Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best (non greatest hits) Doobie Brothers Album, December 31, 2001
I am a huge fan of the Doobie Brothers, I like every album they ever made (some more than others, some less), but this is definitely their best one. The first track is pretty good jazz/rock. The next is the classic title track. The third track is the only one I'm not crazy about. All the rest of the tunes have great melodies, great group sound, a variety of moods, yet cohesive as a whole. Turn it Loose and It Keeps You Runnin' (which used to be KRTH's backup song to their ads) are my favorites from side 2 but "It's All Good." Do yourself a favor and buy this CD!
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
West Coast rock/soul trauma, March 20, 2001
I remember the shock that many of us felt when we first heard this album previewed on FM radio back in 1976. It bombed so badly in the UK that the follow-up, LIVIN ON THE FAULT LINE, was never released here on LP. There are few traumas in the history of rock music which have led to a band re-inventing itself so successfully. The cause was Tom Johnston's departure, a possibility which had been foreseen with the recruitment of third guitarist Jeff Baxter. But Baxter was neither a vocalist nor a volume songwriter. When Johnston finally left, the band was thrown into upheaval. None of them seemed to have a solo career ahead of them, so they had to stick together. But only one track was in the can -- 'Turn It Loose', a leftover from the wonderful STAMPEDE period that hadn't made it onto the album. However much the band's manager might want to thrust Simmons as the band's new leader -- that's why his photo is on the front of this album -- it seems that he needed a co-leader to bring out the best of his glorious writing, singing and guitar playing. It might have seemed strange to their fans but the Doobies could have continued with much the same sound if they had picked Maria Muldaur, who had sung on a number of their earlier albums, as their new lead singer. Bonnie Raitt would also have enabled them to continue with their blend of West Coast and Southern boogie. Instead they chose someone who had never worked with the Doobies before. But he had a wonderful voice and he had worked on the classic Steely Dan album KATY LIED. It turned out that he also had a gift for composition too, as exemplified on 'Losin' End' and the stand-out track 'It Keeps You Runnin''. The only problem with those two classic tracks was they are both pretty much solo efforts, keyboard and drum machine tunes that I suspect McDonald had mapped out before he joined the Doobies. McDonald needed a vehicle to establish himself before going on to a solo career, and the traumatised Doobies became that vehicle. McDonald's arrival as a reasonable keyboardsman meant that the Doobies no longer had a need for brilliant pianist Bill Payne, so out went another link to Southern boogie. So we get an LP of three parts: the tracks such as 'Turn it Loose' where there is frankly no evidence of McDonald, except perhaps as a post-production background vocal overdub, the tracks McDonald virtually recorded on his own, and the ensemble tracks such as 'Rio' and 'For Someone Special', where there is no evidence of Johnston. And the amazing thing is that it all works magnificently. The original LP was a very thin piece of vinyl -- part of Warners Brothers' cost-saving regime of the time -- and I found it very difficult to find a copy that wasn't warped. With the CD we get at last a robust medium, although this is the earliest Doobie Brothers album for which there is no mention of Lee Herschberg doing the CD remastering. Maybe it isn't remastered. Who cares anyway? It's a marvellous mid-70s recording.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A stuttering start but class shows through. Buy It!, July 29, 2005
I'm not going to go over the same ground as the other reviewers... Gavin Wilson's notes for this album are pretty accurate so you may want to read this first. I'd just like to take up a couple of point he makes which are not accurate for all you history buffs out there. At the end I give you my opinion of the album if you just want to skip down to that.
QUOTE "McDonald needed a vehicle to establish himself before going on to a solo career"
This statement is misleading in that it suggests that Mike only joined the Doobie Brothers to further his solo career - at the time in '73/'74 Mike McDonald would have needed a crystal ball to have had this in mind. He joined the Doobies because he was asked by Pat Simmons over the telephone and he was not just 'using the band' as a stepping stone to a solo gig. Mike had been gigging around the West Coast for a couple of years - most notably with Steely Dan (which was on/off as anyone who knows Dan will understand - they went through more musicians that I've had hot dinners... approx' 52 on Aja alone!). At the time he had had an abortive solo album released through a producer friend Rick Jarrard and he was living in a garage apartment surviving on oatmeal. He had pretty much given up on the idea of a solo career and was really looking for work as a session musician. Jeff Baxter, another Dan session man recommended him to Pat and that was that.
The whole idea of Mike going solo didn't come until the Doobies fell apart around 79/80 and then it was out of necessity... it was either a solo gig or go look for more session work. Mike's never planned anything in his life.. and he still believes to this day in syncronicity - fate leading him forward.
QUOTE "However much the band's manager might want to thrust Simmons as the band's new leader it seems that he needed a co-leader to bring out the best of his playing."
The truth of this is that Pat is a very nice guy and a great musician but was not a leader in '74. He was a hippy in the true sense of the word and this was not even his band remember - he came in a year or two after Tom Johnston had formed the band. Tom Johnston was the driving force behind the Doobs in the early days both in terms of direction, leadership and song writing. Following his well documented drug and health issues (he collapsed on tour with bleeding stomach ulcers that nearly killed him and spent 12 months recovering) the Doobies were in serious free fall.
You have to understand that these guys were all stoned half the time and all they could focus on was getting to the next gig to play a live set. They weren't really a studio band at all so the idea of them all sitting down round a table and working out which musical direction to go after Tom's sudden exit is frankly.... laughable.
Jeff Baxter, however, is a leader and has very strong ideas about what he wants to do. It was really his decision to employ Mike McDonald and it was part of his (later admitted) plan to take over Tom's spot as leader of the Doobies. He realised that the Doobs had potential and with Tom gone were ripe for the taking. By bringing in his buddy from Steely Dan (McD) he gave his corner more strength. What is really ironic is that through the Doobies, Mike McDonald blossomed and developed a close bond with Pat Simmons and Tiran Porter which pushed Baxter out of the band a couple of years later. Baxter has commented on this power struggle and admits that once he realised he couldn't lead the band he decided to quit
QUOTE "The only problem with those two classic tracks was they are both pretty much solo efforts".
'Takin It To The Streets' WAS written before Mike joined the Doobies, in fact the words were part written by Mike's sister as part of a college paper on Martin Luther King and social unrest in the U.S. It is no surprise that Mike's musical inspiration for this track was Marvin Gaye and the album 'What's Goin' On' which pre-dated this album by 3 years. 'It Keeps You Runnin' and 'Losin End' were also pretty much written solo by Mike and these three songs really began a new direction for the band which would see them rise to chart success and Grammy awards with the next three albums, Fault Line, Minute By Minute and One Step Closer.
This album is a real mish mash of styles and rhyhms which done' really knit for me. You have remnants of the past (Turn It Lose - Tom Johnstons rescued studio dub from Stampede), Mikes solo tracks over dubbed by the band, a kind of odd song 'For Someone Special' from bass player Tiran Porter that whilst OK doesn't fit with anything, an attempt at a 'pop' song in 'Rio', Pat's bluegrass influenced '8th Avenue Shuffle' and a pre-psychodelia 'Wheels oF Fortune'.
If you know the history of the band at this point in their career, it is glaringly obvious why the album should be this way. It is an attempt to tread water, an albums of bits and pieces put out under pressure from the record company whilst the band tried to come to terms with losing its core (Tom Johnston).
Having said that, it is also a remarkable album in that it marks a turn in the bands direction. It is historical in that it certainly resued the faltering career of the Doobie Brothers. It's worth buying just because it features the fledgling inspirational work of Michael McDonald and the truly great song 'Takin' It To The Streets'. This is THE album that began a major shift in popular Rock music away from the hard blues of Cream and Jimi Hendrix to the Ray Charles and Motown influenced Soul. Just a few years later Michael McDonald's chords and vocal dubs would be copied across the board for nearly a decade from Christoper Cross, Toto and David Pack in the early 80's to band like Go West in the 90's. This album is where it began and you owe it to yourself to check it out.
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by The Doobie Brothers 
