"Smokin' Jokin', Doing Coke With Leon

I saw Joe Cocker this weekend, along with the Steve Miller Band. Both were great and my wife mentioned how much better Cocker seems to be physically, with, you know, his muscular dystrophy and all. She asked me to look it up when we got home and when I did I have to admit, fuck, I always thought Joe had muscular dystrophy myself. Of course, Joe has no physical problem at all, that's just the way he moves on stage.

I think I got the idea Cocker had MD from the National Lampoon Lemmings album, which was the first place I ever heard John Belushi do his Joe Cocker impression. John made it famous on Saturday Night Live, where he flopped around on the stage like a fish out of water pouring beer all over his body and generally looking like a fool, but also singing a fairly good Joe Cocker. As Ccocker himself remembers...

During the time of "You Are So Beautiful," I was working at Village Recorders, in Los Angeles, and someone comes into the studio and says, "Joe, we've got this video to show you that you're not going to like." I don't know how long Saturday Night Live had been on the air, because I never watched much TV, but when I saw this video of John Belushi doing me being spastic and pouring beer, I became hysterical.

Everyone else said, "Joe, you're not supposed to find this amusing. You're supposed to find this gross and inoffensive."

I said, "Oh, come on. You can't not laugh at this." I didn't even know who Belushi was.

Moving my hand around is subconscious with me. A lot of the time I'm more or less conducting the band, just keeping a feel. I don't know why I do it. It's just one of those things.

I clearly remember the night this aired. I was living in my first rented house and my friend Baron Mrkva was over and we were pretty high. We were sitting on this couch in the TV room and when Belushi started flopping on the floor we both lost it, laughing so hard we fell literally off the couch onto the floor and rolled around holding our stomachs, which were aching from how hard we were laughing.

I can't embed a video of that performance, but the one below is the earlier one from Lemmings. Lemmings was a National Lampoon stage show, a take on Woodstock, the Woodchuck Festival of Peace, Love and Death, where hippies got together for a weekend of music, drugs, sex and suicide. The main actors/writers/performers were a bunch of unknows: John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest.

Listen to Lonely at the Bottom where Belushi sings, "We were makin' musical history. Now I'm workin' for muscular dystrophy."

With A Little Help

My brother Jack sent this to me the other day. As you may recall, I saw Joe Cocker last year in Florida and was blown away by his performance. I don't know if that was on my brother's mind when he sent this to me, who knows? What I do know is that this is laugh-out-loud funny! Take a look!

Belushi

Twenty-five years ago today John Belushi was found dead in Hollywood of acute cocaine and heroin intoxication. A tragic end for one of the funniest people ever to grace weekly TV and the movies and the stage.

I remember the first time I heard the Lemmings album with Belushi's impersonation of Joe Cocker and then a few years later seeing him do the same bit on Saturday Night Live was even funnier. I actually recall falling off the couch and rolling on the floor laughing so hard my side ached, which only made it funnier.

The other stand outs from SNL were John as the Samurai tailor with Buck Henry and the video bit of an old Belushi walking through the cemetery past the graves of the rest of the cast and telling us how they all died and how John had out lasted them all. But that was not to be; Belushi would be the first of the SNL Not Ready For Prime-time Players to die. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was working for SOGITEC, a technical typesetting company in Lakewood California when a woman I worked with came into the office upset and said to us all, "Pelosi's been shot!"

Rick Pelosi was one of the technical illustrators I worked with (if you're out there "Hi Rick!") and it startled me, but not my boss at the time, Bob Waterman. Bob calmly asked, "Do you mean Belushi?"

The co-worked replied, "Oh, yes, that's it. John Belushi's been shot. I just heard it on the radio."

Now I don't know if it was ever reported that John was shot or if she was just so upset she heard it wrong, but we turned on a radio (no Internet in 1982) and heard the news. What a down day that ended up being.

I think had John not self-destructed he might have ended up being not just a funny, funny man, but a great dramatic actor. I have nothing to really base this on except that the guy seemed to excel at just about every thing he did and he just oozed talent.

Mr. Belushi, you are missed.