Anchoring yacht rock: 'Nothing that 100 men or more could ever do'

Animus ruled the monoculture recently when lionine Daryl Hall, shorn last year of mustachioed appendage John Oates, balked at the “yacht rock” phenomenon, despite its official statisticians’ declaration of the team’s “Kiss on My List” as being mostly “yachtski,” a hardly mathematical scale denoting total seafaring weight, at 62%.

“This is something I don’t understand,” Hall harrumphed at Broken Record podcast host Justin Richmond. “First of all, yacht rock was a fucking joke by two jerkoffs in California, and suddenly it became a genre, and I don’t even understand it. I never understood it.”

His profane befuddlement is understandable. Like most named musicological disciplines, yacht rock doesn’t actually exist. And I’m someone who spreads postpunk on toast like linguistic cholesterol. However, like all named musicological disciplines, it’s violently debated as real, and its parameters will only expand with time. There’s no objective or rigid measure of what constitutes yacht; anyone who presents as authoritative is probably just a dick.

So, who knows? Perhaps Hall & Oates’ “Private Eyes” (holding at 45% yachtski) will someday clear the turnstile, at which point a still-sentient Hall nuzzles his inner barque. Maybe Michael Nesmith’s “Rio” (39.2%) or “Cruisin’” will assume its rightful place in the upper reaches, so I can stop building car bombs.

And yacht rock is the brainchild of — well, not two jerkoffs but three or four wiseasses, though the California part’s correct. It’s all arbitrary, anyway, a whimsy-fueled neologism fashioned long after the music it celebrates by J.D. Ryznar, David Lyons, Hunter Stair and Lane Farnham in a Los Angeles-based Channel101 web series launched in 2005. It was meant to burlesque, lovingly, a fantastical movement linked in part by overlapping figures: Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Michael Jackson, Christopher Cross, Steve and Jeff Porcaro (Toto), etc.

A governing body formed by the show’s creators collates a living “Yacht or Nyacht?” chart, a Necronomicon where anal-retentive gumshoes like me may determine once and for all who qualifies. Up top, of course, reclines the bouncing blueprint, the Doobie Brothers/Kenny Loggins’ “What a Fool Believes” at a perfect 100, something neither the Michael McDonald-era Doobs nor Loggins achieved alone.
In fact, it could be argued that the Doobies aren’t yacht without the aforementioned conspirator, who joined in 1975; founding frontman Tom Johnston co-built a more rustic outfit with pelvic-rock leanings (“Listen to the Music,” “Rockin’ Down the Highway,” “Long Train Runnin’,” the rifftastic “China Grove,” “Another Park, Another Sunday,” “Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me),” and the Patrick Simmons-led “Black Water” and “Jesus Is Just Alright”). And when an earlier lineup, sans McDonald, reunited in 1989, it downplayed his influence with a Top 10 Billboard hit, “The Doctor,” that harkened back to “China Grove,” even reviving/burying that song’s hook in its foundational mix.

Of course, a détente, if ever one was necessary, was reached long ago, and McDonald’s remained a consistent presence among the siblings for the last 33 years, including on the upcoming Walk This Road (Rhino), which, as per its released singles and sleeve art, seems to thrive on electrified pastoral meditations.

You could spend lifetimes parsing “Yacht or Nyacht?” for potential inconsistencies, diving down rabbit holes until you’re mostly rodent. For instance, how does Jay Ferguson’s “Thunder Island” tease the genre’s shoreline (45%) while Paul Davis’ “’65 Love Affair” doesn’t even board the ship? Is it because the former goes “doo, doo, doo, doo” and “sha, la, la, la, la, my lady” while the other gets away with “doo-wop-diddy-wop-diddy-wop-doo”? Because one’s set on a distant strip of tropical paradise and the other seems to take place entirely in the narrator’s recesses as he reflects on almost gettin’ some in high school? Luckily, Davis consummated this fantasy on “Cool Night” (what we straight-banged pun-monkeys called “School Night”), deemed 54% yacht rock by the ruling powers.

If you really wanna have some fun, pop into a discussion and mention Supertramp, whose sole “Yacht or Nyacht?” entry is “Take the Long Way Home” at a dismal 13%. Shouldn’t that band have more? Isn’t Breakfast in America fat with candidates? Doesn’t "Even in the Quietest Moments …" have at least one? Such questions result in switchblade brawls and heartbreak, sometimes related to the quintet’s prog-rock origins, a background it shares with both Ambrosia — “Biggest Part of Me,” “You’re the Only Woman,” “How Can You Love Me” and “How Much I Feel” are all yacht-certified — and Genesis, whose discography is not, though “Misunderstanding” comes within a Phil Collinsian hair (43.5%).
Such compartmentalization used to be easier. In the before times, my friends and I dubbed this style Riunite rock, largely because we were cathode striplings whose chance absorptions of Supertramp or Air Supply squeezed jingles from our collective waybacks: “Here’s to good friends / Tonight is kind of special,” “That’s life, SANYO!” and “Riunite on ice / Riunite so nice.” Basically we associated the rainbow-suspender allure of “Lost in Love” with social drinking and adult romance in apartments full of waterbeds and high-tech appliances.

Admittedly, as a classification, Riunite rock was too limited to include Toto. Was it possible to sweet-talk someone over Moscato d’Asti against “Hold the Line” (56.5%)? Sounds like a job for domestic beer, once Boston’s “Smokin’” failed.
The whole thing’s silly. As a fan of the original series, whose videos we freaks traded by email, I can’t take “yacht rock” too seriously. It’s a clever lark that eventually earned sociocultural heft.

But as a music critic, I find these exchanges informative and a hell of a lot of fun.

Though, hell, I can be a pedantic dick, too. Ahem.

Ask not for whom the yacht floats

The tour was announced in December: IROC-Z subwoofer titans Toto and Christopher Cross to traverse the U.S., capitalizing on both parties’ prolificacy in the previous month’s “Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” on HBO. We rawkwriters drooled at this thematic hook.

Then, a wrench: Men at Work. Men at Work? Australia’s Men at Work? With the Vegemite sandwich and a head full of zombie? “Got Yacht Rock?” Chris Jordan of the Asbury Park Press asked in his tour-teaser lede. But, hey, uh-uh, that’s not, no. This isn’t conjecture but an, ahem, official “Yacht or Nyacht?” ruling.

Yet, frontman Colin Hay and a reconstituted Men at Work have puttered in such vicinities with the Yacht Rock Revue, a smooth-heavy brand launched in 2007. Three years ago, in fact, Hay joined them to perform “Down Under” as well as the title track from his 13th solo album, “Now and the Evermore.” Next month, Men at Work’s billed for the Great South Bay Music Festival in Patchogue, New York, a mingling, with the Revue, of marquee ’80s acts (Naked Eyes) and ’70s vets (Ambrosia).

Obviously, no 1982 proselytizer put any sounds on boats. Writers attempting to describe this band pulled from smaller palettes. Out came such explications as “new wave,” which was somewhat accurate in Men at Work’s case, despite its dearth of cold electronics. Leader Colin Hay’s stage persona was equal parts Ray Davies/Rick Nielsen showman. Or picture Sting with Stewart Copeland’s provocative joie de vivre. Comparisons to The Police and even Dire Straits were inevitable.

In truth, they were a pub-bred union capable of playing whatever style fell its way in watering-hole-heavy Melbourne. The original lineup jelled in a late-’70s jam session at that city’s Grace Darling Hotel. Much of what became the debut album "Business as Usual" (1981) came together at the Cricketers Arms Hotel, though an early take on “Who Can It Be Now?” reportedly required six and a half minutes with a two-minute introduction. Once album producer Peter McIan coaxed the fellows to CBS Records, he begged them to ditch the noodling frills and yank the song to its muscled essence, the perfect velocity for a number about being broke as collectors stormed your porch.
They were part of what was prematurely dubbed the “Aussie Invasion,” leading a pack that featured Cold Chisel, The Church, Icehouse, Mondo Rock, Mental as Anything, Australian Crawl, and Split Enz (whose roster included Tim and Neil Finn, later of Crowded House). Later came contemporaries Midnight Oil and INXS, whose American successes would trump the earlier arrivals’.

But “Who Can It Be Now?” and the second single, “Down Under” — both memorably given voice by the late Greg Ham, whose sax and flute imbued them with such character — performed astoundingly well, both hitting the top of the U.S. Pop chart. Funny enough, the former peaked Oct. 30, 1982, just as Toto’s “Africa” made its grand entrance. That single raced to No. 1 on Feb. 5, 1983, unseating “Down Under” after four weeks.

And “Africa,” incredibly, spent only seven days at the pinnacle before descending and didn’t reach gold-selling RIAA status for almost another decade. Then something weird happened. In the New Millennium, it showed up in video games like "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" (2002), "Quantum Break" and "Rock Band 4" (both 2016). Betty White tackled it with Donald Glover and Danny Pudi on the Sept. 3, 2010, episode of NBC’s “Community.”

Those blessed rains were back. Starting in September 2017, the song went platinum and double platinum two years straight. That December, a Twitter user asked Weezer to record it, which the band did, happily. Last September, the Toto original passed 10 million, going what the industry calls “diamond.” Today, “Africa” stands at 93% yachtski, representing the genre’s peak period.

Christopher Cross has enjoyed his own resurgence thanks to this phenomenon. This abundantly talented, overachieving kid brother made the mistake of dominating pop music right out of the gate, grabbing five major Grammys (what the wags call a sweep) for his eponymous 1979 full-length debut, which boasted four Top 20 hits in “Sailing” (No. 1), “Ride Like the Wind” (No. 2), “Never Be the Same” (No. 15) and “Say You’ll Be Mine” (No. 20). That’s almost half the goddamn LP. He was unstoppable.

At the time, he seemed cheek-squeeze cuddly in his sweaters, ironed button-downs and football jerseys — not exactly rock 'n’ roll deviance with his aerobics cool-down playlist. He didn’t recover from such misguided suppositions for a long time. Aside from the Top 10 “Think of Laura” single — “Loving Strangers” (58.5%) from the “Nothing in Common” soundtrack in ’86 deserved better, too — he never hit his initial heights again. Too smiley, too cherubic, too nice?
Ah, little did we know. Years later came the story about the time he covered for a debilitated Ritchie Blackmore on a 1970 Deep Purple date in San Antonio. In “Dockumentary,” he confessed to being flipped on LSD — and driving! — when he conjured “Ride Like the Wind,” something English metalheads Saxon must have intuitively grokked when they reinterpreted this paean to rebellion in 1987.

He maintains a pretty amusing Facebook presence, too. They may not frolic in the same stylistic sea, but they all know each other. Hay plays with Toto’s Steve Lukather in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. However, they’d first met at the 1982 Grammys, where Toto’s “Rosanna” won Record and Album of the Year while Men at Work carried Best New Artist.

Lukather and Cross have long enjoyed a creative relationship; the former contributed guitar to the latter’s Oscar-feted “Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do)” (56.25%) in 1981 as well as to his sophomore release, 1983’s Another Page, the belated follow-up to a Grammy-snarfing bow some three years earlier.

Hay and Cross didn’t make an acquaintance until their respective post-fame wanderings. “We were both doing solo stuff,” Hay recalled in a recent Live Nation video, “trying to make sense of how to approach the rest of our lives.”

Thus, this trip’s pitched as old friends on a winding voyage. And truth be told, the view’s always better from a yacht, the moonlit bow reflecting stars as guidance toward salvation.