Wednesday July 13, 2022 “Listen to the Music” The Doobie Brothers
“Listen to the Music” written by guitarist and band co-founder Tom Johnston was the Doobie Brothers first hit...fifty years ago. Johnston also created the distinctive guitar hook late one night when he said as he was doing what he always did, playing guitar.
The inspiration for the song was based on Johnston’s somewhat Utopian belief that music would lift man up to a higher plane, and to paraphrase a line from the Beach Boys "wouldn't that be nice",
The Doobie Brothers would be eligible to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 but that august group chose to induct Gladys Knight and the Pips, Pete Seeger and the Velvet Underground that year instead. The Doobies would not be inducted until 2020.
OK I waited as long as I could, the band originally named Pud changed that name, as a joke, to Doobie Brothers which of course was slang for marijuana, but that had to be tempered early in their career at some of the more conservative radio stations. During those interviews the band members said that the name was based on the children’s TV series Romper Room (OK who remembers Miss Nancy) where they often said “Do be a Do Bee, not a Don’t Bee”.
Following his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s and Spirit in the 1980s, guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter became a self-taught ballistic missile expert who went on to chair a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense. Now I’m not saying that is true but I read it and felt the need to share it.
Stay safe and well…and do be a Do Bee and take the Doobie Brothers advice, listen to the music.