Vol. 15 - Members Only: Michael McDonald and Our Exclusive Clan

Back to my editing work, I am pleased to share this Email conversation between Adolpho and Halliday concerning Michael McDonald, surely one of the greatest living soft rockers. - ed.

Holiday begins with a quote from "What a Fool Believes":

“She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice”

And then addresses his friend:

Dolf:

Hurt AND confident?

Let us consider one Michael McDonald.  His work with the Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross, James Ingram, and even Chaka Khan was seminal.  His background vocals found on more scrumptious tracks than I care to count.  His solo work, especially his first solo album from 1982, has cemented his place in Soft Rock history.  He IS blue-eyed soul for many, but I am fond of him for a different reason, a reason that makes him a vulnerable, lost soul, a loser in love. The proof is in the hair.

Even as a young man with the Doobie Brothers, his heart had already been broken many times.  I have heard that a broken heart can cause ones hair to lose all pigment, almost overnight, and I have witnessed this surreal event myself.  I have a good friend who was completely gray in our sophomore year of high school.  A skunk chunk sprouted from his cowlick as early as age 13!   I thought the phenomenon was genetic until he chose to reveal to me his tragic love story. 

It seems that in 7^th grade he fell hard for a redhead named Megan whose green eyes glistened like morning dew on a freshly cut lawn.  This Meg filled out a pair of Levi’s in all the right ways.  The stolen glances he enjoyed of her deep, freckled cleavage haunted him well into his twenties.  He spent many months as her lab partner, exchanging pleasantries but not much more.  Her eyes turned him to stone, so to speak, and he prayed every day that the Chemistry teacher would not make him rise from his seat and the concealment provided by his wooden desk top.  It wasn’t until we were teammates on our high school track and field team that I was able to share with him the wisdom of the “Fosberry Flip.”  For those not familiar with this invaluable technique, I will briefly explain:  When, at an inappropriate time, one finds ones member engorged, the best solution, besides reciting baseball statistics to oneself, is to pull forward the waistband of ones trousers, allowing the offending member to “flip” up where it can then be secured in the waistband of ones undergarments and trousers, hidden behind a large belt buckle if so inclined. 

Well, unaware of the Fosberry Flip at this younger age, my friend looked the fool, never able to walk fair Megan to her locker or her next class, where he might find a moment to ask her out.  When one evening, emboldened by hard drink (imported beer!), he did find the courage to reveal his feelings to her via a stolen moment on his parent’s home phone, she went on and on for an hour about her boyfriend who attended the local preparatory school.  She considered all her male classmates so immature, she said.  Not you, she assured my friend, but he knew better. 

Was it self-loathing that turned his bangs a whitish gray the very next morning?  He told me that, even as she let him down as gently as she could, her voice scraped through his belly like fine sandpaper, and a couch pillow’s employ was necessary to conceal his gym shorts from the eyes of his siblings should they spy his pre-Fosberry tumescence.  To make matters even worse, he was paired with this Megan for another complete semester and had to witness her ever-developing beauty from just a seat away.  He lit their shared Bunsen burner and noticed her experimentation with women’s perfume.  He feigned interest in covalently bonded homogeneous solutions while he admired her new haircuts and (oh, dear!) stylish new glasses.  He had to watch her become even more lovely, finding it harder every day to separate his rich fantasy life from the cruel reality.  She never even noticed that his hair looked like that of a 35 year old man.  She never even noticed the bulge in his trousers, for pity sake!!

I can’t help but think that Michael McDonald turned prematurely gray under similar circumstances.  His lyrics say so much about his personal failures in love:

I keep forgettin we're not in love anymore
I keep forgettin things will never be the same again
I keep forgettin how you made that so clear
I keep forgettin every time that you are near

Dolf replies:

The sign of a classic

 "Minute, by minute, by minute---I keep holding on." Enigmatic. Charismatic. Hairtastic. My fondness for MM harkens back to the days of my youth. Yes friend, I was fond of the salt & pepper well before my own manhood took root. I recall the time Father and I took that short ride to Korvettes (maybe a Two Guys store) and bought Minute by Minute on LP for the Nice Price.

I had already been indoctrinated into the raspy vocals of Mike via my Father’s appetite for the prior two Doobie albums. The tale of your school chum resonates with me. For we have all known the pain and horror of the schoolboy "call to arms" (like a baby’s arm, I say!). Yes, I too was afflicted by this malice of hormones and overactive imagination. Her name was Philene, skin light as mocha and hair as kinky as my schoolboy infatuation. Her father was Jamaican and her mother German. I fancied myself a lover of the exotic, and my young love for this half-Nubian princess stoked my young desires. I remember the day all too well.


Philene, I'm begging you..



We were set off to a party in honor of a common friend’s birthday. The party turned from innocent to precarious with the spin of a bottle. Yes, I spun, and the bottle chose for me the young octoroon queen of my dreams. As we slowly and nervously moved to the closet where many burgeoning explorations and nefarious deeds took place, my mind screamed. This, friend, was my moment---Philene!! “You Don’t Know Me but I’m YOUR BROTHER"! We moved close to embrace and touched lips---and it happened. Oh, how I wished I hadn't worn those loose-fitting gym shorts. She suddenly grew frightened and left in a flash—that uncomfortable and damp “poke” destroyed our night. After “composing” myself by citing the Declaration of Independence verbatim, I went back to the group in shame—and, like your friend, with a bit of self-loathing in tow, I suppose. I never forgot that night—and I swear, in the halls of school, Philene would give me a little knowing smirk and nervous smile. I was takin' it to the streets. And she knew it. She just wasn’t ready for it.  Or perhaps our moment had too quickly passed.

Holiday continues:

Young Dolf:

Perhaps your encounter with Philene caused your premature baldness?  I poke fun of course, friend, poke being the operative word.  I can't stop thinking of Dolly Parton's classic "Jolene".  Philene, I'm begging you.  Please don't take my man(hood).  But I digress too long.  Back to Mike's painful encounters with the women he loves. 
 

The proof is in the hair.

Why such a cruel fate for such a gentle, soulful man??  If we are lucky enough to find love, we are blessed.  If we lose our loves, it is much easier to never see them again, no?  I have never been one to remain friends with exes, but I suppose the prototypical Soft Rocker would aspire to such selfless love.  If I were in my aforementioned friend’s shoes, I most certainly would have requested a homely new lab partner.   Your life would certainly have been better had Philene transferred schools that week.  Perhaps this is something about me that I should work on.  I wonder if you and Philene remained friends, if you have channeled this experience into the tasty licks that emanate from your dulcet guitar, that sustain your downy voice??   Michael likely surrounded himself with ex-lovers, for how could such a man share his heart once and then just hide it away forever when the affair had ended?  The doleful gaze on the cover of his solo debut shows that hurt hidden in plain sight.  “The pain and ache a heart can take, No one really knows," he says on his “I Can Let Go Now” (more of this gem below).  But I think Mike knows a lot more than he believes.  "The wiseman has the power..."  More evidence:

“… Just when you think you know what love is about
Someone takes your place, and you find that
Love lies-right to your face..”

The lyrics to “Love Lies” from this same record help tell the tale.  It seems poor Mike must always confront his broken heart, face to face.  Or perhaps he is a masochist.   Perhaps he is driven to find answers, to search the faces of his past lovers for answers, however painful.  Perhaps that is what a true artist does?  My friend is now happily married (to a bottle-blonde) and never mentions the girl who turned him gray, but he seems happier, more content than me.  He has truly felt love and pain in equal measure.  He should learn to play keyboards and join our Lather and Rinse!

We can hope that, like Mike and my high school chum, we can all get to this place where we let love take its course, treacherous, destructive, graying, balding or not.  These incidents truly build character.  In Michael’s cover shots (in the look I am sure you volleyed back at Philene’s knowing glance) there is something else present; it is a confidence--more precisely, a “cockiness.”  Flipped ala Fosberry or not, members of the Soft Rock clan know that another love will come along who can appreciate the bounty hidden within.  And buoyed by this self-love, this self-confidence, this knowledge that they have been “blessed,”so to speak, they move on.  I will let Mike tell it:

It was so right, it was so wrong
Almost at the same time…

…But I was tossed high by love
I almost never came down
Only to land here
Where love's no longer found
Where I'm no longer bound

And I can let go now