In the world of the 1978 comedy classic National Lampoon’s Animal House, we know garage rock is OK, as evidenced by John Belushi, as Bluto Blutarsky, belting out “Louie Louie.” Rhythm and blues/soul also gets the film’s stamp of approval, thanks to the frat brothers’ adoration of Otis Day and the Knights.
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But folk music? That genre doesn’t fare quite as well. The evidence of that is a brief but memorable scene where Belushi smashes the guitar of an aspiring folk singer to smithereens.
Bluto Takes a Stand
Let’s set the scene. A mustachioed guy strums an acoustic guitar and sings earnestly on a staircase in the middle of a fraternity party, while a bunch of toga-clad coeds listen intently. Bluto stumbles down the steps aimlessly, seeming as if he’s going to pass right by this little huddle. He stops, and his expressive eyes dart sideways at the scene taking place below him.
Suddenly, he rips the guitar out of the player’s hand. With four quick lunges, he bashes the guitar off the surrounding walls. He then hands the neck of the guitar (he has obliterated the rest of it) to the terrified player, mumbles “Sorry,” and moves on.
On the surface, the scene is very much in keeping with both the anarchic spirit of the film and Belushi’s character, a force of nature whose actions often have little to do with the overall plot. But you can also read the scene as the filmmakers taking a stand for old-fashioned rock and roll over the cerebral music that would come to challenge it in the era when the movie was set.
A Musical Pivot Point
Animal House is set in 1962. Music fans will recognize that time as the sunset for the first era of rock and roll. Two events would help to usher it out of favor. Obviously, The Beatles and the British Invasion were a big factor. But the folk music scene, gaining serious traction in the early ’60s, would also play a role.
To play the folk singer in Animal House, director John Landis enlisted Stephen Bishop. Just a year previous to the release of the film, Bishop’s career as a singer/songwriter had taken off with the release of his album Careless, which spun off a pair of Top-25 hits.
Landis entrusted Bishop with choosing the song he’d be singing on the stairwell, asking only that it be in the public domain so the producers wouldn’t need to cough up dough for the rights. Bishop chose brilliantly with “The Riddle Song.” There’s something about the precious lyrics to that track (I gave my love a cherry that had no stone / I gave my love a chicken that had no bone) that practically demands a comeuppance of some sort.
Belushi and the Blues
It’s somewhat telling that John Belushi would play the symbolic role of folk-destroyer in Animal House. Belushi was on a bit of a musical journey himself at the time he was making the movie. During filming, he became fascinated with blues music.
That fascination manifested itself in the creation of The Blues Brothers, the fictional siblings played by Belushi and Dan Aykroyd who would periodically perform on Saturday Night Live. To further the connection, John Landis would eventually direct The Blues Brothers movie, which picked up the slob-comedy baton from Animal House in 1980.
If you believe the filmmakers of Animal House were making their own statement about changing musical tastes with the guitar-smashing scene, you can see it as a last-stand moment for traditional rock and roll values. Or maybe they just needed another excuse for John Belushi to be hilariously destructive.
Photo by Herbert Dorfman/Corbis via Getty Images
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