Brother John Is Gone: The Blues Bar Blues

Time is a present you make to yourself, wrapped up in the end with a few ribbons of memory. Back when it seemed there was all the time in the world, some of it was well-spent with the laughter and music of John Belushi and friends inside the Blues Bar. Twenty years this month since the tragic passing of a 33-year-old rock'n'roll actor who helped shape a generation's hybrid embrace of popular music and merriment, one's thoughts still return to a small corner in Belushi's life. Before the December 1978 release of the Blues Brothers' chart-topping, double-platinum Briefcase Full of Blues, The Blues Brothers movie of 1980, its Blues Brothers 2000 sequel, or even the House of Blues chain, there was the gin mill that nurtured it all, the Blues Bar—an unlicensed, derelict brick tavern on the corner of Dominick and Hudson Streets in the then-lonely industrial canyons of Manhattan's SoHo district.

In 1978, Universal Pictures gave Belushi and his buddy Dan Aykroyd money to finance the development of the script for The Blues Brothers. John used his share to lease a suite of offices at 130 Fifth Ave. to be the headquarters of a creative partnership with Danny dubbed Black Rhino Enterprises/Phantom Enterprises. Danny took his portion of the advance to establish—as he once had in Toronto and Chicago—an after-hours haunt in which he, John, and cronies from their scuffling days in the fabled Second City improvisational comedy troupe could "gather their thoughts."

The ancient four-story tenement that would house the Blues Bar was rented in the summer of '78. Aykroyd left its windows painted black as they had been after the former watering hole for factory workers was shut down in the early '70s. Each weekend, following rehearsals and broadcasts of the Saturday Night Live (SNL) TV show they helped launch, they filled the long, narrow room with cohorts, beginning with a bash for the Grateful Dead when they played on the SNL Nov. 11, 1978, program.

The choice menu on the Blues Bar's battered jukebox encompassed R&B, rock, and reggae, from Sam & Dave's "You Don't Know Like I Know" and "Goin' Back to Miami" by Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders, to two rare singles donated by this columnist, "Jah Live" by Bob Marley & the Wailers and Tapper Zukie's "A Message to Pork Eaters." Belushi and Aykroyd usually supplied the booze and Budweiser that fueled the joint, though patrons customarily chipped in to buy more when provisions ran low. The hangout had no stage, no sophisticated sound system, no frills of any sort (beyond the single flower—often a plastic rose—that Aykroyd would place in a vase atop the porcelain ruins of the toilet in the otherwise forbidding ladies' powder room, "Just so we have something nice for the womenfolk").

Belushi and Aykroyd's brother, Peter, cached assorted amps, mikes, and musical instruments in