Paul Gilbert Covers the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes”

Paul Gilbert recently sat down to take part in a session of Guitar Player’s No Guitar Is Safe podcast.

In addition to playing riffs, jamming and talking about his career and technique, Paul offered up a fast, impromptu cover of the Doobie Brothers’ 1979 hit “What a Fool Believes.” In doing so, he delivered a spot-on imitation of Doobie Brothers vocalist Michael McDonald.

Paul was illustrating a point using the song’s catchy riff when he spontaneously began copying the heavily bearded singer’s distinctive falsetto.

Asked by host Jude Gold how he managed to channel McDonald so accurately, Paul replied, “With Michael McDonald you just have to try. And I’ve got a little bit of a beard going. It’s the F filter, where every consonant becomes the letter F.”

Check out the clip below. And be sure to click any of the links below to hear the entire free episode, which is presented by Audio-Technica and their new E-Series in-ear monitoring headphones. You can also enter to win a pair of Audio-Technica’s flagship E-Series ATH-E70 monitoring headphones just by entering your name and email in the drawing here.

Get the entire podcast right here.