Covering guitar and drum parts together

Cris Cohen: You talked about Tiran’s unique style of playing. But also, Tom, you wrote in the book… you talked about “my chunka-chunka style of guitar playing”.

Tom Johnston of The Doobie Brothers: I'm going to find another term for that.

Cris Cohen: I think you should trademark that. If nothing else, I think the Ben and Jerry's people would get into that one. 

But you said, “It was me trying to cover both guitar and drum parts together backbeat style.” Number one, it's interesting because it's very similar to what Dave Grohl said in an interview recently, where he said he approaches guitar playing from a drumming perspective.

Tom Johnston: That makes sense.

Cris Cohen: So what drove you to do that rather than think, “Well, the drummer will take care of the beat.” Rather than waiting for him, you said, “I'll come up with on my own and incorporate it into the guitar parts.”

Tom Johnston: I wasn’t actually playing drum parts, per se. Maybe listening to Bo Diddley a long time ago, that’s where some of that came from. But if you're sitting in a bedroom in San Jose way back when, or if you're sitting in a pasture waiting for your girlfriend to get out of school, and you're sitting there writing a song, and you've got an idea in mind of what it should feel like rhythmically, you try to incorporate that in the song as you're playing it. And the earliest version I can think of is the first single we put out, which is “Nobody”. There were other songs, but that's the first one that everybody heard.