Speaker 1: Pushkin. Michael McDonald's husky baritone is one of the most
Speaker 1: instantly recognizable voices from the seventies and eighties. As a
Speaker 1: member of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and as a
Speaker 1: hit making solo artist, Michael McDonald's career is one for
Speaker 1: the books. Enter Paul Riser, the comedic actor and writer
Speaker 1: behind New York Times bestselling books, popular movies, and TV shows.
Speaker 1: Before the start of the pandemic, Paul met Mike McDonald
Speaker 1: at a party and the two became fast friends. Listening
Speaker 1: to Michael's incredible stories, Paul found himself trying to piece
Speaker 1: together the arc of Michael's career. They began recording their
Speaker 1: conversations and soon they had over six hundred pages of
Speaker 1: stories they eventually turned into the memoir With a Fool Believes.
Speaker 1: The book chronicles the highs and lows of Michael's career,
Speaker 1: his struggles with the diction, and his lifelong insecure. On
Speaker 1: today's episode, I talked to Michael McDonald's and Paul Reiser
Speaker 1: about their unlikely work in relationship. Michael also talks about
Speaker 1: why it's proposed Quincy Jones produced solo album never materialized,
Speaker 1: and he remembers the time one of his childhood heroes,
Speaker 1: Ray Charles, chewed him out while wearing a bathrobe. This
Speaker 1: is broken record. Liner notes in the digital age. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Mitchman. Here's my conversation with Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser.
Speaker 1: I've never done an interview with a musician who's written
Speaker 1: a book along with the author, but it just seemed
Speaker 1: like such a cool pairing that it was impossible to pass.
Speaker 2: Up unlikely pairing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you guys meet?
Speaker 2: Well? I played at a party. I was hired to play,
Speaker 2: you know, just kind of piano and saying my guitar
Speaker 2: player joined me for moral support. And it was at
Speaker 2: a party that happened to be next door to Paul's house.
Speaker 2: And he was at the party and we got to
Speaker 2: talking and we realized we had a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: musical interest in common. And he mentioned that he had
Speaker 2: a studio in his house next door and if we
Speaker 2: felt like it, we want to come over and check
Speaker 2: out his studio. And he's got a couple of pianos
Speaker 2: and invited us to come over and kind of jam
Speaker 2: a little bit. So my guitar player friend, Bernie, and
Speaker 2: I went over to Paul's and we kind of sat
Speaker 2: up and we played a few old Beatles songs and
Speaker 2: some old Motown songs and just kind of talked about
Speaker 2: what we liked about those songs, and we found we had,
Speaker 2: you know, real similar interests in music from the sixties.
Speaker 3: And there's a lesson to be learned. Because I didn't
Speaker 3: want to go to this party. I don't really have
Speaker 3: to go to any party. And I walk in and
Speaker 3: I go, oh my, Mike McDonald's playing, Oh my god, listen,
Speaker 3: Oh my god. And I'm not usually this forward, but
Speaker 3: I went over to say hello, and I've been a
Speaker 3: big fan of Michael's for years. And then I kind
Speaker 3: of like, I'm going to roll the dice here I
Speaker 3: go listen, and I literally said, I live eighty feet
Speaker 3: away and I have two pianos. You want to come over?
Speaker 3: And Mike, god bless him, said sure, and there I was,
Speaker 3: and I just was kind of pinching myself. I'll go,
Speaker 3: I'm playing piano with Michael McDonald for no reason on
Speaker 3: a Tuesday night. So we became friends from that, and
Speaker 3: then over the years we would just talk about I
Speaker 3: was always curious about Mike's career and arc because I
Speaker 3: never really had my hands around it, like he's everywhere.
Speaker 3: I can't see the through line, you know. So I
Speaker 3: was as a fan. I would periodically ask Michael questions,
Speaker 3: you know, and he would tell me, explain to me
Speaker 3: about how he got from the Steely Dan to Doobies,
Speaker 3: and I never I never quite made sense. And I
Speaker 3: jokingly said one day, I said, you should write a
Speaker 3: book so I, you know, I wouldn't have to call
Speaker 3: you every time I have a question and do his credit.
Speaker 3: He said, you know, I was thinking about it. He
Speaker 3: wasn't thinking about it, said people have asked me about it.
Speaker 3: He said, I don't know how to do that, And
Speaker 3: it just so happened. This was March of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: in lockdown, and I said, well, you know, I've written
Speaker 3: a couple of books, and let's be honest, we've got
Speaker 3: nothing to do. Nobody's working. So we just started taping
Speaker 3: our conversations and that became the start of the book.
Speaker 1: And over Zoom right, yeah, zoom.
Speaker 2: We did much.
Speaker 3: We were not in the same room for like four
Speaker 3: years or so, but it was like a month and
Speaker 3: a half of just sitting on Zoom and chatting. It
Speaker 3: was really easy. It was just because there was no pressure.
Speaker 3: We didn't have nobody bought it, there was no deadline,
Speaker 3: nobody was waiting for this, and we kind of jumped
Speaker 3: into that with, hey, if this turns out to be nothing,
Speaker 3: you know. So we had coffee over Zoom for a
Speaker 3: month and then we put it all together. You know.
Speaker 3: It took all these stories and I would basically just
Speaker 3: literally transcribe Mike's stories exactly as he said, and then
Speaker 3: sort of put it in some rough order, sent it
Speaker 3: over to Michael, and he started just expanding them and
Speaker 3: writing and digging, and we just went back and forth
Speaker 3: and it came out well, I like to think.
Speaker 2: Well, it's only one for you. When he came up
Speaker 2: to me, initially I could see you in his face
Speaker 2: and by his questions that he was thinking he must
Speaker 2: have fallen on really hard times. He's playing birthday parties now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I told him, noo, the guy's paying me a fortune.
Speaker 1: As a caliber of Paul's neighborhood.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, it was great fun. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: had he not suggested it, you know, and as I
Speaker 2: like to say, how lucky am I? You know, I've
Speaker 2: never written a book first book I write. I write
Speaker 2: with a guy who's you know, written the screenplays, TV shows,
Speaker 2: comic writer, produced movies, acted and everyone he hasn't produced,
Speaker 2: you know. So I was like, this is too good
Speaker 2: to be true. And you know, the only in trepidation
Speaker 2: I had was but once we got started, I started
Speaker 2: to think, Oh my god, what have I agreed to?
Speaker 1: What have I done?
Speaker 2: Because I've got Paul on the hook for this thing,
Speaker 2: and what if it just kind of fizzles out somewhere
Speaker 2: halfway in the middle, you know, it's just not that
Speaker 2: interesting anymore, you know, And like I just pictured myself
Speaker 2: having a thing of things to come up with for
Speaker 2: the next chapter.
Speaker 3: But that was the nice part of truely. I mean,
Speaker 3: almost everything I've ever done has been sort of on spec.
Speaker 3: It's like, let me just go write this and then if,
Speaker 3: you know, if it has interest to somebody, great, But
Speaker 3: I find it's hard to write with a deadline or
Speaker 3: somebody waiting for it. So this really was two guys
Speaker 3: chatting and it was easy. You know. I was asking
Speaker 3: questions that I genuinely wanted to know the answer, and Mike,
Speaker 3: as we just started talking and relaxing, you know, he
Speaker 3: would tell one story and then spin off into another story.
Speaker 3: I go, well, that's really funny, and I don't know
Speaker 3: where it goes, but that'll find a home somewhere. And
Speaker 3: then the last six months eight months have been really
Speaker 3: about editing it down and honing it. And we had
Speaker 3: a great editor who came on board, you know, about
Speaker 3: six eight months ago and gave us some great direction, like,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe thin this out, but expand over here.
Speaker 3: And literally to the last minute, Mike would go, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I ever told you this story.
Speaker 2: I go, no, Jay, that's.
Speaker 3: Great, And then suddenly that would find its way into
Speaker 3: the book.
Speaker 1: Do you worry about that as you're going along.
Speaker 2: We're worried about it right now still as we speak.
Speaker 1: How do you know you've mind everything.
Speaker 2: One of the things for me that I kind of
Speaker 2: felt that the endeavor might have some legs was Paul's
Speaker 2: came to find out later his work ethic as a writer,
Speaker 2: you know, but as a writer and an actor. One
Speaker 2: of the more enduring qualities of Paul is that he's
Speaker 2: genuinely interested in what everybody else is doing or has done,
Speaker 2: or where they came from. Things like that, you know,
Speaker 2: And that was a real motivating factor for me, because
Speaker 2: he would ask me things about you know, before we
Speaker 2: even decided to write the book. It's just in passing
Speaker 2: that he was interested in knowing about Steely, Dan or
Speaker 2: Donald and Walter, and I was all too happy to
Speaker 2: talk about myself and for any opportunity to. You know,
Speaker 2: my wife says, you know, the sound of your own
Speaker 2: voice is the most pleasant thing in their life.
Speaker 1: You know that plays against type though, because you do
Speaker 1: come across as that could vary. I don't think you
Speaker 1: come fro It appears even from the book like you
Speaker 1: call yourself like a more of a band guys. This
Speaker 1: is when you're kind of like you sign the solo
Speaker 1: deal for your record with Warner, and you're kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm more of a band guy. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want to and you're kind of having this conundrum
Speaker 1: of like, well, I want to get my best songs
Speaker 1: to the.
Speaker 3: That's one of the sentences in the book that was
Speaker 3: an AHA moment for me, and Mike said it really
Speaker 3: kind of in passing, I went, that's maybe the origin
Speaker 3: point of this book is you go, I have never
Speaker 3: thought of myself as a solo guy. I was a
Speaker 3: guy in a band and went, that really makes sense
Speaker 3: because you have been and everybody's but you've played with
Speaker 3: everybody over the last you know, for fifty years. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it's funny because a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 3: I was really intrigued about, not only was it hard
Speaker 3: to get Mike to talk about it, but really there
Speaker 3: wasn't even really questions that I could ask, like, you know,
Speaker 3: and I hope I'm not making your self conscious, but
Speaker 3: like Mike's voice is this thing that's like what is that?
Speaker 3: And everybody loves Mike's voice, Like, but how do you
Speaker 3: talk about I would ask him questions and go, I
Speaker 3: don't know, Well, how do you get that sound? That's
Speaker 3: how I say. It's like saying to George Clooney, we
Speaker 3: how'd you get handsome? You know? What do you want?
Speaker 3: It just came like this, So I would find the
Speaker 3: things that I fascinate me still fascinate me. But you know,
Speaker 3: I play piano, so and I watched Mike plays and
Speaker 3: he plays very different style and it's really cool and
Speaker 3: he does things that I can't quite figure out. And
Speaker 3: so a lot of it was I tried to like,
Speaker 3: and some of the stuff we cut it got a
Speaker 3: little too nerdy, like I like, you know, talking about
Speaker 3: you know, octaves and fifths and chords and went, yeah,
Speaker 3: nobody's gonna want to hear that I helped. You know,
Speaker 3: there are parts of the book that I think musicians
Speaker 3: and techno nerds or seventies officionados might really dig into.
Speaker 3: But at the heart of it is the story of
Speaker 3: the guy that I knew, but I didn't really know
Speaker 3: his story. And you know, part of what's so moving
Speaker 3: in this book, I think is, you know, Mike's loving
Speaker 3: relationship with his wife Amy over the years and all
Speaker 3: they've been through, and Mike's journey, the substance abuse and
Speaker 3: Mike's finding his career. As specific as it is to
Speaker 3: Mike McDonald's journey, it really I think resonates with a
Speaker 3: lot of people because everybody's had their own struggles, everybody's
Speaker 3: had their own journey and their own lack of confidence,
Speaker 3: and like, oh, here's this guy who's so successful and
Speaker 3: we all love and look how long it took him
Speaker 3: to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Really, one of the more beautiful things about the book
Speaker 1: is starting out with the early life and just just
Speaker 1: being so open about your lack of confidence, from a
Speaker 1: young age, and that seems to kind of rear up
Speaker 1: throughout your career, the addiction struggles, some of the ups
Speaker 1: and downs you went through with your wife, your wife
Speaker 1: getting sick, your kids. I mean, there's very personal book
Speaker 1: that I feel like, beyond the music stuff which I
Speaker 1: came to it for, there's a lot of great encouragement
Speaker 1: just for life, you know, how to live your life. Well.
Speaker 2: I think our hope was that people would see their
Speaker 2: own life and you know, but with the books more
Speaker 2: it's about, you know, specific incidents that music fans might
Speaker 2: sound find interesting, but there's really not enough of that
Speaker 2: to make a book, you know. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of it is also how just random events and seemingly
Speaker 2: unimportant moments in your life really are the things that
Speaker 2: shape you more than the big events. And you know,
Speaker 2: and that a lot of times, some of the worst
Speaker 2: things that happened to us inevitably will almost without fail,
Speaker 2: turn out to be the best things that ever happened
Speaker 2: to us with enough time. But I think so much
Speaker 2: of where we all find ourselves at a certain point
Speaker 2: in our lives would be totally different. But for some
Speaker 2: of the events that we would have rather not had
Speaker 2: to go through. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, most any movie, a good movie, a
Speaker 3: good TV show, or a book, you know what hooks you, Well,
Speaker 3: it's the story. It's like, yes, but what really hooks
Speaker 3: you in the story, And if you get to it,
Speaker 3: it's the character. It's the person, and there's an individual.
Speaker 3: And what was I think really comes out in the
Speaker 3: book is like, yeah, there these great stories of rock
Speaker 3: history and Mike's musical journey, but at the heart of
Speaker 3: it is this guy that you know. The reason I asked,
Speaker 3: jokingly asked Mike to write a book years ago, was
Speaker 3: I wanted to read it. It's like, I don't have
Speaker 3: to be involved. I just who are you? Tell me
Speaker 3: how this happened? And I'm to this day still flattered
Speaker 3: and honored that he, you know, agreed to trust me
Speaker 3: with his story to help him get it out. But
Speaker 3: when you get done with it, what you see is, Oh,
Speaker 3: here's this guy, as you say, who overcame, you know,
Speaker 3: his own challenges and struggles. And I think everybody will
Speaker 3: read that and go, yeah, why do we all make
Speaker 3: life so hard for ourselves? And it should be simpler?
Speaker 3: And it's somehow always inspiring and encouraging to read or
Speaker 3: find out that somebody you admire hasn't necessarily figured it
Speaker 3: out yet either. We're all still working at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously a lot of people write memoirs. But as
Speaker 1: someone who self admittedly is more of a band guy
Speaker 1: than a solo guy, did it feel weird in the
Speaker 1: end to have like your life distilled down to six
Speaker 1: to twelve hour read in three hundred and eighteen pages?
Speaker 1: It did?
Speaker 2: You know? I mean? But I kind of just really
Speaker 2: all the way along the way trusted Paul's I was
Speaker 2: waiting for him to kind of give me the signal
Speaker 2: one way or the other, like let's cut our losses
Speaker 2: and put this on the shelf. But he, you know,
Speaker 2: he kept encouraging me, goes, no, this is good, you know,
Speaker 2: And at times, you know, I'm all too sure. I
Speaker 2: would have never gotten past probably wouldn't got past the preface,
Speaker 2: you know. But just in terms of my capacity as
Speaker 2: a writer, I like to write, but I've only written
Speaker 2: like articles and op eds, and I enjoy that. But
Speaker 2: writing a long story and kind of putting the structure
Speaker 2: of that together in advance and a draft and all
Speaker 2: that that was the things that Paul really was so
Speaker 2: helpful with and his along the way. As long as
Speaker 2: he said to me, no, this is good. You know,
Speaker 2: let's keep going. You know, that's all the confidence I
Speaker 2: needed to keep going. You know, I was kind of
Speaker 2: waiting for him to give me the like, you know,
Speaker 2: a little time.
Speaker 3: But again, because there was nobody, there was no commitment.
Speaker 3: This was just you know, like two guys, let's just
Speaker 3: see where this goes. And we always had the freedom
Speaker 3: and I will always say, just write it and we'll
Speaker 3: cut it if you know, if you go, hey, that's
Speaker 3: too personal, just see what happens when you type it out,
Speaker 3: and then we'll cut it. And if you don't like
Speaker 3: what it says, we take it out. There's a real
Speaker 3: freedom in that there's nobody expecting anything or waiting for anything.
Speaker 3: And a lot of times, you know, went both ways.
Speaker 3: A lot of times Mike would say something, there's a
Speaker 3: really funny story, and but you look at it and
Speaker 3: you go, I don't know if that belongs in your book,
Speaker 3: though it's not about you. That that was a funny
Speaker 3: story that happened to your friend in the studio. Great,
Speaker 3: but now let's get back to your story. And then
Speaker 3: there are a lot of times he just sort of
Speaker 3: casually say something. I go go back what Ray Charles
Speaker 3: is in his bathrobe and he's yelling if you can
Speaker 3: I hear that?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 3: I'd like to hear that story.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the great things about the
Speaker 1: book too, is like it's so well structured because you know,
Speaker 1: like you understand very early in this book how important
Speaker 1: Racharles Michael McDonald.
Speaker 3: You know, three.
Speaker 1: Quarters through.
Speaker 2: Up he's yelling in.
Speaker 1: A bathrobe, screaming at you for money that you can't
Speaker 1: give to me. Can you tell that story?
Speaker 2: I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: It was one of the worst moments in my life,
Speaker 2: the thought that Ray was even had agreed to do
Speaker 2: this show. It was a show of which I was
Speaker 2: the honoree. The idea was we were going to raise
Speaker 2: money for NAM, which is a program that tries to
Speaker 2: seek to keep music programs in the public schools alive
Speaker 2: by donating instruments and texts and you know, things like
Speaker 2: that worthy cause it was a worthy, a worthy and
Speaker 2: so my initial thing with everybody was as far as
Speaker 2: any kind of fee for performing, because Yamaha was very
Speaker 2: generous with everybody, and you know, endorsed and sponsored all
Speaker 2: the people at some point, but nobody got paid. Everybody
Speaker 2: agreed that as long as the money is all going
Speaker 2: to charity, and we're all that's the favored nation's idea here,
Speaker 2: we're all good with.
Speaker 1: Everyone needs to respect.
Speaker 2: And apparently Ray had not gotten that memo, you know.
Speaker 2: So when he found out he wasn't getting paid, you
Speaker 2: know it, you know. And I get that because even
Speaker 2: by then, I knew what it was like to be
Speaker 2: in this business. And uh, you know, at the mercy
Speaker 2: of all the powers that be along the way, you know,
Speaker 2: most of the time you're not getting paid, you know.
Speaker 3: But so you like, you're like hours before the show
Speaker 3: and you get summoned to his trailer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I go in there. I'm thinking
Speaker 2: the guy, his road manager came to me, and his
Speaker 2: roadmasger was like out of a you know, a Lawn
Speaker 2: Chaney movie or something. He had the cane, you know,
Speaker 2: and he just looked like some kind of a mobster figure,
Speaker 2: you know, And he says, the boss wants to talk
Speaker 2: to you. I go, sure, And I couldn't tell if
Speaker 2: his tone was ominous or not, but I didn't, you know, Sure,
Speaker 2: I went to his trailer and Ray was in there.
Speaker 2: And he uh, kind of a typical race demeanor, was
Speaker 2: you know, he was. He was very nice and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, he was doing to do Hagar because he
Speaker 2: loved that song. And so he starts off. He goes,
Speaker 2: Michael Man, He goes, when did you write?
Speaker 1: He girl?
Speaker 2: I love that song, you know, I said. I said, well, Ray,
Speaker 2: I didn't write Hey girl. I said, it's Carol King
Speaker 2: and Cherry Goffin. And he kind of stopped rocking for
Speaker 2: a minute, and I could tell I was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I had just gone down a few pegs in his radar,
Speaker 2: so you know, I said, but yeah, it's a great song,
Speaker 2: isn't it. He goes, yeah, Well, no, no matter. He goes, uh, Man,
Speaker 2: I just got to talk to you. He goes, listen,
Speaker 2: you got to give me something, you know, And I'm right,
Speaker 2: and I kind of knew where he was going, but
Speaker 2: I thought, well, surely, you know, I can explain my
Speaker 2: way out of this, you know, I said, well, Ray,
Speaker 2: I saw you know, at first, I tried to evade
Speaker 2: the whole thing, like what kind of get you? You
Speaker 2: got everything you need here in the dressing room? Is
Speaker 2: this dressing room? Okay? He's like, no, man, he goes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to give me something. He goes, I said, well, ray, I,
Speaker 2: you know we're talking about money. I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I would pay you out of my own pocket. I'd
Speaker 2: be happy to, I said. My only problem is that
Speaker 2: I've kind of put it to everyone, gave everyone my
Speaker 2: word that all the moneys from this thing we're going
Speaker 2: to go to this charity. And if I paid anyone,
Speaker 2: even if I no matter how willing I am to
Speaker 2: do that, I would be breaking my word to everybody else,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, So I'm kind of in a
Speaker 2: weird spot, at which point he kind of his picture
Speaker 2: of his voice went up just a little bit and he,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of let me know and unknown certain
Speaker 2: terms by by way of saying, you know, I'm an
Speaker 2: old man. God damn it. You know, I don't you know,
Speaker 2: I don't play this shit.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a line in the book when
Speaker 3: you said to you, you know, I've made a solemn oath.
Speaker 3: He goes, I don't give a fuck about you.
Speaker 2: I don't give about your solemn oath.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta give me something like oh no.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, my life's passing in front
Speaker 2: of me. And before I was. I'm walking into the trailer,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, well, if all those guys I played
Speaker 2: with Ferguson could see me now going into meet call
Speaker 2: for Ray Charles now at this point cut to him
Speaker 2: like yelling at me, and Me's sitting there trying to
Speaker 2: figure out am I gonna How am I going to
Speaker 2: get out of this conversation gracefully thinking oh boy, if
Speaker 2: my friends and Ferguson could see me now Ray Charles
Speaker 2: chewing my ass out, you know.
Speaker 3: But you know, there was these little sort of like
Speaker 3: sub themes that only emerged after we got all these
Speaker 3: stories together. And like Mike has this you know, really
Speaker 3: wonderful relationship and affection for his dad, and through the
Speaker 3: book the story is about not wanting to disappoint his dad.
Speaker 3: And then we get to Mike had a story with
Speaker 3: Quincy Jones where it kind of didn't go smoothly, and
Speaker 3: Charles and like and suddenly respected you know, yeah, and
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, this all ties together. Like when
Speaker 3: you have this guy in your life that you revere,
Speaker 3: your last thing you want to do is disappoint them.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I can see Mike's soul through this book.
Speaker 2: Now, Well, the threat for me was almost every situation
Speaker 2: of responsibility, especially if it dealt with people that I
Speaker 2: you know, was like with in case of Ray and Quincy.
Speaker 2: I was about to work with these guys who I'd
Speaker 2: never dreamed a million years would ever work with me
Speaker 2: or for any reason, you know. And my dad, I
Speaker 2: was always trying to get his respect, you know, and
Speaker 2: I when I suspected all along it if he could
Speaker 2: trade me in for another son, he probably would, you
Speaker 2: know that, you know I mean, but so that theme,
Speaker 2: you know, when I became a patrol boy, you know,
Speaker 2: whenever I got one of those perks as a kid,
Speaker 2: even I would blow it within twenty four hours. I
Speaker 2: got a paper route once and I wound up selling
Speaker 2: everybody yesterday's paper, I believe, or.
Speaker 3: I thought a while that was there.
Speaker 2: I thought this is going to be easy. It's only
Speaker 2: like six or seven papers there. I didn't see the
Speaker 2: gigantic cliole of papers that were tied in you know,
Speaker 2: wire over across the street waiting for me to go
Speaker 2: over and get them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So I got fired from that job. I caused the
Speaker 2: three our pile up on my first day as a
Speaker 2: patrol boy. That was always the running theme in my
Speaker 2: life was like give Mike the job and watch him
Speaker 2: just crash and burn, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well then for every one of those stories, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna put my whirltzer my Pinto, go drive
Speaker 1: down try out for Steely Dan, a group I really love,
Speaker 1: and it's like tryout turns into the practice.
Speaker 2: Into had come off a long string of auditions I
Speaker 2: failed when I went to that one, you know, and
Speaker 2: and of all the ones I got for some reason, Uh.
Speaker 1: What with auditions you got before that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Just regular you know bands around town that were like,
Speaker 2: we had pretty good gigs, like playing in these what
Speaker 2: were discos back then, before DJs and before all that
Speaker 2: were typically bands who did a lot of funk dance music,
Speaker 2: you know, and people like to dance too, so that
Speaker 2: was what you thought of as a discothech back then.
Speaker 1: There was a playing like.
Speaker 2: Sol Yeah, you know, you go into another band had
Speaker 2: all those tunes and tower Power, you know, the War,
Speaker 2: you know, all all the music that people just you know,
Speaker 2: like to get up and dance to. They weren't there
Speaker 2: to just mingle. They like to dance, you know, And.
Speaker 1: Were those your kind of bands like.
Speaker 2: Well, I had a certain part. We always liked enjoyed
Speaker 2: doing that and growing up, yeah, that's what we were,
Speaker 2: you know, in Saint Louis. We came from that era
Speaker 2: where you know, people just really enjoyed dancing on the weekends,
Speaker 2: and we were the band they could play the stuff
Speaker 2: that they like to dance.
Speaker 1: To, but like to like ev be someone who eventually
Speaker 1: goes and joins seely Dan, which is like a really
Speaker 1: high brow form of music, an incredible form of music.
Speaker 1: You know. I just imagine like playing War, who I
Speaker 1: love by the way, and it's a large band, but
Speaker 1: like that might can imagine they might be beneath like Donald.
Speaker 2: Oh no, they love War too, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know Donald loves War. Donald probably has a more
Speaker 2: eclectic taste of music than even I do. You know,
Speaker 2: he's you know, I was surprised he was so grateful dead.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have figured him for that at all. I
Speaker 2: didn't know he was oh yeah yeah. And back then,
Speaker 2: you know, I did a lot of gigs, like kind
Speaker 2: of coffee house type gigs with singer songwriters, like I
Speaker 2: played the Smokehouse and Burbank there, you know, and the
Speaker 2: steel drum player. It was like any place that they
Speaker 2: would actually pay us to show up, we would do
Speaker 2: that gig, you know. So but these club gigs were
Speaker 2: a little special because you got paid a little more
Speaker 2: and they were more steady. If you were a good
Speaker 2: house band at a club like that, like the rain
Speaker 2: Tree and Torrents and places like that, you could maybe
Speaker 2: work there for a year, you know, and you would
Speaker 2: have to worry about how you're going to pay your
Speaker 2: phone bill for a little while, you know. But a
Speaker 2: lot of those gigs, I would study and advance the songs.
Speaker 2: I thought they'd get their song list and I'd show
Speaker 2: up and I was like, thanks, but you know, no thanks,
Speaker 2: you know almost got it. If you played a little
Speaker 2: more organ or if you you know'd sing a little
Speaker 2: higher or whatever it was. I would seemingly never get
Speaker 2: the gig. So to walk into this thing and literally
Speaker 2: I didn't know most of their songs. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I knew the ones I liked that I heard on
Speaker 2: the radio, but so I was literally learning the songs
Speaker 2: on the spot. Donald was teaching them to me.
Speaker 3: And they're not easy songs.
Speaker 2: No, I mean they're not. There's a lot of vocal parts.
Speaker 2: But I was just so desperate to get this gig
Speaker 2: because I loved the band so much. I was I
Speaker 2: think I went into some other mental state that I
Speaker 2: don't normally visit, you know, where I actually my brain
Speaker 2: works at a higher efficiency. And I learned the songs.
Speaker 2: And but three or four hours later, I'm thinking, if
Speaker 2: I got this gig, I don't know, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: no one's told me to thanks, but no thanks yet,
Speaker 2: you know. And so they I say, say, well, come
Speaker 2: back next day, we'll learn some more stuff. And I
Speaker 2: started to kind of assume that I got the gig,
Speaker 2: and it just it turns out I did. And so
Speaker 2: that first audition turned into a rehearsal, which turned into
Speaker 2: the following week of rehearsal or so, and then we
Speaker 2: left for points beyond in the United States and played
Speaker 2: all around the States.
Speaker 1: That's about as incredible a gig as you can have
Speaker 1: expected to have gotten.
Speaker 2: It was the gig I would It was a dream gig,
Speaker 2: you know. And uh and true to form, Timothy Schmidt
Speaker 2: and I talked about this because we were both kind
Speaker 2: of in that those guys around town who were hoping
Speaker 2: for that gig, a gig like the Eagles or Steee Dan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: come along, daydreams and stuff, you know, and he goes,
Speaker 2: you know, in a minute, you get it, he goes,
Speaker 2: what happens? The band breaks up? You know. A week later.
Speaker 1: After quick Break, we're back with more from Michael McDonald
Speaker 1: and Paul Reiser. We're back with Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser.
Speaker 1: That tour with Steely Dan, I was looking it up.
Speaker 1: You got to play on bills with some other interesting groups,
Speaker 1: and I was just curious how much you remember, like Montrose,
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar's group, the Beach Boys, the Eagles might have
Speaker 1: been on a gig, a bill on a gig.
Speaker 2: We did one with the Eagle. I think we did
Speaker 2: the thing up in San Francisco on the day on
Speaker 2: the Green. The Eagles, I think he played the day
Speaker 2: before us. We were the headliner the next night.
Speaker 1: So you get two touring stints with Steely Dan, and
Speaker 1: then afterwards you come back to California and the dissolved
Speaker 1: the band. You kind of have like one last run
Speaker 1: in with Walter before that kind of era is over,
Speaker 1: which is he almost gets arrested.
Speaker 2: Looking we both almost got arrested, but we had a
Speaker 2: mutual friend and we were gonna. You know, we both
Speaker 2: like to smoke pot and we like to do the
Speaker 2: occasional blow. But you know, we weren't. You needed one
Speaker 2: of us where two people could really afford a good
Speaker 2: coke hab it, you know. So we came up with
Speaker 2: the idea that we could get a little bit from
Speaker 2: this friend of ours we knew was a dealer, and
Speaker 2: it was so good that we could cut it and
Speaker 2: it would still be better than most stuff that our
Speaker 2: friends might run into on the street. We could just
Speaker 2: sell it to our close friends and.
Speaker 3: Shows you a business model.
Speaker 2: It was our business model, and then we would have
Speaker 2: some leftover to get us through the week. Well, the
Speaker 2: entire amount didn't get us through the night even you know,
Speaker 2: we of course snorted most of it before we ever
Speaker 2: got around to cutting it, and our conversations just got
Speaker 2: sillier and sillier, and that wound up in the LA Police.
Speaker 2: Coming back to this apartment, I was, I was only
Speaker 2: watching this apartment for a friend of mine, and she
Speaker 2: happened to have scales and everything. I thought, well, this
Speaker 2: is a perfect setting for cutting this cocaine.
Speaker 1: And you know makeshift office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, And well, anyway, the whole thing went
Speaker 2: south really quickly and wound up that next morning somewhere
Speaker 2: just before dawn with what seemed like the entire La
Speaker 2: Police County police force, you know, knocking at my door
Speaker 2: with Walter in tow and he had apparently been knocking
Speaker 2: on some windows across the alley because he forgot which
Speaker 2: apartment I lived in, and.
Speaker 3: He was out screaming at for in the morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah Coke, Mike, are you in there? You know? So anyway,
Speaker 2: but re miraculously we did not go to jail.
Speaker 1: And then and then it's like the night ends as
Speaker 1: it's like mundane it's can be. Was you go into
Speaker 1: bed and he's coked out, drinking margarina, that's playing electric
Speaker 1: bass on your acoustic bass on your Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, It's like.
Speaker 1: What kind of life is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, it was a typical musician's life at that
Speaker 2: point in time. You know, you know, it seemed like
Speaker 2: all we really thought about back in those days was
Speaker 2: it wasn't about money or managing any money or or
Speaker 2: even you know, making money necessarily. It was just the
Speaker 2: next gig was all we really ever thought about. What
Speaker 2: when's the next gig and what we got to do
Speaker 2: to get there?
Speaker 3: And you know, and and that's sort of a nice
Speaker 3: through line through the whole story from Mike being eight
Speaker 3: years old till today that it's the music. It's not
Speaker 3: you know, it's not any the fancy of couci mas.
Speaker 3: It's not the fame. It's when do I get to
Speaker 3: play who do I get to play with? And what? Gee,
Speaker 3: I had a moment where a song came to me
Speaker 3: or I heard something and it moved me. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's so many moments in the beginning of your career
Speaker 3: which are in the book of you going you know
Speaker 3: it is maybe not what I was cut out for,
Speaker 3: or like, gee, this is not as fun as I
Speaker 3: thought it would be, and maybe I'm gonna There was
Speaker 3: even story, you know, came out to La for his
Speaker 3: big break at eighteen and it blows up and I
Speaker 3: was but you know, back home with the tail between
Speaker 3: his legs, I'm Saint Louis. Yeah, I guess that didn't happen.
Speaker 3: And the story could have ended there, but for this
Speaker 3: phone call and that phone call and suddenly, all right,
Speaker 3: take two, you get another shot at And that's sort
Speaker 3: of the theme. If there's a theme, it's like what
Speaker 3: Mike was saying before like these little moments that are
Speaker 3: accidental turn out to be pivotal and there but for
Speaker 3: the grace of God or anything else, those moments wouldn't happened.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't have had this career and this music that
Speaker 3: we've gotten to enjoy. So you know, I feel successful
Speaker 3: in that what we set out to do. What I
Speaker 3: wanted to know as a selfish fan, was like, I
Speaker 3: want to understand Mike McDonald's life because it doesn't make
Speaker 3: sense to me. Now I do. Now I get it,
Speaker 3: and you read the story and go, okay, So what
Speaker 3: happened because of these boneheaded things that have no reason
Speaker 3: to have ever happened? He got a call to go
Speaker 3: audition for Steely Dan. Why that's how it happened. He
Speaker 3: understands it. Yeah, well, to see it all in one place,
Speaker 3: like okay, And by the way, you know, as much
Speaker 3: as it's hard to get a track of, maybe you
Speaker 3: understand Michael McDonald's arc, Steely Dan itself is hard to grasp.
Speaker 3: Doobie Brothers broke up and reformed seventeen times? So like,
Speaker 3: oh okay, no wonder, I can't keep track. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of moving pieces here, so it helped to understand that.
Speaker 2: And again, I think one of the themes that we
Speaker 2: started to emerge for both of us in the writing
Speaker 2: of it was this is really what happens to everybody.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We all think that we were going to a distinct
Speaker 2: place with our lives, and we make a plan and
Speaker 2: typically never you know, best laid plans, you know, yea,
Speaker 2: and the journey's never over. I mean, my kids are
Speaker 2: you know, they're in their thirties, and once in a
Speaker 2: while they'll confide in me about you know, well, you
Speaker 2: knew what you wanted to do when you were you know,
Speaker 2: half my age, or I just don't know what I
Speaker 2: want to do yet? What what's what do next?
Speaker 3: Or whatever?
Speaker 2: And all those questions that I can unabashedly reassure them
Speaker 2: that you'll be asking yourself those questions when you're seventy five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the book, you never seemingly know where you're
Speaker 1: going next.
Speaker 2: No, And and it's almost kind of scary to be
Speaker 2: my age now and still not know where I'm going.
Speaker 2: You know, I look at my life ahead and I
Speaker 2: just well, should I be you know, preparing for this?
Speaker 2: Should I be preparing for that? Should I be just
Speaker 2: forging ahead with my head down and keep swinging.
Speaker 1: Are there things musically that you feel like I need
Speaker 1: to check this.
Speaker 2: Off all over the place? Yeah, all over the map.
Speaker 2: I mean, what are some of those things? Well, one
Speaker 2: of them was just playing organ. I always loved a
Speaker 2: good B three player, and I always you know, and
Speaker 2: that was always my waterloo. I just thought, you know,
Speaker 2: every time I got near a B three, I would
Speaker 2: play it once in a while, you know, on a
Speaker 2: session or something. But I never felt like I knew
Speaker 2: what I was doing, and I always felt like it
Speaker 2: was I was convinced it was an instrument that unless
Speaker 2: somebody put you at it when you were five and
Speaker 2: you couldn't even reach the pedals, you had no business
Speaker 2: playing it because it's a lifetime. It's like accordion. If
Speaker 2: you didn't start playing that when you're a kid's fat
Speaker 2: chance you're going to learn it now, you know. But
Speaker 2: lo and behold later in life, when I went back
Speaker 2: with the Doobies, all of a sudden, I saw the
Speaker 2: opportunity to you know, and when I played with them before,
Speaker 2: I never played organ, you know, I only played keyboards.
Speaker 2: And since you know, the first time, Yeah, so this
Speaker 2: is the first time I've actually played organ with them,
Speaker 2: and I always wanted to on certain songs, but I
Speaker 2: just never trusted myself to be put on stage with
Speaker 2: an organ.
Speaker 3: How different is it? How different is it to play?
Speaker 2: If it's key, It's a different feeling because you don't
Speaker 2: have a sustained pedal, you know, it's one of the things,
Speaker 2: you know, you learn to kind of play more fluidly
Speaker 2: without any kind of sustained pill.
Speaker 1: You're a very rhythmic player, though, so I'd imagine it
Speaker 1: would really suit you.
Speaker 2: In some ways. Yeah, I kind of came to understand
Speaker 2: what I could and couldn't do with organ, you know.
Speaker 2: And every time I got a little inkling of what
Speaker 2: I could maybe make use of this, you know, I
Speaker 2: could bring something to this song on organ, it would
Speaker 2: intrigued me all the more. And so by the time
Speaker 2: the fiftieth anniversary came around, I was convinced that this
Speaker 2: was my shot to you know, get up play a
Speaker 2: little organ, you know. So I do, and I enjoy
Speaker 2: the hell out of it. I really, I've always loved
Speaker 2: the instrument, but it's it's a real learning curve for me,
Speaker 2: and I'm and I find that seventy two, what if
Speaker 2: I got to lose. I'm enjoying that where that might
Speaker 2: have terrified me in my thirties, like the imposter syndrome,
Speaker 2: Like somebody's going to know how little I know about this,
Speaker 2: you know, but I kind of don't care about that now.
Speaker 2: I just want to dive in to it. And some
Speaker 2: of the guys I know who I've always admired them
Speaker 2: for their acumen with B three have been more than
Speaker 2: kind to show me some stuff and kind of help me.
Speaker 3: You know who the guys that are that you look
Speaker 3: up to in that world great organ players.
Speaker 2: Well, Billy Payne's a great organists, Billy Preston was a
Speaker 2: great organist. Pat Coyle who I've played with for years
Speaker 2: as a wonderful B three player. Robbie Robinson who plays
Speaker 2: with Frankie Valley and played over the years with a
Speaker 2: lot of different acts, kind of known for being good
Speaker 2: organ guys, you know, and they've all stepped up to
Speaker 2: kind of help me with my you know, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: One friend of mine, a new friend of mine, Abdul
Speaker 2: Royal is a great organist. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: the guys that grew up in church, Mark Harris, who
Speaker 2: played on a lot of songs and records with me,
Speaker 2: and you know, they were guys that typically grew up
Speaker 2: in church and learned to play organ in church. And
Speaker 2: it's almost super natural what some of these guys can
Speaker 2: do and how you know easy it is for them
Speaker 2: to just manipulate the organ while they're playing something. It
Speaker 2: would be hard enough for me to just play what
Speaker 2: they're playing, much less be thinking about what drawbars I'm
Speaker 2: going to pull out, right, you know, when I'm going
Speaker 2: to put this button on and that, you know, and
Speaker 2: then they play with their feet too, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's a that's an amazing all of it has
Speaker 2: to become instinctual. And I think your best chance at
Speaker 2: that is starting when you're about four, you know.
Speaker 1: Right right when your feet can't touch the right Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a bit about you get to the
Speaker 1: doobies eventually, and this puts you in the ecosystem of
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Records, which was a really unique ecosystem in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties into the early nineties. It was
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: What I loved about Warners were the people involved, you know,
Speaker 2: Lenny Warnicker, Russ Titleman, Ted Templeman, Moe Austin. Well, everybody
Speaker 2: was creative. The promotion guys were creative. They they seem
Speaker 2: to know how to market this kind of music that
Speaker 2: wasn't that typically obviously commercial music. It was artists like
Speaker 2: Bonnie Raid, Little Feet. They brought artists to the forefront
Speaker 2: like Ricky Lee, Jones, Van Halen, you know, the DeBie Brothers,
Speaker 2: even you know, although we might have been one of them,
Speaker 2: their more you know, obviously kind of commercial acts.
Speaker 1: You know, all these they had a lot of acts
Speaker 1: that were they didn't sell a lot of records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't quite care about it, and.
Speaker 2: They would keep those artists on their roster. They you know,
Speaker 2: you know, some of those artists never really gained that
Speaker 2: incredible commercial success, but they flourished under the umbrella an
Speaker 2: artistic kind of nurturing. That Warners and those people in
Speaker 2: the A and R department who are all great producers themselves,
Speaker 2: you know, they these guys weren't just A and R guys.
Speaker 2: They their walls were filled with some of my favorite
Speaker 2: albums of gold record some platinum records.
Speaker 1: A lot of records you made with Ted Templeman.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Ted was he was kind of a Svengali
Speaker 2: in the studio really, and we knew we were really lucky,
Speaker 2: especially us, because we were kind of a gangly bunch
Speaker 2: of many different and diverse influences. And it was like
Speaker 2: hurting cats artistically, and Ted did a great job of that,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think we all appreciated his ability
Speaker 2: to do that. It was just a really wonderful place
Speaker 2: to be in this business of music if you were
Speaker 2: a recording artists at that time, you know, And I
Speaker 2: felt like I was in an elite group, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean where else would an artist like Randy Newman flourish,
Speaker 2: you know, because everybody knew him as a songwriter and
Speaker 2: everybody wanted to do his songs, you know. But they
Speaker 2: were the ones who always encouraged him to make his
Speaker 2: own solo records. And with all the success that Bonnie
Speaker 2: had later, it was really after her tenure at Warner Bros.
Speaker 2: But every bit because of the nurse element and the
Speaker 2: love of her artistry that they had for her. I
Speaker 2: think she would tell you that too.
Speaker 1: When she had her success ultimately with with Don was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I think the one of the best things
Speaker 2: that about Bonnie's story that I love is when she
Speaker 2: started writing, you know, because I think she even she
Speaker 2: might have been surprised at what a great writer she is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's written some great songs, you know, and some
Speaker 2: of my favorite songs. You know, Nika Time is such
Speaker 2: such a great tune. It's it's almost uncandy that she
Speaker 2: didn't do that earlier in her career.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The artists on Warner where you mentioned some of them,
Speaker 1: there's also Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood.
Speaker 2: Mac Carly Simon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, James Taylor, did you guys feel like a family
Speaker 1: where you did? You know a lot of the other artists, And.
Speaker 2: Well, if I got to meet them at all, it
Speaker 2: was usually in the halls of Warner Brothers or at
Speaker 2: the studio there where we all recorded Amigo Studios. But
Speaker 2: I got to meet James there, and I got to
Speaker 2: meet car McCarley and I wrote a song later it
Speaker 2: was a really significant song in my career. And we
Speaker 2: met when she just dropped by one of our sessions
Speaker 2: because Ted was scheduled to produce an album on her
Speaker 2: and she came by to say hi to him and
Speaker 2: we were recording Keeps You Running. So she liked the song,
Speaker 2: and she decided to record the song on her next record,
Speaker 2: so we played on the track for her and that
Speaker 2: was a thrill, you know, because she was already, you know,
Speaker 2: a huge artist. And James it was like my all
Speaker 2: time fave, you know, I just loved everything he did.
Speaker 2: And Grilla the Gorilla Record was like for me, the
Speaker 2: Holy Grail, you know, I just love that record so much.
Speaker 1: And Carly, eventually you got to co write one of
Speaker 1: your huge hits with her, right like, yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Co wrote you Belong to Me and never spoke a
Speaker 2: word to each other during the whole writing of the song.
Speaker 2: We had a track on it, and I gave the
Speaker 2: cassette of my playing the song at home to Teddy
Speaker 2: and I said, that's the song, and you know, I
Speaker 2: just all I have is that one line, you Belong
Speaker 2: to Me. I don't even know what it means, you know,
Speaker 2: but it's just a playsetter, really, you know, that's kind
Speaker 2: of where the chorus should go. And ted without missing
Speaker 2: a beach, said, you know, you should let Carly Simon
Speaker 2: write the lyric to this, and which just sounded so
Speaker 2: perfectly right to me. I just said, your lips to
Speaker 2: God's ears. Sure, you know, and he sent it off
Speaker 2: to her and she sent this beautifully handwritten lyric back,
Speaker 2: and I wish I still had that handwritten lyric somewhere.
Speaker 2: I keep praying someday I'll open a book and it'll
Speaker 2: fall out.
Speaker 3: But there's one of those happy accidents again, like if
Speaker 3: she had not dropped by the studio that day, so
Speaker 3: that would have happened. Yeah, so there's one of the
Speaker 3: biggest hits in your library.
Speaker 1: After one last quick break, we're back with the rest
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Paul Reiser and Michael McDonald. We're
Speaker 1: back with the rest of my conversation with Paul Riser
Speaker 1: and Michael McDonald. Another happy accident you document well in
Speaker 1: the book, Paul, is what a fool believes when Kenny
Speaker 1: is coming over to your house to do a writing session.
Speaker 2: That's one of Paul's favorite stories.
Speaker 1: Tell that story.
Speaker 3: Oh, there was nothing Mike. You know, Mike is very
Speaker 3: forthcoming about how sometimes have an idea and I'll just
Speaker 3: rattle around for months and years. And he had that
Speaker 3: little so because somebody who was it in the in
Speaker 3: the Doobies that said Kenny once was a cornelius.
Speaker 2: I guess Kenny expressed some interest in writing with me,
Speaker 2: and I asked not Cornelis was Tyrone reporter? And asked
Speaker 2: Tyrone if you would give him me his number? And
Speaker 2: Tyrone passed on the number to me. You know, I
Speaker 2: was so excited, you know, maybe too excited, you know,
Speaker 2: but I called it and we made an appointment to write,
Speaker 2: and Kenny was going to come down for Santa Barbara
Speaker 2: to write with me. And I lived alone at the time.
Speaker 2: In my house was filthy, bachelor filthy, you know, the
Speaker 2: ashtrays full of cigarettes on the piano and stuff, and
Speaker 2: empty beer bottles everywhere and uh cigarettes floating in him
Speaker 2: and god knows who was there. And my sister came
Speaker 2: over mostly to meet Kenny Loggins, but she cleaned my
Speaker 2: house up, you know, frantically cleaning my house before he
Speaker 2: got there. So I met the piano and like sitting
Speaker 2: over there and kind of messing around with some little
Speaker 2: bits and pieces of songs I had, trying to think, well,
Speaker 2: what do I have that I could play for him?
Speaker 2: Maybe something we could be a start for us, you know,
Speaker 2: looking through notebooks and things I might have written down,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: But I love that you bounced it off your sister
Speaker 3: and go, I don't know, what do you think it
Speaker 3: is that? And she goes kind of cringees. I go, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't think I would play that. Yeah, okay, thank
Speaker 3: you sister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she kind of I think she thought maybe that
Speaker 2: was a little too circusy or something, you know.
Speaker 3: But then the unbelievably good timing of Kenny opens the.
Speaker 2: Door and the doorbell rang at the moment I was
Speaker 2: playing it for her, and she kind of went, I
Speaker 2: don't know about that one. The doorbell rings, you know,
Speaker 2: And I go to the door and there's Kenny and
Speaker 2: he's got his guitar and a bag with note pads
Speaker 2: and you know, he's kind of struggling with all this
Speaker 2: stuff and tape player in his hand. I said, here, game,
Speaker 2: let me let me take your guitar. Said man, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad you could come down. He goes, Before we say
Speaker 2: anything else, he goes, you were just playing something on
Speaker 2: the piano. He goes, is that something new? And I said, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: The fact I was playing it for my sister just
Speaker 2: hates it. Yeah, because I was thinking about playing it
Speaker 2: for you, you know, because I want to work on
Speaker 2: that first.
Speaker 3: And apparently from the other side of the door. Just
Speaker 3: hearing that had already come up with she had a
Speaker 3: place in his life was like insane, that's yeah, the
Speaker 3: bridge before I answered the door, you.
Speaker 1: Know, insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How long did it take for that song to come
Speaker 1: together between the two, Well.
Speaker 2: We finished most of it that day. The chorus we
Speaker 2: wrote the next day on the phone. Right, We kind
Speaker 2: of left that day going we got something good here,
Speaker 2: but it really needs that chorus, you know, a chorus
Speaker 2: that really pays off, And we couldn't, for the life
Speaker 2: of us figure out what that was yet. You know,
Speaker 2: we kind of knew where the lyric was going intentionally,
Speaker 2: you know, like two people looking back on a moment
Speaker 2: with two completely different views on what exactly happened, and
Speaker 2: the guy thinking this was this great missed opportunity for
Speaker 2: the love of his life and only assuming that she
Speaker 2: felt the same way. But obviously she did not, you know,
Speaker 2: so he's looking to renew this flame, and she's just
Speaker 2: looking to have dinner with an old friend, you know.
Speaker 2: But we just really couldn't figure out how that would
Speaker 2: culminate into a chorus. But the next day, I don't
Speaker 2: know which one or the other of us thought, Well,
Speaker 2: you know what a fool believes? You know. So I
Speaker 2: was on the piano and we were on the phone.
Speaker 2: Back then you could actually play the piano over the
Speaker 2: phone and be coherent. You know. Nowadays with the iPhones
Speaker 2: you can't do that. But so we came up with
Speaker 2: the chorus chords and the melody.
Speaker 1: And playing back and forth over the phone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just kind of trading, trading ideas over the phone
Speaker 2: until we came up with the chorus.
Speaker 3: And that was when you said, you know, what a
Speaker 3: full Believes might be a good name for a book.
Speaker 3: That's how prescient he was. Not yet, but in forty years,
Speaker 3: this is going to be a book.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two of you with titles mad about you
Speaker 1: what a full Believe? I mean, you guys are incredible
Speaker 1: at the titles, And there's a point in the book
Speaker 1: and wonner as great as they were, there's a point
Speaker 1: where you put out living on a fault Line and
Speaker 1: it's kind of stretching their imagination of what you guys are, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, that record missed my consciousness completely. It's
Speaker 1: a really good album.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and I said, yeah, it wasn't met
Speaker 2: with a lot of enthusiasm and owners or you know,
Speaker 2: by the public or by radio. Really it was kind
Speaker 2: of went under the radar, and I think we were
Speaker 2: kind of going into areas that were, you know, just.
Speaker 1: Not that commercial really like you're made that way.
Speaker 2: Well, you belonged to Me was on that there's a Light.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, this is some incredible song, but you're
Speaker 1: kind of stretching them and then minute by minute you
Speaker 1: guys write and record that. And it's really the R
Speaker 1: and B promotions team at Warner Brothers that here's something
Speaker 1: and decides we're going to promote this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the head of the R and B promotions
Speaker 2: at the time, which was a whole different ballgame. This
Speaker 2: was like just pre urban kind of music before rap
Speaker 2: came out and everything. The whole complexion of how to
Speaker 2: market R and B music and where you know, what
Speaker 2: that market even was, you know, had changed dramatically and
Speaker 2: obviously for the better. Hip hop is huge. You know,
Speaker 2: back then the R and B department warners once in
Speaker 2: a while caught up. They had some great R and
Speaker 2: B artists, Patty Austin and James Ingram, so they had
Speaker 2: huge success print that Prince. Yeah, but it was a
Speaker 2: changing time, and Ernie Singleton was the head of promotion
Speaker 2: back then, and he was one of those guys that
Speaker 2: kind of understood radio, you know, especially in the black community,
Speaker 2: which was largely radio stations were owned and operated by
Speaker 2: the program director, you know, you know they were they
Speaker 2: were typically black. Yeah, smaller black owned businesses, and the
Speaker 2: guy who owned the radio station was typically the head
Speaker 2: jock and had the airtime. And so if you walked
Speaker 2: in there with an album and he liked it, he'd
Speaker 2: sit you down and play the whole record, you know,
Speaker 2: and that just doesn't happen anymore. You know that those
Speaker 2: days are gone, you know.
Speaker 1: Reading that, though it was interesting, it kind of confirmed something,
Speaker 1: which is that like R and B is such a
Speaker 1: kind of a bullshit title to begin with, but so
Speaker 1: are titles in general. Because I was thinking about it,
Speaker 1: and it's like the AOAR format album oriented rock or
Speaker 1: soft rock or or now yacht rock. It's like, really
Speaker 1: what that was was like it was R and B. Really,
Speaker 1: you guys are playing yeah, but you know, because you
Speaker 1: guys are white guys or your white Tyran's black, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's like, okay, well, we can't.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, I would much rather be called
Speaker 2: yacht rock than adult contemporary.
Speaker 1: But why can't like you're a damn R and B singer? Well,
Speaker 1: you know right?
Speaker 2: I always felt that way. I remember when I had
Speaker 2: my own label for a while, very short while, with
Speaker 2: a couple of friends, and we hired independent promotion guys,
Speaker 2: and we had this one guy. He was kind of
Speaker 2: a classic character, really is an independent promotion guy, just
Speaker 2: you know, you know, I would say to look, why
Speaker 2: don't we go to all the formats with this, Oh no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. No you're not you're not rock. Okay,
Speaker 2: let me just tell you that, right, you know, well,
Speaker 2: you know, but the only real success we had were
Speaker 2: on formats that no one would have ever except the
Speaker 2: one guy in that department, like Erny Singleton, who said
Speaker 2: to me at some point, he goes, you know, I've
Speaker 2: always dug the band. They just would never give us
Speaker 2: the ball. They wouldn't you know. We were the last
Speaker 2: guys they would say, Hey, go out and promote the
Speaker 2: next Doobie Brothers album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a live bit in a fault line I feel
Speaker 1: like would have done really well in R and B. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if there's stuff on there sounds like earth Wind and
Speaker 1: five we had leading.
Speaker 2: Into those guys. They would have probably brought it to
Speaker 2: gotten some radio play that we never really got with it.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's just hindsight twenty twenty, you know,
Speaker 2: and typically the world needs to categorize everything, just like
Speaker 2: the major labels always needed to tell people what they
Speaker 2: want to hear, you know. Yeah, and that was always
Speaker 2: the thing that was like it was like shooting themselves
Speaker 2: in the foot, you know, but it was in an
Speaker 2: effort to control the market that they wanted to grow.
Speaker 2: Like when the major labels before rock and roll started
Speaker 2: to kind of make us noise, it was the Sinatras
Speaker 2: and you know, and rightfully so the great singers and
Speaker 2: artists the time. The trios were big back then, that
Speaker 2: Cold Trio and a lot of those East Coast trios
Speaker 2: that were fairly popular, you know, but they were the
Speaker 2: ones that were making anything that sounded like pop records.
Speaker 2: The Mills Brothers and you know, nobody else was making
Speaker 2: records for the average guy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was either classical records or you know, but the
Speaker 2: big labels didn't want it to grow beyond that because
Speaker 2: they knew they had these guys signed, and we're just
Speaker 2: going to keep selling these guys records. So all these
Speaker 2: little independent labels started popping up because they had the
Speaker 2: Fontella Basses and Chuck Berry's and the Little Richards, and
Speaker 2: you know, they had these crazy phenomenal acts that they
Speaker 2: were catching on like wildfire, and they knew that the
Speaker 2: major labels weren't interested, you know, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the major labels start going, whoa, wait a minute, we're
Speaker 2: missing out on this, so they would buy up all
Speaker 2: the little indies. It's always been that kind of big
Speaker 2: the whale comes along and eats everybody, and then it
Speaker 2: starts to, you know, just kind of fester until some
Speaker 2: other little airwave pops up, like FM radio or you know,
Speaker 2: things like that. Rap came about the same way urban
Speaker 2: music as we know it today started at street level,
Speaker 2: you know, because there wasn't any labels that we're going
Speaker 2: to go out and sign these guys. You know, they
Speaker 2: made their own records and they were having success selling
Speaker 2: those records and getting an airtime with those records. And
Speaker 2: so the major labels have always had to learn that
Speaker 2: lesson over and over again. You can't really just dictate
Speaker 2: what people want to hear you. You have to have
Speaker 2: your ear to the ground so that you even know
Speaker 2: what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know which, right while we're talking about hip hop,
Speaker 1: I gotta thank you for the great war and g
Speaker 1: regulate you you're sampled by Warren g Long Beach legend.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, he is.
Speaker 1: I got to thank you for Regulate.
Speaker 2: That's that's the version of my kids always liked. They
Speaker 2: didn't like my version.
Speaker 1: I mean, Regulate. Did you play it for me?
Speaker 2: I didn't have to. They are? They knew about it
Speaker 2: before I did. But yeah, you know they they love
Speaker 2: that version of it. And it's learning curve. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're a musician, you never stop learning what's going
Speaker 2: on around you, and you're never stop marveling at how
Speaker 2: You're never listening enough. It's kind of like being grateful.
Speaker 2: You know. You can say I'm grateful, but if you're
Speaker 2: really learning anything about your own life, you realize I'm
Speaker 2: not grateful enough.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, that's a great, great way of thinking about that.
Speaker 3: Why do you save that for the book? You know,
Speaker 3: I haven't shared this with you, but it's like I
Speaker 3: just hearing Mike's outlook on life. It's like I've learned
Speaker 3: to be more forgiving and more humble and cognizant of
Speaker 3: other people just because of watching how he handles and
Speaker 3: he has handled situations. I go, oh, you know, I
Speaker 3: could be probably a little bit less of an asshole
Speaker 3: if I tried, you know.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I mean, he's being honest the first
Speaker 2: of all. Like I said, he's the most responsible for
Speaker 2: the book even being a book, you know. But I
Speaker 2: it was wonderful because we had like six hundred pages
Speaker 2: of just transcript before we started actually writing the book.
Speaker 2: Maybe not that much, but we had a lot of
Speaker 2: clubs pages.
Speaker 1: Did you have to do much extra curricular work outside
Speaker 1: of the interviews with Michael just to sort.
Speaker 3: Of the laziest guy that way?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, he did a lot, and and really for me,
Speaker 2: that was the real education for me was to see
Speaker 2: Paul's genuine interest in other people. I think it has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with what he does for a
Speaker 2: living too, being an actor and a writer, you know,
Speaker 2: but his acumen or his capacity to build a story
Speaker 2: was really what I benefited from so much. You know,
Speaker 2: he saw threads and interesting points of reference in the
Speaker 2: stories like a writer would, like a professional writer would,
Speaker 2: and it was a revelation to me in many cases,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, but.
Speaker 3: Just hearing the stories and then put looking at them
Speaker 3: all together, which is not something any of us do regularly, right,
Speaker 3: We don't recite our life. We don't look for necessarily
Speaker 3: for themes. But when you see it in the stack
Speaker 3: of pages, you go, huh, this is a similar you know.
Speaker 3: There's a funny story Mike first band, the first job
Speaker 3: they ever had, playing for the women's pta group, and
Speaker 3: they play their five songs and the priest comes up
Speaker 3: and goes, oh, thank you boys, that was lovely. And Michael, no,
Speaker 3: we have a whole other set and his answer is
Speaker 3: that won't be necessary. I thought, well, that's the greatest
Speaker 3: first review. Whatever dear won't be needed here.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: But then as the story went on, there were like
Speaker 3: three other stories. They're like that kept coming back. You know,
Speaker 3: we've all had that place where like you're not really
Speaker 3: wanted here, which you know, we get Every actor and
Speaker 3: musician gets more than their share of everything that I
Speaker 3: had hoped the book would do has done. It makes
Speaker 3: sense of this connects the dots and we see the stories,
Speaker 3: the arc of how the five year old kid who
Speaker 3: sang in a saloon with his dad becomes the Michael
Speaker 3: McDonald of today.
Speaker 2: To see that that random things and seemingly unimportant moments
Speaker 2: sometimes become the things that shape us the most, you know,
Speaker 2: more than any plans we have or great designs.
Speaker 3: Like me going to that party where you were playing pianos.
Speaker 3: I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 2: No, in my life as a as a script was
Speaker 2: certainly not one that I wrote. You. Yeah, and I think,
Speaker 2: but I think for most people that's not uncommon.
Speaker 1: Was it frustrating to see your life to see it written?
Speaker 1: Did anything feel avoidable that happened?
Speaker 2: I don't really think in those terms anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I used to regret, have a lot of regrets,
Speaker 2: you know, And certainly there are some things I wish
Speaker 2: I could read live and redo and you know, wish
Speaker 2: I never had done or whatever that may or may
Speaker 2: not be in the book. But I've come to reconcile
Speaker 2: with myself the fact that what I know about myself
Speaker 2: and my life and for better or ward, is all
Speaker 2: a product of every one of those things that happened,
Speaker 2: and that some of the worst things trying out to
Speaker 2: be the best things that ever happened to me. You
Speaker 2: hear people all the time go, you know, prison changed
Speaker 2: my life for the better. You know, I'm grateful that
Speaker 2: I went to prison. I'm sure they weren't at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, but in hindsight you see things differently, you know,
Speaker 2: And in many ways, this book for me was that
Speaker 2: kind of revelation of looking back and realizing that some
Speaker 2: of the people I resented the most that I really
Speaker 2: felt righteous, you know, resentment for who I felt took
Speaker 2: advantage of me or whatever in some way or another.
Speaker 2: With a little bit of time and space, I realized
Speaker 2: that those really are actually the very people that, without
Speaker 2: whom I would probably still be back in Missouri, you know,
Speaker 2: lived out my life in Missouri. They were the people
Speaker 2: that got me to California. They were the people that
Speaker 2: allowed me to walk through the door I walked through
Speaker 2: with them with her, and I felt I had every
Speaker 2: reason to be agree with them over something to do
Speaker 2: with our relationship, but more importantly, the opportunity they gave
Speaker 2: me just by way of you know, not saying any
Speaker 2: you know, get rid of this guy. You know, they
Speaker 2: did more for me than they ever did to me.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, Paul In the acknowledgments, you mentioned
Speaker 1: that your son helped transcribe the interviews. Yeah, how was
Speaker 1: it working with your son on Michael's project in particular?
Speaker 3: Well, it was you know, it was COVID and he
Speaker 3: locked down and I said, you need something to do.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a job, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you a child labor's wages. I said, you
Speaker 3: take this, but you got to type it out. So
Speaker 3: subconsciously I think, I want, like, do you understand who
Speaker 3: Michael is? Do you understand who he's played with? And
Speaker 3: so I was sort of subliminally leaving crumbs for him
Speaker 3: to learn about. I didn't know James Taylor or I
Speaker 3: didn't know Bonny. I remember one of the transcripts, whether
Speaker 3: by accident or not, he misspelled John Lennon's name, and
Speaker 3: I went, listen, you can't be my son and misspelled
Speaker 3: John Lennon. That can't happen, or like there would be
Speaker 3: Coldport or somebody or or or Stephen Sondheim and watching
Speaker 3: him try and spell that, I'm going, Yeah, learned. Some
Speaker 3: words are some big words you should learn.
Speaker 2: Maybe your kid write about some artists from the seventies.
Speaker 2: That's child abuse. I think, yeah, sure, but.
Speaker 3: You know those stories too, you know I was. I
Speaker 3: was tickled, and I knew other people would be too.
Speaker 3: When Mike shared his stories about how his kids are
Speaker 3: not impressed with his celebrity or his music, like you
Speaker 3: know you I've heard that so many times with so
Speaker 3: many other Springsteen talking about his kids maybe no two
Speaker 3: of his songs and how can that be? It's like,
Speaker 3: because they're your kids and they just don't give a shit,
Speaker 3: because that's just so. I found that very heartwarming and
Speaker 3: u comforting.
Speaker 1: You referenced earlier, Paul, before I started recording that We
Speaker 1: Are the World documentary that just came on our Netflix.
Speaker 1: It would have been incredible if you were on. I
Speaker 1: mean it was a great tune as it was, but
Speaker 1: your voice on that would have been amazing, taking it
Speaker 1: another notch up. And as I was reading the book
Speaker 1: and Quincy was supposed to do produce your second solo
Speaker 1: album and then there was a misunderstanding that ultimately resolved
Speaker 1: or whatnot. But is that kind of why you weren't
Speaker 1: a part of that or do you not even know?
Speaker 2: You No, I think there was just you know, you
Speaker 2: can only have so many people doing something like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was huge as it was, you know,
Speaker 2: but I think, yeah, it was one of those moments
Speaker 2: where Quincy made the whole music business look good, you know,
Speaker 2: and Michael too, you know. They it was a very
Speaker 2: noble thing that they did, you know. Yeah, not that
Speaker 2: I didn't sit around wondering why I wasn't called either,
Speaker 2: but I you know, yeah, oh sure, yeah, me and
Speaker 2: a few other people were gosh, we did get the
Speaker 2: call on that one.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Do you remember hearing about it at the time.
Speaker 2: No, I think I just saw it, you know, when
Speaker 2: it came out on MTV.
Speaker 1: But it was great, a missed opportunity that you wanted.
Speaker 3: I never knew for us. The other think wheal and
Speaker 3: Jennings walking out, I never knew because and begin I go, gee,
Speaker 3: I don't remember him being in there. It's like he
Speaker 3: wasn't because was it Lionel or Stevie wonder who.
Speaker 1: TV wants to say, let's throw some putting some I.
Speaker 3: Don't even know it was real SWAHELI or just it's
Speaker 3: why he sounding, you know, oh really? And and Whalen
Speaker 3: Jenner's walk down goes yeah, no.
Speaker 1: Good old no, good old boy everything. That's why he
Speaker 1: good old boy.
Speaker 3: Canna be saying why because he's.
Speaker 1: Wearing like a ten gallon hot or you know, a
Speaker 1: big cowboy hat and you see him walking down off
Speaker 1: the bleachers and at some point you just see a cowboy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and he's gone.
Speaker 3: But you know what, to to Quincy's credit, like, oh,
Speaker 3: that Willie Nelson was on it was genius. It's like
Speaker 3: and perfect.
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have heard and I would
Speaker 1: have loved to have heard Michael quincy solo album. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that was in the when I read that.
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, that was in the cards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, no, I know I was. I guess I
Speaker 2: only have myself to blame on that one. I I
Speaker 2: think it was just a bunch of miscommunication, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I always felt like it was a missed
Speaker 2: up tune. I would have loved to have done that
Speaker 2: record with Quincy and and Bruce Swudine.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Bruce too.
Speaker 2: But I'm grateful for the chance I did get to
Speaker 2: record with Quincy. It was amazing and Bruce because they
Speaker 2: were such a team, you know, and Quincy was, you know,
Speaker 2: really the genius behind the music part of it all.
Speaker 2: But what was amazing, was they never wasted any time
Speaker 2: getting right to the heart of the matter. You know,
Speaker 2: I was so in the seventies. I was so used
Speaker 2: to doing these dates where they'd sit there and hit
Speaker 2: the snare drum for like literally three hours. So by
Speaker 2: the time they got the sound they wanted, they would
Speaker 2: have to change the head anyway from hitting it for
Speaker 2: two hours. But it was just like sessions just took
Speaker 2: forever to get started, and you know, nobody seemed to
Speaker 2: quite know where the mojo was. And you know, with
Speaker 2: Quincy and Bruce, it was like, I picked this mic
Speaker 2: for you. I've never met you in my life, but
Speaker 2: I picked this mic for you. I've heard your voice.
Speaker 2: I kind of know what you need to sing into,
Speaker 2: you know, And he was dead on, you know, I
Speaker 2: got one other one. I'm gonna try it now that
Speaker 2: that was the right one, and you know, and Quincy
Speaker 2: was like, you know, from the musical aspect of it,
Speaker 2: was like he knew exactly where this should go before
Speaker 2: we played a note. You know. It was just, you know,
Speaker 2: really an education to work with those guys. They they
Speaker 2: to me kind of encapsulated that I walk in the
Speaker 2: studio because I know why I'm here. I don't walk
Speaker 2: in the studio and wonder who's going to give me
Speaker 2: the idea of where we're going here? You know. It's
Speaker 2: and I used to work for a lot of producers
Speaker 2: who were like that was like they thought that I
Speaker 2: was gonna you know, I would come up with the
Speaker 2: background parts that they wanted to hear where they weren't
Speaker 2: they sure what that was yet, because they were kind
Speaker 2: of relying on me to, you know, come up with
Speaker 2: it or something. And you know, that was another thread
Speaker 2: in my whole story, was that dysfunctional defect that I
Speaker 2: was famous for letting someone else do what I knew
Speaker 2: I should be doing myself and then being pissed off
Speaker 2: at them for not doing it right later, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean that was my m O, you know, for
Speaker 2: many years, and probably still is. But I you know,
Speaker 2: I try to catch myself in the act at this age,
Speaker 2: you know, because life's too short. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm still I'm just really grateful for the honesty.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I mean, thank you for incredible stuff
Speaker 1: and talking to us.
Speaker 3: Glad you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: H thank you, Thank you man. Thanks to Michael McDonald
Speaker 1: and Paul Riser. For talking about the process behind writing
Speaker 1: their book, What a Fool Believes. You can hear a
Speaker 1: list of all of our favorite songs featuring Michael McDonald
Speaker 1: on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
Speaker 1: Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
Speaker 1: help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Ben Tollinday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: are the Music's by any Beats. I'm justin Richmond.