HBO's Yacht Rock DOCKumentary
Get it? DOCKumentary?
Yacht rock deserves better. It doesn't even deserve that name. Which derives, we learn, from a "comedy" web series in the early 2000s. Which looks truly horrid from the clips we’re shown. Nonetheless - the term has stuck. What else are we supposed to call that distinct brand late ‘70s FM soft rock?
Do we even like that music? Yeah, it’s okay. This HBO Music Box documentary doesn’t go much further than that, and therein lies the problem. Interview clips from Fred Armisen, Questlove, and Mac DeMarco are so deadpan that it feels like a mockumentary. But to be fair, how excited is anyone supposed get about Toto?
There are also some dubious claims:
Christopher Cross, the Kermit the Frog soprano of hits like “Arthur’s Theme” informs us that pre-fame he had a successful weed business. I had to pause and rewind. He did say wheat business, right? I am spamming X to doubt that Christopher Cross ever did anything more than go halvsies on a lid or two.
“Yacht rock was the first sensitive male music.” Perhaps the plaintive whimpering of yacht rockers seems more progressive than Led Zeppelin’s caveman histrionics. But pining for love has always been a component of rock music - what else are you supposed to write ballads about? And lyrically these songs have Hallmark card level sentiments.
So we’re left with a tonally confused film. There’s not much drama to mine out of session musicians forming bands, or smiling Kenny Loggins recalling his hits. Michael McDonald is the god of the genre, with his white soul crooning and easygoing sportcoat swag. A fine moment rolls through all the songs that bit off the bouncy keys of “What A Fool Believes.” Which is not only THE yacht rock song, but one of the finest pop songs of any era. It’s the sound Brian Wilson spent six months searching for, and just about reaching on “Good Vibrations.” One could argue that co-writers McDonald and Loggins bested him in one chill afternoon.
The other highlight for me was seeing Prince Paul talk about Steely Dan. He sampled “Peg” for De La Soul’s “Eye Know,” so his appreciation is genuine. As is Questlove’s for the Doobie Brothers, referencing an infamous episode of What’s Happening? when Rerun got caught taping their concert and we received a lesson on the evils of bootlegging. (Sort of like if Lars Ulrich appeared on a special episode of Friends to warn the gang about using Napster.) I’d have preferred less backstory-of-Toto and more hip hop producers talking about how and why they sampled these artists, but that would be a different documentary. This one, as it is, just kind of falls flat.
NOTE: Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” is featured in a scene in my novel Lefty, when it plays on repeat from a police bracelet. Check out Lefty HERE.