Fresh Air - Michael McDonald

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

McDonald says that earlier in his career, he tended to avoid writing about himself directly in songs. He opens up about his life and career in the memoir, What a Fool Believes. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about his first band as a tween, his songwriting process, and being big in the Black community.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. I keep forgetting love Every time you're near Every time I see your smile Hear your hello Saying you can only stay a while And I know that it's hard for you To say the things we both know are true But tell me, how come I keep forgetting When mine ain't love anymore?

When this single, I Keep Forgetting by Michael McDonald, came out in 1982, it rose to the top of the pop, R&B, and adult contemporary Billboard charts. The song is from McDonald's first solo album, If That's What It Takes, and was actually inspired by a 1962 song with the same name by Chuck Jackson. As we learn in a new memoir, Michael McDonald's entire career has been somewhat of a musical nod to both the past and the future, with many of his biggest hits being interpretations or remakes by soul artists of the past. In turn, McDonald's music has unlocked nostalgia for new generations of fans. Many of his songs have been sampled by hip-hop artists like Warren G and Nate Dogg's Regulate and the electronic group Maloco's interpolation, Familiar Feeling.

McDonald's new memoir, co-written by comedian Paul Reiser, chronicles McDonald's life and career in music, which goes all the way back to his childhood, tagging along with his father to saloons in St. Louis, where his dad would sometimes perform. As a high school dropout, McDonald writes about his move from the Midwest to Los Angeles, spending his early years as a session musician and becoming a member of two iconic rock bands,

Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, before embarking on a decades-long solo career. The name of his memoir is titled What a Fool Believes, named after the Doobie Brothers' 1979 Grammy-winning song. Michael McDonald, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Good to be here. Yes, well, as I told you, I hope I'm not a dork during this interview, because I really am a big fan. And the first thing I just want to ask you, why Paul Reiser as a writing partner for this

book? Well, Paul and I met at a party years ago and became friends in the years since. And during the pandemic, we talked and he said, you know, why don't you write a book so I can stop asking you all these questions about Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers? I said, well, you know, I've thought about it, but I wouldn't know how to start. And mostly I thought, well, how much of a story is here? You know, is this thing going to kind of phase out in the middle of it and, you know, suddenly become apparent to both of us that it's not that great of a story? But he kept encouraging me to go with it and that he thought it was going to be a good story. One of the things that we learn about you as we go through your life chronologically

is just how much of an understated view you have of yourself. You're pretty self-deprecating. For a long time, you actually say you felt like an imposter. And I hear that even in talking about this process with Paul Reiser. You're like, I don't know if I have interesting stories. It surprises me because you're Michael McDonald. Well, that's a double-edged sword right there. And I don't mean to be self-deprecating when I say this, but I never really understood why people gave me so much credit as a musician, especially because I really am just more or less a songwriter

who plays a little bit of piano and was kind of put in situations over the years where I had to kind of lean into that a little bit. And only because of that did I actually start to actually try to better myself in that regard. I was, I think, happy before that to just play in a couple of keys and write songs with what knowledge I had. Mostly I gained from learning pop music from records and the radio. But it wasn't until I really joined the Doobie Brothers that I really started to feel the responsibility of being the keyboard player, quote-unquote,

and probably made the greatest strides during that period of time to kind of better my piano playing a little bit. So I did always feel a little like an imposter, like I was running to catch up just to keep my job. So the title of the book is What a Fool Believes, which is also the title of your most successful and really most recognizable song that you've ever written. It won Song of the Year in 1980, and it's from the album Minute by Minute when you were a member of the Doobie Brothers. You co-wrote it with Kenny Loggins in 1978. Let's listen. He came from somewhere back in her long ago. Said a better fool, don't see, trying hard to recreate what had yet to be created. Once in her life, she musters a smile for his nostalgic tale. Never coming near what he wanted to say Only to realize

It never really was She had a place in his life He never made her think twice As she rises to her apology Anybody else would surely know He's watching her go But what if we leave? He sees No wise man has the power

To reason away That was Michael McDonald singing What a Fool Believes from the 1978 Doobie Brothers album, Minute by Minute. Michael, just this year, What a Fool Believes was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a big deal in itself. But as we learn from your book, this was not an easy process. You became a member of the Doobie Brothers, an already established group. And as we learn from the book, this song and this album was not well received by the record company or the press when it was

first released. Yeah, no, that's true. For me, writing songs has always been kind of a haphazard process at best. I seem to have a bad habit of languishing with song ideas for sometimes years, and then eventually getting around to finishing it with someone or later myself. Even recently, the Doobies are doing a record right now, and some of the songs that I've recorded, one was a much more recent song, but one of them was something I probably started writing, gosh, six, seven years ago now. This song in particular, though, you started writing, you stopped, you get back to it. There's a story behind that.

Well, the story there is it was like a piano riff, and maybe the first verse, possibly. And I wrote the lyrics on an envelope on a flight from New York to L.A. And somehow in my house at my piano, I kind of was messing around with, you know, the verse movement of the piano. And I played it for Ted Templeman one time. We were looking at him. And Ted was. Ted Templeman one time. We were looking at – And Ted was. Ted Templeman was our producer at the time. And we tried to flush out whatever we thought we all had in our arsenal of ideas to go into the next record with. And so he was asking me what he got.

And I said, well, this is one idea I thought might be kind of cool. And to me, it was kind of like a gospel feeling, kind of a piano riff. And in some ways, it kind of harkened back to some of the early pop R&B records that I loved so much. It just had that kind of bounce to it that I thought was catchy. And when I played it for Ted, he said, that is a hit. You've got to finish that.

I said, well, I will. I will. He goes, no. He goes, I know you. And so I said, no, I promise I will. And of course I didn't. And we also didn't get to the album in a much longer time than we all thought. And so coming through that period of time, Tyran Porter, our bass player,

called me one day. He goes, you know, I ran into Kenny Loggins and he expressed an interest in writing with you. And I told him I would pass on his number to you. I said, oh, man, thank you. I was very excited about that, and I called Kenny. And we made a plan to get together. And so cut to the chase. The day he's coming, my house was filthy. My sister had come over to help clean it up because it was like ashtrays filled with cigarettes spilling onto the floor. Yeah, you were having a good time there, which we're going to get to. It was bachelor filthy.

I'm playing little ideas for her, and I'm looking through notes of lyrics and notebooks I had laying around, and just trying to kind of come up with something that I might want to play for Kenny to get a start on something. One of the things I played her was that little piano riff and that verse. And I said, well, what do you think? She goes, yeah, it's nice. It wasn't really a whole lot there.

So just as I was playing it for her, the doorbell rang, and we both kind of looked at each other like, oh, my God, it's Kenny Longin. And he was like really hot stuff during that time. I mean, he was like at the apex of his career. He was just coming out himself and would later be known as like a really great singer-songwriter. So you guys got together and you wrote this amazing song that became a huge hit. But really, it wasn't initially thought of as a huge hit. And part of that issue, if I'm correct, is that the song and your voice were a departure from the sound of the Doobie Brothers.

Well, actually, one of the first songs I ever cut with the Doobie Brothers was the most unlikely Doobie Brothers song I could even imagine, which was a song called The Losing End. But Ted liked the demo I had made with Tyran at his house. And that came from just Tyran inviting me over for dinner, and we were sitting there having dinner at his place, and he had just put together a small studio off in the corner of his living room. He said, I'm dying to kind of record something. You got anything?

I said, well, I got this one song. I didn't think much of it. I thought, well, it's just something to put down. So we put down The Losing End and made a demo of it. And he wound up playing that for Teddy. And Teddy liked it and decided that we should cut that as the Doobie Brothers, which I wouldn't have imagined in a million years. So everything that we did from that point on was in some way

kind of a departure from what they had done. But I think that was the better direction for us to take because otherwise we would have just been trying to reimagine the foundation that Tom Johnson had already laid down for the band, which was... Right, because you were recruited initially as a temp replacement for Tom Johnson, who was the lead vocalist, but he had gotten sick. Right, right, right. And not so much for him directly as just somebody to kind of come in and play some keyboards and take over some of the lead vocals, you know,

and sing some backgrounds, you know, because Tom was pretty multitasking in his role with the band, you know, as far as guitar player. Keyboards had figured into a lot of their records, but they never had a keyboard player at that point in time. They were just strictly a guitar band. So they thought, well, here's the perfect opportunity to bring keyboards into the mix live. And we got enough guitar players because they had Jeff Baxter and Pat. So it seemed like the logical choice to bring in a keyboard singer to just kind of cover things that might be lacking otherwise. You stepping into a group and being able to integrate with the group and then form a sound that is unique but also holds to the foundation of the group, it's kind of

the hallmark of what you do and what you have done. Not only did you do this with the Doobie Brothers, but throughout your career you've been a member of several bands. There was Steely Dan for a time period, but this goes all the way back to your childhood. Your very first group was actually named after you, right? Mike and the Majestics. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, no one knows why that happened, but- Oh, there has to be a reason.

Yeah. Right. My sister named the band, I think. Yeah. But it was Mike and the Majestics, and I soon got demoted, and it was just the Majestics. And how old were you when you guys started this band? We started when we were all around 12, really. And I think our first gigs happened more like when I was 13.

The other guys were a year and two older than me. What kinds of gigs were you guys doing, and what kind of music were you performing? Well, back then we were playing basement parties, birthday parties for girls we knew in the eighth grade. And then we graduated to fraternity parties at a very tender age, which my mother was not happy about. So she enlisted my father to come on as our manager. Not before we were exposed to some of the rites of passage that we were probably too young to witness at these fraternity parties. Did you realize that at the time?

Yeah, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven, really. Because, you know, the girls were all really cute, and the frat guys were out of their minds. And they would pass the hat. That was the other great thing about fraternity parties. We would play them for like 10 bucks. But then we had a curfew because we were all like 12 and 13 years old. And in the course of all this, we learned all the filthy lyrics to Louie Louie and songs like that that were college staples. And we would typically tell them, well, we can play until about 10 o'clock,

then we've got to go home. And they would pass the hat to keep us there. They'd go, oh, play another hour. So we wound up going from $10 to $60. And we thought, oh, my gosh, show business is fantastic. And for $60, four kids in the early 60s, that was a lot of money. That bought a lot of Twinkies and Dr. Peppers. So we had a good time doing that.

And we learned a lot of other music. We learned a lot of music that was popular, like I say, to a generation that was just a bit older than us. Because at that time, who were your musical inspirations growing up? Who were the folks you were really into? From a young age, I always had a great admiration for Ray Charles. But, you know, through our exposure to the music of these college fraternities, we started to hear like Marvin Gaye and the Motown stuff and Bobby Bland, you know, Solomon Burke, songs like that that were just kind of like...

Motown and soul artists, yeah. Yeah, the generation before us, but we were, you know, all of a sudden introduced to all this great music that we would then endeavor to learn and play for these parties, you know. Your dad was a streetcar driver, also a singer himself, a musician himself, and he really had a great influence on you as a man and as a musician. How would you describe him? My dad was that guy that I always wanted to be but never really thought I could be. He was kind of the quintessential charming, handsome Irishman. He had a wicked sense of humor,

very dry, very funny guy. And he was always quick to comment on the irony of life around him and things and people in a very humorous way. And he was just so charming. People loved him. And on top of that he had a beautiful voice and he wasn't afraid

to use it. He loved to sing. He hung out in more bars than most drunks I knew, but my dad never took a drink in the time I knew him. He had quit drinking before I was born. You kind of came to this idea on why. Because it's interesting how he'd spend all his time in these

saloons, even take you to them sometimes as a young boy to listen to music. Yeah, he loved being out among them like most Irish people. The pubs were like a central part of his life, you know, saloons in St. Louis. He knew all his favorite piano players. And back in those days, every corner bar usually had a piano player. And they were all very good. They were those kind of people that could sit down and play any song. They had repertoires of 400 songs that they could play in any key. People would go in there to sing, and they would accompany them.

And my dad had his favorite piano players. And he was one of their favorite singers because he actually could sing. And they enjoyed accompanying him. And people enjoyed listening to him. So he kind of built a reputation in the North St. Louis area as a vocalist. And when Bob came in the door of whatever saloon it was, he was immediately met with, Bob, sing us a song. Or the piano players would ask him to come up and sing because they were trying to get rid of some guy who was up there hogging the microphone.

Our guest today is singer and songwriter Michael McDonald. We're talking about his new memoir, What a Fool Believes. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. I don't need your hand I know I could turn Think that you'd be gone That I must be prepared Any time to carry on Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, five minutes

I keep holding on I keep holding on I keep holding on I'll be holding on I'll be, I'll be, I'll be I'll keep holding on Oh baby You would stay just to watch me die This message comes from WISE,

the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. I'm Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado, and live from Philadelphia, it's Fresh Air Plus. Listen, I'm Leslie Jones. I'm the heavy hitter walking into the room.

Trust and believe, listen, give all respect to those ladies. But none of them was a comic like me. After the season finale of Saturday Night Live, we listened back to a few SNL audition stories from our archive on this week's Fresh Air Plus bonus episode. Learn more and join for yourself at plus.npr.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

And if you're just joining us, my guest is Michael McDonald. He's written a new memoir titled What a Fool Believes, co-written by comedian and author Paul Reiser. The book chronicles McDonald's life and career as an award-winning musician. He writes about growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, dropping out of high school to pursue music and being a member of two iconic rock bands, Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.

As a solo artist, he's recorded nine studio albums and a number of singles and collaborated with numerous artists. His distinctive voice can be heard as background vocals on many artists' work. Something you said in your book that I thought was really interesting is that initially, or maybe for a time, you were not aware that the song versions that you were hearing, like of your favorite songs, had been covers by black artists from previous generations. So you were receiving the pop version, and you weren't even aware of it until you started

to do your own research as a musician yourself. Yeah, I think that was pretty much the experience of a lot of people in my generation growing up, white kids who thought that Pat Boone wrote Tutti Frutti, you know, I mean, we didn't know any better, you know, because radio was so segregated, as was everything in the United States at the time. It was a sad division in what really was such a strong part of our culture, you know, but it was always kind of isolated away from and giving credit to the people who really brought those art forms to America

and really gave America its own true artistic art form, jazz and R&B music, gospel that came from those roots, R&B and gospel. For instance, the English Invasion bands, we thought that they wrote those songs like It's All Over Now by the Rolling Stones was Bobby Womack and his brothers had a group called the Valentinos. And that song was a number one hit on black radio when the Stones released it. Bobby Womack was quoted as saying, I was so depressed when this English band came out with our song until I got a couple of checks from them. Then I kind of rethought the whole thing. When did you become aware of it, that this was the root of the music you loved?

It took a couple years for me to actually really realize that most of the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing was by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and different American blues artists. And that the Beatles were doing Smokey Robinson songs. But I'm still learning to this day, much to my surprise. Some of the songs like The Animals Don't Let enjoy the success of the song that other artists did. And then here you came as part of the Doobie Brothers with this distinct voice. I think that people sometimes say, I think I've heard someone say that your voice is both a whisper and a yell at the same time. But you come on the scene and black people love you.

Did you ever feel surprised by that, especially early in your career when you started to have those hits with the Doobie Brothers that really put you on the map on all different Billboard charts, R&B charts, as well as the pop charts? I don't know that I was so much aware of it, but whenever that was brought to my attention by friends of mine who liked our music, I was really flattered by that. And I continue to be flattered because to me that's really the test have that privilege of being able to do that and have it accepted by the audience who I believe created it, who invented it and brought it to all of us, you know, the culture in the United States that really brought about what is widely accepted as just American culture across the board, you know, is really African-American culture, you know, in its inception, you know, and not the least of which is our music, you know. Your voice is so soulful. The lyrics have so much depth.

You reveal in this book, though, that it's not that deep for you, meaning that you write in third person. You rarely write about your own lived experience. You observe human nature. You're kind of a little bit like taken aback when get in touch with my own feelings about things, especially anything intimate. I've gotten better at it, I think, as far as songwriting goes. I think I've gotten a little better at touching on subjects that I think are not just universal, easily accessible human nature aspects, but things that are a little more personal. How did you get to that? What do you think is the difference between now and back in the day when you were writing all those songs that were hits?

You know, I think probably more than anything else, it's just being sober, you know, to put it mildly. I think I've learned in sobriety to slowly, to kind of peel back different layers. Like they say, it's like an onion skin. Because you struggled with addiction for many, many years. Yeah, and it was by way of addiction that I avoided really consciously feeling much of anything. And with that came a lot of wreckage where I just wasn't quite able to think ahead. Or my best thinking really didn't do me any favors during those years. years, you know. But more than anything, I think what, you know, people who suffer from addiction share universally is that we're kind of hiding from ourselves. We're kind of hiding from our

feelings. And because our fears, you know, are like, we're sure there's a bear in the bushes. It may only be a poodle, but, you know, I think I'll have a drink rather than walk that way. What did the drugs do for you as a performer? I thought in the beginning that they enhanced my ability to just kind of go to that place that music always took me anyway, you know, which was kind of an otherworldly experience for me. I don't know what the word would be, but I think it's like anything where you feel something emotionally that doesn't come around in the day-to-day living cycle. It's some kind of special emotional experience that you get a certain way.

And for me, singing was always that. As a kid, I always found that that opened up a place in me that I was comfortable with going, where I might not be in conversation. What do you see when you see yourself, if you look back, or I don't even know if you do, but if you ever look back at videos of yourself performing back in those times, when you know you were dealing with your drug addiction and alcohol addiction, do you see it? Do you see a confidence in yourself?

What do you see when you look at that old footage? I think I mostly wish that I had figured out sobriety by then, you know, back then. You know, I always, with a certain kind of remorse that I look at those and I remember where I was and who I was, probably more importantly. I was, you know, I life and 50-plus year career as an award-winning musician. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. One of your iconic songs from your time with the Doobie Brothers is Taking It to the Streets, which was released in 1976. And you wrote the song and, of course, sang it. Let's listen to a little bit. You don't know me, but I'm your brother

I was raised here in this living hell You don't know my kind in you Well, soon the time will tell You Telling me the things you're gonna do for me That was Michael McDonald singing Taking It to the Streets, which he wrote as a member of the Doobie Brothers in 1976. And Michael, those lyrics, they're just so timely, so apt, especially now even. I mean, I just think about what we've been dealing with in our country over the last few years.

And I wanted to know, because you're from Ferguson. And of course, Ferguson was a very different place when you were growing up there, but what were your feelings when Ferguson became the center of unrest? And also you had this song that really speaks to something that had been happening then, and it continues to to happen and it's happening now. Yeah, on all those points, when I grew up in Ferguson as a kid, it was a product of white flight from the cities. It was this new suburban outside of the inner city. Was that part of why your family moved there? It was, I'm sad to say. You know, I think my grandparents,

my grandmother was the only one left of my grandparents at the time, and we lived below her in a neighborhood that at the time, my earliest memories were like mostly older people whose kids had grown and left, you know, the neighborhood. But what happened, much to our delight, was some kids moved in across the alley. And we immediately were thick as thieves with these kids. The oldest was a boy, and his siblings ranged all the way down to my age and in between. And he was kind of the babysitter. You know, I mean, he looked after his siblings while I think his parents worked.

And he would organize these games in the alley, dodgeball, wiffleball. And it was really in the interest of keeping us all occupied. And I think he saw his responsibility. I got that impression from him even at that age. I had quite a bromance with this guy from the very beginning. And I remember just being totally enamored by this guy and thinking, God, he's the greatest. It wasn't long after that that my grandmother, I can still remember her asking what we were doing. I said, we're playing with these kids down the alley that just moved in

and how much fun we were having. It was within weeks. The house was up for sale and we were moving. I learned later that this was the first black family to move into our neighborhood. To my grandmother that somehow signaled that you know it was time to go the property values were going to suffer and you know blah blah blah whatever people thought in their misguided social strata of such situations. How do you reflect on the I mean just because I'm thinking about your grandmother's choice where she was a woman

of her time and so many people like her made those choices to move to this place. It's a hard thing to really wrap your head around. I mean, I became aware of racism, bigotry at a young age because it wasn't long after that that I learned why we moved, you know. And it was part of the realization that the world wasn't such a friendly, warm and fuzzy place. There was racism. There was the atom bomb. There was all these things that the Korean War. And it's like prior to that, I was only like four or so.

Even when my family's struggles, you know, my parents and their struggles, I wasn't that cognizant of it. And the world seemed like a safe place as long as I was with my family. You know, what could be wrong? But I wasn't aware of the world outside. As I became more aware of the world at a young age, that was one of the first things I remember. It was kind of unsettling, you know, that all these things, there was all these restrictions and all these things that happened that I didn't quite understand. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Michael McDonald. He's written a

new memoir titled What a Fool Believes, which chronicles his life and 50-plus year career as an award-winning musician. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Your music is so much like a bridge. I'm going to go back to How Black People Love You. I I swear I was at an event last night and a song of yours came on. And like it always does, you know, the crowd got into it. And I wonder, because you know you've been a bridge for so long, crossing genres, rock and R&B and soul, have you ever grappled with, though, or felt in any way that what you do, your versions of your songs that have sometimes become hits, that you were appropriating in any way?

Or do you feel genuinely like a bridge that has taken in all of what you've experienced to be able to give this gift that you give to us? Yeah, no, I mean, I think the idea that I might be appropriating or not genuine or, you know, I don't think I ever felt like I wasn't being sincere, but whether or not I had aen to the Streets, my first image of the song was I was on my way to a club gig somewhere and the intro of the song just kind of popped in my head and I couldn't wait to get to the gig and set my piano up and pick the chords out on the piano.

And I was hoping I didn't forget it because I thought, you know, it just felt like an opening to a gospel song and I loved gospel music at the time. Growing up, I remember I liked rock and roll too, but nothing was more powerful to me than gospel music. I thought rock and roll was a close second, but not nearly as emotional and emotive and powerful as gospel music was. So I guess I was kind of hoping I was writing a gospel song, if you will.

And it wasn't until I got a chance to play with those chords and I started thinking, well, what better motif for that very idea of people falling through the cracks, our society and what place we have in it. How do we do it better by each other than a gospel song? It just seemed like the perfect kind of underpinning for that kind of idea lyrically. And of course, I couldn't really,

it took me a minute to come up with Taking to to the streets because – and that came from the idea that we've got to be cognizant of this. We've got to do better by each other or this is what it's going to come to. It's going to be settled one way or the other. These kind of progressive ideas and reforms don't come easily, you know, and they come by necessity. And so the necessity only becomes greater until we, you know, we actually take the action needed, you know. And so that's what the song was about to me. Like, you know, like, you know, we're going to meet on the same plane one way or the other. You know, maybe we can do it out of love for each other and consideration and empathy before we have to do it out of frustration. You know, your voice and your performance style, it's so distinctive.

And I'm really fascinated on where your voice is now. I think I said earlier how people said, like, you're the only one who can whisper and also yell at the same time. But your voice has changed over time. Back when you first started, you were actually singing in a very specific way that is not what we know you as, but you realize the strain in your voice. So you were able to change it to be able to withstand singing at that level for that period of time. Where would you say your voice is now? That's a good question. I think the voice is a malleable instrument, you know, at best, and especially with age.

You know, it's like you're constantly renegotiating with it. I find that at my age now, I'm just trying to figure out what my strengths are and what I can use to put the song across. I wish in some ways I could sing with the range or the sense of pitch or whatever it is I had when I was younger, but unfortunately those things change over the years. Are there songs you had to rearrange now that your voice is different? I certainly came to sing them differently over the years. I'm not so sure it's because I had to.

In some cases, I did. I lowered the keys of certain things that became problematic for me as I got older. Singing What a Fool Believes in C-sharp, for instance, was, you know, it got a little high. Yeah, right. And I remember Ray Charles saying to me, because I still sing all those songs and my songs in the same keys. I never lowered a key. And I remember thinking, wow, I'm going to aspire to that.

I'm going to do that. And, of course, as it became over the years, some songs just became, because I typically recorded songs a little higher than probably was my actual range. Your range, anyway. Yeah. And I heard someone say one time that Smokey Robinson and whoever was producing the Motown sessions at the time used to make like Marvin Gaye and some of the singers sing his songs a half step higher than they really were comfortable with. Because he felt, especially with Marvin Gaye, that it brought out a certain angst in his performance that he could get only that way.

And so I always felt that way, too. I always felt like, you know, this is going down on tape. If I sing it just a little bit higher and I have to reach for it a little bit, that'll come across. And then I was reluctant to lower the keys later live. But another great singer, a guy I admired very much, Little Anthony, we were doing a gig together. And he had just come off stage, and he was singing like he did when he was 19. It was like I marveled at how great he still sounded. And we were talking. And I said, man, you sound like he still sounded, you know. And we were talking.

I said, man, you sound like you always did, maybe better, you know. I said, I just marvel at that. He goes, well, he goes, you know, you got to lower the keys as you go, you know. And I remember thinking, really? It didn't sound like it to me. He goes, you've lowered some of your keys, haven't you? I go, no. He goes, what the hell is wrong with you?

Right, you need to get to it. He goes, yeah. He goes, no. He goes, let've lowered some of your keys, haven't you? I go, no. He goes, what the hell is wrong with you? Right, you need to get to it. He goes, yeah. He goes, no. He goes, let me tell you. He goes, first of all, you won't even notice it after a while if it's a half step or something. And the renewed confidence that comes with that is worth it because when you get on stage and you're going after the song for an audience live, you don't want to be sitting there thinking, uh-oh, here comes that line. Am I going to go down in flames or am I going to make it? And that was true.

And I found that to be true. And so over the years, I've been less reluctant to lower keys and stuff, especially if it brings a better performance out of me. But I found that a lot of things have changed, you know, my vibrato, you know, and I have to kind of learn what still works for me when I'm singing because I don't want to be trying to sound like I used to sound, you know, and have that be obvious. I want to just be able to do what I do best now. Well, Michael, I really enjoyed your memoir, and I really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you so much. Well, same here, Tonya. I thank you for your time. I really appreciate talking to you. Michael McDonald's new memoir is what a fool believes. On tomorrow's show, Emmy and Oscar-nominated actor, comic, and screenwriter Kristen Wiig. She was a beloved cast member on Saturday Night Live and starred in and co-wrote the film Bridesmaids.

In her new series, Palm Royale, she plays a pageant queen trying to break into high society in the 1960s. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You look for my reaction What do you need to know? Don't you know I'll always be the one You don't have to prove to me You're beautiful to strangers

I've got loving eyes. Oh, my own. You belong to me. In this life, anyone could tell. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with engineering help from Adam Staniszewski and Connor Anderson from WDET.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.