Are The Doobies cool?
I’m sure there’s a hell of a back story – drug abuse, womanizing, mud sharks, etc. But all the truth I need is in the music (cue up “Listen to the Music” if you got it).
The Doobies aren’t terribly flash. They’re heads-down, good-timin’ biker rock. I can see how this sort of thing could be utterly repugnant. Sometimes I hear their cover of “Take Me In Your Arms” in the grocery store and, like Grand Funk’s “The Locomotion”, it just seems so desperate.
This could just be a nostalgia trip – there’s nothing spectacular about “Long Train Running” or “China Grove”. Hell, “Another Park, Another Sunday” could be Chicago. But, the honesty – a true band with vocal chops – it always works. Until it doesn’t, I suppose. The Doobies really had it for a few years there. And they still do.
I’m sure The Doobies are as mystified as anyone as to why it stopped working. Even listening to their first album, it’s all there. Solid. Competent. Sweet finger-pickin’ and harmonies effortlessly carrying on for that CSN dollar. Their albums are a joy - Elvis Costello likely uses them for target practice - but this is AMERICAN ROCK. A bar band that got lucky? That’s kind of how it works in this country. Only in contrast to Lynyrd Skynyrd or The Allman Brothers do we see how pop-oriented the Doobies were. Not exactly America-doing-Neil-Young lightweights, but when they started bringing in the synths on The Captain & Me, you realized they were more Northern California than Mississippi black water. They went pro. You would, too.
Tom Johnston could only push the formula so long. One of their ubiquitous hits, “Long Train Running”, had been little more than a playful rehearsal jam for years. It almost never came to be:
"I didn't want to cut it," Johnston confessed. "...I just considered it a bar song without a lot of merit.”
It’s not hard to lose perspective when seemingly everything you do is swallowed willingly by FM radio. God, their hits sound good in the car. But “Nobody”, their cover of “Beehive State”, “Disciple”, “South City Midnight Lady”, “I Cheat the Hangman” – these are some choice deep cuts. I would recommend everything they did from the self-titled debut to Stampede. These fuckers could play.
And then Johnston dropped out.
I think they got some dudes from Steely Dan. You are free to take the thread in that direction.
I’m out.