Reader’s Choice/Tom’s Top Tunes…Song #60/250: What a Fool Believes by The Doobie Brothers.

Faithful readers of this blog will know that when it comes to my musical education I am definitely a 70s baby! I have written extensively about the soundtrack to my highschool years being filled with guitar-driven tracks like “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, “Raise a Little Hell” by Trooper, “Ooowatanite” by April Wine, “Come Sail Away” by Styx and dozens of others, all thumping away from Kenwood or Pioneer car stereo speakers that my high school friends had purchased from Woolco. While I always associate my favourite high school feelings and emotions with tunes like these, being out and about on a Friday night was not the only time I heard music. I grew up in a home that listened to the radio. This was particularly true during breakfast in the morning. More specifically, we were a family that had an obsession with news and information. Consequently, we listened to the early morning newscasts on the radio. This would be followed by reading the daily newspaper that arrived at our doorstep by mid-morning most days. Our day would end in the evening with the CBC National News on TV. As far as the times allowed back in the 1970s, I always felt as though we were well-informed and that the news and information we received came from trusted sources. Thus as a child, my exposure to public broadcasting, especially the radio, was news oriented at first. But as I entered my teenage years, I began paying more attention to the music that was played leading into and out from the morning newscast. Our local station, CJCB, was a fairly conservative station. During those mornings as I ate my cereal and drank my juice, I heard songs such as “Snowbird” by Anne Murray, along with songs by the likes of Nana Mouskouri, Charley Pride or Hank Snow. Most of those songs went in one ear and out the other without leaving much of an impression during the process. But as the 1970s neared their end and my high school years began, I started to understand that CJCB played different music at other times of the day. That may seem like an obvious thing but, at the time, I only really knew what my parents listened to and that all seemed to be fairly tame stuff. This is where the beauty of high school comes into play. If I had been homeschooled and never strayed far from my house, I am sure I would have grown up thinking that the Tommy Hunter and Lawrence Welk TV shows, along with our local CJCB radio, were all that there was in terms of music. But I was not homeschooled. I left my house every weekday and went to school with scores of other kids who came from homes that were not like mine. It was through my friends that I learned of bands such as Kiss, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Alice Cooper, AC/DC and so on. It was also through my friends that I learned that CJCB radio played other, more modern music at night. And so it was that as Christmas approached midway through my highschool years, I asked for a good pair of headphones as my main present. Santa Ma came through with a pair of Technics headphones that she bought downtown. Wearing those Technics brought with them a sense of freedom that took my breath away and ended up ultimately charting the course of my life! For the first time ever, I could choose to listen to whatever music I wanted to. I could listen to as many songs in a row as I wanted to. Most importantly, I could listen to music whenever I wanted to. Goodbye Lawrence Welk, hello rock n’ roll! Another new thing that I discovered about myself was that the time I liked listening to music the most was alone in the dark after everyone else had gone to bed. In the darkness there were no visual stimuli to distract me from the lyrics and music I was hearing. Listening to music in this manner allowed me to listen to the words of the prophets, as it were, with my mind. Images would fill my head. Whole musical productions would appear. It was the beginning of a personal habit of associating songs with stories. Being alone in the dark with music allowed me to escape from the humdrum world of my ordinary life. It allowed me to see myself differently and to imagine greater possibilities than what the present had to offer. It is also why, when I left on a class trip to Halifax in Grade 11 or 12 with my friends for company and a few coins in my pocket, that I used some of that money I had brought to buy my very first piece of music of my own. A few of us had wandered into a record shop while in Halifax. The whole experience of being surrounded by row upon row of record albums was intoxicating and exhilarating. I had never seen so much music in one place at one time before. Because of those Technics headphones, I had discovered a whole world of modern music that my parents never listened to at home or in the car. In a way, the time spent listening to music in the darkness ‘round midnight was a sort of homework that had prepared me for that very moment in that Halifax record shop. I could have chosen any album or single. There were hundreds and thousands to choose from. In the end, the very first piece of music I ever purchased with my own money in my life turned out to be “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers. As I paid for that 45 single, the man at the cash register asked if I needed one of those yellow disks to stick in the middle of the 45. I had no idea what he was talking about. That’s how young I was and how early I was on a musical journey that has brought me to you on this fine day.

Mannnnn! I wore that 45 out! I absolutely loved owning my own music. If I played “What a Fool Believes” once, I played it a thousand times! I loved the dulcet tones of singer Michael McDonald. I knew when every note from his keyboard came in. I knew every drumbeat. I loved how the other members of the band added their harmony parts. I loved it all. Listening to The Doobie Brothers on repeat also was the beginning of a trend (that I have since outgrown) of overplaying singles. You know how it is. You discover a new song and play it so often that you soon get sick of hearing it. Well, I never got sick of “What a Fool Believes” but I did eventually get to the point where I began to wonder if they had any other songs that I might like. This led me to discover “It Keeps You Running” from the FM movie soundtrack, as well as “Minute By Minute”.  It also led me backwards through their song catalogue to classic tracks such as “China Grove”, “Listen to the Music”, “Black Water”, “Take Me in Your Arms” and “Takin’ It to the Streets”. That bit of research helped me to realize that The Doobie Brothers were initially led on vocals by a man named Tom Johnston. It was Johnston who sang on the early songs that helped to establish the band as one of rock’s best and most successful acts. But as the 1970s rolled along, Johnston began experiencing health problems which made touring and fulfilling his lead vocal duties difficult. Thus, Michael McDonald was hired to act as Johnston’s understudy, so to speak, on those nights when Johnston wasn’t feeling up to the job and/or to simply give him a break from the daily grind of touring. At the time, Michael McDonald had been a highly respected session player for the likes of Steely Dan and Kenny Loggins. In fact, it was with Loggins that McDonald wrote the words to “What a Fool Believes”. In the later half of the 1970s, he became the lead singer for the band and was the voice behind The Doobie Brother’s only ever Grammy win for “What a Fool Believes”. Through it all, what I ended up discovering was that it was actually Michael McDonald who I liked listening to more than it was the classic era Doobies. Coming to understand that I enjoyed his soul/jazz-based song stylings more than I did the classic rock sound of the early Doobies is my first evidence of being a discerning listener. That ability to differentiate between the influences behind songs led me directly to bands such as Steely Dan and singers such as Steve Winwood, for two examples that spring to mind off the top of my head. McDonald’s voice is one that I still enjoy listening to through my Beats headphones today. Songs like “What A Fool Believes”, “It Keeps You Running” and “Minute By Minute” all still sound amazing to me and make me smile. And yes, while I may be a grown adult male, husband and father of two, I still most enjoy listening to Michael McDonald sing late at night, headphones on, surrounded by darkness. Some things never change.

Heaven forbid that I should ever write the story of my life. But, if I did then today’s post would surely form the broad outline of its own chapter. One of the truisms of life is that we are usually unaware that pivotal life moments are happening at the time that they are actually taking place. High school is often a place where pivotal moments lay in wait for the unsuspecting. For me, my highschool moment wasn’t a sporting championship, a sexual conquest or being the victor in an epic fight. Instead, it was being introduced to the world of music by my friends and fellow classmates. It was Friday nights spent listening to the bass thumping sounds of those with their own cars as they cruised up and down through the streets of my small town. It was coming to realize that there was more than just my parent’s music to listen to. Some of my most favourite highschool memories are of moments spent alone in the solitude of my home, headphones on, the sound of Michael McDonald singing “He came from somewhere back in her long ago…”, watching stories form in my head as the music played, knowing all the while that better memories were waiting to be made and that I would be the author of my own story soon enough. In some ways, like it was for so many others, high school was the beginning of growing up. At least that’s what this fool believes.

The link to the official website for The Doobie Brothers can be found here.

The link to the official website for Michael McDonald can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “What a Fool Believes” by The Doobie Brothers can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.

The link to the official website for Technics audio products can be found here. Thanks, in advance, for the use of your photo at the tip of this post. Thanks, as well, for the excellent headphones that I used growing up.

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