Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser

Michael McDonald’s husky baritone is one of the most instantly recognizable voices from the ‘70s and ‘80s. As a member of The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and a hitmaking solo artist, Michael McDonald’s career is one for the books.

Enter Paul Reiser—the comedic actor and writer behind New York Times best-selling books, popular movies and TV shows. Before the start of the pandemic, Paul met Mike McDonald at a party and the two became fast friends. Listening to Michael’s incredible stories, Paul found himself trying to piece together the arc of Michael’s career. They began recording their conversations and soon they had over 600 pages of stories that they eventually turned into the memoir, What A Fool Believes. The book chronicles the highs and lows of Michael’s career, his struggles with addiction, and his lifelong insecurities.

On today’s episode Justin Richmond talks to Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser about their unlikely working relationship. Michael also talks about why his proposed Quincy Jones-produced solo album never materialized. And he remembers the time one of his childhood heroes—Ray Charles—chewed him out while wearing a bathrobe.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Michael McDonald songs HERE.

And you can grab your copy of this fantastic memoir HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Michael McDonald's husky baritone is one of the most
instantly recognizable voices from the seventies and eighties. As a
member of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and as a
hit making solo artist, Michael McDonald's career is one for
the books. Enter Paul Riser, the comedic actor and writer

(00:38):
behind New York Times bestselling books, popular movies, and TV shows.
Before the start of the pandemic, Paul met Mike McDonald
at a party and the two became fast friends. Listening
to Michael's incredible stories, Paul found himself trying to piece
together the arc of Michael's career. They began recording their
conversations and soon they had over six hundred pages of

(00:58):
stories they eventually turned into the memoir With a Fool Believes.
The book chronicles the highs and lows of Michael's career,
his struggles with the diction, and his lifelong insecure. On
today's episode, I talked to Michael McDonald's and Paul Reiser
about their unlikely work in relationship. Michael also talks about
why it's proposed Quincy Jones produced solo album never materialized,

(01:21):
and he remembers the time one of his childhood heroes,
Ray Charles, chewed him out while wearing a bathrobe. This
is broken record. Liner notes in the digital age. I'm
justin Mitchman. Here's my conversation with Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser.
I've never done an interview with a musician who's written

(01:42):
a book along with the author, but it just seemed
like such a cool pairing that it was impossible to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Up unlikely pairing.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, how did you guys meet?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Well? I played at a party. I was hired to play,
you know, just kind of piano and saying my guitar
player joined me for moral support. And it was at
a party that happened to be next door to Paul's house.
And he was at the party and we got to
talking and we realized we had a lot of you know,
musical interest in common. And he mentioned that he had

(02:16):
a studio in his house next door and if we
felt like it, we want to come over and check
out his studio. And he's got a couple of pianos
and invited us to come over and kind of jam
a little bit. So my guitar player friend, Bernie, and
I went over to Paul's and we kind of sat
up and we played a few old Beatles songs and
some old Motown songs and just kind of talked about

(02:39):
what we liked about those songs, and we found we had,
you know, real similar interests in music from the sixties.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
And there's a lesson to be learned. Because I didn't
want to go to this party. I don't really have
to go to any party. And I walk in and
I go, oh my, Mike McDonald's playing, Oh my god, listen,
Oh my god. And I'm not usually this forward, but
I went over to say hello, and I've been a
big fan of Michael's for years. And then I kind
of like, I'm going to roll the dice here I

(03:06):
go listen, and I literally said, I live eighty feet
away and I have two pianos. You want to come over?
And Mike, god bless him, said sure, and there I was,
and I just was kind of pinching myself. I'll go,
I'm playing piano with Michael McDonald for no reason on
a Tuesday night. So we became friends from that, and
then over the years we would just talk about I
was always curious about Mike's career and arc because I

(03:30):
never really had my hands around it, like he's everywhere.
I can't see the through line, you know. So I
was as a fan. I would periodically ask Michael questions,
you know, and he would tell me, explain to me
about how he got from the Steely Dan to Doobies,
and I never I never quite made sense. And I

(03:50):
jokingly said one day, I said, you should write a
book so I, you know, I wouldn't have to call
you every time I have a question and do his credit.
He said, you know, I was thinking about it. He
wasn't thinking about it, said people have asked me about it.
He said, I don't know how to do that, And
it just so happened. This was March of twenty twenty
in lockdown, and I said, well, you know, I've written

(04:11):
a couple of books, and let's be honest, we've got
nothing to do. Nobody's working. So we just started taping
our conversations and that became the start of the book.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
And over Zoom right, yeah, zoom.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
We did much.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
We were not in the same room for like four
years or so, but it was like a month and
a half of just sitting on Zoom and chatting. It
was really easy. It was just because there was no pressure.
We didn't have nobody bought it, there was no deadline,
nobody was waiting for this, and we kind of jumped
into that with, hey, if this turns out to be nothing,
you know. So we had coffee over Zoom for a
month and then we put it all together. You know.

(04:46):
It took all these stories and I would basically just
literally transcribe Mike's stories exactly as he said, and then
sort of put it in some rough order, sent it
over to Michael, and he started just expanding them and
writing and digging, and we just went back and forth
and it came out well, I like to think.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well, it's only one for you. When he came up
to me, initially I could see you in his face
and by his questions that he was thinking he must
have fallen on really hard times. He's playing birthday parties now, Yeah,
And I told him, noo, the guy's paying me a fortune.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
As a caliber of Paul's neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
But yeah, no, it was great fun. I mean, you know,
had he not suggested it, you know, and as I
like to say, how lucky am I? You know, I've
never written a book first book I write. I write
with a guy who's you know, written the screenplays, TV shows,
comic writer, produced movies, acted and everyone he hasn't produced,

(05:43):
you know. So I was like, this is too good
to be true. And you know, the only in trepidation
I had was but once we got started, I started
to think, Oh my god, what have I agreed to?

Speaker 1 (05:55):
What have I done?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Because I've got Paul on the hook for this thing,
and what if it just kind of fizzles out somewhere
halfway in the middle, you know, it's just not that
interesting anymore, you know, And like I just pictured myself
having a thing of things to come up with for
the next chapter.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
But that was the nice part of truely. I mean,
almost everything I've ever done has been sort of on spec.
It's like, let me just go write this and then if,
you know, if it has interest to somebody, great, But
I find it's hard to write with a deadline or
somebody waiting for it. So this really was two guys
chatting and it was easy. You know. I was asking
questions that I genuinely wanted to know the answer, and Mike,

(06:34):
as we just started talking and relaxing, you know, he
would tell one story and then spin off into another story.
I go, well, that's really funny, and I don't know
where it goes, but that'll find a home somewhere. And
then the last six months eight months have been really
about editing it down and honing it. And we had
a great editor who came on board, you know, about
six eight months ago and gave us some great direction, like,

(06:56):
you know, maybe thin this out, but expand over here.
And literally to the last minute, Mike would go, I
don't know if I ever told you this story.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
I go, no, Jay, that's.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Great, And then suddenly that would find its way into
the book.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Do you worry about that as you're going along.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
We're worried about it right now still as we speak.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
How do you know you've mind everything.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
One of the things for me that I kind of
felt that the endeavor might have some legs was Paul's
came to find out later his work ethic as a writer,
you know, but as a writer and an actor. One
of the more enduring qualities of Paul is that he's
genuinely interested in what everybody else is doing or has done,
or where they came from. Things like that, you know,

(07:40):
And that was a real motivating factor for me, because
he would ask me things about you know, before we
even decided to write the book. It's just in passing
that he was interested in knowing about Steely, Dan or
Donald and Walter, and I was all too happy to
talk about myself and for any opportunity to. You know,

(08:00):
my wife says, you know, the sound of your own
voice is the most pleasant thing in their life.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
You know that plays against type though, because you do
come across as that could vary. I don't think you
come fro It appears even from the book like you
call yourself like a more of a band guys. This
is when you're kind of like you sign the solo
deal for your record with Warner, and you're kind of like, oh,
I'm more of a band guy. I don't know if
I want to and you're kind of having this conundrum
of like, well, I want to get my best songs
to the.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
That's one of the sentences in the book that was
an AHA moment for me, and Mike said it really
kind of in passing, I went, that's maybe the origin
point of this book is you go, I have never
thought of myself as a solo guy. I was a
guy in a band and went, that really makes sense
because you have been and everybody's but you've played with
everybody over the last you know, for fifty years. Yeah.

(08:46):
But it's funny because a lot of the stuff that
I was really intrigued about, not only was it hard
to get Mike to talk about it, but really there
wasn't even really questions that I could ask, like, you know,
and I hope I'm not making your self conscious, but
like Mike's voice is this thing that's like what is that?
And everybody loves Mike's voice, Like, but how do you
talk about I would ask him questions and go, I

(09:08):
don't know, Well, how do you get that sound? That's
how I say. It's like saying to George Clooney, we
how'd you get handsome? You know? What do you want?
It just came like this, So I would find the
things that I fascinate me still fascinate me. But you know,
I play piano, so and I watched Mike plays and
he plays very different style and it's really cool and
he does things that I can't quite figure out. And

(09:30):
so a lot of it was I tried to like,
and some of the stuff we cut it got a
little too nerdy, like I like, you know, talking about
you know, octaves and fifths and chords and went, yeah,
nobody's gonna want to hear that I helped. You know,
there are parts of the book that I think musicians
and techno nerds or seventies officionados might really dig into.
But at the heart of it is the story of

(09:52):
the guy that I knew, but I didn't really know
his story. And you know, part of what's so moving
in this book, I think is, you know, Mike's loving
relationship with his wife Amy over the years and all
they've been through, and Mike's journey, the substance abuse and
Mike's finding his career. As specific as it is to
Mike McDonald's journey, it really I think resonates with a

(10:14):
lot of people because everybody's had their own struggles, everybody's
had their own journey and their own lack of confidence,
and like, oh, here's this guy who's so successful and
we all love and look how long it took him
to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Really, one of the more beautiful things about the book
is starting out with the early life and just just
being so open about your lack of confidence, from a
young age, and that seems to kind of rear up
throughout your career, the addiction struggles, some of the ups
and downs you went through with your wife, your wife
getting sick, your kids. I mean, there's very personal book

(10:47):
that I feel like, beyond the music stuff which I
came to it for, there's a lot of great encouragement
just for life, you know, how to live your life. Well.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
I think our hope was that people would see their
own life and you know, but with the books more
it's about, you know, specific incidents that music fans might
sound find interesting, but there's really not enough of that
to make a book, you know. I think a lot
of it is also how just random events and seemingly

(11:15):
unimportant moments in your life really are the things that
shape you more than the big events. And you know,
and that a lot of times, some of the worst
things that happened to us inevitably will almost without fail,
turn out to be the best things that ever happened
to us with enough time. But I think so much
of where we all find ourselves at a certain point

(11:35):
in our lives would be totally different. But for some
of the events that we would have rather not had
to go through. You know.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, you know, most any movie, a good movie, a
good TV show, or a book, you know what hooks you, Well,
it's the story. It's like, yes, but what really hooks
you in the story, And if you get to it,
it's the character. It's the person, and there's an individual.
And what was I think really comes out in the
book is like, yeah, there these great stories of rock

(12:02):
history and Mike's musical journey, but at the heart of
it is this guy that you know. The reason I asked,
jokingly asked Mike to write a book years ago, was
I wanted to read it. It's like, I don't have
to be involved. I just who are you? Tell me
how this happened? And I'm to this day still flattered
and honored that he, you know, agreed to trust me

(12:22):
with his story to help him get it out. But
when you get done with it, what you see is, Oh,
here's this guy, as you say, who overcame, you know,
his own challenges and struggles. And I think everybody will
read that and go, yeah, why do we all make
life so hard for ourselves? And it should be simpler?
And it's somehow always inspiring and encouraging to read or

(12:44):
find out that somebody you admire hasn't necessarily figured it
out yet either. We're all still working at it.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, obviously a lot of people write memoirs. But as
someone who self admittedly is more of a band guy
than a solo guy, did it feel weird in the
end to have like your life distilled down to six
to twelve hour read in three hundred and eighteen pages?
It did?

Speaker 2 (13:07):
You know? I mean? But I kind of just really
all the way along the way trusted Paul's I was
waiting for him to kind of give me the signal
one way or the other, like let's cut our losses
and put this on the shelf. But he, you know,
he kept encouraging me, goes, no, this is good, you know,
And at times, you know, I'm all too sure. I

(13:27):
would have never gotten past probably wouldn't got past the preface,
you know. But just in terms of my capacity as
a writer, I like to write, but I've only written
like articles and op eds, and I enjoy that. But
writing a long story and kind of putting the structure
of that together in advance and a draft and all
that that was the things that Paul really was so

(13:48):
helpful with and his along the way. As long as
he said to me, no, this is good. You know,
let's keep going. You know, that's all the confidence I
needed to keep going. You know, I was kind of
waiting for him to give me the like, you know,
a little time.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
But again, because there was nobody, there was no commitment.
This was just you know, like two guys, let's just
see where this goes. And we always had the freedom
and I will always say, just write it and we'll
cut it if you know, if you go, hey, that's
too personal, just see what happens when you type it out,
and then we'll cut it. And if you don't like
what it says, we take it out. There's a real
freedom in that there's nobody expecting anything or waiting for anything.

(14:26):
And a lot of times, you know, went both ways.
A lot of times Mike would say something, there's a
really funny story, and but you look at it and
you go, I don't know if that belongs in your book,
though it's not about you. That that was a funny
story that happened to your friend in the studio. Great,
but now let's get back to your story. And then
there are a lot of times he just sort of
casually say something. I go go back what Ray Charles

(14:47):
is in his bathrobe and he's yelling if you can
I hear that?

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Please?

Speaker 3 (14:51):
I'd like to hear that story.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
I mean, that's one of the great things about the
book too, is like it's so well structured because you know,
like you understand very early in this book how important
Racharles Michael McDonald.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
You know, three.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Quarters through.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Up he's yelling in.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
A bathrobe, screaming at you for money that you can't
give to me. Can you tell that story?

Speaker 2 (15:10):
I guess yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
No.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was one of the worst moments in my life,
the thought that Ray was even had agreed to do
this show. It was a show of which I was
the honoree. The idea was we were going to raise
money for NAM, which is a program that tries to
seek to keep music programs in the public schools alive
by donating instruments and texts and you know, things like

(15:36):
that worthy cause it was a worthy, a worthy and
so my initial thing with everybody was as far as
any kind of fee for performing, because Yamaha was very
generous with everybody, and you know, endorsed and sponsored all
the people at some point, but nobody got paid. Everybody
agreed that as long as the money is all going

(15:57):
to charity, and we're all that's the favored nation's idea here,
we're all good with.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Everyone needs to respect.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
And apparently Ray had not gotten that memo, you know.
So when he found out he wasn't getting paid, you
know it, you know. And I get that because even
by then, I knew what it was like to be
in this business. And uh, you know, at the mercy
of all the powers that be along the way, you know,
most of the time you're not getting paid, you know.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
But so you like, you're like hours before the show
and you get summoned to his trailer.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, and you know, I go in there. I'm thinking
the guy, his road manager came to me, and his
roadmasger was like out of a you know, a Lawn
Chaney movie or something. He had the cane, you know,
and he just looked like some kind of a mobster figure,
you know, And he says, the boss wants to talk
to you. I go, sure, And I couldn't tell if

(16:53):
his tone was ominous or not, but I didn't, you know, Sure,
I went to his trailer and Ray was in there.
And he uh, kind of a typical race demeanor, was
you know, he was. He was very nice and he said,
you know, he was doing to do Hagar because he
loved that song. And so he starts off. He goes,

(17:13):
Michael Man, He goes, when did you write?

Speaker 1 (17:16):
He girl?

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I love that song, you know, I said. I said, well, Ray,
I didn't write Hey girl. I said, it's Carol King
and Cherry Goffin. And he kind of stopped rocking for
a minute, and I could tell I was like, you know,
I had just gone down a few pegs in his radar,
so you know, I said, but yeah, it's a great song,
isn't it. He goes, yeah, Well, no, no matter. He goes, uh, Man,

(17:38):
I just got to talk to you. He goes, listen,
you got to give me something, you know, And I'm right,
and I kind of knew where he was going, but
I thought, well, surely, you know, I can explain my
way out of this, you know, I said, well, Ray,
I saw you know, at first, I tried to evade
the whole thing, like what kind of get you? You

(17:59):
got everything you need here in the dressing room? Is
this dressing room? Okay? He's like, no, man, he goes, Yeah,
you got to give me something. He goes, I said, well, ray, I,
you know we're talking about money. I said, you know,
I would pay you out of my own pocket. I'd
be happy to, I said. My only problem is that
I've kind of put it to everyone, gave everyone my
word that all the moneys from this thing we're going

(18:21):
to go to this charity. And if I paid anyone,
even if I no matter how willing I am to
do that, I would be breaking my word to everybody else,
you know, I said, So I'm kind of in a
weird spot, at which point he kind of his picture
of his voice went up just a little bit and he,
you know, kind of let me know and unknown certain
terms by by way of saying, you know, I'm an

(18:45):
old man. God damn it. You know, I don't you know,
I don't play this shit.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
You know, there was a line in the book when
you said to you, you know, I've made a solemn oath.
He goes, I don't give a fuck about you.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
I don't give about your solemn oath.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, you gotta give me something like oh no.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
And so I was like, my life's passing in front
of me. And before I was. I'm walking into the trailer,
I remember thinking, well, if all those guys I played
with Ferguson could see me now going into meet call
for Ray Charles now at this point cut to him
like yelling at me, and Me's sitting there trying to
figure out am I gonna How am I going to
get out of this conversation gracefully thinking oh boy, if

(19:22):
my friends and Ferguson could see me now Ray Charles
chewing my ass out, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
But you know, there was these little sort of like
sub themes that only emerged after we got all these
stories together. And like Mike has this you know, really
wonderful relationship and affection for his dad, and through the
book the story is about not wanting to disappoint his dad.
And then we get to Mike had a story with

(19:46):
Quincy Jones where it kind of didn't go smoothly, and
Charles and like and suddenly respected you know, yeah, and
it was like, oh, this all ties together. Like when
you have this guy in your life that you revere,
your last thing you want to do is disappoint them.
It's like, oh, I can see Mike's soul through this book.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Now, Well, the threat for me was almost every situation
of responsibility, especially if it dealt with people that I
you know, was like with in case of Ray and Quincy.
I was about to work with these guys who I'd
never dreamed a million years would ever work with me
or for any reason, you know. And my dad, I
was always trying to get his respect, you know, and

(20:28):
I when I suspected all along it if he could
trade me in for another son, he probably would, you
know that, you know I mean, but so that theme,
you know, when I became a patrol boy, you know,
whenever I got one of those perks as a kid,
even I would blow it within twenty four hours. I
got a paper route once and I wound up selling

(20:50):
everybody yesterday's paper, I believe, or.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
I thought a while that was there.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I thought this is going to be easy. It's only
like six or seven papers there. I didn't see the
gigantic cliole of papers that were tied in you know,
wire over across the street waiting for me to go
over and get them.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
So I got fired from that job. I caused the
three our pile up on my first day as a
patrol boy. That was always the running theme in my
life was like give Mike the job and watch him
just crash and burn, you know.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, well then for every one of those stories, it's
like I'm gonna put my whirltzer my Pinto, go drive
down try out for Steely Dan, a group I really love,
and it's like tryout turns into the practice.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Into had come off a long string of auditions I
failed when I went to that one, you know, and
and of all the ones I got for some reason, Uh.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
What with auditions you got before that?

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh? Just regular you know bands around town that were like,
we had pretty good gigs, like playing in these what
were discos back then, before DJs and before all that
were typically bands who did a lot of funk dance music,
you know, and people like to dance too, so that
was what you thought of as a discothech back then.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
There was a playing like.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Sol Yeah, you know, you go into another band had
all those tunes and tower Power, you know, the War,
you know, all all the music that people just you know,
like to get up and dance to. They weren't there
to just mingle. They like to dance, you know, And.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Were those your kind of bands like.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Well, I had a certain part. We always liked enjoyed
doing that and growing up, yeah, that's what we were,
you know, in Saint Louis. We came from that era
where you know, people just really enjoyed dancing on the weekends,
and we were the band they could play the stuff
that they like to dance.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
To, but like to like ev be someone who eventually
goes and joins seely Dan, which is like a really
high brow form of music, an incredible form of music.
You know. I just imagine like playing War, who I
love by the way, and it's a large band, but
like that might can imagine they might be beneath like Donald.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Oh no, they love War too, you know. I mean,
I know Donald loves War. Donald probably has a more
eclectic taste of music than even I do. You know,
he's you know, I was surprised he was so grateful dead.
I wouldn't have figured him for that at all. I
didn't know he was oh yeah yeah. And back then,
you know, I did a lot of gigs, like kind
of coffee house type gigs with singer songwriters, like I

(23:13):
played the Smokehouse and Burbank there, you know, and the
steel drum player. It was like any place that they
would actually pay us to show up, we would do
that gig, you know. So but these club gigs were
a little special because you got paid a little more
and they were more steady. If you were a good
house band at a club like that, like the rain
Tree and Torrents and places like that, you could maybe

(23:35):
work there for a year, you know, and you would
have to worry about how you're going to pay your
phone bill for a little while, you know. But a
lot of those gigs, I would study and advance the songs.
I thought they'd get their song list and I'd show
up and I was like, thanks, but you know, no thanks,
you know almost got it. If you played a little

(23:56):
more organ or if you you know'd sing a little
higher or whatever it was. I would seemingly never get
the gig. So to walk into this thing and literally
I didn't know most of their songs. I didn't know.
I knew the ones I liked that I heard on
the radio, but so I was literally learning the songs
on the spot. Donald was teaching them to me.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
And they're not easy songs.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
No, I mean they're not. There's a lot of vocal parts.
But I was just so desperate to get this gig
because I loved the band so much. I was I
think I went into some other mental state that I
don't normally visit, you know, where I actually my brain
works at a higher efficiency. And I learned the songs.
And but three or four hours later, I'm thinking, if

(24:39):
I got this gig, I don't know, you know, I mean,
no one's told me to thanks, but no thanks yet,
you know. And so they I say, say, well, come
back next day, we'll learn some more stuff. And I
started to kind of assume that I got the gig,
and it just it turns out I did. And so
that first audition turned into a rehearsal, which turned into

(25:00):
the following week of rehearsal or so, and then we
left for points beyond in the United States and played
all around the States.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
That's about as incredible a gig as you can have
expected to have gotten.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
It was the gig I would It was a dream gig,
you know. And uh and true to form, Timothy Schmidt
and I talked about this because we were both kind
of in that those guys around town who were hoping
for that gig, a gig like the Eagles or Steee Dan. Yeah,
come along, daydreams and stuff, you know, and he goes,
you know, in a minute, you get it, he goes,

(25:33):
what happens? The band breaks up? You know. A week later.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
After quick Break, we're back with more from Michael McDonald
and Paul Reiser. We're back with Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser.
That tour with Steely Dan, I was looking it up.
You got to play on bills with some other interesting groups,
and I was just curious how much you remember, like Montrose,

(26:02):
Sammy Hagar's group, the Beach Boys, the Eagles might have
been on a gig, a bill on a gig.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
We did one with the Eagle. I think we did
the thing up in San Francisco on the day on
the Green. The Eagles, I think he played the day
before us. We were the headliner the next night.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
So you get two touring stints with Steely Dan, and
then afterwards you come back to California and the dissolved
the band. You kind of have like one last run
in with Walter before that kind of era is over,
which is he almost gets arrested.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Looking we both almost got arrested, but we had a
mutual friend and we were gonna. You know, we both
like to smoke pot and we like to do the
occasional blow. But you know, we weren't. You needed one
of us where two people could really afford a good
coke hab it, you know. So we came up with
the idea that we could get a little bit from

(26:57):
this friend of ours we knew was a dealer, and
it was so good that we could cut it and
it would still be better than most stuff that our
friends might run into on the street. We could just
sell it to our close friends and.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Shows you a business model.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
It was our business model, and then we would have
some leftover to get us through the week. Well, the
entire amount didn't get us through the night even you know,
we of course snorted most of it before we ever
got around to cutting it, and our conversations just got
sillier and sillier, and that wound up in the LA Police.
Coming back to this apartment, I was, I was only

(27:34):
watching this apartment for a friend of mine, and she
happened to have scales and everything. I thought, well, this
is a perfect setting for cutting this cocaine.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
And you know makeshift office.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, you know, And well, anyway, the whole thing went
south really quickly and wound up that next morning somewhere
just before dawn with what seemed like the entire La
Police County police force, you know, knocking at my door
with Walter in tow and he had apparently been knocking

(28:04):
on some windows across the alley because he forgot which
apartment I lived in, and.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
He was out screaming at for in the morning.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah Coke, Mike, are you in there? You know? So anyway,
but re miraculously we did not go to jail.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
And then and then it's like the night ends as
it's like mundane it's can be. Was you go into
bed and he's coked out, drinking margarina, that's playing electric
bass on your acoustic bass on your Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Sure, It's like.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
What kind of life is it?

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah? No, it was a typical musician's life at that
point in time. You know, you know, it seemed like
all we really thought about back in those days was
it wasn't about money or managing any money or or
even you know, making money necessarily. It was just the
next gig was all we really ever thought about. What
when's the next gig and what we got to do

(28:52):
to get there?

Speaker 3 (28:52):
And you know, and and that's sort of a nice
through line through the whole story from Mike being eight
years old till today that it's the music. It's not
you know, it's not any the fancy of couci mas.
It's not the fame. It's when do I get to
play who do I get to play with? And what? Gee,
I had a moment where a song came to me

(29:13):
or I heard something and it moved me. And you know,
there's so many moments in the beginning of your career
which are in the book of you going you know
it is maybe not what I was cut out for,
or like, gee, this is not as fun as I
thought it would be, and maybe I'm gonna There was
even story, you know, came out to La for his
big break at eighteen and it blows up and I

(29:33):
was but you know, back home with the tail between
his legs, I'm Saint Louis. Yeah, I guess that didn't happen.
And the story could have ended there, but for this
phone call and that phone call and suddenly, all right,
take two, you get another shot at And that's sort
of the theme. If there's a theme, it's like what
Mike was saying before like these little moments that are

(29:54):
accidental turn out to be pivotal and there but for
the grace of God or anything else, those moments wouldn't happened.
We wouldn't have had this career and this music that
we've gotten to enjoy. So you know, I feel successful
in that what we set out to do. What I
wanted to know as a selfish fan, was like, I
want to understand Mike McDonald's life because it doesn't make

(30:16):
sense to me. Now I do. Now I get it,
and you read the story and go, okay, So what
happened because of these boneheaded things that have no reason
to have ever happened? He got a call to go
audition for Steely Dan. Why that's how it happened. He
understands it. Yeah, well, to see it all in one place,
like okay, And by the way, you know, as much
as it's hard to get a track of, maybe you

(30:39):
understand Michael McDonald's arc, Steely Dan itself is hard to grasp.
Doobie Brothers broke up and reformed seventeen times? So like,
oh okay, no wonder, I can't keep track. There's a
lot of moving pieces here, so it helped to understand that.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
And again, I think one of the themes that we
started to emerge for both of us in the writing
of it was this is really what happens to everybody.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
We all think that we were going to a distinct
place with our lives, and we make a plan and
typically never you know, best laid plans, you know, yea,
and the journey's never over. I mean, my kids are
you know, they're in their thirties, and once in a
while they'll confide in me about you know, well, you
knew what you wanted to do when you were you know,

(31:22):
half my age, or I just don't know what I
want to do yet? What what's what do next?

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Or whatever?

Speaker 2 (31:28):
And all those questions that I can unabashedly reassure them
that you'll be asking yourself those questions when you're seventy five.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, in the book, you never seemingly know where you're
going next.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
No, And and it's almost kind of scary to be
my age now and still not know where I'm going.
You know, I look at my life ahead and I
just well, should I be you know, preparing for this?
Should I be preparing for that? Should I be just
forging ahead with my head down and keep swinging.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Are there things musically that you feel like I need
to check this.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Off all over the place? Yeah, all over the map.
I mean, what are some of those things? Well, one
of them was just playing organ. I always loved a
good B three player, and I always you know, and
that was always my waterloo. I just thought, you know,
every time I got near a B three, I would
play it once in a while, you know, on a
session or something. But I never felt like I knew
what I was doing, and I always felt like it

(32:24):
was I was convinced it was an instrument that unless
somebody put you at it when you were five and
you couldn't even reach the pedals, you had no business
playing it because it's a lifetime. It's like accordion. If
you didn't start playing that when you're a kid's fat
chance you're going to learn it now, you know. But
lo and behold later in life, when I went back
with the Doobies, all of a sudden, I saw the

(32:44):
opportunity to you know, and when I played with them before,
I never played organ, you know, I only played keyboards.
And since you know, the first time, Yeah, so this
is the first time I've actually played organ with them,
and I always wanted to on certain songs, but I
just never trusted myself to be put on stage with
an organ.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
How different is it? How different is it to play?

Speaker 2 (33:04):
If it's key, It's a different feeling because you don't
have a sustained pedal, you know, it's one of the things,
you know, you learn to kind of play more fluidly
without any kind of sustained pill.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
You're a very rhythmic player, though, so I'd imagine it
would really suit you.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
In some ways. Yeah, I kind of came to understand
what I could and couldn't do with organ, you know.
And every time I got a little inkling of what
I could maybe make use of this, you know, I
could bring something to this song on organ, it would
intrigued me all the more. And so by the time
the fiftieth anniversary came around, I was convinced that this

(33:41):
was my shot to you know, get up play a
little organ, you know. So I do, and I enjoy
the hell out of it. I really, I've always loved
the instrument, but it's it's a real learning curve for me,
and I'm and I find that seventy two, what if
I got to lose. I'm enjoying that where that might
have terrified me in my thirties, like the imposter syndrome,
Like somebody's going to know how little I know about this,

(34:04):
you know, but I kind of don't care about that now.
I just want to dive in to it. And some
of the guys I know who I've always admired them
for their acumen with B three have been more than
kind to show me some stuff and kind of help me.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
You know who the guys that are that you look
up to in that world great organ players.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Well, Billy Payne's a great organists, Billy Preston was a
great organist. Pat Coyle who I've played with for years
as a wonderful B three player. Robbie Robinson who plays
with Frankie Valley and played over the years with a
lot of different acts, kind of known for being good
organ guys, you know, and they've all stepped up to

(34:44):
kind of help me with my you know, that's so cool.
One friend of mine, a new friend of mine, Abdul
Royal is a great organist. You know, a lot of
the guys that grew up in church, Mark Harris, who
played on a lot of songs and records with me,
and you know, they were guys that typically grew up

(35:04):
in church and learned to play organ in church. And
it's almost super natural what some of these guys can
do and how you know easy it is for them
to just manipulate the organ while they're playing something. It
would be hard enough for me to just play what
they're playing, much less be thinking about what drawbars I'm
going to pull out, right, you know, when I'm going

(35:25):
to put this button on and that, you know, and
then they play with their feet too, you know, Yeah,
And that's a that's an amazing all of it has
to become instinctual. And I think your best chance at
that is starting when you're about four, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Right right when your feet can't touch the right Yeah.
Can you talk a bit about you get to the
doobies eventually, and this puts you in the ecosystem of
Warner Brothers Records, which was a really unique ecosystem in
the seventies and eighties into the early nineties. It was
Can you talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
What I loved about Warners were the people involved, you know,
Lenny Warnicker, Russ Titleman, Ted Templeman, Moe Austin. Well, everybody
was creative. The promotion guys were creative. They they seem
to know how to market this kind of music that
wasn't that typically obviously commercial music. It was artists like

(36:21):
Bonnie Raid, Little Feet. They brought artists to the forefront
like Ricky Lee, Jones, Van Halen, you know, the DeBie Brothers,
even you know, although we might have been one of them,
their more you know, obviously kind of commercial acts.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
You know, all these they had a lot of acts
that were they didn't sell a lot of records. Yeah,
they didn't quite care about it, and.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
They would keep those artists on their roster. They you know,
you know, some of those artists never really gained that
incredible commercial success, but they flourished under the umbrella an
artistic kind of nurturing. That Warners and those people in
the A and R department who are all great producers themselves,

(37:01):
you know, they these guys weren't just A and R guys.
They their walls were filled with some of my favorite
albums of gold record some platinum records.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
A lot of records you made with Ted Templeman.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yes, yes, Ted was he was kind of a Svengali
in the studio really, and we knew we were really lucky,
especially us, because we were kind of a gangly bunch
of many different and diverse influences. And it was like
hurting cats artistically, and Ted did a great job of that,
you know, and I think we all appreciated his ability

(37:35):
to do that. It was just a really wonderful place
to be in this business of music if you were
a recording artists at that time, you know, And I
felt like I was in an elite group, you know.
I mean where else would an artist like Randy Newman flourish,
you know, because everybody knew him as a songwriter and
everybody wanted to do his songs, you know. But they

(37:57):
were the ones who always encouraged him to make his
own solo records. And with all the success that Bonnie
had later, it was really after her tenure at Warner Bros.
But every bit because of the nurse element and the
love of her artistry that they had for her. I
think she would tell you that too.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
When she had her success ultimately with with Don was.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, yeah. I think the one of the best things
that about Bonnie's story that I love is when she
started writing, you know, because I think she even she
might have been surprised at what a great writer she is.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, she's written some great songs, you know, and some
of my favorite songs. You know, Nika Time is such
such a great tune. It's it's almost uncandy that she
didn't do that earlier in her career.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah. The artists on Warner where you mentioned some of them,
there's also Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Mac Carly Simon.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, James Taylor, did you guys feel like a family
where you did? You know a lot of the other artists, And.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Well, if I got to meet them at all, it
was usually in the halls of Warner Brothers or at
the studio there where we all recorded Amigo Studios. But
I got to meet James there, and I got to
meet car McCarley and I wrote a song later it
was a really significant song in my career. And we
met when she just dropped by one of our sessions

(39:19):
because Ted was scheduled to produce an album on her
and she came by to say hi to him and
we were recording Keeps You Running. So she liked the song,
and she decided to record the song on her next record,
so we played on the track for her and that
was a thrill, you know, because she was already, you know,
a huge artist. And James it was like my all

(39:42):
time fave, you know, I just loved everything he did.
And Grilla the Gorilla Record was like for me, the
Holy Grail, you know, I just love that record so much.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
And Carly, eventually you got to co write one of
your huge hits with her, right like, yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Co wrote you Belong to Me and never spoke a
word to each other during the whole writing of the song.
We had a track on it, and I gave the
cassette of my playing the song at home to Teddy
and I said, that's the song, and you know, I
just all I have is that one line, you Belong
to Me. I don't even know what it means, you know,

(40:18):
but it's just a playsetter, really, you know, that's kind
of where the chorus should go. And ted without missing
a beach, said, you know, you should let Carly Simon
write the lyric to this, and which just sounded so
perfectly right to me. I just said, your lips to
God's ears. Sure, you know, and he sent it off

(40:38):
to her and she sent this beautifully handwritten lyric back,
and I wish I still had that handwritten lyric somewhere.
I keep praying someday I'll open a book and it'll
fall out.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
But there's one of those happy accidents again, like if
she had not dropped by the studio that day, so
that would have happened. Yeah, so there's one of the
biggest hits in your library.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
After one last quick break, we're back with the rest
of my conversation with Paul Reiser and Michael McDonald. We're
back with the rest of my conversation with Paul Riser
and Michael McDonald. Another happy accident you document well in
the book, Paul, is what a fool believes when Kenny

(41:24):
is coming over to your house to do a writing session.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
That's one of Paul's favorite stories.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Tell that story.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Oh, there was nothing Mike. You know, Mike is very
forthcoming about how sometimes have an idea and I'll just
rattle around for months and years. And he had that
little so because somebody who was it in the in
the Doobies that said Kenny once was a cornelius.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
I guess Kenny expressed some interest in writing with me,
and I asked not Cornelis was Tyrone reporter? And asked
Tyrone if you would give him me his number? And
Tyrone passed on the number to me. You know, I
was so excited, you know, maybe too excited, you know,
but I called it and we made an appointment to write,

(42:07):
and Kenny was going to come down for Santa Barbara
to write with me. And I lived alone at the time.
In my house was filthy, bachelor filthy, you know, the
ashtrays full of cigarettes on the piano and stuff, and
empty beer bottles everywhere and uh cigarettes floating in him
and god knows who was there. And my sister came

(42:31):
over mostly to meet Kenny Loggins, but she cleaned my
house up, you know, frantically cleaning my house before he
got there. So I met the piano and like sitting
over there and kind of messing around with some little
bits and pieces of songs I had, trying to think, well,
what do I have that I could play for him?
Maybe something we could be a start for us, you know,

(42:52):
looking through notebooks and things I might have written down,
you know.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
But I love that you bounced it off your sister
and go, I don't know, what do you think it
is that? And she goes kind of cringees. I go, yeah,
I don't think I would play that. Yeah, okay, thank
you sister.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah, she kind of I think she thought maybe that
was a little too circusy or something, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
But then the unbelievably good timing of Kenny opens the.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Door and the doorbell rang at the moment I was
playing it for her, and she kind of went, I
don't know about that one. The doorbell rings, you know,
And I go to the door and there's Kenny and
he's got his guitar and a bag with note pads
and you know, he's kind of struggling with all this
stuff and tape player in his hand. I said, here, game,
let me let me take your guitar. Said man, I'm

(43:35):
so glad you could come down. He goes, Before we say
anything else, he goes, you were just playing something on
the piano. He goes, is that something new? And I said, oh, yeah.
The fact I was playing it for my sister just
hates it. Yeah, because I was thinking about playing it
for you, you know, because I want to work on
that first.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
And apparently from the other side of the door. Just
hearing that had already come up with she had a
place in his life was like insane, that's yeah, the
bridge before I answered the door, you.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Know, insane.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
How long did it take for that song to come
together between the two, Well.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
We finished most of it that day. The chorus we
wrote the next day on the phone. Right, We kind
of left that day going we got something good here,
but it really needs that chorus, you know, a chorus
that really pays off, And we couldn't, for the life
of us figure out what that was yet. You know,
we kind of knew where the lyric was going intentionally,
you know, like two people looking back on a moment

(44:34):
with two completely different views on what exactly happened, and
the guy thinking this was this great missed opportunity for
the love of his life and only assuming that she
felt the same way. But obviously she did not, you know,
so he's looking to renew this flame, and she's just
looking to have dinner with an old friend, you know.

(44:55):
But we just really couldn't figure out how that would
culminate into a chorus. But the next day, I don't
know which one or the other of us thought, Well,
you know what a fool believes? You know. So I
was on the piano and we were on the phone.
Back then you could actually play the piano over the
phone and be coherent. You know. Nowadays with the iPhones

(45:16):
you can't do that. But so we came up with
the chorus chords and the melody.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
And playing back and forth over the phone.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, just kind of trading, trading ideas over the phone
until we came up with the chorus.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
And that was when you said, you know, what a
full Believes might be a good name for a book.
That's how prescient he was. Not yet, but in forty years,
this is going to be a book.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
It's gonna be a book.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, the two of you with titles mad about you
what a full Believe? I mean, you guys are incredible
at the titles, And there's a point in the book
and wonner as great as they were, there's a point
where you put out living on a fault Line and
it's kind of stretching their imagination of what you guys are, which,
by the way, that record missed my consciousness completely. It's

(46:00):
a really good album.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, thank you, and I said, yeah, it wasn't met
with a lot of enthusiasm and owners or you know,
by the public or by radio. Really it was kind
of went under the radar, and I think we were
kind of going into areas that were, you know, just.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Not that commercial really like you're made that way.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Well, you belonged to Me was on that there's a Light.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
You know, yeah, this is some incredible song, but you're
kind of stretching them and then minute by minute you
guys write and record that. And it's really the R
and B promotions team at Warner Brothers that here's something
and decides we're going to promote this.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, well, the head of the R and B promotions
at the time, which was a whole different ballgame. This
was like just pre urban kind of music before rap
came out and everything. The whole complexion of how to
market R and B music and where you know, what
that market even was, you know, had changed dramatically and

(47:00):
obviously for the better. Hip hop is huge. You know,
back then the R and B department warners once in
a while caught up. They had some great R and
B artists, Patty Austin and James Ingram, so they had
huge success print that Prince. Yeah, but it was a
changing time, and Ernie Singleton was the head of promotion
back then, and he was one of those guys that

(47:20):
kind of understood radio, you know, especially in the black community,
which was largely radio stations were owned and operated by
the program director, you know, you know they were they
were typically black. Yeah, smaller black owned businesses, and the
guy who owned the radio station was typically the head

(47:43):
jock and had the airtime. And so if you walked
in there with an album and he liked it, he'd
sit you down and play the whole record, you know,
and that just doesn't happen anymore. You know that those
days are gone, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Reading that, though it was interesting, it kind of confirmed something,
which is that like R and B is such a
kind of a bullshit title to begin with, but so
are titles in general. Because I was thinking about it,
and it's like the AOAR format album oriented rock or
soft rock or or now yacht rock. It's like, really
what that was was like it was R and B. Really,

(48:16):
you guys are playing yeah, but you know, because you
guys are white guys or your white Tyran's black, I mean,
you know, but it's like, okay, well, we can't.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Let me tell you, I would much rather be called
yacht rock than adult contemporary.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
But why can't like you're a damn R and B singer? Well,
you know right?

Speaker 2 (48:35):
I always felt that way. I remember when I had
my own label for a while, very short while, with
a couple of friends, and we hired independent promotion guys,
and we had this one guy. He was kind of
a classic character, really is an independent promotion guy, just
you know, you know, I would say to look, why
don't we go to all the formats with this, Oh no,

(48:56):
you can't do that. No you're not you're not rock. Okay,
let me just tell you that, right, you know, well,
you know, but the only real success we had were
on formats that no one would have ever except the
one guy in that department, like Erny Singleton, who said
to me at some point, he goes, you know, I've
always dug the band. They just would never give us
the ball. They wouldn't you know. We were the last

(49:18):
guys they would say, Hey, go out and promote the
next Doobie Brothers album.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, a live bit in a fault line I feel
like would have done really well in R and B. Yeah,
if there's stuff on there sounds like earth Wind and
five we had leading.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Into those guys. They would have probably brought it to
gotten some radio play that we never really got with it.
But you know, that's just hindsight twenty twenty, you know,
and typically the world needs to categorize everything, just like
the major labels always needed to tell people what they
want to hear, you know. Yeah, and that was always
the thing that was like it was like shooting themselves

(49:51):
in the foot, you know, but it was in an
effort to control the market that they wanted to grow.
Like when the major labels before rock and roll started
to kind of make us noise, it was the Sinatras
and you know, and rightfully so the great singers and
artists the time. The trios were big back then, that

(50:12):
Cold Trio and a lot of those East Coast trios
that were fairly popular, you know, but they were the
ones that were making anything that sounded like pop records.
The Mills Brothers and you know, nobody else was making
records for the average guy.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
It was either classical records or you know, but the
big labels didn't want it to grow beyond that because
they knew they had these guys signed, and we're just
going to keep selling these guys records. So all these
little independent labels started popping up because they had the
Fontella Basses and Chuck Berry's and the Little Richards, and
you know, they had these crazy phenomenal acts that they

(50:50):
were catching on like wildfire, and they knew that the
major labels weren't interested, you know, and all of a sudden,
the major labels start going, whoa, wait a minute, we're
missing out on this, so they would buy up all
the little indies. It's always been that kind of big
the whale comes along and eats everybody, and then it
starts to, you know, just kind of fester until some
other little airwave pops up, like FM radio or you know,

(51:13):
things like that. Rap came about the same way urban
music as we know it today started at street level,
you know, because there wasn't any labels that we're going
to go out and sign these guys. You know, they
made their own records and they were having success selling
those records and getting an airtime with those records. And
so the major labels have always had to learn that

(51:34):
lesson over and over again. You can't really just dictate
what people want to hear you. You have to have
your ear to the ground so that you even know
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
You know which, right while we're talking about hip hop,
I gotta thank you for the great war and g
regulate you you're sampled by Warren g Long Beach legend.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Oh that's right, he is.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
I got to thank you for Regulate.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
That's that's the version of my kids always liked. They
didn't like my version.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
I mean, Regulate. Did you play it for me?

Speaker 2 (52:01):
I didn't have to. They are? They knew about it
before I did. But yeah, you know they they love
that version of it. And it's learning curve. You know,
if you're a musician, you never stop learning what's going
on around you, and you're never stop marveling at how
You're never listening enough. It's kind of like being grateful.
You know. You can say I'm grateful, but if you're

(52:23):
really learning anything about your own life, you realize I'm
not grateful enough.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Wow, Wow, that's a great, great way of thinking about that.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Why do you save that for the book? You know,
I haven't shared this with you, but it's like I
just hearing Mike's outlook on life. It's like I've learned
to be more forgiving and more humble and cognizant of
other people just because of watching how he handles and
he has handled situations. I go, oh, you know, I

(52:54):
could be probably a little bit less of an asshole
if I tried, you know.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
So, you know, I mean, he's being honest the first
of all. Like I said, he's the most responsible for
the book even being a book, you know. But I
it was wonderful because we had like six hundred pages
of just transcript before we started actually writing the book.
Maybe not that much, but we had a lot of

(53:21):
clubs pages.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Did you have to do much extra curricular work outside
of the interviews with Michael just to sort.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
Of the laziest guy that way?

Speaker 2 (53:28):
No, no, no, he did a lot, and and really for me,
that was the real education for me was to see
Paul's genuine interest in other people. I think it has
a lot to do with what he does for a
living too, being an actor and a writer, you know,
but his acumen or his capacity to build a story

(53:49):
was really what I benefited from so much. You know,
he saw threads and interesting points of reference in the
stories like a writer would, like a professional writer would,
and it was a revelation to me in many cases,
you know, you know, but.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Just hearing the stories and then put looking at them
all together, which is not something any of us do regularly, right,
We don't recite our life. We don't look for necessarily
for themes. But when you see it in the stack
of pages, you go, huh, this is a similar you know.
There's a funny story Mike first band, the first job
they ever had, playing for the women's pta group, and

(54:27):
they play their five songs and the priest comes up
and goes, oh, thank you boys, that was lovely. And Michael, no,
we have a whole other set and his answer is
that won't be necessary. I thought, well, that's the greatest
first review. Whatever dear won't be needed here.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
But then as the story went on, there were like
three other stories. They're like that kept coming back. You know,
we've all had that place where like you're not really
wanted here, which you know, we get Every actor and
musician gets more than their share of everything that I
had hoped the book would do has done. It makes
sense of this connects the dots and we see the stories,
the arc of how the five year old kid who

(55:03):
sang in a saloon with his dad becomes the Michael
McDonald of today.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
To see that that random things and seemingly unimportant moments
sometimes become the things that shape us the most, you know,
more than any plans we have or great designs.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Like me going to that party where you were playing pianos.
I didn't see that coming.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
No, in my life as a as a script was
certainly not one that I wrote. You. Yeah, and I think,
but I think for most people that's not uncommon.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Was it frustrating to see your life to see it written?
Did anything feel avoidable that happened?

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I don't really think in those terms anymore, you know,
Like I used to regret, have a lot of regrets,
you know, And certainly there are some things I wish
I could read live and redo and you know, wish
I never had done or whatever that may or may
not be in the book. But I've come to reconcile

(56:02):
with myself the fact that what I know about myself
and my life and for better or ward, is all
a product of every one of those things that happened,
and that some of the worst things trying out to
be the best things that ever happened to me. You
hear people all the time go, you know, prison changed
my life for the better. You know, I'm grateful that

(56:24):
I went to prison. I'm sure they weren't at the time,
you know, but in hindsight you see things differently, you know,
And in many ways, this book for me was that
kind of revelation of looking back and realizing that some
of the people I resented the most that I really
felt righteous, you know, resentment for who I felt took
advantage of me or whatever in some way or another.

(56:46):
With a little bit of time and space, I realized
that those really are actually the very people that, without
whom I would probably still be back in Missouri, you know,
lived out my life in Missouri. They were the people
that got me to California. They were the people that
allowed me to walk through the door I walked through
with them with her, and I felt I had every

(57:08):
reason to be agree with them over something to do
with our relationship, but more importantly, the opportunity they gave
me just by way of you know, not saying any
you know, get rid of this guy. You know, they
did more for me than they ever did to me.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
You know, yeah, yeah, Paul In the acknowledgments, you mentioned
that your son helped transcribe the interviews. Yeah, how was
it working with your son on Michael's project in particular?

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Well, it was you know, it was COVID and he
locked down and I said, you need something to do.
I'm going to give you a job, and I'm going
to give you a child labor's wages. I said, you
take this, but you got to type it out. So
subconsciously I think, I want, like, do you understand who
Michael is? Do you understand who he's played with? And
so I was sort of subliminally leaving crumbs for him

(57:56):
to learn about. I didn't know James Taylor or I
didn't know Bonny. I remember one of the transcripts, whether
by accident or not, he misspelled John Lennon's name, and
I went, listen, you can't be my son and misspelled
John Lennon. That can't happen, or like there would be
Coldport or somebody or or or Stephen Sondheim and watching
him try and spell that, I'm going, Yeah, learned. Some

(58:18):
words are some big words you should learn.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Maybe your kid write about some artists from the seventies.
That's child abuse. I think, yeah, sure, but.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
You know those stories too, you know I was. I
was tickled, and I knew other people would be too.
When Mike shared his stories about how his kids are
not impressed with his celebrity or his music, like you
know you I've heard that so many times with so
many other Springsteen talking about his kids maybe no two
of his songs and how can that be? It's like,

(58:46):
because they're your kids and they just don't give a shit,
because that's just so. I found that very heartwarming and
u comforting.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
You referenced earlier, Paul, before I started recording that We
Are the World documentary that just came on our Netflix.
It would have been incredible if you were on. I
mean it was a great tune as it was, but
your voice on that would have been amazing, taking it
another notch up. And as I was reading the book
and Quincy was supposed to do produce your second solo
album and then there was a misunderstanding that ultimately resolved

(59:16):
or whatnot. But is that kind of why you weren't
a part of that or do you not even know?

Speaker 2 (59:20):
You No, I think there was just you know, you
can only have so many people doing something like that.
I mean, it was huge as it was, you know,
but I think, yeah, it was one of those moments
where Quincy made the whole music business look good, you know,
and Michael too, you know. They it was a very
noble thing that they did, you know. Yeah, not that
I didn't sit around wondering why I wasn't called either,
but I you know, yeah, oh sure, yeah, me and

(59:43):
a few other people were gosh, we did get the
call on that one.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Do you remember hearing about it at the time.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
No, I think I just saw it, you know, when
it came out on MTV.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
But it was great, a missed opportunity that you wanted.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
I never knew for us. The other think wheal and
Jennings walking out, I never knew because and begin I go, gee,
I don't remember him being in there. It's like he
wasn't because was it Lionel or Stevie wonder who.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
TV wants to say, let's throw some putting some I.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Don't even know it was real SWAHELI or just it's
why he sounding, you know, oh really? And and Whalen
Jenner's walk down goes yeah, no.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Good old no, good old boy everything. That's why he
good old boy.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Canna be saying why because he's.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Wearing like a ten gallon hot or you know, a
big cowboy hat and you see him walking down off
the bleachers and at some point you just see a cowboy.
Oh my god, and he's gone.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
But you know what, to to Quincy's credit, like, oh,
that Willie Nelson was on it was genius. It's like
and perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
I would have loved to have heard and I would
have loved to have heard Michael quincy solo album. I
couldn't believe that was in the when I read that.
It was, yeah, that was in the cards.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yeah, well, no, I know I was. I guess I
only have myself to blame on that one. I I
think it was just a bunch of miscommunication, and uh,
you know, I always felt like it was a missed
up tune. I would have loved to have done that
record with Quincy and and Bruce Swudine.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Yeah yeah, Bruce too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
But I'm grateful for the chance I did get to
record with Quincy. It was amazing and Bruce because they
were such a team, you know, and Quincy was, you know,
really the genius behind the music part of it all.
But what was amazing, was they never wasted any time
getting right to the heart of the matter. You know,
I was so in the seventies. I was so used
to doing these dates where they'd sit there and hit

(01:01:27):
the snare drum for like literally three hours. So by
the time they got the sound they wanted, they would
have to change the head anyway from hitting it for
two hours. But it was just like sessions just took
forever to get started, and you know, nobody seemed to
quite know where the mojo was. And you know, with
Quincy and Bruce, it was like, I picked this mic

(01:01:48):
for you. I've never met you in my life, but
I picked this mic for you. I've heard your voice.
I kind of know what you need to sing into,
you know, And he was dead on, you know, I
got one other one. I'm gonna try it now that
that was the right one, and you know, and Quincy
was like, you know, from the musical aspect of it,
was like he knew exactly where this should go before
we played a note. You know. It was just, you know,

(01:02:11):
really an education to work with those guys. They they
to me kind of encapsulated that I walk in the
studio because I know why I'm here. I don't walk
in the studio and wonder who's going to give me
the idea of where we're going here? You know. It's
and I used to work for a lot of producers
who were like that was like they thought that I
was gonna you know, I would come up with the

(01:02:31):
background parts that they wanted to hear where they weren't
they sure what that was yet, because they were kind
of relying on me to, you know, come up with
it or something. And you know, that was another thread
in my whole story, was that dysfunctional defect that I
was famous for letting someone else do what I knew
I should be doing myself and then being pissed off

(01:02:52):
at them for not doing it right later, you know.
I mean that was my m O, you know, for
many years, and probably still is. But I you know,
I try to catch myself in the act at this age,
you know, because life's too short. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Well, I'm still I'm just really grateful for the honesty.
I mean, it's I mean, thank you for incredible stuff
and talking to us.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Glad you enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
H thank you, Thank you man. Thanks to Michael McDonald
and Paul Riser. For talking about the process behind writing
their book, What a Fool Believes. You can hear a
list of all of our favorite songs featuring Michael McDonald
on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe
to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes.

(01:03:36):
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Ben Tollinday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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(01:03:57):
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