Biography/History of
Michael McDonald
“You just try to pick the songs that are most meaningful to you,” says
five time Grammy-winner Michael McDonald about the inspiration for his
new album, Soul Speak. “These songs span my life—they’re the ones
where I can remember where I was when I first heard them, the ones that
made me interested in becoming a recording artist, the songs I’d always
imagined myself singing.”
Soul Speak is the natural follow-up to McDonald’s two smash
explorations of the Motown Records songbook—the platinum-selling
Motown from 2003, which was nominated for two Grammy awards, and the
next year’s gold-selling Motown Two. But this time, McDonald
didn’t restrict himself to any one style or record label or decade; he
wanted to interpret songs that he loved, regardless of genre. So while
some of the selections—“For Once in My Life,” “Walk on By,” or the
album’s first single, “Love TKO”—fall squarely within the blue-eyed soul
territory that we associate with Michael McDonald, others, like Leonard
Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” are a bit more
surprising.
The creator of such hits as “I Keep Forgettin’," the Grammy-winning “Yah
Mo B There," and the Number One pop single “On My Own," McDonald isn’t
afraid to challenge expectations.. “Everybody always wants you to keep
doing what you did last time,” he says. “You’re always met with, ‘Oh,
you don’t want to do that, you’ll lose your fan base.’ But I’ve found
that whenever I got back on the radio, it was with something completely
different than what I’d done before.”
Besides, he adds, his own responsibility to a song doesn’t change just
because its sound does. “I approach them all the same way—can I find
that place in me where I feel I’m being sincere with the song?”
McDonald, 56, has been a fixture in American pop music for over three
decades. After emerging out of the local scene in his hometown of St.
Louis, he first came into the spotlight as part of Steely Dan’s touring
band in the early 1970s. He contributed vocals and keyboards to the
band’s classic albums Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, Aja,
and Gaucho. While working with Steely Dan, McDonald also joined
the Doobie Brothers, where his voice became the group’s focal point on
such songs as “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “Minute by Minute,” and,
unforgettably, the Number One single “What a Fool Believes,” which won
the 1980 Grammy as Song of the Year.
McDonald’s distinctive, instantly recognizable voice may be his
signature, but on Soul Speak, he wanted to push himself to match
the songs rather than the other way around. “A lot of these songs call
on me to step up to the plate as a vocalist even more than the songs I
write,” he says. “But if I’m going to do a record that’s well known, I
won’t lower the key. That’s part of the ingredients of respecting the
original—whether it’s in the most comfortable key for me or not.”
That same traditional philosophy determined the way in which Soul
Speak was recorded. “On the Motown records,” says McDonald,
“we built the tracks on computers and then brought in the musicians. But
this time was really more old-school, done live in a couple of takes.
Other than things like the horns, these tracks were all done pretty much
as you hear ‘em.”
This approach allowed McDonald to try out many more songs than he was
able to use, and to be more spontaneous in the studio. For instance, he
was working on a version of “Hallelujah” for a Leonard Cohen tribute
concert at UCLA. “I came up with something a little different, a little
more blues/R&B version,” he says. “Fifteen minutes before the session,
we made the decision to try to cut it. Those are the moments that make
recording a really rewarding experience.”
The selection on Soul Speak that may be most special to McDonald,
and which he confesses intimidated him the most, is “Redemption Song,”
with its simple folk melody and classic Bob Marley lyric. “I love the
song, but it’s so personal to Bob Marley, to a culture, I thought, how
do I sing this lyric? Is it presumptuous?,” he says. “But I think it
says so much about what all the other songs are about, looking for
redemption in a person or a place, and staying humane in the process.
That lyric just says it as it is—that there’s victory out there, but
it’s never going to come in the form or the time you expect it to.”
Soul Speak also includes three original songs by McDonald, a
reminder that he has a significant history as a writer as well as an
interpreter. “We actually went back and forth choosing the originals,”
he says. “’Only God Can Help Me Now’ and ‘Getting Over You’ are kind of
retro feeling, so they fit pretty easily. ‘Enemy Within’ stands on its
own, but (producer Simon Climie) thought it added a little bit of a turn
that the album needed, so it wasn’t just a collection of oldies.”
McDonald expects that his next project will be more focused on his own
songwriting, but notes that his busy touring schedule makes it
difficult. “More and more, if I’m not careful, I find that I’m out
working all the time, and I have to search for any time to be able to
woodshed and write.”
But of course, the key to a project like Soul Speak is that even
if most of these songs weren’t written in Michael McDonald’s own words,
that doesn’t make them any less personal. The album is the story of a
musical life, of the thoughts and sounds and influences that helped
shape a legendary career. Not that these fourteen songs are the
beginning and end of that tale.
“The only frustrating thing,” says McDonald, “is that the deeper into
the list of songs you go, the more you realize that it’s inexhaustible.
The more you think about it, it just seems to get longer, and the more
impossible it becomes.”
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