Doobie Brothers Reflect on 50 Years of Music

Fifty-three years since their first hit single, “Listen to the Music,” raced up the charts in 1972, the Doobie Brothers are back with their 16th studio album, Walk This Road, and a 20-date tour this summer with the Coral Reefer Band that kicks off on Aug. 4 in Detroit.

The popular rock band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 and on June 11, they’ll be recognized by the Songwriters Hall of Fame as well alongside George Clinton, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Ashley Gorley, Tony Macaulay and Mike Love. 

Over the years, they’ve shifted stylistically from a crunchy country-rock band to a smooth R&B/pop outfit. Both incarnations yielded massive hits, from “China Grove” and “Black Water” in the early ’70s to “Takin’ It to the Streets” and “What a Fool Believes” later in the decade. Their multi-platinum 1978 album Minute by Minute, featuring “What a Fool Believes,” earned three Grammy Awards in 1980.

The ‘70s was an era of mass partying for bands. Johnston was the Doobies’ main casualty. Addicted to cocaine and alcohol, he developed an ulcer condition that caused him to leave the band in 1975. That opened the door for McDonald, who was a background singer at the time with Steely Dan.

Johnston and McDonald’s singing and songwriting styles couldn’t have been more different from each other. Transitioning from Johnston’s raging rockers to McDonald’s soulful tunes, the Doobies’ sound and reach broadened significantly. 

But following One Step Closer in 1980, Warner Brothers dropped them and the Doobies didn’t record again for nine years. They haven’t had much success at radio like they did in their halcyon days. Released in January, Walk This Road has yet to rank on Billboard charts, but they don’t seem to mind. 

“I don’t know if we even have that concept anymore,” co-founder Pat Simmons tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We just hope somebody will hear the songs and show up.” 

It’s a historic album for the Doobies, the first since Takin’ It to the Streets in 1976 brought together the group’s three lead singers and songwriters. While they’ve been playing live since 2019, it’s been nearly 40 years since Simmons, McDonald and co-founder Tom Johnston were all in the same studio.

“We’ve all had our issues,” says Simmons. “It comes with the time period. But yeah, we’re grateful to just be here and able to do it.”

A week ahead of the band’s induction into the songwriters hall of fame, Johnston, McDonald, Simmons and John McFee, all now in their seventies, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter recalling their legendary career, their biggest songs and their longevity. 

The Hollywood Reporter: This is the first time you’ve all recorded together since 1976. What was it like for you, Michael?

Michael McDonald: I wanted to bring things to the band that were more in our wheelhouse, and not having the band move too far out of what we really are most comfortable with, which is R&B and blues, the more traditional genres we operate from. So I was trying to hopefully, this time around, get a chance to be a little truer to that than I’d been in the past with some of my songs.

What was the recording process like?

McDonald: We worked on each others’ tracks separately. John would partition off a day for all the things I needed to do on tracks. If I had keyboards I could do it on Tom or Pat’s songs and background vocals. I would get all that done in a day, usually. That was just to save time and focus on each guy’s contribution. 

You also have a few special guests on “Lahaina,” which Patrick wrote in 2023 after the Maui fires.

Patrick Simmons: I thought it would be nice to have some people from the islands involved in the track, just to localize the song a little bit more. Mick Fleetwood lost his restaurant, so I suggested he play drums. Singer Henry Kapono is a good friend of all of ours, so I called him and also [ukulele player] Jake Shimabukuro. We tried to bring in some Hawaiian folks to be part of it. 

I was not on the island when the fire came down. I was getting play-by-play of what was going on because both my sons were home and kept calling back and forth and it was on the news what was going on right while it was happening. I’m totally helpless. I’ve got to do something. So I’m thinking, I’ll write a song and we’ll raise some funds. 

How did the album process feel for you?

Tom Johnston: We were thinking about doing four songs, just seeing what goes on. But everybody kept writing tunes and bringing stuff in. So there got to be more songs. And pretty soon we had enough for an album.

Michael, how did you end up in the Doobies?

McDonald: [Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarist] Jeff Baxter recommended me to the guys to fill in for a while. 

Simmons: When Jeff recommended Mike, I said, “Well, we’ve got to move forward.” As soon as we heard Mike sing, we all went, “Oh shit, he can really sing.”

McDonald: It even gave a couple of us some pause to see us changing. The big reason for the change was not so much me coming as Tom’s presence being so ominous. He and Pat wrote all this stuff. It has us kind of scrambling. 

Simmons: Things just happened. When Tom was ill, we had probably 20 shows that we needed to complete (in 1975). You sign those contracts with promoters and if you back out, everybody gets mad, you don’t make any money so you go home broke, and then you’re paying expenses for your crew and flights and everything. So we were going, well, how can we finish these shows, get our work done and get through this tour?

McDonald: It wasn’t tough for me because the guys were so welcoming. They seemed so willing to hear anything that I might have. Again, some of it was unlikely Doobie Brothers stuff, but the band had to think of something to do in Tom’s absence. 

How was it for you navigating the transition?

McDonald: You need to find a big sissy to join the band [laughs]. Then you just got to go from there. 

John, what’s your view of this period?

John McFee: Like Mike said, we were just trying to find our way. You can’t second guess what the public is going to think about any style changes. You’re just trying to make the best music you can make. I think that’s one of the reasons this band has made it through so many different style changes and been accepted, because it’s always been about trying to make the best music. It’s not about a formula or something. It’s about just doing your best. 

Let’s do a lightning round of your best-known songs, starting with “Listen to the Music” (1972, No. 11).

Johnston: That was written in my bedroom in San Jose. I’d been listening to Alan Watts speak over at San Jose State. He was an English philosopher and a utopian. We were right in the middle of the Vietnam War, and so I just kind of morphed the two together, with music as opposed to speech. 

“Long Train Running” (No. 8, 1973).

Johnston: That was a jam tune. We played that for two years before it was ever recorded. Our producer Ted Templeman said, “Let’s cut the track. You ought to write some words for it.” I said it’s just a jam song and he said, “Nah, give it a shot.” So I decided it was about a train. I wrote the lyrics in about 20 minutes and there you go.

“China Grove” (No. 16, 1973).

Johnston: “China Grove” was just a rocker. I wrote it on an acoustic, grabbed our drummer John Hartman and went down to the basement of the studio. I said, “This has to be electric, it’s not an acoustic song.” 

Tom, you defined the Doobies’ early sound. Where did that come from? 

Johnston: Oh, a lot of blues. R&B and rock & roll. That’s my background. Little Richard, James Brown and B.B., Albert and Freddy (Kings), along with a lot of other influences. That’s where I was coming from musically. 

“Black Water” Who doesn’t know “Black Water?” So many campfires, so many sing-alongs. 

Simmons: It is a campfire song. 

McDonald: The campfire girls used to get high and listen to that song. 

Simmons: [Makes a joint rolling gesture] It’s a hidden message song. Actually, it’s just a folk-blues thing. I had the riff that I played for the producer just fooling around at a session and he said, “You should write a song.” So about a year later, I was on a streetcar going uptown in New Orleans. It was 1972. I just started writing lyrics down and not really thinking in terms of that riff I had. I was just writing, like poetry.

The next Doobies phase happened when Mike joined the group in 1976. His first song was “Takin’ It to the Streets” 

Simmons: I said to Ted, “How about listening to some of Mike’s material?” And he goes, “I don’t know, I think there’s gonna be a resistance at the label, and you guys are gonna be changing the character of the band. I go, “Yeah, but we should try it. You should listen to Mike’s tunes.” So Mike just sat down at the piano and played “Streets.” Ted went, “Yeah, that sounds great.”

McDonald: I started writing that song on my way to a gig somewhere in L.A. I heard the intro in my head. I had no idea theoretically what it was musically. I was hearing it in my head and figured, I got to get to the gig and pick this out before I forget it. 

“What a Fool Believes,” which you wrote with Kenny Loggins, took the band to another level in 1980. 

McDonald: “What a Fool Believes” is a song that almost didn’t get written. I played it for Ted, the little bouncy piano thing, and he goes, “You gotta finish that. That’s a fucking hit.”

The funny part is I was playing things for my sister, because Kenny was coming down to write with me, and I was kind of nervous about all that and she was only there because she heard Kenny Logins was coming to the house.

So, at that moment, the doorbell rang and Kenny was at the door, and I’m helping him through the door with his guitar and stuff, and he said, “Before we say anything else. You were just playing something on the piano. Is that new?” I told him, “Well, yeah, I was thinking of playing that for you.” He said, “I want to work on that first.” I might not have even played it for him, but for the fact he was standing there listening on the other side of the door and had already written the next movement of the song outside the door before we even sat down. 

What’s your advice on how to deal with a band’s longevity?

Johnston: Boy, I don’t know. That’s not a planned thing. Once again, it just happens. You don’t make a plan to be doing this if you’re sitting in your 20s, thinking, “Well, what are we going to do in 50 years?” Well, nobody fucking knows. 

Simmons: I will say this, and I believe this wholeheartedly, that whether it’s a band or you’re on your own or whatever you’re doing, you have to have a passion for it. You have to love what you’re doing. And I suspect a lot of folks, they kind of got into it for fame and fortune. That only lasts so long, and then pretty soon, you’re back to, OK, I got to write a good song. We’re not playing Madison Square Garden, we’re playing auditorium theaters. We’re not playing for 20,000, we’re playing for a thousand people. 

So you have to be a little more humble? 

Simmons: You have to enjoy it for its own sake. You can’t do it for some kind of platitudes or a popularity thing. It has to be something that you’re driven towards, and I think that’s true for all of us here, all four of us, that we started playing music because we loved it.