It’s a catchy melody with great lyrics: every guy has had a relationship with a girl who didn’t give a damn. He added all the keyboard parts on the synthesiser, layered the vocals and then the string lines, which give What a Fool Believes that emotion. His voice has such a unique range and quality. Michael came up with the rest of the arrangement. But we got lucky and I put it together on the spot. In those days when you cut the tape, you’re over – that’s the master of your recording. Michael looked at me in horror, the whole band did. We had about 35 boxes stacked up in the record booth. Everyone was getting frustrated and my engineer, Donn Landee, said: “Why don’t you go play drums, Ted?” So I went out and we did a take. We recorded the track over and over and it just wouldn’t come together. I tell my son, who’s also a musician: “Just remember, when your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value may be of some importance.” Seeing myself sent up on TV in Family Guy and films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin has been hilarious, and valuable too. There was no real rivalry between Kenny and I, or the other bands, but it was funny – you could almost believe it. I was flattered by the Yacht Rock YouTube series even though it wasn’t very accurate in depicting the people I knew. I think it came out of nowhere and stylistically wasn’t like anything we’d done before or like anything anyone else was doing at the time. It really captured the public’s imagination and developed a life of its own. Our single came out at the start of 1979 and went to No 1 a few months later. The Doobie Brothers kept the song in its simplest form and figured we didn’t need to get too wordy and just tried to capture its spirit. It was more of a creative arrangement with his producer Bob James, who was a phenomenal jazz pianist. Kenny’s solo version was released first, in July 1978. But that’s what we used to make the record. Back then, you were really going for broke when you physically cut the tape. “Let’s stop right here – because I know we’ve got a take in that pile.” He got off the drums, walked into the control room and started cutting the tapes into individual sections right there. By that point, there were boxes of takes for this one song piled as high as the ceiling. We got so desperate that producer Ted Templeman actually wound up playing drums along with our drummer. My band, the Doobie Brothers, tried desperately to get a version we liked. Kenny and I both recorded separate versions around the same time. When your music becomes less relevant, I told my son, your pathetic comic value may be of some importance By the next day, we had finished the track. They were a big part of our memory bank, and What a Fool Believes filled that space. During the session, we got nostalgic about the records we grew up listening to, songs like the Four Seasons’ Sherry and Walk Like a Man.
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