Daniel De Visé’s previous book, B.B. King bio King Of The Blues, is a must-have for anyone at all curious about the genre, and here he pieces together the definitive telling of the making of The Blues Brothers, a hit movie on release 44 years ago and a cult favourite since. Within its pages, we get a close insight into the backgrounds and deep friendship between the film’s stars, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi; and how, on the production side of things, that the picture ran heavily over budget, its gestation marred by battles with the studio.

There are many nuggets of golden info to be gleamed from this book. Illness prevented Muddy Waters from guesting in The Blues Brothers, a replacement found in the form of fellow blues royalty John Lee Hooker – resulting in the Maxwell Street scene in which he plays Boom Boom. The electric piano Ray Charles plays in Ray’s Music Exchange, meanwhile, had a faulty power lead: as Ray bashed away at the keys, a crew member was required to grasp two strands of live wire on the base of the piano, praying to God while doing so. Not to mention the out-of-control cocaine usage that came close to permanently derailing the film…

Despite meeting with mixed reviews in 1980, The Blues Brothers was a blockbuster hit that took at least a million dollars per day during its first few weeks of release. Tragically, a couple of years later Belushi died from a speedball overdose at the Chateau Marmont. In 2020, The Blues Brothers was inducted by the Library Of Congress into the National Film Registry, and in 2024 Daniel De Visé has done this wonderful and raucous film truly proud with a fascinating account.