Dan Aykroyd’s Award Winning Crystal Head

"Christmas With the Kranks" - World PremiereDan Aykroyd is a comedy legend. Even before he shot to fame as one of members of the original cast of Saturday Night Live he was onstage, making music and performing comedy in Canada and Chicago.  And then after SNL he went on to make many great films like “The Blues Brothers”, “Trading Places”, “Ghostbusters” (which he also wrote), “Doctor Detroit”, “The Great Outdoors”, “Driving Miss Daisy”, and “My Girl”.  When he’s not performing in films and on television, he’s out performing blues with his band or running one of his business enterprises.  He stopped by the SiriusXM studios this week to talk about his award winning line of vodka, Crystal Head Vodka.  Excerpts of the interview and an audio clip appear below.  You can hear the full interview exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

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Ron Bennington:  Dan Aykroyd in studio with us.  Danny, you look like a million bucks.  How are you feeling, my friend?  

Dan Aykroyd:  Well, I feel like a thousand, but thanks very much.  It’s good of you to say.  I need all the positive reinforcement I can get at this age.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About Enjoying Business

Ron Bennington:  I think, for a long time, one of the most interesting things about you – a lot of people pick art, some people pick business – you picked both.  You go in both directions.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Well, I started out in show business.  Whether your an actor, writer, producer, director – it’s still a business.  And so, from the very beginning when I started out at CBC in Canada on the show, “Coming Up Rosie”, we had to negotiate our contracts there.  We had to get paid by the government.  We had to run our little companies, our consultancies, so that we had a profit at the end of the year.  Same with “Second City”, we had to figure out our expenses and figure out how to keep the show going and get audiences in the door and do marketing and promotion and all of that.  So really, art and business is mixed quite beautifully in show business.

Ron Bennington:  But you enjoy business, right?  You enjoy having a business and being part of that.  

Dan Aykroyd:  I enjoy working with people who are great collaborators.  And what I get most out of it is meeting new people and getting to know them and learning from them as I am in this alcohol beverage industry.  I’ve met some real legends.  I’ve met guys who have started with liquor stores in inner cities with the shotgun under the counter and now are bigger than some chain stores in some states.  Guys who started with one little bar and now they have 25 restaurants.  Just amazing stories of success.  That’s what I really enjoy about it, is the people that I get to come across.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About Crystal Head Vodka

Ron Bennington:  Well, the bottle that you have for Crystal Head Vodka – one of the things I’ve noticed as I walk through New York, people will put it in the window.  So I’ll go – there it is again.  There it is again.  And that’s all part of the game for you.  That’s all part of the fun, to get that kind of space.  

crystal head vodkaDan Aykroyd:  It’s one bar, one operator, one venue operator, one mixologist, one bar chef, one hotel bar, one retail store at a time.  That’s how the penetration is done.  And so, we have Southern Wines here helping us of the great Southern Wines & Spirits company and my friend Larry Goodrich leading the charge in this area and then Allied Beverages over in New Jersey.  And all around the country, we have great operators that get the product and are driving it home.  Our challenge is to get people to crack the bottle open.  They get the bottle, they take it home, they put it on a shelf and they treat it like collectors.  Now, we’ve sold almost 3 million, so people are drinking it, but my message to people now is that – take a look at the beautiful bottle, but please know the fluid inside has just won the PRODEXPO in Moscow.  It won the double gold in Moscow, best tasting, over 400 vodkas.  And if Russians don’t know vodkas, then the Japanese don’t know sushi, so this is a tremendous endorsement for us.  And we have the Rolling Stones commemorative pack out now which is wonderful.  I know there’s Stones fans listening to us everywhere right now.  The boys are going back out on the road again.  We went to their licensing arm and said – we would like to dedicate our vodka to your tour.  Let’s come up with something together.  And we’ve got this beautiful package here, which you’ll see in stores now.  It’s got a zipper down the front.  You’ll open it up.  There’s a stage.  And then there’s the vodka.  And you’ve got a stopper to encourage you to crack open the vodka.  Try our quadruple gold medal award winning fluid.  Our notes are sweet, vanilla, dry, crisp with a kick of heat off the finish because we don’t mask the alcohol.  We don’t use propylene glycol which is an anti-freeze used in a lot of lesser expensive vodkas.  We don’t use citrus oil which is a bug exterminent, they put that in for kind of a sweetness.  The proplylene glycol, they put in for viscosity.  Ours is naturally smooth.  We don’t put in sugar because you don’t need anymore sugar in alcohol.  And so, we’ve come up with this beautiful award winning fluid and now it sits in this commemorative pack which celebrates 50 years of the Rolling Stones.  I can’t wait to see their concerts.  And the most exciting part of this in the endorsement, which really touches me is that Mick Jagger personally picked the songs in the CDs in the little tray here, you see?  They’re live songs and he picked live tracks that he liked and he put them in this package….it’s in stores now.  It’s going to make a great Father’s Day gift.  Every man that I know is going to want one and every woman that I know is going to want to buy it for a man.  So that’s it.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About His Favorite Vodka Drinks

Ron Bennington:  What type of drink do you normally have on your own?  

Dan Aykroyd:  Well, I like it in a shot glass with a little lime slice.  That’s very nice.  But I do like a classic Long Island Railroad 1955 bar car martini.  That would be what a Madison Avenue executive would get at 11:30 in the morning, coming into the Long Island Railroad in 1955, served to him in an aluminum bar car by a white jacketed waiter.  And that would be, 2 ounces, well if he’s going heavy, 2 ounces of Crystal Head, a splash of Vermouth, splash of olive juice, 3 olives and a pearl onion.  Now that is a classic cocktail.  There’s no citrus called for in that cocktail.  So why work with a vodka that has a load of citrus oil in it?  You want to make the best martini – work with a vodka that has no additives for your cocktail.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About Mythology and the Occult 

Ron Bennington:  I think also we got back to how the marketing thing, it helps being Dan Aykroyd, but the fact that you knew the mythology behind the Crystal Head.  All these things in your life, it seems like they’re disconnected, you find a way to move back and forth like that.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah, I would say that’s correct.  I’ve always been fascinated by the legend of the heads and by their positive empowerment.  So, we like to think that were serving people an enlightened beverage and that we’re all about enlightened drinking and enlightened thinking and as the Navajo, the Mayans and the Aztec wanted to be enlightened by whatever storage capabilities there were in the head – we feel like we’re passing a little bit of that myth and legend on in our sales story to help us with our angle of purity.  Yeah.

Ron Bennington:  What is it about mythology?  You were drawn to it as a kid, I guess right?  The fact that every culture has different kind of myths of afterlife and stuff.  

Dan SkullDan Aykroyd:  I was drawn to…I guess…I love the Greek myths, of course, and I love the modern myths of our society because it’s entertaining primarily.  My interest in the afterlife and spirituality comes from my great grandfather Sam Aykroyd who was a dentist.  He was also a kind of a reviewer for the local newspaper of all the psychic acts that would come through town.  At the turn of the century and in the 10’s and 20’s.  In the 20’s, there were a lot of psychic touring that went on.  You had the Fox Sisters out of Rochester, New York.  They were contacted by a spirit who turned out to be someone that had been buried in their basement.  He was called “Mr. Splitfoot”.  They traveled the world with him.  And in the end, of course, they admitted and they said it was a hoax.  But in the beginning, I think there was something genuine that had happened there.  There was a woman named Eusapia Palladino.  She was a very very talented trans-medium.  She could produce ectoplasm and produce it into forms – hands, feet, whole figures.  Eventually, she lost her gift and tried to hoax it.  So, you had people that had gifts in the beginning and they gave the whole trade of psychic research and mediumship a bad name because once they would lose their gifts, they were unable to get them back and so, they got caught hoaxing.  My great grandfather was kind of a…almost like the reviewer in town as I said who…he would sort out who was genuine, who wasn’t.  And he wrote many journals and books and passed that on to my grandfather who held seances in the house.  My father was also present at them.  And so when I was kid growing up in Canada at the Summer cottage there, instead of reading “National Geographic”, I was reading “The American Society for Psychical Research” journals.  And that’s how come I wrote “Ghostbusters” – because I’ve always been interested in survival of consciousness in the afterlife.  And I do believe that…I do believe it.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About Tom Davis

Ron Bennington:  You’ve always been drawn too to these kind of big personalities.  You’ve known some of the most creative people of your times.  I spent an hour…I do another show called “Unmasked” where we talk comedy with people – and spent an hour with your good friend Tom Davis who I think was one of those brilliant people and coolest people that I’ve ever met in my life.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Tom has a book out called “39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss”.  If you can get it and get it on tape – I recommend getting the audiobook because it’s Tom’s voice.  He was my writing partner.  We wrote “Coneheads” together.  We wrote a lot of SNL stuff together.  He passed away recently from cancer, but right to the end – not a complaint, a smile on his face.

Ron Bennington:  Isn’t that the truth about him?  And I didn’t even know that after we had done this that he had been sick because there was no evidence of that whatsoever.  Curious, funny, sarcastic, everything that you would want.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah, I really miss him.  He was my writing partner.  I miss him.  I miss him a lot.  We were very close and had wonderful years with him.  In fact, my daughter Danielle was with him the day he passed.  She spent the last 3 days of his life with him.  And she loved him.  And it was great that I was able to pass on to the next generation some of his humor and his sarcasm and his caustic way about things.  And he looked at things realistically. He was a pragmatist and just funny, sweet – sweetheart of a guy.  Nobody has a bad word to say about Tom.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About Some of the Other Greats He’s Worked With  

Ron Bennington:  Yeah, very open.  And when we talk about sarcasm, it’s one thing…a lot of those people are dark, but he came to it from such a place of lightness.  Just a really really sweet place.  And that’s been…if you go back over your life, so many great talented people that you’ve had the chance to work with.  Not everybody gets that kind of gift.  How did that work out for you, do you think Dan?

Dan Aykroyd:  Well, I believe that more or less it was the school of comedy that I went into very on and that was improvisation where you’re reliant on the other person.  We were never stand ups – that’s a common misperception.  People say – well, when are you going to do your next stand up?  Well, I never did.  Never have and never will.  We were scene players and it was the spirit of collaboration.  You had to work with the other people and you had to respect their gifts.  And so, I was able to work with John Candy, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas.

Ron Bennington:  All before SNL.   You knew all these…you were all kids together.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah, Marty Short.  Sure, at Second City.  Sure.  And so, it teaches you basically to rely on the other person and that collaboration is the way to get things done in the best possible way for your audience.  It makes it better.

Ron Bennington:  So did you have that feeling as a young person before even SNL, that – wow, I’m with the right people and this generation of comedy is going to change things?  

Dan Aykroyd:  I felt that seeing Second City in Chicago was very insightful and it’s impact of course had already been felt.  I was basically coming into a stream that already existed there because you had Nichols and May, Alan Arkin, Shelley Berman, so many other great comedians – came out in the 50’s and 60’s.  So I knew that being a part of Second City was going to be impactful going forward because it had already been established, people loved improv and the gifts that improv gave to comedy and to theater and film.  And so, it was kind of like becoming a part of an established university.  And I knew that if we did it right and played with the right people and wrote the stuff the right way that it would connect.

Ron Bennington:  And yet, even though you guys worked together – the comedy seems unique to each person.  You don’t remind me of Marty Short.  Neither one of you reminds me of Gilda.  Everybody seemed to hold on to something unique.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah.  Eugene Levy, I mean there’s a guy who has like a classic delivery.  That’s Gene.  It’s true.  We were all different and I think that’s why it worked in Toronto, why it worked in Chicago and why eventually it worked on SCTV and on Saturday Night Live.  Everybody has a specific gift, a look, a quality.  Not that we couldn’t do impressions where we all do the same thing if called upon.  To me, I think the most talented of all us is Marty because he can really sing, really dance, really has those Vaudeville comic chops, has the writing facility and I just think he’s the king of the Second City improv school.

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Dan Aykroyd Talks About the Blues Brothers

Ron Bennington:  That’s another place that you bring into your life that’s never left is the blues.  The blues got introduced to you at an early early age.  

Dan BluesDan Aykroyd:  Yeah.  I grew up in Ottawa, Canada.  It was a government town.  Capital city of that great nation and many universities there, colleges.  There was a booker named Harvey Glatt and he brought people into this little nightclub called The Le Hibou which means “a small owl” in French.  So, I saw Muddy Waters many times.  I saw Howlin’ Wolf a dozen times. Otis Spann, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Sonny & Brownie, (Charlie) Musselwhite, (Paul) Butterfield, James Cotton, Carey Bell, Lurrie Bell – all the blues stars, Elvin Bishop…they all came through there.  So, as a kid, 13, 14, 15, I was going to live blues shows and seeing these artists play and that’s what kind of got me interested in it and we were able to because John was from Chicago, he knew about it from that point of view.  He had been into the Checkerboard Lounge and to Legends when they were really in, maybe I would say the rougher parts of town in the beginning.  So, he knew the form and I did too, so we were able to put it together and if it weren’t for Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn there would be no Blues Brothers.  Once they came on, it legitimized the whole thing.

Ron Bennington:  Well that’s the funny thing about it, like the people at home were seeing as – okay, Dan and Johnny are doing this bit.  But anyone who knew music, knew that you had the greatest musicians working in that band.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Otis Redding’s guitar players.  Yeah.

Ron Bennington:  Yeah, right.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah, and they came on because they knew we were respecting the music, we were respecting the artists and they knew – like Wynonie Harris or Cab Calloway or Kay Kyser, if you were a bandleader, you had to be funny.  You had to be funny.  You had to be a frontman.  You had to be more of…kind of a dancer and vocalist than a musician.  And more of a frontman and entertainer and an emcee and that’s what John and I were.  We were great frontmen, fair musicians, fair dancers, fair vocalists, but we put it all together and it’s a show.

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Ron Bennington:  Dan Aykroyd, such a pleasure to have you in here.  The Crystal Head is available, now of course, with the Rolling Stones package.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Yeah, it’s available all over.  Check it out.  It will be at all the major stores and go see the Stones.  That’s the most exciting part about this.

Ron Bennington:  It’s great that those guys are still doing it.  Isn’t it?    Crystalheadvodka.com for more information.  Danny Aykroyd, a pleasure my friend.   And I’ll see you next time.  

Dan Aykroyd:  Thank you sir.  Good to see you.

 

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Get more info on Crystal Head Vodka at CrystalHeadVodka.com and follow Dan Aykroyd on Twitter @Dan_Aykroyd

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews atRonBenningtonInterviews.com.