The Original Bros talk about their feel of the blues, the influence of the famous Saturday Night Alumni, life in Austria, their favorite Motown artists and more...
DM) What makes you the "original" as opposed to
Belushi & Aykroyd?
JB) In our opinion, the success of the legendary Blues Brothers
doesn't just root only on the popularity of Belushi and Aykroyd
and the movie.
It's also their somehow unique interpretation of all-time
favorite Blues and Soul songs (mostly) from the 60ies and 70ies
that opened this music to a wide-spread audience covering almost
all ages, colors, or social position.
It's questionable, if Belushi and Aykroyd ever saw it this
way or realized it back in the late 70ies, when they started
to perform as the BB's. Also, there's a big difference in between
how European and American audiences see and understand the movie
and the music.
Due to the fact, that neither Helmood or I are famous entertainers
or comedians (yet?), we always tried to deliver a similar "message"
to our own audience. This means, that we try to keep classic
Blues and Soul alive by combining it with more modern elements
and also some good ole' Rock.
At the other hand, we take new compositions and re-arrange
them with typical style-elements of the 60's and 70's, so that
our conversion sound as if they were the original and the actual
original was the cover-version. (May sound a little confusing,
but it's the shortest way to describe it)
The result is "Rock'n'Soul" and, as we experienced
so far, also a very wide-spread audience loves this. We performed
at Folk-festivals as well as at Techno-clubbings and our shows
were not just accepted, but even highly acclaimed by those audiences.
And last but not least, we write our own original songs that
always contain various elements of classic Blues, Soul and a
portion Rock, that fit to our repertoire and go perfect with
the big classic tunes as well.
Beside all that, we're true and big fans of the BB's and didn't
want to confuse the audience by naming ourselves "Blues
Brothers revival... tribute... double..." or whatever. From
the beginning on, we divided our complete repertoire in 30% BB's,
40% others and 30% original songs.
We never wanted to end up as a pure tribute-band. Much more
we always want to improve and develop our music and this in the
way we understand the musical "message" of the BB's.
We didn't want to act as impersonators, fakes or whatever
and we always underlined that we are "originals" ourselves.
That's why we choose "The Original Brothers" for
being our band's name.
DM) What are the differences in how the see the movie?
JB) Americans were familiar with Belushi and Aykroyd as comedians
from the SNL-show. Both already had success, even as "The
Blues Brothers", who had a no.1 hit-single with "Soulman"
in 1978 in the US and a very well selling album named "Briefcase
Full Of Blues".
But like I mentioned before, in Europe Belushi and Aykroyd
were hardly known then. The "Saturday Night Live Show"
for example, was about totally unknown, especially in non-English
speaking countries. Even Belushi's prior movies "1941"
and "Animal House" didn't have enough success in Europe,
to make him become really popular here.
The next thing is about the music. Artists like Ray Charles,
Aretha Franklin or John Lee Hooker did not have a wide fan-community
in those days. Only insider knew a little more about them but
their greatest hits. (James Brown, of course, was en exception).
Black Soul-music, "Stax" and "Motown",
even Blues etc. were something like a white dot on the map for
most Europeans, who mostly thought that American music means
"The Beach Boys", "The Bee Gees", "Grease",
Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and not too much more.
We shouldn't forget that many European countries didn't even
have private radio or TV back then, at the end of the seventies.
So people only knew what their public stations offered them.
Example Germany:
Back in the sixties, those programs were stuffed with 50ies Rock'n'Roll,
translated into German and sung by German Artists. There was
no time and no space for Soul and Blues on German radio. Similar
things happened in other European Countries, with some exceptions
of course - but not too many.
So when the "Blues Brothers" movie came out, it
was announced as "The Blues Brothers - The Most destructive
duo since Nitro and Glycerin". And the audience paid their
attention mostly to the car chases. People didn't talk about
the music or the legends of soul acting as "normal"
people - they only said: "Did you see how many cars they
destroyed?"
It took them several years and - I'm sorry about that, but
it seems to be true - Belushi's early death, to get more into
it all and understand a little more about, why this movie is
still an outstanding one.
DM) A European once told me that there was no such thing as
an American culture, that it was just a mix of all the other
cultures. What do you think?
JB) A country's culture is always related to the peoples that
live within its borders and so also a mixture of many influences.
For example, the famous Austrian culture and it's many famous
names. Everybody knows Mozart, Strauss, etc... - But even Beethoven,
Schubert and many others spent a long time of their lives in
Austria.
Austria was always, unlike most other European countries,
inhabited by many different cultures and peoples. Slavonic, Jewish,
Mediterranean, Northern, Roman, etc... mixed up and built
what is known as "Austrian Culture" with all its famous
music, poetry and architecture.
In the 18th and 19th century (and also the 29th century of
course), many artists and intellectuals left - or even were forced
to leave - Europe and immigrated the US.
They're a specific culture developed and this one also included
new influences from Afro-American, Asian and Latin origin.
The entire topic is definitely too complicated to be discussed
here, but in my opinion there's no doubt, that America's got
an own culture.
Due to the developments since the 20ies of this century, when
distances became less prohibitive and the telecommunication became
more and more simple, faster and effective, "Culture"
becomes more and more something, that happens all around the
world (except in those countries, that have a very restrictive
stand against new developments and influences, because of religious
or other reasons.)
Today, a new movie, a new CD or whatever can reach hundreds
of millions within only a few days through media like TV or Radio
or within seconds through the WWW.
Well, of course that's a little simplified now, but I really
do think, that "culture" can not be anymore happen
in just one country. Maybe some new trend starts somewhere, but
it will be taken further all around the world.
That we came this far roots a lot onto the fast developing
music-, film-, and media business in the US (since the 1920ies)
And yes, there's always money involved, but that's the way things
are going. There are many examples therefore, that if there's
no money - the culture suffers heavily and can't develop itself
anymore.
I hope, I made my point. Like I mentioned before, it's a very
complicated topic. But it's absolutely ridiculous to say, America
doesn't have an own culture.
DM) Did Belushi & Ackroyd ever contact you about your
act?
JB) When Helmood and I founded the band in 1989, we first
thought about naming the band "The Good Ole Blues Brothers
Boys Band" just as "Elmwood" introduced the BB's
in the movie at "Bob's Country Bunker".
We appeared under this name from 1990 to late 93. The funny
thing about it is, that we played only some 6 or 7 songs from
the BB's at that time and had over 70% of our own original songs
in our repertoire.
In late 93, plans for our first CD occurred, which was planned
to become a live-CD. Since we were invited to perform with the
BB-band while they were touring in Austria, we kept in contact
with the band-members and their manager Glen Palmer.
We asked them, if there was any problem we might be facing
in the future, if we use "Blues Brothers" as a part
of our bands own name. Well, the BB-band didn't have anything
against it. But before we were up to start the production of
our upcoming CD, I wanted to be 100% sure, that this is definitely
O.K. with the copyright-owners.
So I contacted Glen Palmer and he gave me the address of Pam
Jaclyn, an attorney in Portland OR and sister of Judy Jaclyn
Pisano (the widow of John Belushi).
I contacted her and it turned out, that in fact no-one else
ever asked for a permit to use the name. (instead of a musical
production in London)
At a meeting in Portland, Dan Aykroyd, some members of the
band and Mrs. Jaclyn decided, to refuse to give us a permit to
use "Blues Brothers" within our name, but highly appreciated,
that we officially asked for it.
Well, we weren't disappointed. Because we were already thinking
about changing the name for something shorter. The old name didn't
really fit onto our posters anyway.
Under these circumstances and according to the other reasons,
about which I've been talking above, we took "The Original
Brothers".
I informed Mrs. Jaclyn about our decision and she was satisfied
with it and Helmood wrote a letter to Dan Aykroyd and also sent
him our new CD.
A couple of weeks later we received a letter from Dan Aykroyd
in which he pronounced his appreciation for our work and thanked
us for our loyalty. (A little later, he sent us an autographed
poster also.)
DM) Were you disappointed in their turning down your request?
JB) Well, a little. But we saw their reasons for their decision.
At the other hand, we never wanted to be just another tribute-act
or look-a-like band. So we didn't have any problems with choosing
another name for our band.
And the old name was a little too long anyway, to fit onto
the posters and to keep it in the minds of our audiences. The
new name offered the opportunity, to use more of our own potential
again.
The only thing that disappointed us a little was, that obviously,
we were the only band that ever asked for such a permit (except
the musical) and there are still tons of other bands performing
under the name "Blues Brothers" without taking care
of a permit or something like that.
We took the hard way, but we're satisfied now. It would have
been much easier to get bookings and raise some money for productions,
if we still were some "Blues Brothers #857" - act.
But like I said, it's only a job then, it's like if you go to
work and manufacture something. We wanted to invent our own original
music and that's exactly what we can do and what we actually
do as "The Original Brothers". Even though we still
play "Soulman", "Gimme Some Lovin" and "Everybody
Needs Somebody To Love".
DM) What inspired you to form the "original brothers"?
JB) Helmood and I had a band back in the mid-80ies that played
only original songs. By chance, we ran into a flock of American
tourists and they shouted out: "Hey! You're the Blues Brothers!"
(although, we didn't wear hats, shades, etc...)
To be honest, neither Helmood nor I knew any details about
the movie at that time, but naturally we became curious. So we
went to see the movie a couple of weeks later and we were shocked
by the similarities between the characters played by Belushi
and Aykroyd and ourselves.
In Europe the majority of the fans still only knows the movie
itself and the soundtrack. But as we were musicians, we started
to collect all information we could get.
We "discovered" the whole story of the BB's and
the band (there was no "Saturday Night Live" ever in
Europe) and of Aykroyd and John Belushi, who was only known for
his parts in "Blues Brothers" and a little bit for
"Animal House" here in Europe. (BTW: The German translation
for the movie-title "Animal House" was "I guess
a horse kicks me" - and who wants to see a movie with a
title like that?)
We wanted to play some of the BB-songs with our band but the
other musicians weren't convinced. So we put together a completely
new line-up by placing a newspaper-ad that said: "Jake and
Elmwood are bringing the band back together."
Two months later we started to perform and since then, with
still growing success.
Well, I hope these answers are understandable. After all,
I'm Austrian and although I'm in the States quite often, my English
writing could be a lot better.
If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to
drop me a line. There's a good chance that we'll come to the
US either by the end of the year or early next year.
Currently we're playing some one-off concerts in Austria until
October. Then we'll be touring in Germany.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like, that we'll get our new
CD ready until September as we planned to. It's always the same:
If you don't have enough gigs, you don't have the money to produce
a new CD. If you have enough gigs, you don't have the time to.
DM) So, when you started the band, you didn't see the Blues
Brothers at all?
JB) We already had our own band at the time when we saw the
movie the first time, but this band had a different name and
we only played our own compositions. After we saw the movie and
found out more about the characters, the music and the entire
background, we felt like it was our duty, to play some of their
music as well and to continue the so called "Mission".
So we collected some other musicians, like a complete horn-section
(absolutely required!) and some soulful, female backup-singers
and got the thing going.
DM) What did you think of the newest Blues Brothers movie,
Blues Brothers 2000?
JB) Dan Aykroyd always wanted to do a sequel. When he wrote
the original script for the first movie, he already completed
the script for the sequel also.
After John's death, everything changed. But Aykroyd kept on
planning a second movie. Many rumors about a new film were to
be heard in the past but nothing happened. It was also to be
heard, that the studios in Hollywood didn't want Aykroyd to produce
a new movie and so didn't give him the money therefore. It seem
like, they didn't want to have any damage done to the
legend.
In fact, now that we know BB2K it looks like, they were right.
Though some people told me, that the movie becomes better if
you see it over and over again I doubt, that many people even
long for seeing it just a second time.
I was personally shocked when I saw it. And to be honest,
I didn't see it again. But I can see what Aykroyd wanted to show
and how he wanted to draw a bridge to the nineties (or the next
millenium). Unfortunately it didn't really work out and I doubt,
that he managed it to open the minds and ears of another generation
to Blues and Soul unless they liked it before anyway.
At the other hand it doesn't look like, that the image of
the first movie-suffers from the new one. It's still an outstanding
piece of movie- and music-history (and of American culture of
course).
And true Aykroyd fans like BB2K anyway. I think another title
would have been much more suitable for this movie: "Elwoods
Return"
DM) What music do you listen to at home?
JB) I'm open-minded for every kind of music. My private collection
(about 500 CD's, 300 LP's and some 300 Vinyl-Singles) contains
mostly Blues, R&B, Soul, Hip-Hop, Rock'n'Roll, Rock but also
many examples of other styles. But I do not really like Techno,
Trash and other things (always with certain exceptions), that
do not require musical skills from their performers.
