“When I get in a bad mood about anything, I realize, ‘Hey, I’m still working. It could always be a lot worse.’”
― Michael McDonald
“Looking back, I sometimes wish I had done things differently. But if I had, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have proven to be my own worst enemy.”
― Michael McDonald
“Everything’s challenging for me, singing-wise. I’m like an old truck with one gear left on it.”
― Michael McDonald
“It was surprising, really, that ‘Minute by Minute’ did as well as it did and as quickly as it did.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’m always like the guy who wants to date the pretty girl so bad, and when he finally gets the chance, he blows it because he spends too much time worrying about it.”
― Michael McDonald
“When I listen to songs, to this day, I listen to the chords and the groove and the melody.”
― Michael McDonald
“There were certain Ray Charles albums and a couple of early Marvin Gaye records that I used to listen to with a vengeance. That’s how you forge a style. It excites you, and you lean toward it almost unconsciously. I was also a Beatles fanatic, but I didn’t emulate them the way I did the R&B artists.”
― Michael McDonald
“I use Facebook, but I find that I’m… if I put up a picture of my dog there or a sunset or something, I get a million hits. If I mention anything to do with my career, three people respond. And/or if I say anything political, I have to duck afterwards. I try to be selective.”
― Michael McDonald
“Where I grew up in St. Louis, Saturday was country music day on television. We’d watch the Bill Anderson show, the Willie Nelson show, the Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner show, and always the Grand Ole Opry. My parents were fans of that music, and my friend’s parents would pull the TV out and watch those shows on the porch.”
― Michael McDonald
“I was attracted to black music for the same reason that I loved those old Irish ballads. Both were social statements of sorts, and both were indigenous to their respective cultures: Ireland, where my father had grown up, and towns like St. Louis along the Mississippi River, where I was growing up.”
― Michael McDonald
“It’s funny how, as we get older, what become our fondest memories are not necessarily the happiest times of our lives but the times of our lives that shaped us the most.”
― Michael McDonald
“I like to celebrate the holiday season – not so much in a religious way, per se, but in a unifying way.”
― Michael McDonald
“I have friends who write all the time, and I envy them terribly.”
― Michael McDonald
“I love to write songs, but they don’t come easy to me – I spend a lot of time writing really dumb stuff that I have to look at the next day and think, ‘God, what was I thinking?’ That’s my process, is just to go through a lot of dumb stuff and hope that, after a lot of hard work, I’ll find a good idea.”
― Michael McDonald
“I suppose I hit my lowest point in the early to mid-80s, which is when things really spun out of control for me.”
― Michael McDonald
“’Livin’ on the Fault Line’ was kind of a commercial disappointment for us, although it seemed to have a certain buzz with the smaller fan base we had.”
― Michael McDonald
“Being in the studio, for me, can be a miserable experience – I can really psych myself out.”
― Michael McDonald
“Aretha Franklin holds a significant place in the collective heart of America. She’s a singular example of what we represent at our best.”
― Michael McDonald
“Aretha Franklin is and will always be a national treasure.”
― Michael McDonald
“I think that’s the one thing we all hope for in this life is we leave something of a legacy, that’s meaningful to someone else, when we leave here.”
― Michael McDonald
“Rap is like any other genre: There are the people who are very creative with it and do remarkable things… and then there’s that whole quadrant that sounds alike. There’s great stuff that’s taken the genre to a new level over the years, and ‘Regulate’ was one of those tracks that was kind of a landmark.”
― Michael McDonald
“Most times, lyrics are the last thing I listen to, being a musician.”
― Michael McDonald
“Throughout my career, there has always been an element of surprise. Sometimes there are moments of disappointment; sometimes there are moments of surprising success.”
― Michael McDonald
“There have been albums I’ve recorded in the past that have had success, and then there have been ones I’ve had extreme faith in, and they ended up as commercial failures.”
― Michael McDonald
“While making any record, you look for the opportunity to bring someone who will help generate something special in the music environments you create.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’d say that Ray Charles is definitely the biggest influence on my singing. Also Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.”
― Michael McDonald
“In one way or another, all my songs are about the necessity for trust.”
― Michael McDonald
“In order for life to be more than a frustrating game of one-upsmanship, one has to remain emotionally open and vulnerable.”
― Michael McDonald
“When I first heard Thundercat’s stuff, I thought, ‘Man, this is so original.’ A lot of his ballads, to me, had such a beautiful harmonic, almost classically Hispanic, feel or, like, Brazilian kind of feeling. I don’t think he does that intentionally or anything. It’s just I think those are his influences on some level.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’d like to do something with Frank Ocean, you know, and I love working with Thundercat, and I’d love to do more with him.”
― Michael McDonald
“We’ve reached a point where people don’t even know how to look for anything fundamentally important anymore.”
― Michael McDonald
“Since the ’60s, we’ve lived so much in an age of quick fixes that the culture itself has become a quick fix.”
― Michael McDonald
“When Kanye gets to a point where he can actually put a couple of notes together either vocally or two bars of valid music playing an instrument, then he might have a right to criticize somebody else.”
― Michael McDonald
“Beck is obviously a consummate musician. He plays instruments, many instruments. He can make his own record without having a fleet of computer operators onboard.”
― Michael McDonald
“I love Coldplay.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve been set up with a Twitter account, and I just never use it.”
― Michael McDonald
“My first rock band was called Mike and the Majestics. I was about twelve, and my older sister Kathy was the manager. There were three of us: me and a friend on guitars and a drummer. We were young, but we played for a lot of fraternity parties, plugging both guitars and a microphone into one little amplifier.”
― Michael McDonald
“I hope to capture the public’s imagination, but I can’t live in the anxiety of that.”
― Michael McDonald
“I truly cherish the time and experience with friends that I have been making music with for so many years, even decades now.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve always been an artist that has had a problem with genres, staying in the box, and being told what I had to be.”
― Michael McDonald
“My friendship with The Doobie Brothers never really changed. We’re all still good friends, and I really admire those guys a lot.”
― Michael McDonald
“For me, a lot of my fondest memories of being in the music business were being in the studio with The Doobs and being part of that organization and being a part of that music.”
― Michael McDonald
“I felt a real kinship with Steve Bruner. He’s one of those guys that is so prolific that he has a hard time keeping up with himself. I’m the opposite and move at a glacial place.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve always felt like the Forrest Gump of the music business. I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great people.”
― Michael McDonald
“I didn’t own a record player when I was younger. I just played every day after school and then started gigging around town. I heard bands and songs through friends of mine, but a lot of what I picked up on was learned by traveling through college towns.”
― Michael McDonald
“Whether artists know it or not, I think we’re all a little influenced by what came before.”
― Michael McDonald
“In the ’70s, there was no shortage of people taking themselves too seriously, as ‘artistes,’ if you will. I think we all had a tendency to do that at some point in our career. So looking back on that, it’s fun to laugh at it.”
― Michael McDonald
“I went to Catholic grade school, so we sang a lot of religious songs: ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Silent Night.’”
― Michael McDonald
“One of my all-time favorite Christmas songs, I have to admit, was the Chipmunks’ ‘Christmas Song.’ I remember playing that song over and over.”
― Michael McDonald
“I love writing Christmas music. It’s some of the easiest songs to write… You draw from your own memories – it’s kind of a wellspring of inspiration, in a way. With other songs, you know, you spend six months just trying to figure out what to write about.”
― Michael McDonald
“Each generation tries to disassociate itself with the last generation. And then, about three decades later, people kind of start to maybe appreciate what you might have done a while back that you don’t even realize you did.”
― Michael McDonald
“The ‘Motown’ detour for me was almost like it wasn’t work. It was more fun than work, and that’s all it takes for me to not be very responsible to other things I should have been paying attention to.”
― Michael McDonald
“I wish I wrote songs like Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, Don Henley, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, so many of the songwriters I admire. They have the ability to say things.”
― Michael McDonald
“Honestly, I’ve never thought of myself as a mover and shaker of songwriting.”
― Michael McDonald
“No matter what anyone else thinks, if someone appreciates what you do, whether it’s 10 people or a million people, it’s all good – because the only reason you make music is to have someone appreciate it.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve come to learn that music speaks for itself.”
― Michael McDonald
“Frankly, I think it’s flattering to be compared to someone like Michael Bolton, who I think is a phenomenal singer with a spectacular range.”
― Michael McDonald
“Like everyone else, I have a lot of things I’d like to do that I’ll probably never get around to. But for the most part, I live day to day.”
― Michael McDonald
“Hey, I’d love to have a hit single, but if that doesn’t happen, I’m not going to complain.”
― Michael McDonald
“My musical education started before I could see over the dashboard, just listening to the radio and cranking up our favorite songs as they came on.”
― Michael McDonald
“I grew up with this idea that songwriters had a great job. My family was Irish Catholic, so if you became a priest or a songwriter, you were golden.”
― Michael McDonald
“I enjoy it immensely, but I’m not comfortable on stage as a person.”
― Michael McDonald
“I think, as musicians, that’s really all we want is to keep working. We want to have a reason to be, and we want to play for as many people in this span of life that we’re allowed as we possibly can, and in as many places as we possibly can.”
― Michael McDonald
“I think when you’re not prepared for something, success can be as crippling a thing as failure to people. I think it touches whatever insecurities you have, that you may not be as in touch with you as you should be or whatever.”
― Michael McDonald
“Probably some of the most miserable years of my life were grappling with some definition of what success was.”
― Michael McDonald
“I don’t know that we ever overcome doubt. We just have to remember that it’s more than likely a poodle in the bushes and not a grizzly bear.”
― Michael McDonald
“What I particularly liked about Nineties hip hop was it had a certain reverence for the groove that I hadn’t been hearing in a while.”
― Michael McDonald
“I just don’t think many people would have crossed the street to hear me doing a hip hop-influenced album!”
― Michael McDonald
“I tell my son, when your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value might be of some use. So you’ve got to go with it, you know.”
― Michael McDonald
“I played so many clubs growing up, and back in that period, in the ’60s, we’d play, like, four, five sets a night.”
― Michael McDonald
“I grew up in the era where everybody wanted to sing like Mitch Ryder and James Brown. And I did, too. But I learned real quick that it hurts after a while.”
― Michael McDonald
“For me, one of the best things of having been a Doobie Brother is that the people involved always were great people.”
― Michael McDonald
“I could never be grateful enough to the Doobies for the opportunities the organization gave me over the years.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’m not the kind of artist who can just gear myself to a particular radio format without looking like a fashion victim.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve felt the noose tightening for me for years at the major labels, where you’re allowed to do less and less of what you would do most naturally and expected to do something that was expected to be saleable.”
― Michael McDonald
“When I was with the Doobies, the style of music was that we all went over the falls with chord progressions, trying to make things as complex and interconnected as possible.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve never felt that I was doing anything more worthwhile musically than when I was with Steely Dan.”
― Michael McDonald
“My wife is, by and large, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
― Michael McDonald
“Laziness can be virtuous in the right setting, I guess.”
― Michael McDonald
“Warner Bros. was a great label to be affiliated with. It’s the best label out there, and the fact that I was with them for 20 years was just an honor.”
― Michael McDonald
“I know that things change and markets change. Those are the realities of the business.”
― Michael McDonald
“Most of my life is taken up with family. It takes me awhile to get a record together that I feel is worthy of putting out.”
― Michael McDonald
“I think it takes longer for me to make a record than most artists.”
― Michael McDonald
“Whenever I sing blues from the ’50s or the kind of blues that you might have heard Eric Clapton or Duane Allman emulate, I often feel the similarity of some of the ragtime stuff I sang early on. A lot of the phrasing and the harmonization is the same.”
― Michael McDonald
“I do love the Nat King Cole stuff, the classic Christmas records. There’s something about putting those records on and hearing his voice at Christmastime that brings back a lot of great memories of growing up.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’m a very slow songwriter; it takes me sometimes years to write one song, if I ever finish.”
― Michael McDonald
“When I was younger, I was pretty cavalier about my voice – I don’t know that I even thought about it that much, to be honest with you.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve always had a dream that I might write a Christmas song that might resonate with people during the holidays.”
― Michael McDonald
“We try to promote the Christmas season and remind people that it is a season of peace. That’s what the season’s real meaning is about. No matter what religion you are, there is that point in time where we should celebrate that idea of peace and humanity.”
― Michael McDonald
“I remember one of my favorite all-time records was by Edwin Starr: ‘Stop Her on Sight.’”
― Michael McDonald
“The Stax/Volt stuff is really what I grew up on.”
― Michael McDonald
“Brian Owens is a young guy from Ferguson, Missouri, my hometown, who I don’t think emulates me at all, but I really enjoy his particular style. He kind of makes me think of the older school of soul singers like Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye.”
― Michael McDonald
“I think every ounce of pain in just living always ends up being the best thing that happened to me. It’s always a growth period. I learn at the speed of pain.”
― Michael McDonald
“I write about humility, because it’s something I hope I one day actually possess.”
― Michael McDonald
“Working with Thundercat was really a thrill.”
― Michael McDonald
“Pat Simmons and I always had a great blend together. We did the background vocals on a Little Feat track called ‘Red Streamliner,’ and that was great fun. I always really loved the way it turned out.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’ve always written short stories.”
― Michael McDonald
“I’m a big country fan. I remember, as a kid, when Ray Charles did the ‘Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music’ record. That’s one of the reasons I became a country fan.”
― Michael McDonald
“I love Hank Williams songs, but I love hearing Ray Charles sing them much more.”
― Michael McDonald
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