Dan Aykroyd Says He'll Never Forget the 'Trauma' of Having to Tell John Belushi's Wife He Had Died

The actor was among the first to receive a call about the shocking death of his collaborator in 1982

In their time together, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi created quite the legacy.

The pair first hit it off in Toronto, Aykroyd recalls in his new Audible Original, Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude, when Belushi paid a visit to the Second City improv troupe there.

"Just before midnight, the door banged open without a warning and a silhouette filled the space against a swirl of blowing snow," Aykroyd, now 72, shared in the Audible project, an oral history of The Blues Brothers. "The shape was defined by an octagonal brown tweed."

The rest is history, of course: the men started making music together as their Blues Brothers alter egos, Jake and Elwood, moving on to the first season of SNL together, where they brought their band to the stage and later, the iconic 1980 film of the same name.

"John and Danny have the number one album in the country, they're on the number one TV show [SNL] in the country and John's the star of the biggest movie in the world, Animal House, all at the same time," Blues Brothers director John Landis shared via Audible of the pair's popularity.

Related: Dan Aykroyd Reveals How He and John Belushi Changed Lorne Michaels' Mind After He 'Didn't Dig' the Blues Brothers

But with fame came temptations, specifically Belushi's "appetites and facilitations, which many enablers provided to fuel them," Aykroyd said via Audible of the star's drug and alcohol use.

And on March 5, 1982, it came to a tragic head.

"After a night of drinking brandy, smoking cigarettes and consuming cocaine, John succumbed in Bungalow 3 of the Chateau Marmont in L.A. to a non self-administered injection of mixed cocaine and heroin, commonly known as a speedball," Aykroyd shared via Audible. "He was 33 years of age. I was 29."

Aykroyd was hard at work on the Ghostbusters script in New York City when he got the call from their shared agent, Bernie Brillstein.

"My first impulse was to find [John's wife Judy] as soon as possible, running down the entire length of Fifth Avenue to their townhouse on Morton Street," he recounted via Audible. "Arriving at Judy's house, I burst in and saw that she was standing at her fridge and did not know yet."

"We had a push-button lock and I could hear someone pushing the buttons," John's late window, Judy Belushi Pisano, recalled via Audible. "I thought, 'Oh no, it's too early for John to be back. And he would've called.' Then Danny came in and I just knew something was wrong by the way he was standing."

"He sort of started to say something and not be able to say it," she continued. "And he said, 'I don't know how to tell you.' And I kinda like grabbed him and said, 'Has he been hurt?' And he said, 'No, honey, he's dead.' "

Related: John Belushi's Brother Jim and Wife Judy Open Up About Late Actor's Legacy: 'He Made People Feel'

Speaking to PEOPLE recently about the Audible Original, Aykroyd recalled the emotions that swept over him in the moment.

"Having to tell Judy that John was gone, that I'll never forget. That's a piece of trauma that will be with me forever," he said. (Judy died on July 5, 2024.) "I lament that he's not around. It's more than wistfulness: it's a true lamentation. Losing him set me back for a full year, but then I just wanted to go on and do more work and carry on."

Aykroyd has kept Belushi close in many of his projects since, even including never-before-heard audio from the actor in the Audible Original.

"I loved hearing John speak again," Aykroyd told PEOPLE. "He was a very sensitive and honest performer."

John's brother Jim Belushi lent his voice to the Audible Original, too, sharing his bittersweet memories surrounding those days.

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"The day we buried John on Martha's Vineyard, two people came up to me, John Candy and Dan Aykroyd," Jim recalled. "And they put their arms around me and said, 'Sorry for your loss Jimmy. If there's anything we can do, we'll do it.' People say that kinda stuff, right? Not John Candy or Dan Aykroyd. They pursued me. Danny pulled me into his world with a stiff Canadian arm."

In addition to his endless string of hit films — from Ghostbusters and My Girl to Trading Places and Driving Miss Daisy, for which he earned an Oscar nomination — Aykroyd helped found the House of Blues, and thinks of it in part as a shrine to his late friend.

"Every time I walk into a House of Blues, I think, 'John, why aren't you around to enjoy these places where we have the gods of Blues on the wall, the ceiling?' " Aykroyd told PEOPLE. "You can be sure I have a drink and I toast a Crystal Head Vodka to him when I'm in these places."

Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude is available exclusively on Audible now.

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