In
January of 2001Welcome to Cottage Views Doobie Brothers Page
click on album cover to enlarge
In
January of 2001
The Doobie Brothers' Tom Johnston
talked to Cottage Views about the first
Doobie Brothers Record in Ten Years.
Sibling Rivalry - out now on Pyramid Records
The Doobie Brothers, now fronted by founding fathers Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons, along with longtime members Michael Hossack, Keith Knudsen, and John McFee, have finally released their latest work, Sibling Rivalry, on Pyramid Records, after a ten year hiatus from the recording scene.
Since their last studio album, Brotherhood, in 1991 the group have been steadily working, touring the world over, and collecting a backlog of material and songs to utilize in the future. By the time the group had enough down time to actually enter the studio the amount of songs they had gathered far outweighed what could possibly be recorded.
Narrowing the record down to the thirteen songs on Sibling Rivalry may have been hard work, but the finished product is a shimmering collection of classic Doobie Brothers style. From the guitar driven chug of the first single "People Gotta Love Again," to the folky County Pop of "Leave My Heartache Behind," this kindred competition has paid off.
The lead-off single, "People Gotta Love Again," reached #3 on the Classic Rock Radio charts.
INTERVIEW WITH TOM JOHNSTON OF THE DOOBIE BROTHERS
JANUARY 31, 2001
Michael Cimino: How have you been?
Tom: Busy!
MC: Well, welcome back. It’s a real pleasure to hear your new record.
Tom: I’m glad you like it.
MC: It’s ten years. How come it’s taken so long?
Tom: Well, we’ve been on the road most of the time, to be honest with you. And, we just didn’t get around to doing it. We had to get hooked up with a label and it took us at least five years to get this thing done. Most of the work was done in about six months, but, you know, leading up to that - writing a lot of songs, throwing a lot of songs out, all that kind of stuff…
MC: In the last ten years the whole industry has changed.
Tom: You got that right!
MC: What do you think your biggest obstacle is going to be for getting your message across?
Tom: Getting somebody to hear it. The way radio is now, getting played is a bitch. We got airplay on the first single and we did okay but it’s all strictly on classic format. You can’t get anywhere else. The only other way to reach the public is via AC, which is Adult Contemporary, which means you have to have a Soft Rock piece. We have something like that being released. We also have another Rock and Roll one being released. With the first one we got up to #3 on Classic Radio, but doesn’t mean a lot, really, because you’re not hitting that large an audience. It’s certainly not a record buying audience, most of them anyway.
MC: When I first listened to the disc I immediately realized the diversity of the group. There is some rocking stuff and then there is some other jazzy pieces reminiscent of the latter incarnation of the Doobies, a little Michael McDonald influence, don't you think?
Tom: I wondered if some people might go there. It really doesn’t. All that stuff that is more laid back is really not Michael’s style. It’s just stuff that was written by either Keith and Guy, or in one case John and Guy, and then Pat wrote a whole lot of stuff like that. Why I don’t know, but it really doesn’t have the Michael McDonald feel, but it is a laid back thing. And then there’s the Hip-Hop thing that I did, Jericho, which isn’t like anything like anybody’s done before in this band before. I just wanted to give that a shot. That’s probably my favorite track on the whole album to be honest with you (laughs).
MC: Do you
still think we can change the world through our artistry?
Tom: That was what I believed in 1969, ’70, ’71, ’72. That’s what “Listen to the Music” was all about. I don’t have that naïve view anymore. I’ve got to be honest with you, I think you can have an influence but I don’t think you can change the world, no. The world right now is a scary place. The world has changed a lot in ten years, as well. The music business kind of reflects what is going on in the world. Big business has taken over the entire industry.
We were at Warner Brothers for so many years you could walk in and talk to CEO, or the president, or the vice president, or whoever you wanted to, and just sit down and yak with them. It was great. And it was run by a lot of people who were either producers, or ex-musicians. It was a musical oriented company working with musicians. Now it is all lawyers and business guys. They’re just suits. They don’t give a shit about the music. As long as it makes money they’ll chew people up and spit ‘em out. It’s very noticeable when you listen to the stuff that’s on the radio.
There is a lack of people who sing melodies. Depending on which area you want to go to, there is a lot missing in the music world as far as I’m concerned. A lot!
I don’t believe what I once did; that if all of the leaders in the world got together and sat down, and in those days ‘smoked a joint’ – as I used to think, and listened to the music they’d figure out that we’re not all that different. It’s just not that way.
Some people have done spiritual music since the get go, and especially nowadays it’s all about – and there’s nothing wrong with this when I say this part - it’s all about feeling good, and right here right now, and the hell with later. Rock ‘n’ Roll has, kind of, always been about that. That part is okay. That part is not wrong, but the lyrics and the way it’s being put across… A lot of the lyrics are pabulum… The people who can sing are so busy doing vocal calisthenics that they’ll never sing a melody. Rap, to me, is a complete waste. Nobody should have bothered to come up with that one. And me, being an R&B oriented guy, I’m frustrated because I grew up listening to all the R&B greats, and Blues greats, and I still do. To me it’s frustrating because they always had the best music, as far as I’m concerned. Hands down, the best music. And now, the Afro-American community is turning out crap. It’s depressing for me because there’s no new Otis Redding, there’s no Aretha Franklin’s, there’s no new James Brown, there’s no Temps, there’s no… on and on and on… there’s no “oh, that’s such and such.” You hear the first couple of notes and you go, “I know who that is.” It could be anybody. You could put on ten different groups and they all sound the same. Which is what my parents used to say to me about Little Richard. Really that is the case. Vocally, there is nobody who stands out and you can say, “That’s such and such.” I don’t hear anybody who hits me that way. There are people out there who can really sing but they’re not going anyplace with it.
MC: It’s all about production.
Tom: I think music needs a renaissance. I think it needs to turn around. I don’t want to say it can’t get worse, because surely it can, but with people like Eminem, and Korn, and Marilyn Manson, who offer no hope whatsoever to the kids who are listening, and who are impressionable, find it there way to be rebellious, it makes me sad. I’ve got kids which has changed my whole outlook on life, I’ve got to tell you, in a big way. They’re at the age, especially my son who has just turned 13, he’s at the age where this stuff, well, he has been for two years, and I’ve tried to talk to him and not sound like my parents sounded to me. It’s like, “Christopher, music is supposed to give you a message and hopefully make you feel good.” Even if it’s rebellious, like Hendrix – raucous, like Cream – if you really want to get out there, those guys could really play. They really knew their instruments. They were movers and shakers in the forefront of guitar playing. And their lyrics were cool, and their songs were really cool and they really went somewhere. Now, you talk to me about these guys like Blink 182, or Korn, or Rage Against the Machine, and I’m sorry, I’ve listened to that stuff and it leaves me befuddled. It’s scary. A lot of it’s about everything from suicide to getting loaded. A lot of stuff that kids don’t need to hear. There’s enough of that in real life, you don’t need to hear about it.
MC: Your new album is very diverse with everybody pitching in ideas.
Tom: We produced it ourselves and that was a good thing in some ways and not the best thing in some ways. I think we turned out a really polished album as far as sound goes, sonically. We got one of the best mixers in the world to mix it and he did a great job. And it was recorded really, really well. All done on ADATs and using computers. I think we would have been a little better off if we had used somebody, and we did use somebody for a little while, for guidance on tune selection. I think we put out too many songs and I think we did a little too heavy on the light stuff.
MC: That’s what I was hinting at before. I didn’t want to say that the record sounded like Michael McDonald but there are a lot of AC songs included.
Tom: We’ve even got easy listening Jazz on there.
MC: Do you think his influence is still affecting the band?
Tom: No. When he was in the band, yeah, you better believe it. He turned the band around 180 degrees from where it was. He is a very talented guy. It was a very classy kind of music they were making after I left the band. Actually, while I was still in the band, but then I left in ’77. Where Michael took the band was just as popular with a whole lot of people as what was going on before, and with a different set of people usually. He reached a lot of people. Michael is a incredibly talented guy. He’s got a new album out too and the funny thing is he has gone the opposite direction if you listen to that. He’s got some ballads on it and stuff but he’s got some funk things and some stuff that he’s never tried before. That’s kind of cool.
MC: Was it your differences in musical opinion that made you leave in ’77?
Tom: Not at all. It had nothing to do with Michael. I didn’t leave because of Michael. I left because I was toast. I needed to get away from the band. I had an ulcer and I almost bled to death. It was just time to get away from the whole thing. So, I took two years off and got very healthy and then went and did two solo albums and then after that toured on them, and then after that I played in a local band here in Marin County and didn’t do a lot until we got back together in ’87 to do that reunion thing.
We’ve been working steadily since ’89. the only year we didn’t do a lot was ’92 and that was mostly because two guys left the band and we needed to replace them.
MC: Michael did tour with you at one point, didn’t he?
Tom: Yeah, in ’99 he did a summer tour with us.
MC: Any reason why he is not on the new record?
Tom: Well, he’s not in the band. We look at it like this; whoever is in the band doing all the shows is who is on the record. It’s nothing against Michael. We do about five dates a year with Michael, all corporate dates, and we still see him all the time and we’re still on real good terms with him. It has nothing to do with that. He’s doing his solo thing career and he doesn’t want to do a Doobie Brothers thing and we want to do our Doobie Brothers thing and we don’t want to give people the impression that Michael’s still in the band, because he’s not, and he hasn’t been involved in anything we’ve done (studio-wise) for the last eleven years, almost twelve.
MC: I’ve, personally, been more into the more guitar oriented Doobies songs, so I was real glad to hear the first single, “People got to Love Again.”
Tom: If anything, that’s reminiscent of stuff that went on years ago. It’s dressed up a little bit, but it has still got that feel to it.
MC: And
Pat’s song, “Leave my Heartache Behind,” reminds me of the old days.
Tom: Son of Black Water as he calls it (laughs).
MC: One of the songs I want to ask you about is “45th Floor.”
Tom: I wrote that with Bill (Champlin). That’s kind of a statement on politics as the two of us view it. People and politicians who make up our aristocracy in the political world and arena and how they operate, and our disdain for them. There are not a lot of politicians out there that I get warm and fuzzy about. (laughs) There is no politics in our music. To make a somewhat musically snide remark is about as far as I’ve ever gotten. I don’t usually deal with it.
MC: With the political correctness of our current society, do you think the name of the band just goes over peoples heads now?
Tom: Well, they don’t associate it with that anymore and nobody in the band does that anymore, so it’s just a name now. That’s all it is. We were never flag-bearers for anything, although in those days it was sort of a lifestyle. It was just the way it was back then. It was something to latch onto - ‘Oh, I know who that is - that’s the Doobie Brothers,” instead of Pud (laughs) which doesn’t elicit any kind of feelings, I don’t believe, and that was never a name that was used by the band. That was just a band that formed and reformed until I ran into Pat and got together in that formation.
MC: How did you get the name Doobie Brothers?
Tom: The oldest question (laughs).
MC: No, really. Who came up with the name?
Tom: A guy named Keith Rosen. We called him Dyno. He was living in the house on 285 South 12th Street where the band got it’s start. He came up with the name. We didn’t have a name. We were just playing and he said, ‘Why don’t you call yourselves the Doobie Brothers?’ and we said, ‘What the hell, we don’t have a name,’ and we’d heard of worse, so we did.
MC: Did you think you were going to get some flak from the press for it?
Tom: We didn’t really care. I was 22 at the time and I was paying the rent and having the time of my life. I was a happy camper in those days. (laughs)
MC: The title of the disc, Sibling Rivalry, does it have a significant meaning?
Tom: Nah, it’s just a tounge in cheek thing. Doobie Brothers/Sibling Rivalry.
MC: I thought it may have something to do with everybody fighting to get their songs on the record.
Tom: I wouldn’t say fighting, but we did sit down and listen to songs a lot of times. We got halfway through the album and threw most of it out, which is another reason it took a while. Because we decided we didn’t want to use those songs. And consequently, there was... nobody got mad and started screaming or anything like that, but at that time we had a guy who was listening to the tunes we sent him and he said ‘Yeah, that’s a good song,’ but he was nowhere around by the time we got finished with it.
When you produce it yourself, this is the first time we ever done it, you open yourself up to the wonderful world of politics which makes things less free flowing and sometimes less productive. Although, I must say, I think we did a darn good job under the circumstances the way that we did this. I’m used to working with a producer. I’m used to working with Teddy. I’ve worked with other producers, on Cycles and Brotherhood, but I’m used to working with somebody who would say, “This would be good, or that would be good,” or maybe have an idea or input on the song selections or what you’re doing with your lyrics. Maybe those aren’t the best ones you could write, or you could come up with something better. “Maybe it would be better if the chorus had this. These songs are okay, but maybe you don’t need all those, or maybe…” Any number of things, a drum lick, …
MC: Sometimes it’s easier to see things from an outside perspective.
Tom: It’s a great thing. And if people are upset then they take the blame. It doesn’t fall on the guy who’s trying to create the work of art.
MC: Is it much more satisfying to be a touring band instead of a recording unit these days?
Tom: I’d love to make another record on top of this one with a producer and see where that went. Touring is great but it gets old. I get really sick of traveling especially with having a family. It’s hard to say what it would be like if I didn’t have a family, but I got sick of it in the old days, so… It’s a dichotomy. I love playing. I love to go out and play. I love to be in front of a crowd. I love to get people up. I love to work an audience. But, to do that you have to travel. You can’t do one without the other, until somebody comes up with the “Beam me up,” thing (laughs). When you go out for a month at a time after a while you’re just kind of in a daze. Riding on buses all night. Town to town doing 5 on 1 off. After a while it’s another frame of mind to be in.
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