In the fall of 1975, Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC, bringing sketch comedy to the masses. Along for the show's maiden voyage were a handful of actors and actresses who would lay the foundation for what would become the longest-running late night show on television. Among the legendary cast was Dan Aykroyd, and he would spend the next four years fabricating hours of hilarious material, one sketch at a time.

Not stopping there, Aykroyd would go on to play a pivotal role in the development of several other successful ventures. His financial contributions helped launch the House of Blues franchise. His love for the blues fueled the music of The Blues Brothers and his fascination with the paranormal would give birth to the celebrated Ghostbusters movies.

Having been invited back onto SNL on multiple occasions, including last month's season finale with Beyonc� Knowles, Aykroyd is in high demand, both on the television screen and the car stereo. With past "Blues Brothers" album sales well over three-million, he recently released, "Have Love, Will Travel" with fellow blues aficionado Jim Belushi.

During an in-depth interview, he describes this new album at length, reminiscing about the time he spent with fallen cohorts John Belushi and John Candy. In addition, he offers his take on the seemingly endless discussion on the music-download issue. Of course, an interview with Mr. Aykroyd would be incomplete without discussing his work on Ghostbusters, as well as the aforementioned SNL.

Crazewire: For more than twenty years, you have juggled being "Dan Aykroyd the actor" with "Elwood Blues the musician". How did you get turned on to the blues?

Dan Aykroyd: Well, I was very fortunate to have grown up in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa, which had a pretty ample degree of culture; world culture. Being that all the embassies were here and the seat of government was here in Ottawa. There was a nightclub booker who had a club on Sussex drive, right next to the Prime Minister's residence. Ottawa, it's very Scandinavian in its model, you know? In Scandinavia, you see that. You see the King, the Prime Minister, and the President all live in the same neighborhood. Ottawa is very much like that.

So, this guy booked a lot of blues acts in Ottawa?

Oh yeah. This guy booked everyone who was big in the blues world in the 50's and 60's. I saw Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters. I jammed with Muddy Waters in fact when I was a kid, which was a dream. He needed a drummer for a couple of songs, because his drummer, S.B. Leary, didn't come back to the stage. Paul Butterfield, whose album "East West" turned an entire generation of white, Anglo-Saxon, Midwestern kids onto the blues; including me. I saw Jimi Hendrix at the Capital Theatre. Just about everybody in the blues scene, so to answer your question, it was seeing early blues stars like that. I went to "Expo '67", which was the Canadian "World's Fair" and I saw Sam and Dave, who at that point were at the height of their Stax/Volt fame. I got turned on to the Stax/Volt Memphis sound. I had to find out all about that. So, I sort of had a good grounding there.

I'm assuming John Belushi shared your love for the blues?

No, no, no. When I met Belushi, I was playing him a record by the "Downchild Blues Band" which is a local Toronto band. He said, "What's that?" and I said, "Well, it's the blues". He said, "I don't know much about that." I said, "Well, you're from Chicago. You should." He was into heavy metal, punk music, The Ramones, stuff like that. So I said, "Teach me about heavy metal, and I'll teach you about the blues." We decided to listen to some records and from that point, we would go on to form what would become "The Blues Brothers".

Were you hesitant to work on further "Blues Brother" projects after John's passing?

Yes, I thought it was all over. I thought it was finished. I thought I would never ever sing or play again. Obviously, it took me a while to bounce back from that one. I went over to Europe for a weekend for his funeral. I buried him on a Saturday, and Sunday I flew over his grave. The Concord, it makes a right turn over Martha's Vineyard. We made that turn up around 50,000 feet, but the island was clearly defined. There was where I had left my friend, and I looked down for one last view and thought, "This is it."

How and when did you realize that this was not it; that Elwood Blues would take the stage again.

Well, I made another flight over to England. I was met by a gentleman named, "Isaac Tigret", who was the founder of Hard Rock [Caf�] and later the House of Blues. We started Hard Rock in America, and we opened the one in New York City. He said to me, "Why don't you get that band together again?" So, I did. I put it together as, "The Elwood Blues Revue" with Paul Shaffer, and we began to play. We played there in New York. We played in Dallas. We played a couple more Hard Rock.openings. It was just me, alone out there, and people were going, "Well, is this going to work without a partner?" The music was so good, though. The power of the music and the musicianship. People were digging these shows. So, I was able to continue on my own for a time.

What made you decide to look for a partner, and ultimately team up with Jim Belushi?

Jimmy had joined me for a benefit for my school; Carlton University in Ottawa. I took Criminology there, but I didn't graduate because I dropped out to go into show business. I brought him to the government opera house; the National Arts Centre. I said, "You know, you can do this. You can do the blues." He wanted nothing to do with it. I said, "C'mon, you're an Albanian from Illinois like your brother. You can sing blues and r&b;" and by God, he handled himself beautifully. He came onstage, danced, moved, we had fun. I thought, "This can work."

You have a brand new album out with Jim titled, "Have Love, Will Travel." Is this essentially a new Blues Brothers release, or have you moved away from that?

Really, "The Blues Brothers" was essentially a Chicago/Memphis fusion band. The guitar players were Memphis players with a Chicago sound like Matt Murphy. Then, you had Steve (Cropper) and Duck (Donald Dunn), who didn't play blues when they were with Stax, but we were doing so many Stax/Volt tunes, that they adapted. The essential difference in what I'm doing with Jimmy right now is more of a Texas/California fusion. The players are all out of Texas, and there is a distinctive sound. I guess, where Chicago would be defined by Fenton Robinson and Magic Sam, Texas would be defined by T-Bone Walker and Freddie King. The guys in the band now are more influenced by that King/Walker type of blues, that kind of sound. It's a departure for me, away from material that I did with John and into some songs that I liked as a kid.

The gentlemen you just mentioned, Steve and Duck, are world-renowned musicians with enormous shoes to fill. Does your current band hold up with the legendary Blues Brothers lineup?

Well, Jimmy has done pretty well, I've done pretty well, you know we can afford the best band out there. All of our players are amazing; some are Grammy winners, even. It's a very, very guitar-oriented band. I say that to any young people before they play it. If you like guitar, this is a great band. They really are tremendous guitar players. There is a very fat, wide sound to the record. I'm quite happy with it. I wouldn't have put it out if I wasn't happy. I'm not selling shit here. I'm not trying to turn shit into gold. I'm honest about our vocals. We're not Luther Vandross or Lionel Ritchie or Otis Redding. But what we do, we're great frontmen. We deliver strong material. The classic songs are unparalleled. Because the band is so good, we've had to step up in quality on the vocals. They didn't let us get away with anything that sounded off-key or off-pitch. It's just a fun, happy record. It's basically a replica of what you would see if you came to one of our gigs.

Speaking of gigs, how have they gone? Are people digging this "Texas/California" sound?

We actually just did a cross-country tour and had a lot of fun with that. I have come to realize that we have a very interesting demographic. It's very funny. The people that come out to see us, and really enjoy it, are women, age 35 to 75. I saw women in their 70's drooling over Belushi like he was Bon Jovi. We do a song on the record by Willie Dixon called "300 Pounds of Joy". So, we have men over 300 pounds as part of our demographic. So, you've got women aged 35 to 75, men over 300 pounds, and then the weirdest subsection are the late-starting couples who had children in their 30's or 40's. The kids are now pre-adolescent, 8 to 12 years old. So, you've got these older parents in their late 30's or early 40's bringing their kids to the shows. The kids have no idea whatsoever who we are.

I would hope they recognize your faces, if not your names.

Well, some know Jimmy from his TV show (ABC's "According To Jim"). There might be a handful who know me as the father in "My Girl". (laughs) They don't know anything about "Trading Places", "Spies Like Us", "Ghostbusters", "Blues Brothers", "Saturday Night Live", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Grosse Point Blank". They don't know, but they're singing and dancing and having a great time nonetheless. Everybody goes away with a good feeling because (pauses) blues music is not lamentation. Not all of it is despairing over the loss of a car, a job, or a woman. A lot of it is full of humor, so everybody walks away from our show; they smile, they laugh, and they feel like they've had a good time. We're just having a lot of fun with it. We actually are moving some records when people hear about it. We're turning on a new generation of people to it. Even though they're kids, they're still seeing that there is a merit in this music, which of course is the roots of all rock and roll, house, rap, funk, hip-hop, pop. It all comes from the blues.

It sounds like everybody is enjoying the new material.

Yes, everybody that listens to the material likes it. We're just fighting awareness problems, because we have no big label. It's basically Jimmy and me doing it ourselves. We have no AM/FM airplay at all, because everything out there right now is hip-hop, rap, pop, r&b.; You know, there's not a lot of demand for our music on the radio, except for on a blues station, so we're not getting any principal airplay. We're not getting any vh1, vh2, mtv, you name it. We don't have a big advertising budget, but everybody that listens to the record likes it.

You are bound to reach a few hundred-thousand more when you play Toronto later this month.

Yes, absolutely. We're going to be playing with the [Rolling] Stones. We're going to be fronting, starting the afternoon off for AC/DC, Rush, the Guess Who. That'll be great; what a show! That's Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] and Michael Cole, their manager, going, "Hey, we want to do something for Toronto." The media totally misinterpreted that SARS thing when you look at the fact that 35,000 people died of the flu in America last year. 700 died from SARS worldwide. I mean, it would be more likely that an anvil come through my window on the interstate than getting hit by that mess. It's ridiculous. It's a completely confined thing, and Toronto has one of the best health services in the world.

You mentioned a moment ago that you have no big label on your side. How and why did you decide to release this album independently, given your track record of successful "Blues Brothers" releases on major labels?

Well, we tried initially. We went to Universal. I sold a million copies of the "Blues Brothers 2000" soundtrack with them, but they didn't want to bother with this one. They dropped me from their label, so we had to do it ourselves. There is an immense satisfaction knowing that people are being turned onto this music, even though we're going about it in kind of an underground, unconventional way.

Well, if you have the money, releasing the album on your own can be a positive experience.

It is, because we're not being lied to. We know how many pieces we've manufactured and how many are really going out the door. We don't have to deal with executives who say "Don't use this cut or that cut." I've been telling people to download the record, burn it, give it to your friends. If I was with a big label, they'd slap me hard for saying that.

That's interesting. A lot of independent artists are mixed on the downloading issue.

Well, I'm mixed about it as well. I want to share the music. The best way to get it out there is to buy a copy, burn a copy, give it to your dad or uncle, and so on. It does, however, compromise, the songwriters a little bit. As a Blues Brother, I've got 75 cuts on the file-sharing sites that I don't see any money from. The songwriters for those tracks are getting robbed and they shouldn't be, because they work hard. I'm optimistic though. I think that the file-sharing, the downloading, and the burning can actually stimulate CD sales. People listen to these records and they go, "I want the jewel case. I want the artwork. I want my own copy for the cottage, the house, the boat, etc."

We've spent a good deal of time discussing your endeavors with both John and Jim Belushi. Another gentleman you worked with on several projects, including "Nothing But Trouble" and "The Great Outdoors" was John Candy.

Candy was great; like a brother to me. Anybody who knew Candy just loved the guy. He was a sweetie. He was fun, but he was dangerous too. Sometimes he'd get a little drunk, you know, and get carried away. One night, he picked Dave Thomas and me right up like a pair of beer barrels, one on each shoulder. He spun us around, I'll never forget it. He was very powerful. Obviously, he was a (pauses) really wonderful, wonderful man; quite a substantial human being, all the way around. He and I started out together. He was a Kleenex salesman, and I was a mailman. So, from that, we built a great relationship and started "Second City" in Toronto together.

The Chicago chapter of Second City was already around at that point though?

Yeah, it was an offshoot of the "Compass Players", which were a group that had formed at the University of Chicago in 1957. They based their technique on psychological role-playing games and there was a book by a gentleman named Paul Sills and his mother Viola Spolin. They basically laid out the details for improvisation that everybody still uses today, so "Second City" grew out of that. The Toronto company was formed in 1972, and I joined it with Gilda Radner, Brian Murray, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy; people that are in Chris Guest ("Best in Show", "A Mighty Wind", "This is Spinal Tap") movies.

Were you hesitant to leave Second City when Lorne Michaels approached you about Saturday Night Live?

Actually, at that point, we were at the Second City in Pasadena. [John] Candy and I got into a Mercury Cougar and we drove from Toronto to Pasadena in 38 hours. We were there for this opening of the Pasadena Second City, which was an ill-fated venture. Lorne called me, and to answer your question, I wanted to work on SNL because it sounded like an exciting concept. I went to the big, 500-person, cattle-call audition in New York City. I looked, and there were people lined up around the block for this audition. I thought, "I'm not going to wait until the end of this line." I knew Lorne from before. We were friends. We had worked for CBC in Canada. I had visited him in California when he was writing for Lilly Tomlin. I thought, "I am just going to go in and say 'Hello. I'd love to work with you' or whatever." So, I walked in and went past everybody, and said hello to the director and Lorne. I was in the room for a minute, tops. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. They had seen 375 people. I just supplied kind of a burst of energy that made them think again.

That was it? You had a new job at that point?

Almost. Lorne later called me in for some taped auditions, which we all had to do; Gilda, John, and myself. He wasn't sure if he wanted to hire Belushi or I. He was a little afraid that we would get together as a team and sort of challenge authority and be rebels, which of course we ended up being. Ultimately, I think Gilda helped push it, and [Al] Franken and [Tom] Davis helped push my hiring over the line there.

In your four-year run with the show, you had over 20 recurring characters in your arsenal including Beldar Conehead and Yortuk Festrunk. Which character was your favorite, and why?

Fred Garvin, male prostitute. Just because of the absurdity of it and the fact that he had a lot of work done. He wore a lot of trusses, just that costume. You know, he had the green Austrian hat, the big glasses and plaid jacket; the whole sort of Midwestern take on being a dilettante. That was a lot of fun. Of course, I loved doing the Coneheads. Whenever I can play an alien, I'm in.

Well, you've been a fan of all things paranormal for a number of years.

Yeah, from a long-standing family interest in it. My great grandfather was into it, and who isn't into ufology? I screened "The Day The Earth Stood Still" for my family the other day and it was just so gripping and wonderful. That, of course, was based on some actual sightings that took place in July of 1952. You can check the Washington papers. It's all there; journalistic archives about the sightings near the Coast Guard station. There was a picture of lights taken in a V-shape that appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine. Interestingly enough, in July of 2002, around the same time, jets were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base to go after a couple of objects that were buzzing the capital; almost 50 years to the day after the first occurrences happened. It's almost like they came back to visit. I grew up with this. It was in the culture of movies. You know, "This Island Earth" and "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers", and I can remember my parents talking about it even. So, I was a UFO baby essentially, growing up in the 50's and 60's. I just find it entertaining. That's why I like it. It's stimulating and entertaining. For a creative person like myself, I like the stories behind it.


I'm sure that makes things flow pretty smoothly when making a movie like, "Ghostbusters."

Well sure. An actor has to believe whether he believes or not. That's the trick to acting; to believe you're there. I came up with Ghostbusters after reading an article about quantum physics and parapsychology in the American Society of Psychical Research Journal and then watching a Bowery Boys movie like "Ghostchasers". I thought, "Let's redo one of those old ghost comedies, but let's use the research that's being done today." Even at that time, there was plausible research that could point to a device that could capture ectoplasm or materialization; at least visually.

Moving back to SNL, many memorable Weekend Update moments involve your co-anchoring stint with Jane Curtain. Were you happy to see the show adopt a two-anchor format (with Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey) once again in 2000, after nearly 20 years without it?

Well, Jimmy Fallon, next to Chevy [Chase], I think he's the best they have ever had in that slot. I was not very good at it, although we did have some memorable moments. Tina Fey is amazing, also. She's not only a great performer, but an incredible writer. She's one of the head writers of the show. So, the two of them, it's just one of those winning formulae that will help the institution survive.

The co-anchor slot wasn't your cup of tea, though?

I was never entirely comfortable in that slot because it was too "me out front". I like to do characters. I prefer to do voices and sketches. I was never a standup comedian. I was never good at delivering jokes. We were scene players at Second City, so I was never entirely comfortable with the news gig. I did it because Lorne [Michaels] needed somebody in that slot, and I was very happy to be relieved of it when the time came. As uncomfortable as that was at times, I have no complaints. In the end, it all worked out pretty well for everybody. My four years at SNL were adrenaline-charged, exhausting, anxiety-filled, tense, and immensely creatively satisfying.

Check out Mr. Aykroyd's new album at the following sites
'Have Love, Will Travel' on amazon.com
'Have Love, Will Travel' on Jim Belushi's website
'Have Love, Will Travel' on cduniverse.com