What a Fool Believes (1978)

Performer: Kenny Loggins                                    Writers: Kenny Loggins & Michael McDonald
Album US Chart Position: #7                                Label: Columbia Records
Musicians: Kenny Loggins, Mike Hamilton, Brian Mann, George Hawkins and Tris Imboden

The first time I heard this song on the radio I thought there was something wrong with the turntable at the radio station. It was the wrong speed and the wrong voice, but once I recognized Michael McDonald I realized that he and the Doobie Brothers were covering the song. And then I remember thinking that made sense as he had co-written it with Kenny Loggins. By that time, late December of 1978, I was already intimately familiar with “What a Fool Believes” from Kenny Loggins’ best selling album Nightwatch after listening to it all fall. It was a hard-driving pop song with a tight arrangement and great dynamics about a man who wants to rekindle a long-over relationship with a woman. But he doesn’t realize that she never felt the same way about him. “As he rises to her apology,” leaving him yet again, “anybody else would surely know” that it “never really was.” The chorus is terrific too. “What a fool believes, he sees,” and no one can “reason away” his dreams of getting back together with her. The album turned out to be Loggins’ highest charting album, going to number seven, before the Doobie Brothers’ Minute by Minute was released at the end of the year.

Two pick up notes by the band lead into a guitar solo intro by Mike Hamilton using a wah-wah pedal effect. Brian Mann’s keyboards provide an interesting counter melody climbing up melodically to the downbeat while the guitar goes down, and the drum overdubs by Tris Imboden set up an intricate rhythm underneath. Everything stops on the downbeat and the drums fill into the first verse. The percussive keyboards by Mann, which would become the focal point of the Doobie Brothers’ version, are supported by George Hawkins’ bass, which is prominent in the mix. Call and response background vocals are only used on the first line of the verse, but are used extensively on Loggins’ bridge. On the second half of the bridge the backing instruments set up a syncopated rhythm that changes back on the chorus with long held notes by the backup vocals. What seems to begin as a second verse adds more backing vocals, but after only three lines goes into a brief but frenetic wah-wah guitar solo by Hamilton, and then right into another bridge and chorus with more of a forceful backing and some ad-lib vocals from one of the band members along with Hamilton’s guitar fills. The final fade chorus also has the backing vocals running through some compression effects to the fade out.

It turns out that the song had been mostly written by Michael McDonald, which is the reason that Kenny Loggins never released the song as a single. McDonald was having trouble coming up with a bridge and bassist Tiran Porter, who knew Loggins, suggested that McDonald get together with the singer-songwriter. The story goes that McDonald was at his house playing some of his music for his sister when Loggins came to the door. He heard what McDonald had done on “What a Fool Believes” from the other side, and by the time he was invited inside he already had an idea for the bridge. For me, though, there’s no comparison between the two versions. While the Doobies kind of plod along, the Kenny Loggins’ version is sprightly and incredibly precise as the band seems to perform as one. The cut was the third song on the B-side of the album, but it was always the A-side for me as I naturally dropped the needle on the hit single “Whenever I Call You Friend” first, in what I consider one of the greatest album sides of the seventies. And even though Michael McDonad’s version of “What a Fool Believes” went to number one on the singles charts, I always felt it was because of the advanced familiarity of the song that Loggins’ album provided.