When television's 20/20 profiled the Doobie Brothers last summer, the segment's highlight was a brief glimpse of the band laying down the vocal tracks to "Real Love," the first single from One Step Closer. Clustered around a mike, several Doobies exhaled ethereal backup harmonies. Standing dramatically in front of another microphone was the group's lead singer, Michael McDonald, who cowrote the tune. The camera moved in on McDonald in midsong: eyes closed, his voice intense, his dark beard gently but urgently nuzzling the foam rubber that covered the mike. I was startled by this intimate picture. It reminded me of seeing Billie Holiday on film for the first time and discovering that she wasn't a fancy, heavy-lidded crooner but a fragile creature with wide eyes and a musician's alertness. Instead of a jaunty pop star exploiting a sensually gruff baritone, McDonald suddenly seemed like a seasoned stage actor, a passionate Romeo pouring out his heart to a Juliet conjured from thin air. He was caught up in his imagination and oblivious to the world.

"Real Love" is not only one of the great pop songs of the year but probably the best record the Doobie Brothers have ever made. Every time I hear it, I can't help thinking about that indelible image of McDonald's furry face cozying up to the microphone. The terse drumbeats, delicate guitar notes and electric keyboard chords that start the track cast a spell, while–in suspended time, like that moment when sex begins and clocks stop–Michael McDonald spins out a tale of romantic pathos: the struggle to recapture one's first dream of love, the inevitable series of unfulfilling encounters "grindin' down a secret part of you," the willing self-deceit ("Let me hear you lie just a little/Tell me I'm the only man/That you ever really loved"). It's an old story, yet McDonald's emotional reading makes it immediate. He projects the kind of heart-rending vulnerability stereotypically ascribed to women. "When you say comfort me/To anyone who approaches," he sings, with enough feeling in "comfort me" to suggest he's said it plenty of times himself. And the way he limns "Well we've both lived/Long enough to know/That we'd trade it all right now/For just one minute of real love" unexpectedly conveys the romantic's conviction that in the instant when love is most real, it's already fading.

Not surprisingly, "Real Love" overwhelms everything else on One Step Closer. It's the only cut that fully uses McDonald's talent – and, in terms of talent, McDonald towers above the rest of the Doobies like a giant among dwarfs. The Doobie Brothers have a long history – first as a semiacoustic bar band, then as an extremely popular touring act, now as one of the top-selling groups in America–but many people don't realize how profoundly the character of the band changed when Michael McDonald joined in 1975. It wasn't so much his songwriting, though he's written or cowritten the group's finest numbers since then. It wasn't so much his keyboard playing, though keyboards had never figured prominently in the Doobies' music before, and McDonald's staccato, percussive instrumental style soon became the band's signature sound. What made the difference was McDonald's voice: a gravelly purr that had the commanding soulfulness of Ray Charles yet wasn't utilized to shout raunchy rock (à la Joe Cocker or Rod Stewart) but to invest mainstream pop with a steamier version of Frank Sinatra's bel canto dreaminess. The tension between beauty and the beast, between pop-soul and rock & roll, that McDonald's singing exemplified suddenly gave an artistic edge to the Doobie Brothers' essentially unambitious, crowd-pleasing music.

Some interesting things happened, however, between the Doobies' last album, Minute by Minute, and One Step Closer. First, Michael McDonald became the hottest singer in the music business. In the past year, he's recorded duets with Rickie Lee Jones, Kenny Loggins, Nicolette Larson, Lauren Wood, Jackie DeShannon, Christopher Cross and George Benson – a phenomenon that threatens to cause overexposure and/or intragroup dissension. Then, front-line guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter left the band and was replaced by a merely functional second guitarist, John McFee. (Saxophonist-organist Cornelius Bumpus and drummer Chet McCracken were also added.) Baxter's departure, in conjunction with McDonald's punchy keyboard style and longtime producer Ted Templeman's increasing fondness for layers of Latin percussion, further emphasized the group's rhythm section rather than the guitars.

Unfortunately, the effects of these changes have been curious and detrimental, because One Step Closer is the Doobie Brothers' least interesting LP since McDonald's arrival. Except for "Real Love," the best the album has to offer are the catchy pop-funk clichés of "No Stoppin' Us Now" (marred by Patrick Simmons' typically shrill, jive vocal) and "One by One," both of which simply rework the staggered bass lines, skittering guitar, multiple layers of syncopation and swirling backup vocals of past Doobies productions.

What's most distressing about the record is that just when it's clear that McDonald should be running the show, the group has apparently decided to demote him by enforcing a strict democracy. One Step Closer's two worst cuts are "Thank You Love," a nauseating string of quasiromantic banalities written by Bumpus and crooned by him in the professionally insincere voice of jazzmen trying for disco crossovers, and "South Bay Strut," a nebulous MOR-jazz instrumental by McFee and McCracken. It seems all too obvious that when these three joined the outfit, they must have been promised at least one songwriting credit, thereby ensuring them the big bucks that go with having a copyright on an LP virtually guaranteed to go platinum. This kind of crassness–letting business decisions dictate aesthetic choices–has given the Doobie Brothers the reputation of being the ultimate example of "corporate rock": i.e., empty, soulless product that has everything to do with money, marketing and demographics and precious little to do with music.

The low quality and cynical carelessness of One Step Closer is actually rather shocking–at least if you think of the Doobies as professionals with artistic aspirations and a stake in pop culture. Of course, if you consider them just another hack cha-cha boogie band along the lines of Tower of Power and Orleans, the album is about as lame as you'd expect. I don't know where the Doobie Brothers place themselves, but I see them as essentially mediocre musicians with a potential auteur in their midst.

Even McDonald isn't infallible, however. His trite "Keep This Train A-Rollin'" and "Dedicate This Heart" (written with Paul Anka) fall far below the standards set by "Real Love" or "There's a Light" or "Let Me Go, Love," his duet with Nicolette Larson. Could the other Doobies' mundanity be rubbing off on him, or is he saving the good material for his much-rumored solo disc? In any case, Michael McDonald has a choice to make: he must either assert himself as the leader of the Doobie Brothers or start his own kingdom. Whatever he decides, I have no doubt that he'll prevail. (RS 330)

DON SHEWEY