TOP 40 DEBUT: January 12, 1980
PEAK POSITION: #34 (January 12, 1980)
A bleeding ulcer cost Tom Johnston his band. Yes, that sounds overly dramatic, and obviously other factors influenced the guitarist’s decision to walk away from the Doobie Brothers in 1977, seven years after starting the group as a college student in San Jose, California. But the chain of events leading up to that inglorious exit? They all trace back to April 1975, with Johnston lying in a hospital bed as the Doobies go on tour without him. Perhaps there’s an alternate, ulcer-free timeline where both parties stay together, where Michael McDonald never enters the picture, and where “Savannah Nights” becomes the lead-off single for a brand-new Doobie Brothers album. And maybe in that timeline, “Savannah Nights” turns into a massive hit, rather than a mostly forgotten single from the guy who sang “Long Train Runnin’” and “China Grove.”
Tom Johnston never left California. He was born in Visalia, an agricultural city 43 miles outside Fresno, and moved to San Jose after high school, where he enrolled in the local university as a graphic design major. His older brother turned him onto Little Richard and Bo Diddley while Tom was still in elementary school; by age twelve, he began studying guitar in earnest, influenced by blues players like Jimmy Reed and Freddie King.
In San Jose, Johnston fell in with Skip Spence, the troubled-but-brilliant founder of Moby Grape. Spence introduced Johnston to drummer John Hartman, and the two started playing shows under the name Pud, supplemented with a revolving cast of local musicians. In 1970, singer/guitarist Pat Simmons and bassist Dave Shogren entered the picture and the lineup finally coalesced. The name “Doobie Brothers,” to no one's surprise, came from the quartet’s mutual love of marijuana consumption. (This being the Nixon era, the Doobies would spend years offering alternate explanations for their name that did not mention marijuana consumption.)
Johnston quickly assumed the role of primary vocalist and songwriter, helming nearly all the group’s early hits: the #11 “Listen To The Music,” the #8 “Long Train Runnin’,” and the #15 “China Grove” (8’s across the board). Even when Simmons took the occasional spotlight (like on the #1 single “Black Water”), it was always understood that the distinctive Doobies’ “sound” came from Tom’s percussive rhythm style and smoothly propulsive compositions.
But on the eve of a major 1975 tour, Johnston became severely ill and had to be rushed to a local Memphis hospital. The diagnosis was a bleeding ulcer. Tom would be out of commission for months. Faced with the expensive prospect of cancelling an entire tour, the Doobies took the advice of guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (a Steely Dan alum who’d only joined the group a year earlier) and hired another Dan cohort to cover some of Johnston’s vocals for the live shows. And that’s how Michael McDonald became a Doobie Brother.
If you’re Tom Johnston, what follows is the stuff of nightmares. The band were contractually obligated to release an album in 1976, their principal songwriter was still hospitalized, and McDonald had songs. And, as Johnston himself admitted years later: “They were really good songs.” The first of those “really good” songs, “Takin’ It To The Streets,” became the first Doobies single with McDonald on lead vocals. It didn’t sound much like Tom’s version of the band, but the public didn’t seem to mind. “Streets” peaked at #13, while its parent album outsold the previous year’s Stampede. To quote Johnston again: “And that’s when they started going in that direction. As they should have.”
After a year-long absence, Tom returned to the Doobies to discover the band had moved on without him. He still participated in the Takin’ It To The Streets album and tour, but his contributions were marginalized: one writing credit (of nine), and just two lead vocals (one shared with Simmons). Johnston's rhythm-heavy style, long the group’s signature, now felt out of step with the new material coming from his replacement. “It was not in a direction where I was musically,” he said later. “It wasn’t the kind of stuff that I’m into doing. That’s certainly not a reflection on Michael in any way. I think Michael’s an incredible artist…. It’s just not what I grew up doing and where I came from.”
Early in the sessions for the next album, 1977’s Livin’ On The Fault Line, Johnston decided he wanted out. He pulled his five songs from consideration, left the group, and basically quit rock ‘n roll altogether. “We were either on the road or in the studio all the time,” he explained in a 2011 interview. “There wasn’t any time at home, and I’m a homebody. So, I left. And all I did was play baseball and lift weights. I didn’t really pick up a guitar for about six months, then I started slowly drifting back into it.” When Johnston finally came back, it wasn’t with the Doobies. It was with a 1979 solo album, Everything You’ve Heard Is True, and a single that sounded a whole lot like his previous band.
“Savannah Nights” is unmistakably a Tom Johnston composition, which means it would’ve slotted perfectly on any Doobie Brothers album released between 1972 and 1975. There’s an army of L.A. session vets backing him up. The Memphis Horns makes an appearance. But the song’s DNA is pure Doobie. The first nine seconds of disco backbeat—provided by legendary drummer Rick Shlosser—turn out to be a feint; once Johnston’s distinctive rhythm guitar enters, we’re in familiar, if not unwelcome, territory. (It probably helped to have longtime Doobies producer Ted Templeman manning the boards, too.)
Lyrically, Johnston isn’t stretching here. The rich, vibrant culture of Savannah, Georgia never even gets a mention; the one piece of geography in the whole song—“you can find him down on Fourth Street”—feels like a placeholder for Anytown, USA. There’s some kids, and a lady, and quite a bit of dancing. But we might as well be in China Grove, rockin’ down the highway alongside the Illinois Central. Tom tells us his hero is “the king of Savannah nights/ The inspiration/ The ladies’ delight.” But his kingdom could be any nightclub with a neon-lit dancefloor and half-priced drinks for women before 10 PM.
Fortunately, most of “Savannah Nights” is pure groove, and that groove conveys far more atmosphere than Johnston’s generic lyrics ever could. Studio crispness abounds, with the rhythm section leaning hard into a constantly evolving disco strut. The horns dominate, driving the proceedings as much as the actual vocals. Midway through, ace keyboardist Mark T. Jordan lays down a funky-as-hell clavinet line and basically steals the entire show. (Okay, it’s not Stevie-doing-“Superstition” funky, but still. Pretty funky.) Johnston even gets to rip a nice long guitar solo, before Jordan returns, this time with some barrelhouse piano. Everyone’s loose, everyone’s having fun. In the era when Tom’s version of the Doobie Brothers dominated, it might’ve been a big hit.
But that wasn’t the radio landscape of 1979. Tom Johnston released “Savannah Nights” during the same year his former band returned to #1 with “What A Fool Believes.” That Grammy-winning smash, penned and performed by Michael McDonald, sounded nothing like the singles Tom had penned for the Doobies years before, but it did sound like the adult rock that would take over the airwaves in the beginning of the next decade. “Savannah Nights” spent a mere two weeks inside the Top 40 at the beginning of 1980, peaking at #34 before dropping fifty places in the last week of January. On that same chart, McDonald moved up to #15 with a song he’d co-written with Kenny Loggins and jumped ten spots with a second single, this one a duet with Nicolette Larson. Billboard had spoken. Tom Johnston was yesterday’s news.
In hindsight, “Doobies do disco” was always gonna be a tough sell, regardless of the calendar year. And while I don’t love “Savannah Nights,” I absolutely respect the motivation behind it. Johnston walked away from the thing he founded rather than compromise his vision, and he stayed in his lane even when that lane wasn’t particularly fashionable or commercial. That’s an admirable decision for any artist. And in Tom’s case, the decision eventually paid off. It’s gonna take some years, but Johnston will eventually be back in the Top Ten (and on this site), playing guitar and singing lead for his old band—without changing one iota.
GRADE: 6/10
I WANT MY MTV: There’s nothing memorable about this particular video—a standard, bare-bones, “live on stage” clip—beyond its weird claim to history: “Savannah Nights” aired on MTV’s “Day One,” officially the 31st video ever shown by the channel. Mind you, the song itself had already vacated radio a year and a half earlier. The MTV bench back in ’81? Not a deep one.