Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser

29:39And that's not even mentioning how the card gets you into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences like music festivals and sports events. Whether you're booking your next big trip or we can escape, Chase Sapphire Reserve makes travel more rewarding. Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and A-member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers, the pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.

30:19Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50 % of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, pull this, pull that, turn this. It's just like doing my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway.

30:56I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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 Bill on a gig we did one with the Eagles I think we did the thing up in San Francisco on the day on the green the Eagles I think 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 they dissolve the band but you kind of have like one last run in with Walter before that kind of air is over, which is he almost gets arrested looking for your...

31:56No, we both almost got arrested. But we had a mutual friend, and we were going to, you know, we both like to smoke pot, and we like to do the occasional blow. But, you know, we weren't... Neither one of us were two people who could really afford a good coke habit, you know. So we came up with the idea that we could get a little bit from this friend of ours who 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. And we could just sell it to our close friends and share it. That was your business model.

32:33It was our business model. And then we would have some left over to get us through the week. Well, the entire amount didn't get us through the night even. We, of course, snorted most of it before we ever got around to cutting it. Our conversations just got sillier and sillier. And that wound up in the L.A. police coming back to this apartment. I was only watching this apartment for a friend of mine. And she happened to have scales and everything. I thought, well, this is the perfect setting for cutting this cocaine. It's your makeshift office. Yeah, you know. And anyway, the whole thing went south really quickly.

33:08And wound up that next morning somewhere just before dawn with what seemed like the entire L.A. police, county police force, 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. He was out screaming at 4 in the morning trying to get a Coke. Mike, are you in there? So anyway, but miraculously, we did not go to jail. No, and then it's like the night ends as mundane as can be, which is you go into bed, and he's coked out drinking a margarita that's playing electric bass on your, or acoustic bass on your couch.

33:47Yeah, sure. It's like, what kind of life is this? Yeah, no, it was the 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, wasn't about money or managing any money or even, you know, making money necessarily. It was just the next gig was all we really ever thought about. When's the next gig? And what do we got to do to get there? 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 any of the fancy accoutrements. It's not the fame.

34:26It'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 uh you know there's so many moments in in the beginning of your career which are in the book of you going you know this may be not uh 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 18 and it blows up and now he's but you know back home with his tail between his legs in st 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.

35:07And 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 happen. We wouldn't have had this career and this music that we've gotten to enjoy. So I, 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 you 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.

35:46Why? That's how it happened. I'm glad 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 17 times. It's continued. Oh, okay, no wonder I can't keep track. There's a lot of moving pieces here. So it helped to understand that. Yeah. And again, I think one of the themes that 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're going to a distinct place with our lives and we make a plan.

36:27and that typically never, you know, best laid plans, you know. Yeah. And the journey's never over. I mean, my kids are, you know, they're in their 30s 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 to 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 75. Yeah. And the book, you never seemingly know where you're going next. No, and it's almost kind of scary to be my age now and still not know where I'm going.

37:06You 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 B3 player, and that was always my waterloo. I just thought, every time I got near a B3, I would play it once in a while on a session or something, but I never felt like I knew what I was doing.

37:42and 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 were a kid, there's a bad 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 synths, you know. Right. the first time.

38:12Yeah, and so this is the first time I've actually played organ with him, 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? I mean, if it's keyboard. It's a different feeling because you don't have a sustain pedal. That's one of the things you learn to kind of play more fluidly without any kind of sustain pedal. 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, well, I could maybe make use of this, you know.

38:50I could bring something to this song on organ. It would intrigue me all the more. And so by the time the 50th anniversary came around, I was convinced that this was my shot to, you know, get up and play a little organ, you know. So I do, and I enjoy the hell out of it. I really have always loved the instrument. but it's a real learning curve for me and I'm and I find at 72 what have I got to lose I'm enjoying that where that might have terrified me in my 30s 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 into it and some of the guys I know who I've always admired them for their acumen with a b3 have been more than kind to show me some stuff and kind of help me you know Who are the guys that you look up to in that world, the great organ players?

39:42Well, Billy Payne's a great organist. Billy Preston was a great organist. Pat Coyle, who I've played with for years, is a wonderful B3 player. Robbie Robinson, who plays with Frankie Valli and has played over the years with a lot of different acts, kind of known for being good organ guys. And they've all stepped up to kind of help me with my... That's so cool. One friend of mine, a new friend of mine, Abdul Royale, is a great organist. A lot of the guys that grew up in church, Mark Harris, who played on a lot of songs and records with me, they were guys that typically grew up in church and learned to play organ in church.

40:26It's almost supernatural what some of these guys can do and how easy it is for them to just manipulate the organ while they're playing something. and it would be hard enough for me to just play what they're playing, much less be thinking about what draw bars I'm going to pull out, when I'm going to put this button on. And then they play with their feet, too. And that's amazing. All of it has to become instinctual, and I think your best chance at that is starting when you're about four. Right, right, when your feet can't touch the pedals, as you said. Can you talk a bit about, you get to the doobies eventually, which puts you in the ecosystem of Warner Brothers records, which was a really unique ecosystem in the 70s and 80s into the early 90s.

41:17It was. Can you talk about that a little bit? What I loved about Warners were the people involved. Lenny Warniker, Russ Teitelman, Ted Templeman, Mo Austin. Everybody was creative. The promotion guys were creative. They seemed to know how to market this kind of music that wasn't that typically, obviously, commercial music. It was artists like Bonnie Raitt, Little Feet. They brought artists to the forefront like Ricky Lee Jones, Van Halen, you know, the Doobie Brothers even. Although we might have been one of their more, you know, obviously kind of commercial acts, you know. Because they had a lot of acts that didn't sell a lot of records.

41:57Yeah. They didn't quite care about it. And they would keep those artists on their roster. 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 &R department, who are all great producers themselves. These guys weren't just A &R guys. Their walls were filled with some of my favorite albums, Gold Records and Platinum Records. A lot of your records you made with Ted Templeman. Yes, yes. Ted was kind of a Svengali in the studio, really. 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 herding cats artistically.

42:50And Ted did a great job of that, and I think we all appreciated his ability to do that. But it was just a really wonderful place to be in this business of music if you were a recording artist at that time. And I felt like I was in an elite group. I mean, where else would an artist like Randy Newman flourish? Because everybody knew him as a songwriter, and everybody wanted to do his songs. But they were the ones who always encouraged him to make his own solo records. and and with all the success that bonnie had later it was really uh after her tenure at warner brothers but every bit because of the development and 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 what don was yeah yeah uh i think the one of the best things that bought bonnie's story that i love is when she started writing you know and because i think she even she might have been surprised at what a great writer she is yeah yeah she's written some some great songs you know and uh some of my favorite songs you know nick of time is such such a great tune it's it's almost uncanny that she didn't do that earlier in her career yeah the artists on warner were you mentioned some of them there's also neil young and joni mitchell yes fleetwood mac carly simon yeah yeah james taylor did you guys feel like a family were you did you know a lot of the other artists?

44:17Well, 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 Carly. Carly and I wrote a song later that 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. Wow. And that was a thrill, you know, because she was already a huge artist, and James was like my all-time fave.

45:03I just loved everything he did. And the Gorilla record was like, for me, the Holy Grail. I just loved that record so much. And Carly, eventually you got to co-write one of your huge hits with her, right? 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. All I have is that one line, You Belong to Me. I don't even know what it means. But it's just a play setter, really. That's kind of where the chorus should go. and Ted without missing a beat said you know you should let Carly Simon write the lyric to this and which just sounded so perfectly right to me I 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 you know there's one of those happy accidents again.

46:12Like if she had not dropped by the studio that day, someone that would have happened. So there's one of the biggest hits in your library. After one last quick break, we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Paul Reiser and Michael McDonald. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Oocla Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

46:54With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand. With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

47:35where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

48:00nations. Travel is its own reward, you know. You're out there having experiences you can't have any other way, and with your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're also being rewarded. You earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. So let's say you book a trip to Hawaii, you go surfing at Sunset Beach, you go hiking on a volcano, and you go out to dinner. With the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're actually earning points for going on a grand adventure anywhere you go, any trip you take. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets you into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences like music festivals and sports events.

48:38Whether you're booking your next big trip or a week in escape, Chase Sapphire Reserve makes travel more rewarding. Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers, the pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50 % of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, pull that, turn this.

49:19I can do it with my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing, see? Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 uh what a fool believes yeah yeah when uh kenny is coming over to your house to do a writing session that's one of paul's favorite stories can you tell that story there was nothing my you know mike was very uh forthcoming about how sometimes have an idea and it'll just rattle around for months and or years and he had that little uh so because somebody who was it in the in the doobies that said uh kenny once it was cornelius i guess kenny expressed some interest in writing with me and and i asked not cornelius it was tyran porter and asked tyran if he would give him me his number and tyran passed on the number to me you know i was so excited i you know i may be too excited i you know but i called it and we made an appointment to write, and Kenny was going to come down from Santa Barbara to write with me.

50:55And I lived alone at the time, and my house was filthy, bachelor filthy. You know, the ashtrays full of cigarettes on the piano and stuff and empty beer bottles everywhere and cigarettes floating in them, and God knows who was there. And my sister came over mostly to meet Kenny Loggins, but she cleaned my house up, frantically cleaning my house before he got there. So I'm at the piano and 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 that could be a start for us, looking through notebooks of things I might have written down.

51:38I love that you bounce it off your sister. You go, what do you think it is? And she kind of cringes and goes, yeah, I don't think I would play that one for Kenny. Like, okay, thank you, sister. Yeah, she kind of did. I think she thought maybe that was a little too circusy or something. But then the unbelievably good timing of Kenny opens the door. 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 notepads, and, you know, he's kind of struggling with all this stuff, and a tape player in his hand.

52:16I said, here, let me take your guitar. I 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. In fact, I was playing it for my sister. She hates it. I was thinking about playing it for you, 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. It was like, all right, that's a fertile brain. Yeah, he had already ridden the bridge before I answered the door.

52:49Insane. Yeah. How long did it take for that song to come together between the two of you? 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, a chorus that really pays off. And we couldn't for the life of us figure out what that was yet. We kind of knew where the lyric was going intentionally. Only, 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.

53:30But 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 what how that would culminate into a chorus but the next day uh i don't know which one or the other of us thought well you know what a fool believes and so we 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 can hear it nowadays with iphones you can't do that but uh so we 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 till we came up with the chorus and and that was when you said you know what a fool believes might be a good name for a book yeah that's how prescient he was he's planted not yet but in 40 years this is going to be a book trust me it's going to be yeah the two of you with titles mad about you what a fool believes i mean you guys are incredible with the titles and there's a point in the book and warner 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 i that record missed my consciousness completely it's a really good album well thank you you're nice yeah it wasn't met with a lot of enthusiasm at warner's 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 uh areas that were you know i'm just not that commercial but it was like you're made that way oh yeah well you belong to me was on that there's a light you know yeah this is some incredible songs but thank you but but you kind of stretching them and then minute by minute you guys write and record that and it's really the r &b promotions team yeah at warner brothers that hears something and decides we're going to promote this yeah well the head of the r &b promotions at the time which was a whole different ball game this is like just pre-urban kind of music before rap came out and everything the whole complexion of how to market r &b music and where you know what that market even was you know uh had changed dramatically and obviously for the better hip-hop is huge you know back then the r &b department warner's once in a while caught they had some great r &b artists patty austin james ingram so they had huge success Prince.

55:56Prince, 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, they were typically. Black owned. Yeah, smaller black owned businesses. and the guy who owned the radio station was typically the 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 those days are gone you know reading that though it was interesting it kind of confirmed something which which is that like r &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 aor format album oriented rock or soft rock or or now yacht rock it's like really what that was was like it was r &b right really you mean you guys are playing r &b records yeah but you know but because you guys are white guys or you're white tyrants but i mean you know but yeah sure it's like okay well we can't oh let me tell you i would much rather be called yacht rock than adult contemporary but why can't you just be r &b like you're a damn r &b singer well you know writer 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 as an independent promotion guy just you know uh you know i would say to him 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 so 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 ernie 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 living on a fault line i feel like would have done really well in r &b radio too yeah if there's stuff on there sounds like earth wind and fire if we had leaned into those guys they would have probably brought it to gotten us some radio play that we never really got with it but you know that's just hindsight 2020 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 and that was always the thing that was like a 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 even when major labels before Before rock and roll started to kind of make its noise, it was the Sinatras, and rightfully so, the great singers and artists of the time.

58:53The trios were big back then. Knack and Cole. Knack and Cole Trio, and a lot of those East Coast trios that were fairly popular. But they were the ones that were making anything that sounded like pop records. The Mills Brothers, and nobody else was making records for the average guy. 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 the chuck berries and the little richards and you know they had these crazy phenomenal acts that 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 yeah right 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 yeah rap came about the same way urban music as we know it today started at street level yeah because there wasn't any labels that were going to go out and sign these guys you know yeah they made their own records and they were having success selling those records and getting an air time with those records and so major labels have always had to learn that lesson over and over again that 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 yeah which while we're talking about hip-hop i got to thank you for the great Warren G.

1:00:31Regulate. You're sampled by Warren G. Long Beach legend. Oh yeah, that's right. He is Long Beach legend. I gotta thank you for Regulate. That's incredible. That's the version my kids always liked. They didn't like my version. I mean, Regulate. Did you play it for them? I didn't have to. They knew about it before I did. But yeah, they loved that version of it. It's a learning curve. If you're a musician, you never stop learning what's going on around you. and you never stop marveling at how you're never listening enough. It's kind of like being grateful. You can say I'm grateful, but if you're really learning anything about your own life, you realize I'm not grateful enough.

1:01:12Wow. That's a great way of thinking about that. Why don't you save that for the book? I haven't shared this with you, but 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. Well, you know, I mean, he's being modest. First of all, like I said, he's the most responsible for the book even being a book, you know. But it was wonderful because we had like 600 pages of just transcript before we started actually writing the book.

1:02:03Maybe not that much, but we had a lot of pages. Did you have to do much extracurricular work outside of the interviews with Michael just to sort of figure it out? No, I'm the laziest guy that way. No, no, no, he did a lot of extracurricular work. 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.

1:02:46And it was a revelation to me in many cases, you know. You know, but just hearing the stories and then 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 a stack of pages you go huh this is a similar you know there's a funny story mike's first band the first job they ever had playing for the women's pta group and they play their five songs and the the priest comes up and goes oh thank you boys that was lovely and mike goes no we have we have a whole other set and his answer is that won't be necessary.

1:03:20I thought, well, that's the greatest first review ever. You won't be needed here. Thank you. But then as the story went on, there were like three other stories that like that kept coming back. And 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. I think there's the idea 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.

1:04:05Like me going to that party where you were playing piano. Exactly. Didn't see that coming yeah no i and my life as a as a script was certainly not one that i wrote you know 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 i used to regret have a lot of regrets you know uh and certainly there are some things I wish I could relive 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, for better or worse, is all a product of every one of those things that happened.

1:04:58And that some of the worst things turn 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 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.

1:05:42They 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, whether, and I felt I had every reason to be angry 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, hey, you know, get rid of this guy. You know, they did more for me than they ever did to me. Yeah. Yeah. Paul, in the acknowledgements, you mentioned that your son helped transcribe the interviews. Yeah. How was it working with your son on Michael's project in particular?

1:06:18Well, it was, you know, it was COVID and a lockdown 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 laborer'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. I didn't know Bonnie. 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 misspell John Lennon.

1:06:52That can't happen. or like there would be Cole Porter or somebody or Stephen Sondheim and I'm watching him try and spell that. I'm going, yeah, learn some words. These are some big words you should learn. Don't think I can spell Stephen Sondheim. I can either kid write about some artist from the 70s. That's child abuse, I think. Yeah. But, you know, those stories too, you know, 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. I've heard that so many times from so many others. Springsteen talking about his kids maybe know two of his songs.

1:07:29I went, how can that be? Because they're your kids and they just don't give a shit. So I found that very heartwarming and comforting. You referenced earlier, Paul, before we started recording, the We Are the World documentary that just came out on 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 was resolved or whatnot but is that kind of why you weren't a part of that or do you not even know no i i think there was just you know you can only have so many people doing something like i mean it was huge as it was you know no 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 they 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 i did yeah oh sure yeah me and a few other people were gosh we didn't get the call on that one you know do you remember hearing about it at the time uh no i think i i just saw it you know when it came out on mtv but uh it was great it's a missed opportunity that you i never knew not for you for us the thing well and jennings walking out i never knew because i'm beginning i go gee i don't remember him being in there it's like he wasn't because when was it lionel or stevie wonder was he wants to say let's throw some swahili putting some i don't even know if it's real swahili or just some swahili-ish sounding you know oh really and and waylon jennings walk down goes yeah no what is it no he's a good old no good old boy ever singing swahili good old boy can be singing swahili and the footage is so funny because he's wearing like a 10 gallon hat or you A big cowboy hat.

1:09:08And you see him walking down off the bleachers. And then at some point you just see a cowboy hat walk off the camera. And he's gone. But you know, to Quincy's credit, like, oh, that Willie Nelson was on it was genius. And perfect. I would have loved to have heard. And I would have loved to have heard Michael Quincy's solo album. I couldn't believe that was in the cards. When I read that, it was floored. That that was in the cards. Yeah, well, no, I know. I guess I only have myself to blame on that one. I think it was just a bunch of miscommunication. Yeah. And, you know, I always felt like it was a missed opportunity.

1:09:44I would have loved to have done that record with Quincy and Bruce Soudin. Yeah. Yeah, Bruce Soudin too. But I'm grateful for the chance I did get to record with Quincy. It was amazing to watch him 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. But in the 70s, 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.

1:10:20And it was just like sessions just took forever to get started. And nobody seemed to quite know where the mojo was. And 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 and he was dead on I got one other one I'm going to try no that was the right one and Quincy was like from the musical aspect of it he knew exactly where this should go before we played a note and it was just really an education to work with those guys 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.

1:11:09And I used to work for a lot of producers who were like that. They thought that I would come up with the background parts that they wanted to hear, but they weren't sure what that was yet because they were kind of relying on me to come up with it or something. That was another thread in my whole story was that dysfunctional defect. 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. Yeah. You know, I mean, that was my MO, you know, for many years, and probably still is, but, you know, I try to catch myself in the act at this age, you know, because life's too short, you know.

1:11:49Yeah. Well, I'm just really grateful for the honesty. I mean, it's the incredible stuff. Oh, man, thank you for talking to us. Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, man. Thanks to Mike McDonald and Paul Reiser 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 brokenrecordpodcast.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast 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.

1:12:28Our engineer is Ben Tolliday. 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$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

1:13:00This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next week in escape, discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve.

1:13:38Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hoodie, I'll take it off! I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing. This is an iHeart Podcast.