Kenny Loggins and I had been chatting about getting together to write some songs. He came over to my house in LA just as I was playing what I had for What a Fool Believes. He said: “You were just playing something at the piano. Is that new? That’s what I want to work on first.” He had already come up with the song’s hook line – “She had a place in his life” – before he’d got through the door.
During the session, we got nostalgic about the records we grew up listening to, songs like the Four Seasons’ Sherry and Walk Like a Man. They were a big part of our memory bank, and What a Fool Believes filled that space. By the next day, we had finished the track.
Kenny and I both recorded separate versions around the same time. My band, the Doobie Brothers, tried desperately to get a version we liked. The song was always kind of an enigma. We tried everything in the studio. We got so desperate that producer Ted Templeman actually wound up playing drums along with our drummer. By that point, there were boxes of takes for this one song piled as high as the ceiling. “This is crazy,” Ted said. “Let’s stop right here – because I know we’ve got a take in that pile.” He got off the drums, walked into the control room and started cutting the tapes into individual sections right there. Back then, you were really going for broke when you physically cut the tape. But that’s what we used to make the record.
