Like almost all of the other Beach Boys, Brian Wilson didn’t surf—but try telling that to John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd when they bust in your bedroom dressed as police officers. As the music world continues mourning the passing of musical genius Brian Wilson, we’re looking back on this lighthearted moment from nearly 50 years ago.

Filmed in 1976 for the NBC special The Beach Boys: It’s OK!, the clip actually comes from one of the darkest periods of Wilson’s troubled life. Following the smash success and critical adoration of 1966’s Pet Sounds, Wilson attempted an even more ambitious follow-up, SMiLE. Described by Wilson as “a teenage symphony to God,” the laborious work on the album took a toll on the songwriter and composer, and creative rejection from the rest of the band sent Brian into a downward spiral of drug addiction and mental illness from which he wouldn’t emerge from for decades. SMiLE was never completely finished, and remains one of the greatest lost albums in rock music history.

Amid all that personal turmoil, Brian Wilson still agreed to film a comedy sketch with Saturday Night Live stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. According to Far Out Magazine, The Beach Boys were attempting to appeal to a younger audience and enlisted the help of SNL creator and devout fan Lorne Michaels, who produced and co-wrote the special in an attempt to sell the band to the young audiences that had become his loyal viewers. The Beach Boys: It’s OK! featured a mix of concert footage, interviews, and comedic bits, assembled as part of the “Brian’s Back” campaign to promote Wilson’s full-fledged return to the group.

In the sketch titled “Brian’s Nightmare,” Belushi and Aykroyd show up at Wilson’s house dressed as police officers. Upon entering his bedroom sanctuary—a cocoon of drugs and depression for him throughout the 1970s—they identify themselves as members of the Surf Squad and cite Brian Wilson for “failing to surf, neglecting to use a state beach for surfing purposes, and otherwise avoiding surfboards, surfing, and surf.” The cops then drag Wilson—still clad in his bathrobe—to the beach to make him try to catch a wave.

According to Michaels, Wilson didn’t enjoy the shoot. “He was not happy about it,” the SNL boss told Rolling Stone in 2006. “It was almost a baptism.” The media capitalized on the sight of Wilson out in public, as photographer Annie Leibovitz was on the beach that day and snapped a picture that made it to the cover of Rolling Stone a few months later.

In many ways, the Belushi and Aykroyd sketch is a fitting representation of The Beach Boys in the 1970s. While the band attempted to keep up a lighthearted facade and trot Brian Wilson out as the returning creative golden boy, Wilson spiraled deeper into depression.

External forces exerting their will upon the mentally ailing artist would infamously define the next several decades of Wilson’s life. He eventually landed under the care—or, many would argue, control—of Eugene Landy, the Svengali psychiatrist who maintained 24-hour control over Wilson’s life intermittently throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and into the early ’90s. Regardless of Brian’s state of mind, The Beach Boys wanted him out of his bedroom—even if it meant turning him in to the Surf Squad.

Revisit the classic sketch below.

John Belushi & Dan Aykroyd Take Brian Wilson Surfing | 1976

[Video: SURFSTYLEY4]