Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

As "Yacht Rock: A Documentary" (2024 release; 96 min) opens, we are in "1982, Santa Barbara, California", and the Doobie Brothers are on stage doing "Taking It To the Streets". A number of talking heads, including Questlove, talk about the LA music scene in the 70s and early 80s. We then go to "1976" and examine the unlikely influence of Steely Dan on what would become Yacht Rock, a term not invented until decades after the facts. At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from director Garrett Price ("Daisy Jones & the Six"). Here he examines the phenom that has become a musical subgenre called Yacht Rock. If you are a certain age and familiar with/grew up with SoCal music from the mid-70s and early 80s, much of this music is quite familiar, but you probably had never thought of this music as being its own genre. The Doobie Brothers (led by Michael McDonald), Toto, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, and other such acts are among the big names in Yacht Rock. "It rocks, but not too hard, but it rocks!" claims one talking head. I will not spoil how exactly Steely Dan fits in all this, you'll just have to see for yourself. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised how insightful and entertaining this all was. (At the very end of the documentary, the director ends up speaking with Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. Just watch!)

"Yacht Rock: A Documentary" started streaming on Max a week or so ago and I just watched it the other night. If you are a music fan, young or old, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Remember the band "Ambrosia"? They had several hits in the mid-1970s, perhaps most notably, the song titled "You're the Biggest Part of Me." Now listen to the 1981 Grammy-winning hit written by pop soundtrack maestro Kenny Loggins and that ubiquitous, blue-eyed soul singer named Michael McDonald, "What a Fool Believes." Are they in fact the same dang song? Well, in 2005 or so, comedians on the Internet decided they were at least in the same genre and it needed an evocative name: "Yacht Rock." Christopher Cross and Toto (David Paich, Steve "Where's My Yacht" Lukather and the Porcaro brothers) are all prominently featured in this documentary about a musical period in history, along with every other studio musician playing on most of Steely Dan's albums. As a guy who reviewed musical albums and concerts back in college in the late '70s and early '80s (before moving on to movies and TV), I might quibble with some of the inclusions (e.g., Steely Dan's AJA is a genius work of jazz-R&B-rock fusion), it is ultimately fun and quite humorous to discuss this "pseudo-genre" with its many progenitors. What's the "dockumentary's" funniest moment: the filmmaker finally reaching Donald Fagen on the phone to request an interview "to discuss your music and genre," be asked "What genre is that?" answering "Yacht Rock," to which the great Mr. Fagen replies, "Why don't you just go F¥C£ YOURSELF!?" and then hangs up! That, alone, earns this documentary a rating of 7.5/10.

Most rock documentaries are about adulation; this one is about adulation via ridicule. The genre label now known as 'yacht rock' derives from an obscure, low-budget web comedy series from 2005 of the same name, in which some of the stars of the late 1970s and early 1980s soft rock scene in Los Angeles - people like Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Steely Dan, and the Toto guys - are parodied and ridiculed. However, the basis for it all was the web series creators' love of the music these guys made, and this is the phenomenon explored so brilliantly in this new HBO documentary made by Garret Price. Many of the most famous 'yacht rockers' of that era, such as McDonald, Loggins, Cross, Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro, and David Paich, appear and talk willingly about the scene they once were a part of and helped form, while others refuse to take part, telling director Price to "go f*ck himself" when he calls them up (Donald Fagen of Steely Dan). The inclusion of this sound clip is just one of the many gems that make Yacht Rock: A Documentary into one of the most enjoyable and enlightening music documentaries I have seen in a while.

YACHT ROCK: A DOCKUMENTARY (2024) One can be forgiven for still not understanding what the definition of this sub-genre is supposed to represent even after watching this enjoyable documentary. "Yacht Rock" is an invented term by a couple of comedians about a slice of music from the 70s and 80s with Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald being the patron saints.

A broader definition would be soft rock from that era with an emphasis on the "L. A. Sound". The term is both too broad and too restrictive - Steely Dan are the forefathers even if they rebel against being lumped in (in an amusing clip, Donald Fagan hangs up on Director Garret Price when he tries to interview him by phone). The Doobie Brothers weren't Yacht Rock until Michael McDonnell joined them. The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac aren't members because they don't have enough jazz. Hall & Oates were too Philly etc.. Some of Michael Jackson's work is Yacht Rock, but not most. The contradictions never cease.

Regardless of the silly definitions, YACHT ROCK is a pretty enjoyable piece. Cross, McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Toto (almost by definition, if a member of Toto played on your record, you were an honorary Yacht Rocker) and others who participated have their careers covered in good detail and are allowed the time to speak for themselves. Even if the early inspiration (a web series) began with a mocking tone, the artists here are treated with respect. Cross, in particular, comes off as a very human character. One monster hit album and then never able to come close to duplicating it again. Still, he perseveres and seems content to just doing what he loves.

YACHT ROCK may have a dubious premise, but it's an enjoyable look at a place in time which had a certain sound that many still find warm and comforting to this day.

I would never mock the so-called "yacht rock" genre because that's the music I loved the most during my high school and college years. I didn't even know this type of easy-to-ridicule soft rock music had a name, and it didn't until a comic pre-YouTube web series dubbed it so in 2005. Directed by Garret Price, this breezy 2024 documentary cogently chronicles the genesis of this music and its brief reign on the pop charts and at the Grammys from the late '70's to the early '80's concurrent with the emergence of punk and disco. Steely Dan is credited for molding the sounds, in particular, with their classic "Aja" album in 1977. Steely Dan's Donald Fagen refused to be interviewed for the film as he found the yacht reference insulting, but the era's other stars are accounted for and provide interesting insights into their creative processes. They include fondly remembered artists like Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, and the genre's self-effacing king, Michael McDonald. A nostalgic nugget for those of us who grew up during this period.