When Tom Johnston wrote the Doobie Brothers' 1972 hit, "Listen to the Music," he believed that music could lift people's spirits and possibly change the world.
"Don't you feel it growin', day by day?
People gettin' ready for the news
Some are happy, some are sad
Oh, we got to let the music play."
Thirty-eight years later, is he still a believer in the power of popular music?
"Probably not as much," said Johnston, who will take the stage with the Doobie Brothers in Toledo Wednesday night at the Stranahan Theater.
"'Listen to the Music' involved leaders of the world getting together on some big grassy knoll and smoking a joint together," he said in an interview. "That was the thinking back then. The idea was everybody would mellow out and get out of the [Vietnam] war vibe."
Music still speaks an international language and reaches people around the globe, Johnston said, but there is too much corporate control of the music industry today, and he feels that musicians are writing too many songs with negative messages.
"Some rock guys are writing some really dark stuff. Rap and hip-hop have a lot of violent messages. The whole music scene has changed drastically," he said.
Despite the proliferation of negative lyrics, Johnston said he and the Doobie Brothers are determined to keep offering fans uplifting songs.
"To me, that has always been our job - to make people have a good time. That's why we get up on stage, basically to play stuff that gets you up and makes you feel better," he said.
Johnston, a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, was one of the original members when the Doobie Brothers started in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1970.
He had been playing in a local band called Pud with "a revolving door" of musicians. That band is often cited as leading into the Doobie Brothers, but Johnston has a different opinion.
"Pud had nothing to do with the Doobie Brothers," Johnston said. "It was a hard-rock trio."
It was Skip Spence, a Bay Area guitarist in the 1960s band Moby Grape, who introduced Johnston and John Hartman, which marked the start of the Doobie Brothers.
"Skip Spence was a mentor for that whole Bay Area scene, so in that sense he was a mentor for the Doobies," Johnston said.
Together with Patrick Simmons, a guitarist whose finger-picking country style gave the band a distinctive sound, Johnston and Hartman built a large following in the San Francisco area with their informal weekly concerts.
There was a looming problem, however.
"We didn't have a name; we were just playing," Johnston said. "We said, 'This is getting ridiculous, nobody knows who the hell we are.' A guy that lived in our house said, 'You ought to call yourself the Doobie Brothers.' It wasn't the best name in the world but we didn't have anything else."
So the California country-boogie band named after a slang term for a marijuana cigarette wound up being signed in 1970 by industry giant Warner Brothers Records.
They released an eponymous debut album in 1971 and then added the rhythmic drive of a second drummer, Michael Hossack, with their second album, 1972?s "Toulouse Street."
That record brought the Doobies into the national charts with their hit singles "Listen to the Music," "Jesus Is Just Alright," and "Rockin' Down the Highway."
Both "Toulouse Street" and the Doobies' followup, "The Captain and Me," sold more than a million copies each, and the third album kept the hits coming with "China Grove" and "Long Train Runnin.'"
The Doobie Brothers went through several personnel switches in its early years, but the most notable lineup change came in 1975 when guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Steely Dan fame and singer-pianist Michael McDonald joined the lineup.
McDonald's blue-eyed soul gave the group a dramatically different sound and style and during his seven years with the Doobie Brothers - until what turned out to be a temporary disbandment in 1982 - featured such No. 1 hits as "Minute by Minute" and "What a Fool Believes."
Johnston, who left the group in 1977 because of health problems and was replaced by McDonald, said he has never felt jealous or harbored any bad feelings toward McDonald.
"Michael's a good guy. We got started six years before Michael, and I give the band credit for developing a completely different sound and still succeeding," Johnston said.
"I got a bleeding ulcer in '75 and quit the band in '77. They switched over to a whole different style because they didn't know if I was coming back or not - and I didn't either," he said.
He dropped out of music for a while, then eased back in, recording solo albums in 1979 and 1981. Johnston rejoined the Doobies for a reunion show in 1987 and the group has been together ever since.
The current lineup has been consistent for about 20 years now, with Johnston, Simmons, Hossack, guitarist John McFee, keyboardist Guy Allison, saxophonist Mark Russo, and drummer Ed Toth. Due to illness, Doobie Brothers bassist Skylark will be temporarily absent from the tour. Filling in on bass is John Cowan, who was part of the Doobies' touring lineup in the early 1990s.
The Doobie Brothers are about to release a new studio album, its first in 10 years, Johnston said. The disc, as-yet untitled, is "a little different than people are used to from the band, which I believe is great," he said. "I don't want to rubber-stamp our old recordings."
It will feature a Latin-flavored number, a guest appearance by Willie Nelson, an all-out blues tune, a New Orleans shuffle with horns, and a funky island song, he said.
The Doobie Brothers will be in concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Stranahan Theater. Tickets are $34.50 to $52 from Ticketmaster and the Stranahan box office, 419-381-8851.
Contact David Yonke at:
dyonke@theblade.com
or 419-724-6154.
First Published May 15, 2010, 4:22 p.m.