{"id":974434,"date":"2020-01-15T06:05:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T13:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=937669"},"modified":"2020-01-15T06:05:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T13:05:33","slug":"michael-mcdonald-on-the-doobie-brothers-entering-the-rock-hall-they-deserve-the-nod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/michael-mcdonald-on-the-doobie-brothers-entering-the-rock-hall-they-deserve-the-nod\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael McDonald on the Doobie Brothers Entering the Rock Hall: \u2018They Deserve the Nod\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/michael-mcdonald-RRHOF.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/doobie-brothers\/\" id=\"auto-tag_doobie-brothers\" data-tag=\"doobie-brothers\">Doobie Brothers<\/a> were one of the most popular bands in America when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/michael-mcdonald\/\" id=\"auto-tag_michael-mcdonald\" data-tag=\"michael-mcdonald\">Michael McDonald<\/a> joined their ranks in 1975. Frontman Tom Johnston had just departed due to medical issues and they wanted someone to contribute to the harmonies and add keyboards into the mix. At that point, McDonald was best known for his studio work with Steely Dan, and the group had no idea he was a brilliant songwriter until he showed them a demo for \u201cTakin\u2019 It to the Streets,\u201d which quickly became the title for their sixth studio record and an enormous radio hit.<\/p>\n<p>It was the beginning of a long string of McDonald-penned Doobie Brothers hits like \u201cWhat a Fool Believes,\u201d \u201cMinute by Minute,\u201d and \u201cReal Love.\u201d The group broke up in 1982 and it was the earlier \u201cChina Grove\u201d lineup that re-formed five years later, though McDonald toured with them in 1995 and has guested sporadically with them ever since, often at corporate gigs. But this summer he\u2019s hitting the road with the Doobies for an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/doobie-brothers-50th-anniversary-tour-dates-917925\/\">extensive 50th-anniversary tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We spoke to McDonald about the Doobie Brothers entering the Hall of Fame, plans for the upcoming tour, and what it\u2019s like to be the captain of the Yacht Rock scene.<\/p>\n<p><!-- .l-article-content__pull--left --> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Congrats on the big news.<\/strong><br \/>Thank you! It\u2019s exciting, for sure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What was your first reaction to hearing about it?<\/strong><br \/>I guess I was a little apprehensive just in the sense that I didn\u2019t want to assume too much too soon because you never know how these things are going to fall. Even just up to a couple of days ago, I thought, \u201cWell, anything could happen.\u201d But it\u2019s great news for us. It\u2019s very exciting. It\u2019s always been an honor for me to work with the guys over the years. It\u2019s been a huge chapter of my life. Just on a personal level, getting this award with these individuals means a lot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is this something you thought much about over the years? You guys have been eligible for a long time.<\/strong><br \/>I don\u2019t think I ever really thought about it too much, but I always thought it would be nice. And I thought the band, with or without me, just as a band, deserved the nod. They are such an American band, starting in 1970. I felt as an entity the band deserved a nod from the Hall of Fame, so I\u2019m happy to see that happen and couldn\u2019t be prouder to be a part of it.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IqN7lq4NQB0?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>The timing is pretty perfect because you guys are going on that huge tour this summer.<\/strong><br \/>Going out for the 50th and having this be the way the year starts off is really exciting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bands usually play four songs. Any idea what you might play?<\/strong><br \/>We don\u2019t know yet. I\u2019m guessing we\u2019ll do \u201cLong Train Runnin\u2019,\u201d \u201cListen to the Music\u201d and maybe \u201cTakin\u2019 It to the Streets\u201d and \u201cBlack Water.\u201d That would be my guess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You\u2019re going in alongside Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, T. Rex, Notorious B.I.G., and Whitney Houston<\/strong>.<br \/>There\u2019s something about all those bands that I really enjoy a lot. More than anything, each of those bands has helped shape the form that rock &amp; roll has taken over the years. That\u2019s what I like to see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame\/\" id=\"auto-tag_rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame\" data-tag=\"rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame\">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame<\/a> do, pick those bands that have sculpted what we see rock &amp; roll as today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can you envision an all-star jam between all you guys?<\/strong><br \/>Sure. I\u2019ve always found in those situations that it\u2019s amazing how there\u2019s usually mutual admiration on some level. A friend of mine, David Pack from Ambrosia, was just telling me the other day that he was on a plane with Ronnie James Dio one time. He said, \u201cI don\u2019t know what came over me, but I apologized for having written \u2018I\u2019m Not In Love.&#8217;\u201d Maybe it was another ballad like \u201cThat\u2019s How Much I Feel.\u201d Either way, Ronnie said \u201cAre you kidding? I\u2019d give anything to write a song like that.\u201d It just goes to show you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Are you open to the idea of playing with Skunk Baxter and Tiran Porter at the induction?<\/strong><br \/>Sure. Yeah. The way I look at it is that it\u2019s a night for for anything to happen. Anything could happen and probably should. It\u2019s a magical night for us and the one chance in a long time that we\u2019d all get to play together and take the stage together.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019m sure standing at the podium will be a very emotional moment for you.<\/strong><br \/>It\u2019s the culmination of a lot of years of traveling together and working together. We are fortunate that our friendship has remained the most important thing to us through all the various incarnations of the band. We all had an appreciation for what the band has meant to each of us individually and what it\u2019s been as an experience collectively.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The band was never a real critic\u2019s band, but in so many ways that just doesn\u2019t matter.<\/strong><br \/>Yeah. We always kind of had to look for our validation from our fans because that was really where we got it, on the road playing for people live and having that communication. As far as the media goes, we weren\u2019t referred as a cutting-edge band.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I hear those songs all the time though. That matters more than what any critic wrote decades ago.<\/strong><br \/>I hope you\u2019re right. It certainly has been an amazing ride for us.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qKYQNtF11eg?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Are you thinking much about how the show will be structured this summer when you hit the road with them?<\/strong><br \/>We haven\u2019t really got into the nitty-gritty of it. We\u2019ll probably start rehearsals in May. I\u2019ve talked to [keyboardist] Billy Payne myself and John [McFee]. I\u2019m just trying to get as much material from those guys as I can. I really want to come into this thing as finely meshed into it as I can with Billy. He\u2019s such a phenomenal keyboard player and [has] always been one of my favorites. I want to know what he\u2019s playing and what he thinks I should play and kind of go from there and suss out what my role in keyboards will be. I want to contribute. I don\u2019t want to be the guy that jumps in the pool and splashes everybody who is having a great, great time without me.<\/p>\n<p>With any band, but especially one on the larger size, you want to look for where you can be a contribution to the whole thing. And I know my job as singing will be just what it is. I\u2019ll sing the songs that I sing and then just do backgrounds. I\u2019m really looking forward to that. I\u2019m looking forward to having less responsibility as a lead singer [than] I do with my band. When you\u2019re out on the road for months, there\u2019s always these periods of time where you\u2019re gasping for air and hoping your voice will show up. It\u2019s going to be fun for me to just sing a couple of songs a night.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019ve seen Neil Young say that he used to love the CSNY tours since the whole thing wasn\u2019t on his shoulders. It\u2019s the same here. You\u2019re just part of a band.<\/strong><br \/>Yeah. I think that appeals to most people by nature. There are people that are gifted with great performing skills, but a lot of musicians are not. They were pushed out into the spotlight in certain circumstances, but would usually prefer to be pushed into the backline doing their thing and not having too much responsibility as far as performing goes. I think 80 percent of the musicians I know feel that way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>And Tom and Pat both really have their voices.<\/strong><br \/>Yeah. The band has never sounded better to me. I saw them recently in Nashville. It struck me that this was the best they\u2019ve ever sounded. It\u2019s inspiring to see that. We\u2019re all getting older. You think, \u201cGeez, am I going to be able to do this forever? When do I give up the ghost?\u201d It\u2019s a physical endeavor like anything else. But to see those guys really nail it to the wall, and anyone, the Stones and all these different acts performing at the top of their game, with some of them in their seventies. It gives me great hope.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Are you going to sing any non-Doobies songs in the set?<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019m not sure about that. I think we\u2019ll suss that out, but I\u2019m going to do as much pre-studying and woodshedding as I can knowing that the band \u2014 and it\u2019s always been this way \u2014 we figure out what we\u2019ll do when we get together. We\u2019ll see what feels good and what doesn\u2019t feel good. There will be a lot of trial and error in rehearsals.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xWaj0_jYGlY?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Are you working on any new songs right now?<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019ve actually been recording an album. It started out as an EP and I don\u2019t know what it is at this point. As long as I can think of things to do, I\u2019ll be recording. It\u2019s actually a very simple project. It\u2019s just live. A couple of tracks are with local musicians in Santa Barbara, just musicians I play with in the different local haunts there. I decided to pull them in for a little project. Everything is live. I\u2019m playing live and singing live. I just thought I\u2019d do something like that, that was really simple and kind of represented my experience in California.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s nothing too ambitious, really. Just myself and some local friends. We went up to a studio in Santa Barbara on the coast and just played some stuff live and decided what to record and hoped we\u2019d remember the words by the time we got to taping. We\u2019re all playing in one big room with an engineer. It\u2019s a barn and we\u2019re all on headphones in the same room tying to get out of everyone\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When might that come out?<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019m hoping to get it ready to go as merch on the Doobies tour. We\u2019re trying to come up with stuff for the merch area. I think the Doobies are coming out with an EP. They asked me if I had anything and said, \u201cI\u2019ve got about 100,000 copies of the last record I did since I can\u2019t seem to give it away.\u201d I\u2019m going to bring those out on the tour. I thought I\u2019d record this EP for fun just as a California experience.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CnjEzx7Glr8?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you still get a kick out of being sampled by rap artists? I can\u2019t hear \u201cI Keep Forgettin&#8217;\u201d today and not think about \u201cRegulate.\u201d<br \/><\/strong><span>That was always fun. What I really found interesting was a lot of my synth sounds that have been sampled come from old records in the 1970s, not just the Doobies. Typically those sounds were things the producer and engineer hated that I came up with. I wasn\u2019t too thrilled with it either, but it was the best I could figure out since I couldn\u2019t work those contraptions very well. If I ever really wanted some decent synth sounds, I would call Billy Payne and get him to program some synths for me, which is what we did on \u201cA Fool Believes.\u201d On a lot of the other stuff I would go it alone. Nobody wanted to be in the room with me and a synthesizer. Let\u2019s put it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And so I hear a lot of that stuff on rap records in a different application where it sounds cool \u2014 that was kind of amusing to me. And \u201cRegulate\u201d in particular. I got a chance to meet Warren [G] on the road and his wife on the road. He\u2019s a great guy. The first time I met him he was driving past me on the street in New York City. He rolled down the window and waved to me and we had two seconds to say hello.<\/p>\n<p>They came down to a gig we did in Orange County. It was fun to sit and talk to him. That was one of the early stages of hip-hop sampling that kind of materialized from that point on.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1plPyJdXKIY?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Has any part of you grown weary of the term \u201cYacht Rock?\u201d<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019ve always found it funny, those Internet episodes. It was uncanny how it\u2019s almost become a genre of music. The way I look at it is, it\u2019s something people love to laugh about, but they still have a certain affection for it. In the 1970s when we were writing songs, it was a time when pop musicians were exploring more traditional jazz chord progressions and stuff like that. There was actually a period of time where you couldn\u2019t put enough chords in a song for the radio.<\/p>\n<p>Then there was the great Eighties backlash to that. It\u2019s just a cyclical thing. I toured with Steely Dan a few years ago. I was listening to them from the side of the stage one night and it struck me how amazing it was these guys were the darling of pop radio for more than a decade and their songs are so strange and so harmonically and chordally experimental in some ways, and yet harkening to more traditional musical entities like Duke Ellington. Who would have ever guessed that would have become popular music for a decade?<\/p>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s a pretty amazing thing. And you\u2019re on so many songs from that time, you\u2019re kind of seen as the captain of Yacht Rock. Do you like that moniker?<\/strong><br \/>[<em>Laughs<\/em>] I\u2019ll take whatever I can get at my age.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pmc-contextual-player\">\n<h3> Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/michael-mcdonald-doobie-brothers-hall-of-fame-interview-937669\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Doobie Brothers were one of the most popular bands in America when Michael McDonald joined their ranks in 1975. Frontman Tom Johnston had just departed due to medical issues and they wanted someone to contribute to the harmonies and add keyboards into the mix. At that point, McDonald was best known for his studio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-974434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 23:12:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}