Review by C.J. Bunce
Never heard of yacht rock, or you heard about it but had no idea what kind of music it encompasses? That’s not your fault. Putting a label on something that’s been around 45 years is a very odd thing, indeed. There are elements to revisionist history involved. Retro-labeling? Yacht rock sounds like the stuff of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” or every song from The Beach Boys. It turns out that none of those songs qualify. A new documentary, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary finally explains to everyone what is behind the term, coined by YouTube video series creator J.D. Ryznar in only 2005 to describe a section of the rock music catalog from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s that most of us thought of as soft rock or smooth rock. If you put aside the yacht rock retro-label, what the film does is celebrate some of the best music you probably already love, compiled in a fascinating retrospective web of connections.
Who doesn’t get goosebumps listening to the smooth sounds of Christopher Cross singing his 1979 mega-hit “Sailing”? Did you know the five-time Grammy winner held a win record that wasn’t matched until Billie Eilish came along 45 years later? Tidbits and trivia like that are peppered through the documentary.
So what is this genre? The short version is it’s the “smooth West Coast sound” pioneered by artists like Steely Dan, Toto, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross, and digging deeper, the connections can be found in studio artists shared among bands with hit songs, some who played on thousands of songs in their careers (and a few still contributing). The creators literally trace singer-songwriter and keyboardist Michael McDonald from band to band to lay out how this genre was built–from his stints in Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers to his hit singles “What a Fool Believes,” “Minute by Minute,” and “Takin’ it to the Streets,” to his backing vocalist performances on hits for Toto, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross.
The journey is great fun, and may take you back to those late night cable TV hour-long advertisements for soft rock. Is yacht rock any more offensive a label than soft rock? You can tell none of the big rock stars of the era (all but one of the surviving key musicians of which make an appearance in the film) outright embrace the new term, but it’s a testament to their later-year public personas that they showed up to play along (Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen wouldn’t have any part in it). This is obviously intended as a celebration of their work more than a stigma, and they seem to understand that’s what the intent behind the label and the film is all about.
On the face of it, all the circuitous connecting of the roots of a common sound sounds like an exaggeration, but the documentary’s brilliance is in its ability to draw simple connections from the beginnings of this music to the advent of mega-rock stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna and the era of MTV that arguably killed it. For the new kids on the block, that lyric “video killed the radio star” was no joke. If you ever prided yourself on being the kind of fan who digs into the liner notes to your favorite music albums, this is the show for you.
One high point of the storytelling sees Toto’s Steve Porcaro explain how the song “Africa” was an afterthought that wasn’t initially thought good enough to add to the band’s landmark album Toto IV. It would be the only Toto song to hit Billboard’s #1 spot. Those lyrics are as inexplicable to the band as they are to the legions of listeners who have embraced the song for four decades and counting. And it’s the longevity of these songs’ success that truly resonates. Steely Dan producer Gary Katz, Toto’s Steve Lukather and David Paich, session guitarist Jeff Graydon, singer Brenda Russell, Ambrosia’s David Pack, web series creator Steve Huey, and Jackson Browne tell firsthand how it all happened, with the best stories provided by the kings of the genre, McDonald, Loggins, and Cross. Fred Armisen and Questlove, along with a solid round of critics, supplement the stories with modern context–the choices are a refreshing component because usually in shows like this you often wonder why these people are talking.
If you lived through the heyday of these songs in the 1970s and 1980s, you’ll probably walk away wondering about other songs that seem to fit the bill, but are excluded by the contributors to the film. Where’s the band America, with similar sounding hits like “I Need You” and “A Horse with No Name”? Or Kool and the Gang? Earth, Wind, and Fire? You won’t be the only one. The entire question is the subject of many a discussion thread online. Despite the documentary’s limitations, many a music channel looks outside the box and is more inclusive–if it sounds like soft rock of the era, it’s more than welcome.
With Yacht Rock–The Documentary, director Garret Price adds a great rockumentary to the pantheon of films that have taken music listeners “behind the music” in ways we haven’t seen since the VH-1 show shocked and surprised us with insights into the creative process. The documentary is now streaming on Max.
