Review: ‘Yacht Rock – A Dockumentary’ – I Must Admit, This One Put A Smile On My Face

When I think of major musical developments of the latter half of the 70s, I think of punk rock or maybe New Wave or I shudder at the thought of disco. But who knew when I went down to my local record store in the mall and bought the Doobie Brothers’ Minute By Minute I had unwittingly fallen under the spell of “Yacht Rock.” Admittedly, I waited until I saw that my much cooler friend Bobby had the album before I purchased it… you didn’t want to get caught buying “pop” records, we were rock n rollers. Minute By Minute had a picture of a roach on the inside sleeve so I guess that made it “cool.” But man, did I love the single, “What A Fool Believes.” That sad sack in the song was totally relatable to a teen age boy with a head full of unrequited crushes.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, while I was being held hostage in beautiful Banff by a group identifying themselves as “my family,” HBO released a new Dockumentary (I love the play on boat dock there…) ‘Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary.” Since the Rock Chick has dashed off to New York to shop for a wedding dress for her daughter and I was left on my own, it was time to catch up on some of this rock n roll viewing this weekend. I had already caught The Beatles ’64 and it was superb. I have to admit that watching ‘Yacht Rock’ put a huge smile on my face. Like the genre itself, I enjoyed this doc more than I probably should have.

The term “yacht rock” wasn’t actually coined until the early 2000s. A group of out of work comedians put together a web series entitled, yes, Yacht Rock. Before any of us knew what was happening SiriusXM had a Yacht Rock radio channel and the term became a part of our vernacular. I’ll admit to sliding down the dial to the Yacht Rock station on occasion when I’m in the car. In the Dockumentary, there are a lot of celebrities from Fred Armisen to Questlove to Thundercat who all come on and talk about their experiences with the genre. The funniest description of Yacht Rock that I heard was when one of them said, “It’s music I hear when I’m in the dentist chair.” So true… so true.

They go through a long explanation of what is Yacht Rock and what isn’t… my friend Doug over beers last night said the same thing a female comedian says in the doc, “It’s like pornography, I can’t explain it but I know it when I see it.” These guys posit that Steely Dan are the “primordial ooze” that Yacht Rock sprang from. Specifically I hear a lot about their album Aja, which has been described elsewhere as the “perfect yacht rock album.” Steely Dan used a lot of session musicians and those musicians – Jeff Porcaro (drums), David Paich (keyboards), Jay Graydon (guitar), among others – became the backbone of this new mellow rock. Yacht Rock is defined as being highly crafted pop records built on music that has a heavy jazz influence mixed with an R&B sensibility with plenty of hooks. That sums it up.

There are a host of artists that they feature in this thing and boy, did that bring back some memories for me. The guys in Toto were all successful session musicians and played on everybody’s records including Micheal Jackson whose song “Human Nature” was written by one of the Toto guys. The Michael McDonald led Doobie Brothers feature prominently… as does Michael for his solo work and his session work. He sang on everybody’s records. They call McDonald the King of Yacht Rock but I think they missed an opportunity to call him the Admiral of Yacht Rock. Kenny Loggins, while considered more experimental in his work, was named as being on the Mount Rushmore of Yacht Rock because when he chose to do it, he did it extremely well. Christopher Cross who wrote “Ride Like the Wind” while on acid – he’s much cooler than I realized – is also heavily featured. I even heard a snippet of a song by Pablo Cruise… does anybody remember those guys? They were big there for a while.

They take you through all the ways these albums and songs are inter related via producers or the session guys or songwriters. It’s pretty interesting stuff if you’re into that sort of thing. They even take us through groups that are decidedly mellow but are not Yacht Rock. The Eagles were not – they were country rock. Hall and Oates were Philly Soul, not Yacht Rock. Fleetwood Mac just rocked too much to be Yacht Rock. I have to say I like the bands they say are not Yacht Rock probably better than most of the bands that are considered Yacht Rock. I guess I’m not a huge fan of the genre, but more of a tourist in this realm. There was a lot of focus on fools and the broken hearted in the genre that made it a natural for my listening tastes… “Oh to be young and feel loves keen sting…”

They talk about Michael McDonald appearing on Soul Train. There were even some black artists who conquered the genre as well. Other than the aforementioned song from Michael Jackson, there’s Al Jarreau, George Benson and even the Pointer Sisters. With it’s underpinning of R&B it seems a natural that soul artists would dip into the genre.

As most things did in the 70s, it all came to an end with the advent of MTV. Video in this case, killed the Yacht Rock star. And as happens with artists in every genre, they had to find other things to do. Many of them started to do songs for movie soundtracks. Obviously Kenny Loggins made that into a cottage industry although most of his movie songs are decidedly not Yacht Rock. Much later Yacht Rock became a highly sampled genre in Hip Hop which is pretty cool when you think about it.

Say what you want about Yacht Rock – yes, it’s mellow and kind of schmaltzy – but this “Dockumentary” was a fun way to spend an hour and half. It certainly stirred up some memories for me. Music does that to me, it’s all connected in my brain to a font of memories. I would advise anybody looking for a smile today to tune in on this doc.

Cheers!