Dan Aykroyd On Eric Clapton Making Money From African American Music

The Blues Brothers’ Dan Aykroyd sat down with AXTV’s Dan Rather for an interview, where he revealed his thoughts on Eric Clapton making a profit out of black music.

During the conversation, Rather reminded Aykroyd that the Blues Brothers were criticized for being a band of two white artists taking black music and making money from it. In his response, Aykroyd gave Clapton as an example and said he understands why people try to preserve their culture:

“Well, I have two words to say: Eric Clapton. I mean, if Eric Clapton can do it and come off, revere the music, pay tribute to the music, and make it successful, I think it’s okay for us to step in there. I don’t think it’s a valid point — the blues is for everyone; there are so many great blues artists who aren’t African-American. Fair enough, for people to protect the culture against cultural appropriation, but see, we did it in such a spirit of reverence and love for those performers.”

After that, Aykroyd revealed their record company actually suggested them buy the royalties of all of the songs they used for a small amount of money:

“And the other thing we did was, well, Atlantic Records said, ‘You’re doing all these cover songs, just offer the writers a percentage. You can get these; you can own all these songs yourself! Just give them 10 grand!’ We didn’t. All the people that wrote songs for us, we said, ‘Nope, we’re going to keep performance royalties only, [and] the original songwriters; they keep their royalties. We ain’t making no special deal.'”

According to the comedian, all of the blues artists they covered got their publishing rights in the end:

“Eddie Floyd gets his money, and Donnie Walsh gets his money. All the people who wrote the songs in the show got their full publishing because we love these artists. We love them, and we respected them.”

Aykroyd founded the Blues Brothers in 1978 with the comedian John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Following the release of their debut album ‘Briefcase Full of Blues,’ they rose to fame after the 1980 comedy film ‘The Blues Brothers.‘

Back in 1976, Clapton received a backlash after his racist remarks on stage. However, he later defended himself by saying he was not a racist as he had black friends and he was making black music.

You can watch the interview below.