“WE WERE A work in progress all the time,” Tom Johnston says, recalling the Doobie Brothers’ first era, from 1970 to 1977. The effort certainly paid off: You’d be hard-pressed to find a band with a more prolific and successful eight-year run than the Doobies had at that time.
Formed in Santa Cruz, California, the Doobies’ put four of their first six albums in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, with two — 1973’s The Captain and Me and ’74’s What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits — selling double Platinum. Then there were the hits: “Listen to the Music,” “Long Train Runnin’,” “China Grove,” “Takin’ It to the Streets” and many more, which accounts for the Diamond status of 1976’s Best of the Doobies.
Singer-guitarist Johnston was the primary songwriter during that time, though he and Patrick Simmons also forged one of the most potent and complementary six-string tandems of the 1970s. “We had Pat’s fingerpicking, we had my rhythm, we had rock and roll,” he notes. “So we would venture into all three of those arenas and try stuff. It was a