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Michael McDonald: One Day At A Time

The Doobie Brothers singer reflects on over two decades of sobriety,
his hall of fame music career and his 41-year marriage.

By Daniela Avila in People

f Michael McDonald lives by one rule, it's to trust the "randomness of life."

"My life experience has taught me to have a healthy fear of missing out on the one opportunity that's there, even though it may not be the [one] I planned on," McDonald, 72, says. That strategy has served him well, from first stepping up to a mic as a child through collaborations with greats like Ray Charles and Patti LaBelle. And now the longtime Doobie Brothers member is laying out that lived experience in a new book, What a Fool Believes: A Memoir, cowritten by his longtime friend, actor Paul Reiser, who persuaded him to tell his story. Born into an Irish American Catholic family in St. Louis, McDonald first fell in love with music while tagging along with his dad, a former Marine, to hear piano players at saloons. On one of those nights, 5-year-old McDonald found the courage to take the stage for the first time to sing "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" -- and realized he had found his calling. After years of gigging as a singer, piano and guitar player, McDonald got his big break in the spring of 1973 when a call came from Jeff "Skunk" Baxter -- a former Doobie Brother -- to audition for Steely Dan, whom he played with until 1974. Two years later he heard from Baxter again, who said one of the biggest touring bands in the world, the Doobie Brothers, needed someone to fill in on keyboard and vocals. From 1975 to 1982 McDonald went on to write and sing some of their biggest hits, like "What a Fool Believes," "Minute By Minute" and "Takin' It to the Streets." The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.

"One of the things I'm most proud of is my long-term relationship with the Doobies," the Grammy winner says. "Not that we haven't thrown furniture at each other in the dressing room at times or had our beefs. [But] they were usually very short-lived, and it usually only served to make what was most important come to light, which is our friendships and who we are as people."

But there was a darker side to McDonald's success. His alcohol and cocaine habit worsened until he was under the influence most of the day. In the book he recalls passing out in hotel rooms and run-ins with the law, including one year of probation after the cops raided his girlfriend's apartment and found drugs in 1972.

This all came to ahead when an intoxicated McDonald was kicked out of a family counseling session at a drug and alcohol treatment facility where his wife, Amy Holland, who had developed alcohol abuse issues of her own, was being treated. As he was shown the door, he rand into his old probation officer. "I heard a distinct voice in my head say, 'The jig is up,'" he says. "I suddenly realized the bus is leaving one more time, and I might not be here when it comes back. And I had so much to lose in that moment."

Today McDonald, who has been sober for 27 years, is taking things one day at a time. "My biggest fear today is that if I ever forget where I am or where I came from, enough to pick up that next drink, I may never get back," he says.

"I've learned to be comfortable with my past. There's so much of it I wish I could've done differently, but I've learned that the most important thing for me to do...is to look at it and be honest."

McDonald credits much of his recovery to Holland, 70, a singer-songwriter from New York whom he met in 1980 while producing her album On Your Every Word and married in 1983. They have two children together: Scarlett, 33, and Dylan, 36. "The success of my marriage is [due to] my wife's forgiveness of my behavior over the years," he confesses. In 1996 they were living in Nashville when they received painful news: Holland had breast cancer (see book excerpt below). Holland is now cancer-free -- and McDonald is "grateful for those lessons" the ordeal taught them.

These days McDonald is on tour for the Doobie Brothers' 50th anniversary, and the band will be releasing an album together for the first time in 44 years. Though their afterparties now entail staying up watching TV together on the tour bus "until we can't sit up anymore," he couldn't be more grateful. "[We've] got a lot ahead of us, and I'm hoping to enjoy every bit of it."  

What It Means To Really Love Somebody Else

In light of a devastating diagnosis, Amy Holland and Michael McDonald found strength

In 1996 Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer after finding a lump in her breast. She went for a biopsy and after removing 14 lymph nodes for testing, 11 came up positive.

At first, I managed to not go to the darkest place, imagining the worst outcome. I determined there must be a way to solve this, and we'd find it. I wanted so badly to hear that it was nothing, but that wasn't what I heard. However well I thought I had prepared myself for the worst, it obviously wasn't enough.

The kids were still quite young -- Scarlett was four; Dylan, eight -- so we didn't initially share the severity of the news with them. Going to see Scarlett in her school's spring recital that first week after the diagnosis, I remember Amy looking at our daughter onstage, and I just knew she must've been wondering if she would even be here for this come next year.

That period of uncertainty was one of the most torturous points of this journey for both of us, but is was also in that moment, I believe, that Amy decided whatever she had to do to be there next year and stay in her kids' lives, she was gonna do it.

One of Amy's greatest assets in all this would be her stubbornness. We learned that when positive thinking wanes and gives way to fear or despair, plain old stubbornness comes in pretty handy. I've never known anyone more courageous than my wife as I've watched her get over each and every hurdle in her path to be here for the ones she loves.

Amy then underwent an aggressive chemical regimen.

During one of those intensely potent chemo sessions toward the end of the oncology regimen, there was a moment when she looked at me with a sad, resigned smile as if to say, "I'm sorry to put you through this."

Right then, in the middle of all she was enduring, while fighting for her life, she was mostly concerned about me. It was in that moment I realized that the real character of love can only be seen in moments like these, the desperate, scary, and uncertain times.

There's a level of selfless love you're not going to tap into under ordinary circumstances. You have to be walking through fire. That doesn't mean you won't wander off course or forget to be grateful in the future, but moments like these will forever change you and, like a beacon, point the way back when you need it most.

- From What a Fool Believes: A Memoir by Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser. Copyright © 2024 by Michael McDonald.

John Oates Reclaims His Voice

The musician makes his solo dreams come true after a contentious
end to his chart-topping partnership with Daryl Hall.

By Rachel DeSantis in People

or more than 50 years, musician John Oates's name has been inextricably linked to that of his former bandmate Daryl Hall. "I remember I was in a dressing room for a big concert we were doing, and I was sitting by myself. A security guard poked their head in and went, 'Which one of you guys is Hall & Oates?' And I looked around and said, 'Well, I don't see anybody else,'" Oates, 76, recalls. "That kind of sums it up."

These days Oates is doing things his way as releases his sixth solo studio album, Reunion (out May 17), amid a contentious legal battle with Hall. The album, which features an Americana sound inspired by Oates's move to Nashville some 15 years ago, is the product of a recent conversation the star had with his 100-year-old father that pushed him to search for the creative spark he'd "buried" during the "debilitating" years of regimented touring with Hall. "There was a period where we thought we were going to lose [my father]....and he told me he was going to reunite with Mom," recalls Oates, whose mother died in 2017. "I thought, 'Okay, what is the real meaning of the word 'reunion'? I'm reuniting with my true self [on the new album], who I was before and who I need to be now."

For now, that's the only reunion fans can expect. Hall & Oates sold more than 80 million albums together thanks to hits like "Rich Girl" and "Maneater," but their relationship soured, and in November 2023, Hall, 77, sued Oates in an attempt to stop Oates's alleged plans to sell his share of a joint business venture to a third party -- something Hall said was in violation of a business agreement previously reached by the pair. Oates (who calls the ongoing lawsuit "boring legal mumbo jumbo") says he has nothing but "unbelievable memories" of his time with Hall but acknowledges that "people grow apart" after 50 years. "I always thought it was a miracle that it lasted that long," he says of his partnership with Hall, with whom he last played in 2022. "It's a shame that it had to be aired in public. I have no plans [to play together again], I always felt Daryl wanted to make his mark as a solo artist as well, and in a way, what's happened has given him the freedom to do whatever he wants. I'm happy for him, and I'm really happy for me. I don't see any downside to it."

Oates will tour through August and in November will celebrate 30 years of marriage with wife Aimee, with whom he shares son Tanner, 28. "When Aimee and I first got married, [touring] was a boys' club," he says. "When we got serious, she said, 'Look, if we're going to do this, we have to do it together as a family, or it's not going to work.'" Oates adds that he's "absolutely" writing new music and plans to rock on until he physically can't. "The opportunities are all out there," he says, "and I'm just excited to see what happens next."  

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