Doobie Brothers

John Hartman arrived in California in 1969 with the hopes of meeting Skip Spence of Moby Grape. Spence introduced Hartman to singer-songwriter Tom Johnston and the two musicians later became the engine behind The Doobie Brothers. They began by calling their band, “Pud” and went through a few line up changes sometimes including Skip Spence. It was in 1970 when they met Dave Shogren and another singer songwriter called Patrick Simmons, who had really made a name for himself in the local scene, but he really worked well alongside the line up that was beginning to form. Playing all over Northern California earned them a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1971.

It was over the next five years that they would become an international hit, with their sophomore album “Toulouse Street” released July 1972, going Platinum in the US and charting in Australia and New Zealand as well. “The Captain and Me”, released in March 1973, followed suit but this time going 2x Multi-Platinum. A similar pattern happened over the next couple of years in the form of “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits” and “Stampede” both being top 4 albums in the US, and then in 1976, along came soulful power house, Michael McDonald. Under a contract to release an album in 1976, the Doobies were in a difficult situation where their main songwriter was unavailable so they turned to McDonald and Porter for material. With this request came the album “Takin’ It to the Streets” which was released on March 19th 1976. With the success of this album seeing it make it to number 8 in the Pop Albums Chart, The Doobie Brothers asked McDonald if he’d like to continue working with them for their next record. Fast forward a couple of successful albums to 1979, which is when they released an album called “Minute by Minute”, and on that album featured a song called “What a Fool Believes”, written by McDonald and Kenny Loggins. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 14th 1979, and received Grammy Awards in 1980 for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

Over the course of the next couple of years, The Doobies embarked on world tours but unfortunately due to many issues between band members, exhaustion and disillusion, there were no original members left. Michael McDonald was ready for a solo career, so the band elected to disband. Of course, the band briefly disbanded and effectively hibernated for the next four years before making a comeback in the form of an album called “Cycles” which was released on May 17th 1989, this time without McDonald.