Live From New York - James H. Miller [61]
It really looked like it had been maybe a bar from the Titanic that had been exhumed after several hundred years of submersion and just hastily dropped onto a sidewalk. It was practically rotting, which is probably how they got it, because the rent was reasonable and at the time none of us had that much money. We were still getting probably maximum $2,000 a show. I think our fourth season we all got $4,000 a show. We started the first year at $750.
ROSIE SHUSTER:
I was hanging with Aykroyd at that point in time, so it was kind of amazing watching the whole scene — the Blues Bar and everything — take off. It was kind of like boys’ fantasies of the blues, and then heavy saturation of the blues, and then, having played out all these different fantasies in TV sketches, suddenly there was this manifestation and they really inhabited these characters. And you could see that whole thing start to unfold in the Blues Bar. Some of those parties were pretty intense and wonderful, and just great music and dancing. I remember that really fondly. Just watching those characters explode.
And it was the end of the week and, well, you were psyched. It was like you were buzzing, you’d get turbocharged from the intense effort of it, and then there’s like adrenal burnout later. I remember sleeping at the Blues Bar, you know, as the light broke. Also probably there were other substances involved besides alcohol, and the party just spilled over. People really had a lot of energy they needed to shake off.
PENNY MARSHALL:
The Blues Bar was a zoo, but it was fun. It was people getting famous at the same time, which is always very scary. We held on to each other desperately because we trusted each other. In hanging out with each other, we knew we weren’t going to tell on each other.
STEVE MARTIN:
The first time I did the show, there was a fire in the studio. We had to go out to some other studio to do it. The cast was a little upset because they were not in their home world. We had to go to Brooklyn. I remember being very nervous and thinking, “Oh my God, it’s live.” It was very tense but a lot of fun.
I ran into Dan early one afternoon, and he was sort of black and blue, and I said, “What happened?” and he said, “Oh, I got pushed out of a moving taxi.” They were wild, Dan and John. I never went to their bar, the Blues Bar; I wasn’t that kind of guy.
DAN AYKROYD:
All week you’re wound up. That’s the thing about Saturday Night Live. Once you start on Monday pitching ideas, the pump starts, that adrenaline pump — sst sst sst sst sst — so Tuesday you’re writing sketches, Wednesday you’re reading them, you’re rewriting them Wednesday night, you’re blocking Thursday and Friday. All week that pump is going. And by the time you’re done at one o’clock Saturday night, that pump’s still going at full race. And you can’t just go home and go to bed. So we needed a place to party. And frequently I remember rolling down the armor at the Blues Bar and closing the building at eleven o’clock Sunday morning — you know, when it was at its height — and saying good morning to the cops and firemen.
JANE CURTIN:
I didn’t even know where the Blues Bar was. I sort of stopped going to the after-show parties after the first year, just because they weren’t fun. They were strange. I’d just go home.
JOHN LANDIS:
I went up to the SNL offices, John was giving me a tour, when a very sexy girl walks by. Tight jeans and a T-shirt, no bra, curly hair. “Oh my God, who is that?” And John says,