It was one of those offenses that, while wholly unintended, was nonetheless a source of acute embarrassment. I’d started to play a song on my iPhone while on the commuter train, but had failed to do whatever voodoo needs to be done to connect my headphones via Bluetooth, whatever that is. As a result, while I heard the wistful strains of The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes,” so did others in the nearly-empty railcar, including a young man who broke a basic rules of urban living–never talk to a stranger on a train–to object.
The scene of my embarrassment.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, “but could you turn down your music. It’s kinda loud.”
I looked down at my phone, realized my error, apologized profusely, succeeded in connecting my devices, then sank back into silence until the end of the ride. At that point, as usual, the passengers get up, exchange little looks as they navigate their way out of the car, doing the Alphonse-and-Gaston business of making way for each other.
And then, from another young man who had witnessed my faux pas, came the words that stung me to my soul.
“Yacht rocker,” he said with a snicker to the fellow who had complained. They smiled at each other, shook their heads, then passed by me with upraised eyebrows of scorn.
I carried their disdain with me all day like a case of persistent heartburn, and it wasn’t until I was home that night and could look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, behind a closed door, that I could bring myself to confront the awful possibility they had raised: Was I–in fact–a yacht rocker?
Of course not. I hadn’t been a part of that movement, I had just been a fan–in moderation–of what Wikipedia describes as “a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with soft rock” that was originally known as “the West Coast sound or adult-oriented rock.”
Note the last prong of that definition: what is now derided as “Yacht Rock” was once perceived as rock music an adult could listen to, as opposed to, say, “Born to Be Wild” or something by Led Zeppelin. You could play it in the quiet of your home at a volume that would permit pleasant conversation with friends while drinking an oaky Chardonnay, by contrast with the prone-position and paranoid mindset that the ingestion of large quantities of psychedelic drugs induces.
There was once a time when what is now called Yacht Rock was . . . hip. I recall listening to Steely Dan’s “Peg” in a Cambridge, Mass. art movie house between features thinking-this is just right. I’m going to be watching my favorite foreign movie (The 39 Steps) right after I hear a song that mentions a woman’s favorite foreign movie.
Of course the music of that period–the mid-1980s–had a troubling undercurrent of domesticity to it. If you’re going to be an adult you may settle down, get married or just live together, after a series of short-term relationships and one-night stands that did you no credit. On hearing The Doobie Brothers “What a Fool Believes” while shopping for dishes with the woman who decided she wanted to move in with me (after initially turning me down), I had a musically-induced epiphany; sure she didn’t like me on first impression, but I guess I wore her down. There’s no accounting for tastes.
The Forty-Year-Old Virgin
The nadir of yacht rock came long ago, despite the recent sneers of those twenty-somethings on the train. In 2005 the movie “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” depicted Jane Lynch as the manager of an electronics store who tunes all the televisions to a concert tape featuring Michael McDonald of The Doobie Brothers. When an employee at long last complains, she says “Such a smart ass–get back on the floor.” So those young guys who thought they were being so cool were more than fifteen years behind the times.
To be fair to myself–since those fellows and others like them will not–I don’t own a yacht and don’t want one. As a guy I know likes to say, “If you want to know what it’s like to own a sail boat, stand under a cold shower and tear up a hundred dollar bill.” My wife belongs to an organization that calls itself a yacht club, but the only palpable benefit that we derive from it is access to a bar and restaurant on Cape Cod. We get there by car, not boat, and no one questions us at the door as to whether we need the valet to park our yacht. I’m not sure how she got into it, but it may have been her connection to Christopher Cross’s Yacht Rock “anthem” (that’s Wikipedia talking) “Sailing.” In a tragedy that haunts her to this day, she was college roommates with a girl who knew the girl who is the subject of the song, and she (my wife, not the roommate) can’t listen to it without getting all teary-eyed. Actually, she can’t listen to it at all because I took her copy of the album to a used record store and tried to sell it shortly after we were married. The owner wouldn’t buy it, but he offered to dispose of it properly, as the anti-litter signs say.
Yacht rock is rightly perceived as a predominantly white genre, but James Ingram sings with McDonald on “Yah Mo Be There,” the song that the employee complains about in “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin,” and there are other Black artists included in the Wikipedia list of Classic Yacht Rock artists–Patti Austin and George Benson. In a curious splicing of Yacht Rock with Black gospel music, Kirk Franklin, an inaugural inductee into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, sampled a Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald song in his 2007 “Declaration (This Is It),” turning what is a slightly wimpy song that sounds like a pep talk one would give to a friend whose girlfriend just dumped him into a rousing number that wouldn’t sound out of place at an African Methodist Episcopal church.
Yacht Rock Revue
So in the manner of those minority groups who “reappropriate” a term that has formerly been used to disparage them, turning it into a badge of pride, closet yacht rockers have lately been willing to be out-and-proud about their enthusiasm; there is even a band called “Yacht Rock Revue,” and they perform openly and notoriously, without fear of retribution.
But also without yachts.
And so I’ve gone from never hearing of Yacht Rock to discovering I’m a member of the Yacht wave.