High Society

Dan Aykroyd used to be on a mission from God. Now he's on a mission from Globefill Inc to sell as much of his world-famous Crystal Head Vodka as damn possible. So you gotta start with the vodka questions, otherwise you run the risk of being called a “fucking hosebag”, as was the case when an SBS host refused to let him steer the conversation last week. That said, The Music is all about the booze and blues so we give him a light stir and set him off about his holy grail of alcohols. He means business: the shades are on (and they're not coming off as our photographer will soon find out), he's sharply dressed in his official CHV suit and ready to spiel.

“Yes, we're running at battle speed,” he admits. “Anyone selling a book or a DVD or a record or a download would be doing the same thing – it's just basic Marketing 101. That said I'm so thankful that I'm pushing a product that I can really believe in. You know what? I did sell a few bad movies… selling it on Wednesday and knowing it was gonna be dead by Friday. Having a quadruple award-winning fluid in this beautiful bottle that people are embracing makes my 'selling' job really easy and fun.”

The design of the product alone, which is based on the same legend of the 13 crystal skulls that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg used to cook up the fourth Indiana Jones film, has proven widely popular, with Crystal Head Vodka bottles now lining the shelves of everyone from your local metalhead to upmarket bars worldwide. Aykroyd acknowledges that its success in Australia mirrors that of his homeland of Canada. “I think it appeals to a rebellious, anarchic streak that we share.” He grins.

Popularity does have its drawbacks, however; plenty of liquor stores are forced to keep the prized bottles under lock and key and back in 2011 a group of thieves in Los Angeles made off with a whopping 21,000 skulls that were then sold on the black market.

“We had a tractor trailer in one of our distribution point warehouses and a team got in, they got into the tractor, which was still attached to the trailer, and they drove straight through the fence and got away with it! I didn't reveal it publicly. I waited till we needed it. We had a launch coming up and the LAPD had been so ineffective in finding out who it was, and the insurance guys couldn't work it out either, so we gave them three to four months so as not to interfere with the investigation then I revealed it. It was half-a-million dollars' worth of the vodka. My quote at the time was, 'I don't condone crime, but I'm really happy that people can consume my vodka at a discounted price!'” 

As you can tell, Aykroyd is a businessman and he knows a good publicity op when he sees one. When The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Tour came into view, he and his counterparts put into action a proposal to see his company enter a partnership with the ageing rock titans, the result of which is his most prized accolade: becoming the official vodka of the tour. At first it seems like a tasty cash grab for the Xmas dollars you're gonna spend on dad (and it is), but Aykroyd explains his friendship with the band is longstanding and includes him inviting Keith, Ronnie and Daryl for an extended stay on his farm only a few years ago. Before he's even finished his sentence we've blurted out a question almost as a reflex -– “holy shit, did you guys jam?”

“Absolutely. Every night around the campfire they pulled out the guitars and harp and we sang old blues songs. My uncle is right into George Formby and he plays the banjo. Of course Keith knew exactly who Formby was so we had a wonderful time eating and drinking and staying up till four or five in the morning playing those songs. Keith would rise at three the next day of course… that said, I did most of my real partying with those guys a long time ago.”

There are plenty of people that would say Aykroyd indeed partied too hard back then, given his very public discussion of a deep belief in ghosts and extra-terrestrials. Ghostbusters may have been a straight-up comedy, but its roots are within Aykroyd's own passion for the supernatural, growing up in a household that celebrated what lies beyond our own known dimensions.

“Look if you wanna talk survival of the consciousness after death, residual spirit phantom energy, mediumship, trans-mediumship, channelling spirits from the beyond – well that's a multi-generational thing in my family starting with my great, great grandfather Sam, an Edwardian spiritualist. In the '30s and '40s we had our own trans-medium, his name was Walter Ashhurst… one day in a trance he knelt over the back of a chair and drew a diagram. It turns out later that he was channelling [Charles Proteus] Steinmetz, the physicist. My grandfather, a Bell Telephone engineer, took it to the engineers at Bell Telephone who explained it was a diagram for a very high-oscillating crystal radio, which my grandfather then concluded was probably designed to communicate with the beyond.”

Despite his unnerving and wide-eyed enthusiasm for the paranormal it does seem like the lights have dimmed on the prospect of a third Ghostbusters film, with Bill Murray now famously playing the elusive Roadrunner to his Wyle E Coyote. When future projects are raised he says he treasures a solid 30-year run in the business and harbours no bitterness if his marketability as a leading man may have “dropped off over the years”. So rather than titillate fans with minor trivia about a film we kinda know isn't getting made anytime soon (like everybody else will be doing), we'll leave you with the one and only Dr Raymond Stantz directing us to the real Ghostbusters that he believes deserve the attention nowadays.

“Oh I've advised people on who to call... in terms of mediums that might help them with getting people to cross over successfully. All the time. People come to me with ghost stories everyday,” he says earnestly. “The parallel world is right beside us. Every single state in the USA has a serious paranormal investigation team, if not every county. Everywhere I go people ask me to come and see their great team work and they go about it in a very, very professional way.”