Ask any two music fans what qualifies as yacht rock, and an argument is sure to ensue.
Does Steely Dan count? (Absolutely.) What about Hall & Oates? (No, too East Coast.)
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, the term “yacht rock” was not yet a thing. But everyone knew the music of the Doobie Brothers, Toto and Christopher Cross — who swept the 1980 Grammys with his shimmering ballad “Sailing.”
Those acts topped the charts in an era when slick production, smooth melodies and expert chops ruled the radio waves alongside the country-tinged hits of the Eagles. That would all change when MTV crashed the scene. Suddenly the likes of “What a Fool Believes” and “Africa” were consigned to the uncool “soft rock” heap. After the rise of Madonna and Michael Jackson, some of the earlier wave of musicians moved on to soundtracks, like Kenny Loggins with the “Top Gun” hit “Danger Zone.”
Michael McDonald became a pivotal figure in Yacht Rock by singing and sometimes playing keyboards with Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, Toto, Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross.
HBO
More than two decades later, in 2005, comedians J.D. Ryznar and Steve Huey retroactively coined a term for the genre with their irony-drenched web series “Yacht Rock.” With its lo-fi aesthetic, the show reimagined musicians like Kenny Loggins and Jimmy Buffett laboring to create the jazzy sounds that evoked a possibly cocaine-fueled yacht party. Naturally, the music itself figured heavily in each episode. The series wound up sparking a yacht rock renaissance, spawning three Sirius XM stations and tribute bands like Yachtley Crew.
One Gen X convert was director Garret Price, whose movie “Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” premieres Friday as part of HBO’s Music Box series. Price previously took on a darker story with another installment of the series, “Woodstock ’99.” This time he wanted to explore a lighter moment in music history — and how the oldies his parents loved came to gain a new, younger fandom.
“People always romanticize the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon — the Troubadour scene,” says Price, an editor on the Prime Video miniseries “Daisy Jones & the Six,” which is steeped in a Fleetwood Mac-flavored vision of 1970s L.A. “Yet there’s this whole other scene happening with Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross and Steely Dan and the Toto guys that I don’t think gets as much recognition,” he says.
Fortuitously, Price had recently met Cross’ daughter – who happens to be best friends with ex-Doobie Brother Michael McDonald’s daughter. Madison Cross sparked the idea for the doc, telling Price that her father wasn’t a fan of the moniker, though Michael McDonald found it amusing.
Price set about interviewing the main figures of yacht rock to see how they felt about it. “I always wanted to stick with the Mount Rushmore — Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins and Toto,” he says.
At first, Cross says he found the newly invented phrase “a bit kitschy.” But now the “Ride Like the Wind” singer says, “Anything that can bring some levity into this world, I’m happy to oblige.”
“Sailing” singer Christopher Cross says he found the term “yacht rock” to be kitschy at first, but has since come to appreciate it.
HBO
Price says the others mostly agreed: “They have come around — they understand this has given a second life to their music, and it’s introducing them to a legion of new fans.”
The exception? Notorious curmudgeon and Steely Dan co-founder Fagen, who at first didn’t respond to his overtures.
After several months, Steely Dan’s longtime manager Irving Azoff told Price that Fagen would call him sometime in the next few weeks. “Be ready to record,” Azoff told him.
Eventually Fagen called, and Price asked him whether he would participate in the documentary, explaining it’s about “yacht rock.” The response, as shown in the film, is brief, profane and 100% pure Fagen.
He might not have wanted to go on camera, “but at the same time, he licensed all his music to me. So I think it’s kind of a wink,” Price says.
Why is Steely Dan’s inclusion in the genre so controversial?
“I think people have a hard time with lumping the guy that wrote ‘Sailing’ with the guy that wrote ‘Peg,’” Price says, referencing the debate over whether the cerebral Steely Dan should be associated with the soft rock of Cross or Poco.
Whatever their feelings about the latter-day label, the bands in Price’s Mount Rushmore have common DNA. “It’s rooted in R&B and soul and funk and jazz and Black music, basically. And it all took place in Southern California, within this ecosystem of studios with the session guys,” he says.
And the band continue to have impact: Modern artists like Questlove, Thundercat and Mac deMarco describe in the doc how those jazzy pop tunes influenced their own sound. Thundercat even recruited McDonald and Loggins to contribute to his 2017 song “Show You the Way.”
“These are white musicians that were influenced by Black music. They were trying to take what they loved about it and create a new kind of era of pop music,” Price says. “It makes a lot of sense when hip hop discovers this music of the late ‘70s, to start sampling with revolutionary artists like De La Soul and Warren G, who leaned into this kind of funky aspects of this music.”
It’s fitting, he says, that “Yacht Rock” premieres the day after Thanksgiving, when families might be searching for some cross-generational entertainment.
“There’s humor to it, yes, but there’s also reverence and love and respect.”
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