The Doobie Brothers song “Takin’ It to the Streets” written by Michael McDonald who says the lyrics came out of a conversation he had with his college student sister. “Takin’ It to the Streets” was the first Doobie Brothers single sung by Michael McDonald. He says the inspration was from his sister Maureen, who was a college student at the time.
“I always loved gospel music and I more or less was writing some kind of a gospel musical phrase in my head. But the lyric idea really stemmed from a conversation I had with Maureen about the state of society in terms of the inner city and all the hundreds of thousands of kids that grow up in that environment who have to somehow look at the world and glean some kind of a hopeful attitude from what they’re exposed to and how impossible, really, that must be if you walk in their shoes and see the world that they see day in and day out.”
