Enduring band of brothers

The Doobie Brothers are still touring and producing albums

The Doobie Brothers' song Long Train Runnin' was written more than 30 years ago, but it can still get a party started. It's funky, slightly hick, and a real thigh-slapper.

The music of the Doobie Brothers, who play the Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth on Saturday, even got the Hells Angels dancing. The American motorcycle gang were some of the band's biggest fans when they formed in California in 1970.

But co-founder and guitarist Patrick Simmons says it wasn't just the bikers who liked their boogie rock back then.

"It was all kinds of people. It was the tail end of the 60s, so it was the kind of audiences that you find all over the Bay area. There were clubs all over the place that would cater for the psychedelic crowd, the California hippy lifestyle crowd ... and the bikers."

And, he laughs, "it's suddenly that way again with the sudden resurgence of the 60s love fests going on there today. My daughter thinks she discovered Pink Floyd."

Simmons first met the band's singer and guitarist, Tom Johnston (the other founding member), in 1969 at a gig they were both playing.

Skip Spence, from the band Moby Grape, introduced the pair, they hit it off, and realised they lived in the same area. "We really started out as friends more than anything and we started jamming and that's how it all happened," says Simmons.

The pair, along with bass player Dave Shogren and drummer John Hartman, jammed together in a rehearsal space in Johnston's basement in downtown San Jose. They also hung out at Simmons' place where they would play acoustic guitars in the backyard.

"We were into the same types of music, we both really liked roots music and the blues and we were both rockers to a certain extent.

"We liked the approach to the music of being a little bit acoustic, a little bit electric American roots music. That really connected for the both of us on where we wanted to go musically."

Simmons, though, admits he was the "roots guy" and Johnston was the "harder rockin' guy" which meant the songs they wrote were quite different.

The Doobies' first, self-titled album in 1971 was an acoustic affair. But it was the more rocky Toulouse Street in 1972 that hit the big time with classic tracks like Jesus Is Just Alright and that other party starter, Listen To the Music.

But 1973's The Captain And Me - featuring Long Train Runnin' and the toe-tapping stomper China Grove - was even more popular.

It remains their most enduring album because it was experimental, while still retaining that Doobie Brothers' funk.

"There were a lot of good songs on that record and in terms of the production I think we hit a real little milestone because Ted [Templeman, the producer of the band's first two albums] had a little more of an idea of where he wanted to go with certain tunes and it was the beginning of the synthesiser."

In fact, The Captain and Me, was one of the first albums to have a synthesiser on it.

With the help of synth pioneers, Bob Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil - who made their name working with Stevie Wonder on Music Of My Mind (1972), Talking Book (1972) and Innervisions (1973) - the Doobie Brothers set about incorporating the instrument into their sound.

"They [Margouleff and Cecil] had been experimenting and they had a studio in New York, and they flew out with their synthesiser.

"But [back then] it was really an early version of a synthesiser [because] in order to get sounds, you didn't select through a keyboard, you actually had to patch them with chords to obtain an oscillation and wave form."

Simmons says Stevie Wonder may have pioneered it but "for us, working with the synthesiser was another little milestone and it really was a cool thing".

"The Captain and Me was a little bit of an experimental record in that regard."

Despite a split for six years in the 80s ("There was a moment there when we wanted to do some other things," he says) the band is still solid, with Simmons and Johnston as the core members.

They still release albums - 13 at last count, not including live and greatest hits collections - and their touring schedule is hectic.

But the highlight for Simmons, still, after all these years, is writing a song and it coming out just the way he imagined it.

"I always get excited about getting in there and creating something new.

"You get something down and you go, 'Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind'.

"I would say, half the time anyway, you're never quite thrilled with what you come up with.

"But when you achieve what you set out to do, I don't know how to describe it ... but that is the highlight for me."

* The Doobie Brothers perform at the Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth, Saturday, January 21.

Key albums: Toulouse Street (1972); The Captain and Me (1973); Takin' It To the Streets (1976); Minute By Minute (1978).