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.
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 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 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, 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 a book along with the author, but it just seemed like such a cool pairing that it was impossible to pass.
Up unlikely pairing.
Yeah, how did you guys meet?
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 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 what we liked about those songs, and we found we had, you know, real similar interests in music from the sixties.
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 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 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 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 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.
And over Zoom right, yeah, zoom.
We did much.
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. 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.
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.
As a caliber of Paul's neighborhood.
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, 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?
What have I done?
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.
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, 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, 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.
I go, no, Jay, that's.
Great, And then suddenly that would find its way into the book.
Do you worry about that as you're going along.
We're worried about it right now still as we speak.
How do you know you've mind everything.
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, 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, my wife says, you know, the sound of your own voice is the most pleasant thing in their life.
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.
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. 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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 find out that somebody you admire hasn't necessarily figured it out yet either. We're all still working at it.
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?
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 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 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.
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. 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 is in his bathrobe and he's yelling if you can I hear that?
Please?
I'd like to hear that story.
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.
You know, three.
Quarters through.
Up he's yelling in.
A bathrobe, screaming at you for money that you can't give to me. Can you tell that story?
I guess yeah.
No.
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 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 to charity, and we're all that's the favored nation's idea here, we're all good with.
Everyone needs to respect.
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.
But so you like, you're like hours before the show and you get summoned to his trailer.
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 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, Michael Man, He goes, when did you write?
He girl?
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, 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 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 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 old man. God damn it. You know, I don't you know, I don't play this shit.
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.
I don't give about your solemn oath.
Yeah, you gotta give me something like oh no.
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 my friends and Ferguson could see me now Ray Charles chewing my ass out, you know.
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 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.
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 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 everybody yesterday's paper, I believe, or.
I thought a while that was there.
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.
You know.
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.
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.
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.
What with auditions you got before that?
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.
There was a playing like.
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.
Were those your kind of bands like.
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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
And they're not easy songs.
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 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 the following week of rehearsal or so, and then we left for points beyond in the United States and played all around the States.
That's about as incredible a gig as you can have expected to have gotten.
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, what happens? The band breaks up? You know. A week later.
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, Sammy Hagar's group, the Beach Boys, the Eagles might have been on a gig, a bill on a gig.
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.
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.
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 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.
Shows you a business model.
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 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.
And you know makeshift office.
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 on some windows across the alley because he forgot which apartment I lived in, and.
He was out screaming at for in the morning.
Yeah Coke, Mike, are you in there? You know? So anyway, but re miraculously we did not go to jail.
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.
Sure, It's like.
What kind of life is it?
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 to get there?
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
You know.
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, half my age, or I just don't know what I want to do yet? What what's what do next?
Or whatever?
And all those questions that I can unabashedly reassure them that you'll be asking yourself those questions when you're seventy five.
Yeah, in the book, you never seemingly know where you're going next.
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.
Are there things musically that you feel like I need to check this.
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 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 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.
How different is it? How different is it to play?
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.
You're a very rhythmic player, though, so I'd imagine it would really suit you.
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 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, 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.
You know who the guys that are that you look up to in that world great organ players.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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, 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.
A lot of records you made with Ted Templeman.
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 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 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.
When she had her success ultimately with with Don was.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah. The artists on Warner where you mentioned some of them, there's also Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood.
Mac Carly Simon.
Yeah, James Taylor, did you guys feel like a family where you did? You know a lot of the other artists, And.
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 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 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.
And Carly, eventually you got to co write one of your huge hits with her, right like, yeah, we.
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, 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 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.
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.
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 is coming over to your house to do a writing session.
That's one of Paul's favorite stories.
Tell that story.
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.
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, 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 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, looking through notebooks and things I might have written down, you know.
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.
Yeah, she kind of I think she thought maybe that was a little too circusy or something, you know.
But then the unbelievably good timing of Kenny opens the.
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 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.
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.
Know, insane.
Yeah.
How long did it take for that song to come together between the two, Well.
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 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. 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 you can't do that. But so we came up with the chorus chords and the melody.
And playing back and forth over the phone.
Yeah, just kind of trading, trading ideas over the phone until we came up with the chorus.
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.
It's gonna be a book.
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 a really good album.
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.
Not that commercial really like you're made that way.
Well, you belonged to Me was on that there's a Light.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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, 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.
Let me tell you, I would much rather be called yacht rock than adult contemporary.
But why can't like you're a damn R and B singer? Well, you know right?
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, 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 guys they would say, Hey, go out and promote the next Doobie Brothers album.
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.
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 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 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.
You know.
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 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, 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 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.
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.
Oh that's right, he is.
I got to thank you for Regulate.
That's that's the version of my kids always liked. They didn't like my version.
I mean, Regulate. Did you play it for me?
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 really learning anything about your own life, you realize I'm not grateful enough.
You know.
Wow, Wow, that's a great, great way of thinking about that.
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 could be probably a little bit less of an asshole if I tried, you know.
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 clubs pages.
Did you have to do much extra curricular work outside of the interviews with Michael just to sort.
Of the laziest guy that way?
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 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.
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 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.
Thank you.
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 sang in a saloon with his dad becomes the Michael McDonald of today.
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.
Like me going to that party where you were playing pianos. I didn't see that coming.
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.
Was it frustrating to see your life to see it written? Did anything feel avoidable that happened?
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 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 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. 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 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.
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?
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 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 words are some big words you should learn.
Maybe your kid write about some artists from the seventies. That's child abuse. I think, yeah, sure, but.
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, 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.
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 or whatnot. But is that kind of why you weren't a part of that or do you not even know?
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 a few other people were gosh, we did get the call on that one.
You know.
Do you remember hearing about it at the time.
No, I think I just saw it, you know, when it came out on MTV.
But it was great, a missed opportunity that you wanted.
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.
TV wants to say, let's throw some putting some I.
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.
Good old no, good old boy everything. That's why he good old boy.
Canna be saying why because he's.
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.
But you know what, to to Quincy's credit, like, oh, that Willie Nelson was on it was genius. It's like and perfect.
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.
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.
Yeah yeah, Bruce too.
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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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.
Glad you enjoyed it.
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. 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. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share rate from view us on your podcast. Apt are the Music's by any Beats. I'm justin Richmond.