Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser â yes, the golden-piped white-soul singer, and yes, the veteran sitcom star and comedian â were at Reiserâs spread in Malibu the other day when something far more important than their new joint project came up.
âForgive me, but I need to take a quick timeout,â Reiser said, calling up a menu on his phone. âHalf of every writersâ room is: What are we doing for lunch?â
The two had earned the interruption: McDonald, 72, and Reiser, 68, teamed up to write McDonaldâs memoir, âWhat a Fool Believes,â after they met at a party a few years ago and went back to Reiserâs to jam on side-by-side pianos. The book is titled after McDonaldâs chart-topping 1978 hit with the Doobie Brothers; it covers his childhood in St. Louis and his eventual move to Los Angeles, his stints in Steely Dan and the Doobies, his eventual solo career and his struggles with drugs and booze. Reiser, whose previous books include âCouplehoodâ and âBabyhood,â said he volunteered for the job because heâd always been a fan but didnât understand the arc of McDonaldâs career.
âThis way I could just ask him,â he added with a laugh.
On Wednesday night the two will appear together in a conversation at the El Rey Theatre; McDonald then will spend the summer on the road with the Doobie Brothers, including a June 23 stop at Inglewoodâs Kia Forum. These days the singer lives with his wife, singer Amy Holland, in Santa Barbara â where, speaking of lunch, his all-time favorite Mexican restaurant recently shuttered.
âThe old couple who ran it,â McDonald was sad to report, âthey literally died in the place.â
Are you guys afraid of dying?
Paul Reiser: Only onstage. Iâve had some tough crowds.
Michael McDonald: I donât know that Iâm afraid of it. I let myself think about it once in a while.
Reiser: Youâre not really gonna lead with this.
Hey, Mike brought up the subject.
Reiser: Iâm gonna jump in front of you here.
All right, all right. The jam session that sparked this book â what were you guys playing?
McDonald: We were sitting at a couple pianos, like Ferrante & Teicher, playing Beatles songs, kind of analyzing our favorite bridges, which were so great, especially in that period of time we both love.
Reiser: Pre-âRubber Soul.â We played some Motown too. I tried to slip in a couple of Michael McDonald songs: âWhile I have you here, is that an A-flat youâre playing there?â
Just two famous guys talking about chords.
Reiser: When youâre drawn to something, your brain goes there. I canât help it âIâm watching a movie and Iâm going, âHow did they shoot that?â With the Beatles, it really is staggering â just this perfect 2-minute-and-39-second piece of work. I watched âGet Back,â and it was thrilling to get to see these songs as theyâre forming.
McDonald: It kind of gives you hope as a writer because you realize there were moments when they had no fâing idea how this was gonna work out.
The book grew out of a series of Zoom conversations between the two of you, right?
Reiser: Thatâs all it was. This was four years ago, March 2020, and I was asking Mike to explain to me this or that. I jokingly said, âYou should write a book,â and he said, âWell, Iâve thought about it, but I donât know how to do that.â I said, âIâve written a couple â plus, weâve got nothing else to do.â That was really a factor â that itâd be good during the pandemic to have something to wake up and do. So we both learned Zoom that week, and for about a month and a half, weâd just talk three or four days a week.
McDonald: My biggest fear was: How much of a story is this? I mean, nobody dies, nobody goes to prison.
The book does open with you in the drunk tank in Van Nuys.
McDonald: There werenât many guys in that cell who showed up because they fell asleep in a booth at Du-parâs.
How would you rate your recall of long-ago events?
McDonald: Well, I thought if I wait another five years, Iâm not gonna remember half this stuff. Lot of things I didnât remember correctly â dates and places and times.
Reiser: Heâs talking and Iâm Googling: âUh, Mike, that record came out four years earlier.â
The book has some nice writerly moments. Thereâs a part where youâre talking about the Doobie Brothersâ Grammy wins for âWhat a Fool Believes,â and you say that after the ceremony you couldnât bear to face âthe ominous quiet of my house in the hills.â Who wrote that?
Reiser: Itâs all Mike. I put the conversations in a rough sequence and then heâd take it and write it so it didnât just sound like chitchat. Sometimes heâd write it so well Iâd be like, âWe canât have 47 essays.â So weâd tighten it.
McDonald: Paul was great at saying, âHereâs the story. All this other stuff, youâre kind of wasting the readerâs time.â
Thatâs the challenge, though, right? As a reader, I want the story but I also want the texture.
McDonald: That line you mentioned â that was a true thing for me. Going home that night was ominous because I didnât like being alone at that point in my life. My demons were such that I usually found something to occupy myself with. Iâd go out to clubs by myself just to get out of my own house.
Reiser: Now your goal is not to go out of your house.
McDonald: Thatâs exactly right.
âWhat a Fool Believesâ was probably inevitable as the bookâs title.
Reiser: I had to twist his arm a little bit.
McDonald: It just seemed too obvious to me. I wanted it to be something more offbeat â like, âShut the Fâ Up, Teresa.â
Reiser: My sense was that you didnât want to hang your whole life on a song title, which I understood. But thereâs so many books out there. You want somebody to go, âOh, thatâs about Michael McDonald â I got to read that.â
McDonald: Now it seems like the perfect title.
Reiser: My next oneâs gonna be âDoes This Look Infected?â
You write in the book about how youâd hoped to make your second solo album with Quincy Jones, but it didnât work out: You had to move faster than he was able to, which you let a record exec tell him instead of doing it yourself. I was struck by how little resentment you seem to harbor about that.
McDonald: I think thatâs the truest form of that story. Those were some big revelations for me â that even with people I was righteously indignant about, in almost every case, they did more for me than they ever did to me. With Quincy, Iâm nothing but grateful. Whatever happened that stood in the way of us doing a project, that was my fault. But people I did have issues with, when I look back on it, I realize those are the key people but for whom Iâd probably still be in Missouri.
Is seeing things that way a function of age? I realize you wouldnât have written this book 30 years ago, but if you had, would you have had a different attitude?
McDonald: Iâd probably still be stewing over those things. Not that I still donât: You learn to forgive and you learn to realize your part in things â then, not an hour later, youâre at a stoplight going, âThat son of a bitchâŠâ Are any of us truly capable of total forgiveness? But to get to a point with all that is important, I think, to your own serenity. Otherwise you just keep drinking the poison hoping the other guyâs gonna die.
Reiser: Mike takes responsibility almost to a fault. Iâd never spent this much time with a guy whoâs so evolved. I went, âOh, Iâm really a piece of crap.â
McDonald: But the point is, those conclusions, I didnât come to them easily. I came to them the hard way.
Reiser: Unlike Mike, I enjoy holding onto my resentments: You know, in 1994, I should have said to that son of a bitchâŠ
You ever encourage Mike to talk a little trash?
Reiser: Iâm not a fan of gossip. I donât like it about other people, and I certainly donât want anything being said about me that I wouldnât want shared.
McDonald: Whenever I read one of those books, as much as I might enjoy it, Iâm always left with that â
Reiser: You feel dirty.
McDonald: That, and the feeling that itâs just this personâs version of it. I wonder what the other guy would say, and so youâre left kind of unsatisfied.
See, I love it when someoneâs reached a point in their life and career where theyâre lighting people up.
McDonald: âFâ it, Iâm going in.â
Reiser: I did think Stevie Van Zandtâs book was great, and heâs just totally ripping people he felt like ripping.
While weâre on the subject of Quincy: Why were you not on âWe Are the Worldâ?
McDonald: Youâre not the first person to ask me that recently.
Reiser: Dan Aykroyd took his spot.
Given your success at the time, itâs a conspicuous omission.
McDonald: Iâm sure there are other people who werenât on it. I mean, it was only a cast of thousands.
Reiser: The important thing is that youâve made Mike feel bad about something from 40 years ago.
McDonald: If I said I didnât give it a lot of thought, Iâd be lying. There were other things I was on, like a Donna Summer session Quincy asked me to do. It was Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder â I have a picture of this â and Iâm standing over there looking like I was delivering sandwiches.
The unmade Quincy album made me wonder if writing this book made you mull over other missed opportunities.
McDonald: Oh yeah. And I always considered that a missed opportunity â I always regretted it. For such a fortunate person, I could fâ up a good thing in a heartbeat. My M.O. was letting other people handle what I should have handled myself and then being pissed off at them. That was something I did far too many times in my life.
I enjoyed learning that the hair dye you used in the â80s was called Chocolate Kiss.
McDonald: High-end stuff.
Reiser: I went with Don Ameche 7.
McDonald: Thatâs what I love about these rock ânâ roll events with guys my age: Youâre in line going in and that shoe-polish smell hits you from the guy in front of you. No one born to this world ever had eyebrows that black.
What gave you the gumption to stop dying your hair?
McDonald: I got tired of it real quick. I think in the back of my mind I had the idea that maybe it would get me out of having to make the next music video â because if I refused to do it, they werenât gonna want me to be seen with white hair.
Of course, your white hair then became your visual trademark.
McDonald: I guess. For me, the ordeal of leaning over a sink with a towel around my neck while my wife is yelling at me â that was torturous. I said, âI canât do this anymore or weâll get divorced.â So I went to my hair cutter and had him do it, with the tinfoil and everything. That was even worse.
Did going back over your career make you think about why people have connected with you as a singer?
McDonald: I donât know that Iâd ever have the courage to really analyze that because I may not like the answer. Or I may find out I am the imposter I think I am. Itâs kind of like staring at yourself in the mirror too long â you start to scare yourself a little bit.
Reiser: Thatâs one of the things that I found challenging to put into words. You say âMichael McDonaldâ to anybody, they go, âOh my God, that voice!â But you canât ask the guy, âWhatâs going on in your esophagus?â I realized itâs like asking George Clooney how he got so handsome.
McDonald: As someone who came into a band that was known for a certain vocal sound â Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons [of the Doobie Brothers] â I was met with as much skepticism as I was someone going, âI love your voice.â For every one of those, there was somebody who said I ruined the Doobie Brothers. âYou sound like you have marbles in your mouth,â which is true.
Youâve been embraced in particular by some of the greats of R&B and soul music, some of whom cut duets with you: Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, James Ingram.
McDonald: Thatâs been one of the most gratifying things Iâve experienced. When I heard Ray Charles for the first time I understood what soul music was. Iâd heard other artists and loved them: Nat Cole and Louis Armstrong and Etta James. But it was something that was so explicit about how he approached it. Right away, you went, this guy never sings any song the same way twice â itâs a total improvisation of feeling in the moment. And that just blew my head wide open.
White singers operating in a traditionally Black cultural space can be viewed as interlopers or appropriators. That doesnât really seem to have happened with you.
McDonald: I think a lot of that comes from the fact that when we grew up listening to music, it was very regional. Growing up in St. Louis, pretty much all the music we listened to was R&B from 10 or 15 years before us because it was passed down by the older guys. If you were in a band, you were gonna work up this Bobby Bland song that was out maybe before I was born. So I had a personal relationship with all that music because in that region, thatâs what we listened to â just like Stax/Volt was a natural evolution of growing up in Memphis or like beach music in the Carolinas. Most people donât even know what beach music is, but it was a day-to-day cultural experience for people who grew up on the southern East Coast.
When it came to writing about your family members in the book, did you feel like you needed to ask their permission?
McDonald: I did in my wifeâs case because her journey in sobriety is not something I would normally ever talk about. You just donât do that. But it was such a significant part of the story that I felt compelled to write about how it affected us as a couple. To this day, I think sheâs one of the main reasons Iâm sober â not because I did it for her but because she really pointed the way for me by her own example.
I was moved by your account of deciding to homeschool your son after his struggles in regular school. That wasnât something I expected to encounter in a rock ânâ roll memoir.
McDonald: I think parents should communicate across these perceived lines of the things we donât want other people to know are going on in our house. I found great comfort in that with my son. He wasnât easy, but he wasnât terrible, you know? And I learned that by talking to other parents. All these things I was staying awake all night worrying about, I realized Iâm not alone.