans and non-films of the movie or of Belushi and Ackroyd. Thanks to #Netgalley and #groveatlantic and #atlanticmonthlypress for the opportunity to preview this book.

I've been waiting for a book like this for a long time. The author seems to have done a lot of research. Great, in-depth look at a unique series of events. Highly recommended.

Just from the title alone, this book contains tons of information and could have made separate biographies. The first half of the book covers mostly John Belushi’s early life and when he began his drug habit. The reader is taken down the career path where John meets Dan Aykroyd; both comedians overlapping and performing with The Second City Chicago comedy company. The book highlights their work in SNL, as well as other members of the show, writer Lorne Michaels, and writer/director John Landis and his comedies. The second half of the book focuses on the Belushi and Aykroyd relationship, Belushi’s excessive drug use, and the making of The Blues Brothers.

This is a good dense read and I recommend purchasing the book, not the e-book for allowing you to flip through the table of contents, footnotes, and just going back to something previously mentioned as the writer goes down the rabbit hole to bring the entire backstory.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the e-Advanced Reader’s Copy of The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Visé.

While the book focuses in on the Blues Brothers, the blues tribute band headed up by John Belushi and Dan Akroyd at their apex of SNL fame in the late 70s—it spawned a hit album and movie that introduced legions of suburban SNL fans to R&B—it's also a good primer on the histories of both comedians as well as their time at SNL, and the genesis of SNL, as well as other comedy troupes, especially the places where SNL poached most of its talent: Chicago's Second City and National Lampoon's hit radio show.

I'm pretty sure that something similar—two white guys singing black R&B songs and getting a record/movie deal out of it—wouldn't happen today. It would be considered "cultural appropriation" by the younger generation, in which one is apparently only allowed to cover or have influences by artists of the same skin color. Never mind that R&B is a meld of blues, country, and even folk songs of the very white British realm. These days, everything is parsed by skin tone, and god forbid you "go out of your lane." Whatever that means.

Belushi and Akroyd were aware of the racism inherent in their being able to score a movie deal with black music—and aware of the charge of appropriation that was leveled even back then, when they started the gig as the warm-up band on SNL—and they appropriately stocked the movie with genuine R&B legends. Many of them were brought back from obscurity and had their careers revived and made a lot of money.

It's also a nice delve into the "opposites attract" friendship of Dan and John. John's vices would eventually kill him prematurely, and Dan would go onto even greater success with Ghostbusters and other movies that showcased his odd humor.

This was definitely a "smart alecky white guy gets the babes" time period, showcased also in the massive hit Animal House, and if that isn't your kind of thing, then steer clear. But if you have fond memories of early SNL, or you just like reading about Hollywood and clever, drugged-up celebrities (count me the later), then definitely pick this up.

I subtract a star for the forced-sounding wokeism that occasionally pokes through the pages. The most egregious being the author/publisher not even daring to say the "N word" (am I allowed to write that?) though it is simply quoting a famous sketch written by a black man, Richard Pryor. Such are these times.

I just reviewed The Blues Brothers by Daniel de Visé. #TheBluesBrothers #NetGalley. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this book. I'm a huge fan of the movie, and this was full of information I never knew - it was such a treat to read! My thanks to the publisher & NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in advance.

Ultimately I was disappointed in this book because the movie and band of the title were secondary to a biography of John Belushi. It focused in great detail on his early life and even more on his drug-taking. Although Belushi is the focus of the book, the author gives us only facts, rarely diving below the surface to figure out the reason behind the actor's prodigious appetite for drugs.

The book would have matched the title and the reader's expectations if instead it had focussed more on the movie, it's theme, and Ackroyd, a more interesting person.

It’s not one of my favorite movies, although, I did love the music and the comedy of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, and a few lines are embedded in my brain. I don’t remember the first time seeing it, and I can definitely tell you it wasn’t when it premiered, as I was only three years old. So, probably video cassette or cable television.

If you want to read about how Dan and John came to be on Saturday Night Live, how they met for the first time, how they got John Landis to direct, and a lot more stories of them, then this book is for you. Oh, a lot of inside information for the how The Blues Brothers was filmed as well as Animal House from the cast and crew.

Despite the multitude of drug use by everybody, I still enjoyed the book and was glad a brief biography of Dan and John was included.

Awesome book. Couldn’t put it down. Read through in two days. Fabulous coverage of Dan and John, including many details that were completely new to me. Having been in my 20s during the era I could totally relate although I was shocked at how little SNL participants were being paid at the time they were on the air. Also, a horrifying look at how conservative drinker Belushi became enslaved to drugs.
He tends to be given center stage in this book but that seems to have been his god given position in life. For a book though, I think Dan needs to be an equal opportunity player.
Don’t miss this book. It’s incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever said that before about any piece.