“If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.”
- Lou Reed
Here's a baseball analogy that fits today's topic. On June 2, 1925 , veteran first baseman for the New York Yankees, Wally Pipp, asked manager Miller Huggins for the day off because he had a headache. Huggins inserted a twenty-one year old named Lou Gehrig into the lineup and he didn't come out for 2,130 games, a record that that stood for 56 years. After losing his job, Pipp later joked that he'd taken “the two most expensive aspirin in history.”
Today is the birthday of Tom Johnston (1948), founding member of The Doobie Brothers. Johnston and the Doobies are responsible for some of the most enduring songs from the 1970s and 80s. Johnston himself wrote Listen to the Music, China Grove and Long Train Runnin'.
In 1975, after five years of exhaustive touring, Johnston's health was in shambles. Severe stomach ulcers put him in the hospital in Memphis on the eve of the first show of a new tour. His diagnosis was severe enough that it looked like he'd be out of action indefinitely. To avoid cancelling all the dates, an emergency decision was made by the band to bring in a substitute vocalist, Michael McDonald.
You know where it goes from there. Johnston became the Wally Pipp of rock and roll. When his health recovered a year later he rejoined the band, but by then their musical direction had changed and Johnston never quite fit back in. I guess the moral is, if you like your job, play hurt.
Some people have strong feelings and preferences for one version of the Doobies over the other. I lean toward the rockin' Johnston era over the mellower mainstream McDonald years, but they both have their place. A couple of my favorite Doobie songs are of the lesser known variety. How about you?