Tom Johnston Says He Nearly Died When He Left Doobie Brothers in 1977 - Noise11.com
The Doobie Brothers at Bluesfest Melbourne photo by Mary Boukouvalas

The Doobie Brothers at Bluesfest Melbourne photo by Mary Boukouvalas

Tom Johnston Says He Nearly Died When He Left Doobie Brothers in 1977

by Paul Cashmere on July 4, 2025

in News

When Tom Johnston left The Doobie Brothers in 1977, he says he nearly died.

Tom tells Noise11.com, “I had an ulcer. I had had it since high school and let’s just say the rock and rock lifestyle, especially the formative years in the early 70s when we started taking off, let’s just say we didn’t take care of ourselves very well. The ulcer didn’t like that. I ended up paying the price for that. I ended up having to go to a hospital. I came close to dying. It was quite an experience. I never had the problem again. I got it fixed. It healed and I have never had another hick-up with that at all.”

Tom Johnston and Michael McDonald have never made a Doobie Brothers album together until the new album ‘Walk This Road’. “I had a song on the ‘Taking It To The Streets’ album,” Tom says. “I was there long enough to get it done in Warner Brothers Studio in North Hollywood where we did a lot of our recording. That’s the other thing I gave to that album. I had been getting better. That was my thing for ‘Taking It To The Streets’. It wasn’t a band accomplishment for me. This is. Mike’s on the album, I’m on the album, Pat’s on the album. This is the first album we’ve done together”.

Check out Tom Johnston’s Noise11 interview about the new Doobies album ‘Walk This Road’.

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