Pat Simmons - Long Train Runnin: Our Story of The Doobie Brothers

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Tom Johnstonfounding member of the Doobie Brothers

Pat Simmonsfounding member of the Doobie Brothers

Tiran Porterlongtime bassist for the Doobie Brothers

Ted TemplemanDoobie Brothers producer

Michael McDonaldlongtime Doobie Brothers singer/songwriter/keyboardist

Bill PayneLittle Feat keyboard player, former touring member of the Doobie Brothers, and frequent session player

John McFeelongtime guitarist/vocalist for the Doobie Brothers

Its hard to believe its been more than fifty years since we first met and this thing called the Doobie Brothers was created. We have been through a lot together, and the fact that we are still playing today is something we are deeply thankful for. In the course of putting our book together, we decided it would be cool to allow some other voices to join us on the page. After all, the Doobie Brothers have always been sort of like the ultimate musical brotherhood with all the great players who have been part of this band. It really is an extended family and we thought that having a few family members offer their own words would just be a nice way to help tell the story. We thank them, and we thank you as well for picking up our book and for listening to the music. We couldnt have done this without all of you.

PAT AND TOM

In some ways it feels like a long journey. But in others it seems to have just raced by. For me, it starts at the beginning, in the small town of Visalia, in Central California. Grapes of Wrath country. My parents came out to California in 1933 from a little town outside St. Louis, Missouri, driving a 33 Ford, and whatever they had was packed in the car. My dad got his aeronautical engineering degree in L.A. and began working at the Burbank Airport. My brother was born in 1938 and my sister in 1941, both in L.A. Then my parents moved up to Visalia from L.A. so my dad could work at Tex Rankin Field. He was an aircraft mechanic in World War II for the Army Air Force. I was born in 1948. My dad later started his own aircraft shop in the neighboring town of Tulare, working mostly on crop dusters as well as a few private planes. This is where I would spend every summer working from about the age of eleven or so till I was eighteen. It was hot and repetitive, and I wasnt that mechanically inclined, so I worked under supervision most of the time, working in everything from the engine shop to the parts department. I did love the World War II fighters that would show up occasionally and do some aerobatics over the runway before landing and taxiing to the hangar, where theyd get converted for firefighting. And my dads shop occasionally worked on World War II torpedo bombers that were being converted for the same reason. But the rest was mundane to me. The one thing that made it bearable was listening to music on the radio and smoking the occasional cigarette Id borrow from one of the guys working there. Id sometimes get to put on the radio station that had Happy Harolds House of Blues from a little town up by Fresno. He played nothing but blues and it was killer!

My folks were pretty religious and belonged to the Methodist church in Visalia. This became a sore spot with me and caused friction because I just didnt fit in and wasnt into it. By the time I was twelve, they finally gave up on it. Meanwhile, my older brother was into some great music and brought home records starting when I was about nine. Guys like Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis; those albums in the mid-1950s that he brought home were like magic for me. He was kind of a James Deanstyle hot-rod enthusiast. Lots of girlfriends and a few troublemakers hanging around. I think thats why I looked up to him. I was a rebel in waiting. This all happened when we lived on Myrtle Street, which was in town and located around a lot of the schools I went to. The high school I would eventually attend was right behind the house. My brother had already gone to UC Berkeley and ended up living in L.A. for a while and getting his aeronautical engineering degree, just as my dad had, before getting married and moving back up to Visalia to work at my dads shop, eventually taking over running it. My sister was going to college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, after which she moved up to Santa Clara to work at the Santa Clara County Hospital as a med tech. My brother and sister were both quite a bit older than me so they were both out of the house by the time I was about eleven and we moved to S. West Street, which was more out in the country.

The Central Valley was basically all agricultural, with walnut, almond, peach, nectarine, and plum orchards, and cotton fields around the house we moved to after I turned eleven. There were also cattle ranches out on the west side as it was called, which was out by Firebaugh, west of Visalia. My friends and I would spend a lot of time hanging out in the orchards, and in the summer wed float on inner tubes down the big irrigation ditches that ran through them. Wed also cruise the main drag in town once we were old enough to drive, usually in someones parents caror if someone actually had a car, that was even better. Gas was about twenty-five cents a gallon, so you could hang out all night for pretty cheap. It was like a scene out of American Graffiti. We even had a Mels Diner with girls on roller skates to take your order at your car window, same with the A&W root beer place. Another pastime on summer weekends during high school and junior college was to drive up to Three Rivers in the foothills and tube down the river. Three Rivers was a gathering place for all the kids my age, a lot of whom I went to school with. And it was kind of a party scene with lots of beer, but a lot of fun in the summer because it was always so damn hot!

During the time from when I was about nine till I was fifteen, we would take trips to Missouri to see relatives in the small towns outside St. Louis, where my parents had come from. Early on, we would drive, which took about two and a half days, but by the time I was twelve or so, we started flying in private planes my dad would either borrow from friends or, I guess, rent. It could take up to two days to fly to Missouri, flying many hours a day. If we used the Navion, which topped out at 145150 knots, it would have been the two full days. We only stopped for fuel and at night to sleep. Other planes, like the Bonanza, were a little faster. One trip was in an Aero Commander which was a twin engine plane and flew pretty fast for a private plane in that era. Generally, these planes were small inside, just big enough for four people, and after a couple of days or so it would get pretty boring. So I would get to find all the radio stations broadcasting between California and Missouri as a way to keep track of where we were during the trip. But probably more to keep me occupied. But that at least afforded me the chance to keep up with the music that was popular at the time.

Missouri trips were such a departure from living in California, and I really enjoyed the experience, whether exploring my moms parents house, wandering in and around the town of Bourbon, or visiting relatives on my moms side in Farmington, or hanging out with my dads family in Sullivan, which was right up Route 66. I remember a lot of trains in both areas, which was in rural Missouri. The train was about two hundred feet across the road from my grandparents house in Bourbon, and I loved watching the long freight trains go by. Going to my aunt and uncles (on my dads side) cabin on the Merrimac River outside Sullivan, where they lived, was a gas. Wed drive out to the river in my uncles 52 Chevy pickup, usually with one or two of my cousins and my brother and sister, depending on the year. Once we got close to the river, wed hop out and ride on the running boards through all the tall grasses and woods that were out by the river. Lots of fireworks, fishing, and boating up and down the river, and cookouts. And when I was back in the town of Sullivan, my granddad (my dads father) had a leather shop that made everything from saddles to harnesses for horse teams. And this sat right by an old-time soda fountain heaven! This is when I was pretty young. As I got older and was hanging around with my older cousin, I got to be the test driver for the scooters and go-carts he would make from lawnmower engines and whatever else he could scrape together. It was the all-American dream for a kid at that age. One summer we made cherry bomb cannons out of plumbing pipe that would shoot D-cell batteries. This was a little crazy. You could sink a boat or tear limbs off trees with those things. That lasted for one summer. After these trips, which sometimes had my brother and sister along and were about ten days long, wed head back out to Visalia and pick up our daily lives.