Saturday Night Live is still incredibly popular, except this old school fan dropped out of the fan club a long time ago. Like many, I’ll always have fond memories of the good old days, mainly the first four years, and in a Rolling Stone poll, the cast member I was hoping would be ranked at the top did indeed come in at number one.
Usually these Rolling Stone polls are ridiculous, and I avoid them like the plague because they’ll just infuriate me with their obtuseness. But finally they got something right by ranking Belushi as the #1 member of the SNL gang.
“He was the first rock & roll star of comedy,” RS writes, “a touch of John Lennon soul behind all that Keith Richards pirate bravado.” I often felt that Belushi was the eye and the hurricane, a major driving force behind SNL that was also the heart and soul of the show in many ways.
Most comedians don’t look like Brad Pitt, and Belushi was the regular, every day guy we could all relate to, which was a key to his popularity, that and the fact that the guy was so damn funny. It’s a shame he’s not with us anymore, but in the brief time he was here, his star absolutely shined brilliantly.
