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Western New York's Premier Yacht Rock Tribute!

From the creators of NERDS GONE WILD , we bring you Western New York's premier Yacht Rock Tribute - THE YACHTFATHERS! The "Dons" of yacht rock, smooth as the Inner Harbor!

We'll put you in the mood to cruise with the best AM Gold and Soft Rock hits from the '70s and '80s. Our show features hits from Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Toto, Kenny Loggins, Hall & Oates, Ambrosia, Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs, and more!

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Top 50 Yacht Rock Songs

Yacht rock was one of the most commercially successful genres to emerge from the '70s and yet has managed to evade concise definition since its inception. For many listeners, it boils down to a feeling or mood that cannot be found in other kinds of music: Simply put, you know it when you hear it.

Some agreed-upon elements are crucial to yacht rock. One is its fluidity, with more emphasis on a catchy, easy-feeling melody than on beat or rhythm. Another is a generally lighthearted attitude in the lyrics. Think Seals & Crofts ' "Summer Breeze," Christopher Cross ' "Ride Like the Wind" or Bill Withers ' "Just the Two of Us." Yes, as its label suggests, music that would fit perfectly being played from the deck of a luxurious boat on the high seas.

But even these roughly outlined "rules" can be flouted and still considered yacht rock. Plenty of bands that are typically deemed "nyacht" rock have made their attempts at the genre: Crosby, Stills & Nash got a bit nautical with "Southern Cross," leading with their famed tightly knit harmonies, and Fleetwood Mac also entered yacht rock territory with "Dreams" – which, although lyrically dour, offers a sense of melody in line with yacht rock.

Given its undefined parameters, the genre has become one of music's most expansive corners. From No. 1 hits to deeper-cut gems, we've compiled a list of 50 Top Yacht Rock Songs to set sail to below.

50. "Thunder Island," Jay Ferguson (1978)

Younger generations might be more apt to recognize Jay Ferguson from his score for NBC's The Office , where he also portrayed the guitarist in Kevin Malone's band Scrantonicity. But Ferguson's musical roots go back to the '60s band Spirit; he was also in a group with one of the future members of Firefall, signaling a '70s-era shift toward yacht rock and "Thunder Island." The once-ubiquitous single began its steady ascent in October 1977 before reaching the Top 10 in April of the following year. Producer Bill Szymczyk helped it get there by bringing in his buddy Joe Walsh for a soaring turn on the slide. The best showing Ferguson had after this, however, was the quickly forgotten 1979 Top 40 hit "Shakedown Cruise." (Nick DeRiso)

49. "Southern Cross," Crosby, Stills & Nash (1982)

CSN's "Southern Cross" was an example of a more literal interpretation of yacht rock, one in which leftover material was revitalized by Stephen Stills . He sped up the tempo of a song titled " Seven League Boots " originally penned by brothers Rick and Michael Curtis, then laid in new lyrics about, yes, an actual boat ride. "I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce," Stills said in the liner notes  to 1991's CSN box. "It's about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds." The music video for the song, which went into heavy rotation on MTV, also prominently displayed the band members aboard a large vessel. (Allison Rapp)

48. "Jackie Blue," the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (1974)

Drummer Larry Lee only had a rough idea of what he wanted to do with "Jackie Blue," originally naming it after a bartending dope pusher. For a long time, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils' best-known single remained an instrumental with the place-keeper lyric, " Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Jackie Blue. He was dada, and dada doo. He did this, he did that ... ." Producer Glyn Johns, who loved the track, made a key suggestion – and everything finally snapped into place: "No, no, no, mate," Johns told them. "Jackie Blue has to be a girl." They "knocked some new lyrics out in about 30 minutes," Lee said in It Shined: The Saga of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils . "[From] some drugged-out guy, we changed Jackie into a reclusive girl." She'd go all the way to No. 3. (DeRiso)

47. "Sailing," Christopher Cross (1979)

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more quintessential yacht rock song than “Sailing.” The second single (and first chart-topper) off Christopher Cross’ 1979 self-titled debut offers an intoxicating combination of dreamy strings, singsong vocals and shimmering, open-tuned guitar arpeggios that pay deference to Cross’ songwriting idol, Joni Mitchell . “These tunings, like Joni used to say, they get you in this sort of trance,” Cross told Songfacts in 2013. “The chorus just sort of came out. … So I got up and wandered around the apartment just thinking, ‘Wow, that's pretty fuckin' great.’” Grammy voters agreed: “Sailing” won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Arrangement at the 1981 awards. (Bryan Rolli)

46. "Just the Two of Us," Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr. (1980)

A collaboration between singer Bill Withers and saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. resulted in the sleek "Just the Two of Us." When first approached with the song, Withers insisted on reworking the lyrics. "I'm a little snobbish about words," he said in 2004 . "I said, 'Yeah, if you'll let me go in and try to dress these words up a little bit.' Everybody that knows me is kind of used to me that way. I probably threw in the stuff like the crystal raindrops. The 'Just the Two of Us' thing was already written. It was trying to put a tuxedo on it." The track was completed with some peppy backing vocals and a subtle slap bass part. (Rapp)

45. "Sara Smile," Daryl Hall & John Oates (1975)

It doesn't get much smoother than "Sara Smile," Daryl Hall & John Oates ' first Top 10 hit in the U.S. The song was written for Sara Allen, Hall's longtime girlfriend, whom he had met when she was working as a flight attendant. His lead vocal, which was recorded live, is clear as a bell on top of a velvety bass line and polished backing vocals that nodded to the group's R&B influences. “It was a song that came completely out of my heart," Hall said in 2018 . "It was a postcard. It’s short and sweet and to the point." Hall and Allen stayed together for almost 30 years before breaking up in 2001. (Rapp)

44. "Rosanna," Toto (1982)

One of the most identifiable hits of 1982 was written by Toto co-founder David Paich – but wasn't about Rosanna Arquette, as some people have claimed, even though keyboardist Steve Porcaro was dating the actress at the time. The backbeat laid down by drummer Jeff Porcaro – a "half-time shuffle" similar to what John Bonham played on " Fool in the Rain " – propels the track, while vocal harmonies and emphatic brass sections add further layers. The result is an infectious and uplifting groove – yacht rock at its finest. (Corey Irwin)

43. "Diamond Girl," Seals & Crofts (1973)

Seals & Crofts were soft-rock stylists with imagination, dolling up their saccharine melodies with enough musical intrigue to survive beyond the seemingly obvious shelf life. Granted, the lyrics to “Diamond Girl,” one of the duo’s three No. 6 hits, are as sterile as a surgery-operating room, built on pseudo-romantic nothing-isms ( “Now that I’ve found you, it’s around you that I am” — what a perfectly natural phrase!). But boy, oh boy does that groove sound luxurious beaming out of a hi-fi system, with every nuance — those stacked backing vocals, that snapping piano — presented in full analog glory. (Ryan Reed)

42. "What You Won't Do for Love," Bobby Caldwell (1978)

Smooth. From the opening horn riffs and the soulful keyboard to the funk bass and the velvety vocals of Bobby Caldwell, everything about “What You Won’t Do for Love” is smooth. Released in September 1978, the track peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went on to become the biggest hit of Caldwell’s career. It was later given a second life after being sampled for rapper 2Pac's posthumously released 1998 hit single “Do for Love.” (Irwin)

41. "We Just Disagree," Dave Mason (1977)

Dave Mason's ace in the hole on the No. 12 smash "We Just Disagree" was Jim Krueger, who composed the track, shared the harmony vocal and played that lovely guitar figure. "It was a song that when he sang it to me, it was like, 'Yeah, that's the song,'" Mason told Greg Prato in 2014. "Just him and a guitar, which is usually how I judge whether I'm going to do something. If it holds up like that, I'll put the rest of the icing on it." Unfortunately, the multitalented Krueger died of pancreatic cancer at age 43. By then, Mason had disappeared from the top of the charts, never getting higher than No. 39 again. (DeRiso)

40. "Crazy Love," Poco (1978)

Rusty Young was paneling a wall when inspiration struck. He'd long toiled in the shadow of Stephen Stills , Richie Furay and Neil Young , serving in an instrumentalist role with Buffalo Springfield and then Poco . "Crazy Love" was his breakout moment, and he knew it. Rusty Young presented the song before he'd even finished the lyric, but his Poco bandmates loved the way the stopgap words harmonized. "I told the others, 'Don't worry about the ' ooh, ooh, ahhhh haaa ' part. I can find words for that," Young told the St. Louis Dispatch in 2013. "And they said, 'Don't do that. That's the way it's supposed to be.'" It was: Young's first big vocal became his group's only Top 20 hit. (DeRiso)

39. "Suspicions," Eddie Rabbitt (1979)

Eddie Rabbitt 's move from country to crossover stardom was hurtled along by "Suspicions," as a song about a cuckold's worry rose to the Top 20 on both the pop and adult-contemporary charts. Behind the scenes, there was an even clearer connection to yacht rock: Co-writer Even Stevens said Toto's David Hungate played bass on the date. As important as it was for his career, Rabbitt later admitted that he scratched out "Suspicions" in a matter of minutes, while on a lunch break in the studio on the last day of recording his fifth album at Wally Heider's Los Angeles studio. "Sometimes," Rabbitt told the Associated Press in 1985, "the words just fall out of my mouth." (DeRiso)

38. "Moonlight Feels Right," Starbuck (1976)

No sound in rock history is more yacht friendly than Bruce Blackman’s laugh: hilarious, arbitrary, smug, speckled with vocal fry, arriving just before each chorus of Starbuck’s signature tune. Why is this human being laughing? Shrug. Guess the glow of night will do that to you. Then again, this is one of the more strange hits of the '70s — soft-pop hooks frolicking among waves of marimba and synthesizers that could have been plucked from a classic prog epic. “ The eastern moon looks ready for a wet kiss ,” Blackman croons, “ to make the tide rise again .” It’s a lunar make-out session, baby. (Reed)

37. "Same Old Lang Syne," Dan Fogelberg (1981)

“Same Old Lang Syne” is a masterclass in economic storytelling, and its tragedy is in the things both protagonists leave unsaid. Dan Fogelberg weaves a devastating tale of two former lovers who run into each other at a grocery store on Christmas Eve and spend the rest of the night catching up and reminiscing. Their circumstances have changed — he’s a disillusioned professional musician, she’s stuck in an unhappy marriage — but their love for each other is still palpable if only they could overcome their fears and say it out loud. They don’t, of course, and when Fogelberg bids his high-school flame adieu, he’s left with only his bittersweet memories and gnawing sense of unfulfillment to keep him warm on that snowy (and later rainy) December night. (Rolli)

36. "Eye in the Sky," the Alan Parsons Project (1982)

Few songs strike a chord with both prog nerds and soft-rock enthusiasts, but the Alan Parsons Project's “Eye in the Sky” belongs to that exclusive club. The arrangement is all smooth contours and pillowy textures: By the time Eric Woolfson reaches the chorus, shyly emoting about romantic deception over a bed of Wurlitzer keys and palm-muted riffs, the effect is like falling slow motion down a waterfall onto a memory foam mattress. But there’s artfulness here, too, from Ian Bairnson’s seductive guitar solo to the titular phrase conjuring some kind of god-like omniscience. (Reed)

35. "Somebody's Baby," Jackson Browne (1982)

Jackson Browne 's highest-charting single, and his last Top 10 hit, was originally tucked away on the soundtrack for the 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High . That placed Browne, one of the most earnest of singer-songwriters, firmly out of his element. "It was not typical of what Jackson writes at all, that song," co-composer Danny Kortchmar told Songfacts in 2013. "But because it was for this movie, he changed his general approach and came up with this fantastic song." Still unsure of how it would fit in, Browne refused to place "Somebody's Baby" on his next proper album – something he'd later come to regret . Lawyers in Love broke a string of consecutive multiplatinum releases dating back to 1976. (DeRiso)

34. "Still the One," Orleans (1976)

Part of yacht rock’s charm is being many things but only to a small degree. Songs can be jazzy, but not experimental. Brass sections are great but don’t get too funky. And the songs should rock, but not rock . In that mold comes Orleans’ 1976 hit “Still the One.” On top of a chugging groove, frontman John Hall sings about a romance that continues to stand the test of time. This love isn’t the white-hot flame that leaves passionate lovers burned – more like a soft, medium-level heat that keeps things comfortably warm. The tune is inoffensive, catchy and fun, aka yacht-rock gold. (Irwin)

33. "New Frontier," Donald Fagen (1982)

In which an awkward young man attempts to spark a Cold War-era fling — then, hopefully, a longer, post-apocalyptic relationship — via bomb shelter bunker, chatting up a “big blond” with starlet looks and a soft spot for Dave Brubeck. Few songwriters could pull off a lyrical concept so specific, and almost no one but Donald Fagen could render it catchy. “New Frontier,” a signature solo cut from the Steely Dan maestro, builds the sleek jazz-funk of Gaucho into a more digital-sounding landscape, with Fagen stacking precise vocal harmonies over synth buzz and bent-note guitar leads. (Reed)

32. "Sail On, Sailor," the Beach Boys (1973)

The Beach Boys were reworking a new album when Van Dyke Parks handed them this updated version of an unfinished Brian Wilson song. All that was left was to hand the mic over to Blondie Chaplin for his greatest-ever Beach Boys moment. They released "Sail On, Sailor" twice, however, and this yearning groover somehow barely cracked the Top 50. Chaplin was soon out of the band, too. It's a shame. "Sail On, Sailor" remains the best example of how the Beach Boys' elemental style might have kept growing. Instead, Chaplin went on to collaborate with the Band , Gene Clark of the  Byrds  and the Rolling Stones – while the Beach Boys settled into a lengthy tenure as a jukebox band. (DeRiso)

31. "Time Passages," Al Stewart (1978)

Al Stewart followed up the first hit single of his decade-long career – 1976's "Year of the Cat" – with a more streamlined take two years later. "Time Passages" bears a similar structure to the earlier track, including a Phil Kenzie sax solo and production by Alan Parsons. While both songs' respective album and single versions coincidentally run the same time, the 1978 hit's narrative wasn't as convoluted and fit more squarely into pop radio playlists. "Time Passages" became Stewart's highest-charting single, reaching No. 7 – while "Year of the Cat" had stalled at No. 8. (Michael Gallucci)

30. "I Go Crazy," Paul Davis (1977)

Paul Davis looked like he belonged in the Allman Brothers Band , but his soft, soulful voice took him in a different direction. The slow-burning nature of his breakthrough single "I Go Crazy" was reflected in its chart performance: For years the song held the record for the most weeks spent on the chart, peaking at No. 7 during its 40-week run. Davis, who died in 2008, took five more songs into the Top 40 after 1977, but "I Go Crazy" is his masterpiece – a wistful and melancholic look back at lost love backed by spare, brokenhearted verses. (Gallucci)

29. "Biggest Part of Me," Ambrosia (1980)

Songwriter David Pack taped the original demo of this song on a reel-to-reel when everyone else was running late, finishing just in time: "I was waiting for my family to get in the car so I could go to a Fourth of July celebration in Malibu," he told the Tennessean in 2014. "I turned off my machine [and] heard the car horn honking for me." Still, Pack was worried that the hastily written first verse – which rhymed " arisin ,'" " horizon " and " realizin '" – might come off a little corny. So he followed the time-honored yacht-rock tradition of calling in Michael McDonald to sing heartfelt background vocals. Result: a Top 5 hit on both the pop and adult-contemporary charts. (DeRiso)

28. "Africa," Toto (1982)

Remove the cover versions, the nostalgia sheen and its overuse in TV and films, and you’re left with what makes “Africa” great: one of the best earworm choruses in music history. Never mind that the band is made up of white guys from Los Angeles who'd never visited the titular continent. Verses about Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti paint a picture so vivid that listeners are swept away. From the soaring vocals to the stirring synth line, every element of the song works perfectly. There’s a reason generations of music fans continue to proudly bless the rains. (Irwin)

27. "Hello It's Me," Todd Rundgren (1972)

“Hello It’s Me” is the first song Todd Rundgren ever wrote, recorded by his band Nazz and released in 1968. He quickened the tempo, spruced up the instrumentation and delivered a more urgent vocal for this 1972 solo rendition (which became a Top 5 U.S. hit), but the bones of the tune remain the same. “Hello It’s Me” is a wistful, bittersweet song about the dissolution of a relationship between two people who still very much love and respect each other a clear-eyed breakup ballad lacking the guile, cynicism and zaniness of Rundgren’s later work. “The reason those [early] songs succeeded was because of their derivative nature,” Rundgren told Guitar World in 2021. “They plugged so easily into audience expectations. They’re easily absorbed.” That may be so, but there’s still no denying the airtight hooks and melancholy beauty of “Hello It’s Me.” (Rolli)

26. "Smoke From a Distant Fire," the Sanford/Townsend Band (1977)

There are other artists who better define yacht rock - Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Christopher Cross - but few songs rival the Sanford/Townsend Band's "Smoke From a Distant Fire" as a more representative genre track. (It was a Top 10 hit in the summer of 1977. The duo never had another charting single.) From the vaguely swinging rhythm and roaring saxophone riff to the light percussion rolls and risk-free vocals (that nod heavily to Daryl Hall and John Oates' blue-eyed soul), "Smoke" may be the most definitive yacht rock song ever recorded. We may even go as far as to say it's ground zero. (Gallucci)

25. "Dream Weaver," Gary Wright (1975)

Unlike many other songs on our list, “Dream Weaver” lacks lush instrumentation. Aside from Gary Wright’s vocals and keyboard parts, the only added layer is the drumming of Jim Keltner. But while the track may not have guitars, bass or horns, it certainly has plenty of vibes. Inspired by the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda – which Wright was turned on to by George Harrison – “Dream Weaver” boasts a celestial aura that helped the song peak at No. 2 in 1976. (Irwin)

24. "Reminiscing," Little River Band (1978)

The third time was the charm with Little River Band 's highest-charting single in the U.S. Guitarist Graeham Goble wrote "Reminiscing" for singer Glenn Shorrock with a certain keyboardist in mind. Unfortunately, they weren't able to schedule a session with Peter Jones, who'd played an important role in Little River Band's first-ever charting U.S. single, 1976's "It's a Long Way There ." They tried it anyway but didn't care for the track. They tried again, with the same results. "The band was losing interest in the song," Goble later told Chuck Miller . "Just before the album was finished, Peter Jones came back into town, [and] the band and I had an argument because I wanted to give 'Reminiscing' a third chance." This time they nailed it. (DeRiso)

23. "Heart Hotels," Dan Fogelberg (1979)

Ironically enough, this song about debilitating loneliness arrived on an album in which Dan Fogelberg played almost all of the instruments himself. A key concession to the outside world became the most distinctive musical element on "Heart Hotels," as well-known saxophonist Tom Scott took a turn on the Lyricon – a pre-MIDI electronic wind instrument invented just a few years earlier. As for the meaning of sad songs like these, the late Fogelberg once said : "I feel experiences deeply, and I have an outlet, a place where I can translate those feelings. A lot of people go to psychoanalysts. I write songs." (DeRiso)

22. "Year of the Cat," Al Stewart (1976)

Just about every instrument imaginable can be heard in Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat." What begins with an elegant piano intro winds its way through a string section and a sultry sax solo, then to a passionate few moments with a Spanish acoustic guitar. The sax solo, often a hallmark of yacht-rock songs, was not Stewart's idea. Producer Alan Parsons suggested it at the last minute, and Stewart thought it was the "worst idea I'd ever heard. I said, 'Alan, there aren’t any saxophones in folk-rock. Folk-rock is about guitars. Sax is a jazz instrument,'" Stewart said in 2021 . Multiple lengthy instrumental segments bring the song to nearly seven minutes, yet each seems to blend into the next like a carefully arranged orchestra. (Rapp)

21. "How Long," Ace (1974)

How long does it take to top the charts? For the Paul Carrack-fronted Ace: 45 years . "I wrote the lyric on the bus going to my future mother-in-law's," he later told Gary James . "I wrote it on the back of that bus ticket. That's my excuse for there only being one verse." Ace released "How Long" in 1975, reaching No. 3, then Carrack moved on to stints with Squeeze and Mike and the Mechanics . Finally, in 2020, "How Long" rose two spots higher, hitting No. 1 on Billboard's rock digital song sales chart after being featured in an Amazon Prime advertisement titled "Binge Cheat." (DeRiso)

20. "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)," Looking Glass (1972)

Like "Summer Breeze" (found later in our list of Top 50 Yacht Rock Songs), Looking Glass' tale of an alluring barmaid in a busy harbor town pre-dates the classic yacht-rock era. Consider acts like Seals & Crofts and these one-hit wonders pioneers of the genre. Ironically, the effortless-sounding "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" was quite difficult to complete. "We recorded 'Brandy' two or three different times with various producers before we got it right," Looking Glass' principal songwriter Elliot Lurie told the Tennessean in 2016. The chart-topping results became so popular so fast, however, that Barry Manilow had to change the title of a new song he was working on to " Mandy ." (DeRiso)

19. "I Can't Tell You Why," Eagles (1979)

Timothy B. Schmit joined just in time to watch the  Eagles disintegrate. But things couldn't have started in a better place for the former Poco member. He arrived with the makings of his first showcase moment with the group, an unfinished scrap that would become the No. 8 hit "I Can't Tell You Why." For a moment, often-contentious band members rallied around the outsider. Don Henley and Glenn Frey both made key contributions, as Eagles completed the initial song on what would become 1979's The Long Run . Schmit felt like he had a reason to be optimistic. Instead, Eagles released the LP and then promptly split up. (DeRiso)

18. "Sentimental Lady," Bob Welch (1977)

Bob Welch  first recorded "Sentimental Lady" in 1972 as a member of Fleetwood Mac . Five years later, after separating from a band that had gone on to way bigger things , Welch revisited one of his best songs and got two former bandmates who appeared on the original version – Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie – to help out (new Mac member Lindsey Buckingham also makes an appearance). This is the better version, warmer and more inviting, and it reached the Top 10. (Gallucci)

17. "So Into You," Atlanta Rhythm Section (1976)

Atlanta Rhythm Section is often wrongly categorized as a Southern rock band, simply because of their roots in Doraville, Ga. Songs like the seductively layered "So Into You" illustrate how little they had in common with the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd . As renowned Muscle Shoals sessions ace David Hood once said, they're more like the " Steely Dan of the South ." Unfortunately, time hasn't been kind to the group. Two of this best-charting single's writers have since died , while keyboardist Dean Daughtry retired in 2019 as Atlanta Rhythm Section's last constant member. (DeRiso)

16. "Dreams," Fleetwood Mac (1977)

Stevie Nicks was trying to channel the heartbreak she endured after separating from Lindsey Buckingham into a song, but couldn't concentrate among the bustle of Fleetwood Mac's sessions for Rumours . "I was kind of wandering around the studio," she later told Yahoo! , "looking for somewhere I could curl up with my Fender Rhodes and my lyrics and a little cassette tape recorder." That's when she ran into a studio assistant who led her to a quieter, previously unseen area at Sausalito's Record Plant. The circular space was surrounded by keyboards and recording equipment, with a half-moon bed in black-and-red velvet to one side. She settled in, completing "Dreams" in less than half an hour, but not before asking the helpful aide one pressing question: "I said, 'What is this?' And he said, 'This is Sly Stone 's studio.'" (DeRiso)

15. "Minute by Minute," the Doobie Brothers (1978)

Michael McDonald was so unsure of this album that he nervously previewed it for a friend. "I mean, all the tunes have merit, but I don't know if they hang together as a record," McDonald later told UCR. "He looked at me and he said, 'This is a piece of shit.'" Record buyers disagreed, making Minute by Minute the Doobie Brothers' first chart-topping multiplatinum release. Such was the mania surrounding this satiny-smooth LP that the No. 14 hit title track lost out on song-of-the-year honors at the Grammys to "What a Fool Believes" (found later in our list of Top 50 Yacht Rock Songs) by the Doobie Brothers. (DeRiso)

14. "Lonely Boy," Andrew Gold (1976)

Andrew Gold’s only Top 10 U.S. hit is a story of parental neglect and simmering resentment, but those pitch-black details are easy to miss when couched inside such a deliciously upbeat melody. Gold chronicles the childhood of the titular lonely boy over a propulsive, syncopated piano figure, detailing the betrayal he felt when his parents presented him with a sister two years his junior. When he turns 18, the lonely boy ships off to college and leaves his family behind, while his sister gets married and has a son of her own — oblivious to the fact that she’s repeating the mistakes of her parents. Gold insisted “Lonely Boy” wasn’t autobiographical, despite the details in the song matching up with his own life. In any case, you can’t help but wonder what kind of imagination produces such dark, compelling fiction. (Rolli)

13. "Baby Come Back," Player (1977)

Liverpool native Peter Beckett moved to the States, originally to join a forgotten act called Skyband. By the time he regrouped to found Player with American J.C. Crowley, Beckett's wife had returned to England. Turns out Crowley was going through a breakup, too, and the Beckett-sung "Baby Come Back" was born. "So it was a genuine song, a genuine lyric – and I think that comes across in the song," Beckett said in The Yacht Rock Book . "That's why it was so popular." The demo earned Player a hastily signed record deal, meaning Beckett and Crowley had to assemble a band even as "Baby Come Back" rose to No. 1. Their debut album was released before Player had ever appeared in concert. (DeRiso)

12. "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight," England Dan & John Ford Coley (1976)

There aren't too many songs with choruses as big as the one England Dan & John Ford Coley pump into the key lines of their first Top 40 single. Getting there is half the fun: The conversational verses – " Hello, yeah, it's been a while / Not much, how 'bout you? / I'm not sure why I called / I guess I really just wanted to talk to you " – build into the superpowered come-on line " I'm not talking 'bout moving in ...  ." Their yacht-rock pedigree is strong: Dan Seals' older brother is Seals & Croft's Jim Seals. (Gallucci)

11. "Hey Nineteen," Steely Dan (1980)

At least on the surface, “Hey Nineteen” is one of Steely Dan’s least ambiguous songs: An over-the-hill guy makes one of history’s most cringe-worthy, creepiest pick-up attempts, reminiscing about his glory days in a fraternity and lamenting that his would-be companion doesn’t know who Aretha Franklin is. (The bridge is a bit tougher to crack. Is anyone sharing that “fine Colombian”?) But the words didn’t propel this Gaucho classic into Billboard's Top 10. Instead, that credit goes to the groove, anchored by Walter Becker ’s gently gliding bass guitar, Donald Fagen’s velvety electric piano and a chorus smoother than top-shelf Cuervo Gold. (Reed)

10. "Rich Girl," Daryl Hall & John Oates (1976)

It’s one of the most economical pop songs ever written: two A sections, two B sections (the second one extended), a fade-out vocal vamp. In and out. Wham, bam, boom. Perhaps that's why it’s easy to savor “Rich Girl” 12 times in a row during your morning commute, why hearing it just once on the radio is almost maddening. This blue-eyed-soul single, the duo’s first No. 1 hit, lashes out at a supposedly entitled heir to a fast-food chain. (The original lyric was the less-catchy “rich guy ”; that one change may have earned them millions.) But there’s nothing bitter about that groove, built on Hall’s electric piano stabs and staccato vocal hook. (Reed)

9. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," Elvin Bishop (1975)

Elvin Bishop made his biggest pop-chart splash with "Fooled Around and Fell In Love," permanently changing the first line of his bio from a  former member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to a solo star in his own right. There was only one problem: "The natural assumption was that it was Elvin Bishop who was singing,” singer  Mickey Thomas told the Tahoe Daily Tribune in 2007. Thomas later found even greater chart success with Starship alongside Donny Baldwin, who also played drums on Bishop's breakthrough single. "A lot of peers found out about me through that, and ultimately I did get credit for it," Thomas added. "It opened a lot of doors for me." (DeRiso)

8. "Baker Street," Gerry Rafferty (1978)

Gerry Rafferty already had a taste of success when his band Stealers Wheel hit the Top 10 with the Dylanesque "Stuck in the Middle With You" in 1973. His first solo album after the group's split, City to City , made it to No. 1 in 1978, thanks in great part to its hit single "Baker Street" (which spent six frustrating weeks at No. 2). The iconic saxophone riff by Raphael Ravenscroft gets much of the attention, but this single triumphs on many other levels. For six, mood-setting minutes Rafferty winds his way down "Baker Street" with a hopefulness rooted in eternal restlessness. (Gallucci)

7. "Dirty Work," Steely Dan (1972)

In just about three minutes, Steely Dan tells a soap-opera tale of an affair between a married woman and a man who is well aware he's being played but is too hopelessly hooked to end things. " When you need a bit of lovin' 'cause your man is out of town / That's the time you get me runnin' and you know I'll be around ," singer David Palmer sings in a surprisingly delicate tenor. A saxophone and flugelhorn part weeps underneath his lines. By the time the song is over, we can't help but feel sorry for the narrator who is, ostensibly, just as much part of the problem as he could be the solution. Not all yacht rock songs have happy endings. (Rapp)

6. "Ride Like the Wind," Christopher Cross (1979)

“Ride Like the Wind” is ostensibly a song about a tough-as-nails outlaw racing for the border of Mexico under cover of night, but there’s nothing remotely dangerous about Christopher Cross’ lithe tenor or the peppy piano riffs and horns propelling the tune. Those contradictions aren’t a detriment. This is cinematic, high-gloss pop-rock at its finest, bursting at the seams with hooks and elevated by Michael McDonald’s silky backing vocals. Cross nods to his Texas roots with a fiery guitar solo, blending hard rock and pop in a way that countless artists would replicate in the next decade. (Rolli)

5. "Summer Breeze," Seals & Crofts (1972)

Jim Seals and Dash Crofts were childhood friends in Texas, but the mellow grandeur of "Summer Breeze" makes it clear that they always belonged in '70s-era Southern California. "We operate on a different level," Seals once said , sounding like nothing if not a Laurel Canyon native. "We try to create images, impressions and trains of thought in the minds of our listeners." This song's fluttering curtains, welcoming domesticity and sweet jasmine certainly meet that standard. For some reason, however, they released this gem in August 1972 – as the season faded into fall. Perhaps that's why "Summer Breeze" somehow never got past No. 6 on the pop chart. (DeRiso)

4. "Lowdown," Boz Scaggs (1976)

As you throw on your shades and rev the motor, the only thing hotter than the afternoon sun is David Hungate’s sweet slap-bass blasting from the tape deck. “This is the good life,” you say to no one in particular, casually tipping your baseball cap to the bikini-clad crew on the boat zooming by. Then you press “play” again. What else but Boz Scaggs ’ silky “Lowdown” could soundtrack such a moment in paradise? Everything about this tune, which cruised to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, is equally idyllic: Jeff Porcaro’s metronomic hi-hat pattern, David Paich’s jazzy keyboard vamp, the cool-guy croon of Scaggs — flexing about gossip and “schoolboy game.” You crack open another cold one — why not? And, well, you press play once more. (Reed)

3. "Lido Shuffle," Boz Scaggs (1976)

Scaggs' storied career began as a sideman with Steve Miller  and already included a scorching duet with Duane Allman . Co-writer David Paich would earn Grammy-winning stardom with songs like "Africa." Yet they resorted to theft when it came to this No. 11 smash. Well, in a manner of speaking: "'Lido' was a song that I'd been banging around, and I kind of stole – well, I didn't steal anything. I just took the idea of the shuffle," Scaggs told Songfacts in 2013. "There was a song that Fats Domino did called 'The Fat Man ' that had a kind of driving shuffle beat that I used to play on the piano, and I just started kind of singing along with it. Then I showed it to Paich, and he helped me fill it out." Then Paich took this track's bassist and drummer with him to form Toto. (DeRiso)

2. "Peg," Steely Dan (1977)

"Peg" is blessed with several yacht-rock hallmarks: a spot on Steely Dan's most Steely Dan-like album, Aja , an impeccable airtightness that falls somewhere between soft-pop and jazz and yacht rock's stalwart captain, Michael McDonald, at the helm. (He may be a mere backing singer here, but his one-note chorus chirps take the song to another level.) Like most Steely Dan tracks, this track's meaning is both cynical and impenetrable, and its legacy has only grown over the years – from hip-hop samples to faithful cover versions. (Gallucci)

1. "What a Fool Believes," the Doobie Brothers (1978)

Michael McDonald not only steered the Doobie Brothers in a new direction when he joined in 1975, but he also made them a commercial powerhouse with the 1978 album Minute by Minute . McDonald co-wrote "What a Fool Believes" – a No. 1 single; the album topped the chart, too – with Kenny Loggins and sang lead, effectively launching a genre in the process. The song's style was copied for the next couple of years (most shamelessly in Robbie Dupree's 1980 Top 10 "Steal Away"), and McDonald became the bearded face of yacht rock. (Gallucci)

Top 100 Classic Rock Artists

Gallery Credit: UCR Staff

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If the Yacht Is a Rockin': Riding the Yacht Rock Nostalgia Wave

By maggie serota | jun 12, 2020.

It’s not often that an entire genre of music gets retconned into existence after being parodied by a web series, but that’s exactly what happened after writer, director, and producer J.D. Ryznar and producers David B. Lyons and Hunter D. Stair launched the Channel 101 web series Yacht Rock in 2005. Hosted by former AllMusic editor “Hollywood” Steve Huey, the series was a loving sendup of the late '70s/early '80s smooth jams to which many Millennials and late period Gen-Xers were likely conceived.

The yacht rock aesthetic was innovated by a core group of musicians and producers including, but not limited to, Christopher Cross, Steely Dan, Robbie Dupree, Kenny Loggins, Toto, David Foster, and hirsute soft rock titan Michael McDonald, along with scores of veteran session musicians from the Southern California studio scene.

The Yacht Rock web series was perfectly timed to coincide with a contemporary renaissance of smooth music from the late '70s, the kind that was previously considered a guilty pleasure because it fell out of fashion in the mid-'80s and was soon thereafter regarded as dated and square compared to other burgeoning genres, like punk rock and hip-hop.

Yacht Rock's Early Years

The yacht rock era began roughly around 1976, when yacht rock pillar Kenny Loggins split up with songwriting partner Jim Messina to strike out on his own. That same year, fellow yacht rock mainstay Michael McDonald joined The Doobie Brothers. The two titans of the genre joined forces when Loggins co-wrote the definitive yacht rock hit “What a Fool Believes” with McDonald for the Doobies. They collaborated several times during this era, which was par for the course with such an incestuous music scene that was largely comprised of buddies playing on each other’s albums.

"Look at who performed on the album and if they didn’t perform with any other yacht rock hit guys then chances are [it's] ‘nyacht’ rock,” Ryznar said on the  Beyond Yacht Rock podcast, referencing the pejorative term frequently used to describe soft rock songs that just miss the boat.

"The basic things to ask yourself if you want to know if a track is yacht rock are: Was it released from approximately 1976 to 1984? Did musicians on the track play with Steely Dan? Or Toto?," Ryznar said. "Is it a top 40 radio hit or is it on an album meant to feature hits?" And, of course, does the song celebrate a certain breezy, SoCal aesthetic?

Building the Boat

There are certain key ingredients necessary for a track to be considered yacht rock. For starters, it helps (though is not necessary) to have album art or lyrics that specifically reference boating, as with Christopher Cross's landmark 1980 hit “Sailing.” The music itself is usually slickly produced with clean vocals and a focus on melody over beat. But above all else, the sound has to be smooth . That’s what sets yacht rock apart from "nyacht" rock.

"Its base is R&B, yet it’s totally whitewashed," Ryznar explained on  Beyond Yacht Rock . "There [are] jazz elements. There can be complex, challenging melodies; the solos are all cutting-edge and really interesting. There’s always something interesting about a true yacht rock song. It goes left when you expect it to go right."

Yacht rock’s complex musicianship can be attributed, in part, to the session players on each track. Musicians like percussionist Steve Gadd, guitarist and Toto founding member Steve Lukather, and Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro don’t have much in the way of name recognition among casual soft rock listeners, but they’re the nails that hold the boat together. Steely Dan, “the primordial ooze from which yacht rock emerged,” according to Ryznar, famously cycled through dozens of session musicians while recording their 1980 seminal yacht rock album Gaucho .

"These musicians were not only these slick, polished professionals, but they were highly trained and able to hop from style to style with ease,” Huey explained on  Beyond Yacht Rock . “Very versatile.”

In Greg Prato’s 2018 tome, The Yacht Rock Book : An Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the 70s and 80s , Huey broke down “the three main defining elements of yacht rock,” explaining that it requires “Fusing softer rock with jazz and R&B, very polished production, and kind of being centered around the studio musician culture in southern California … It’s not just soft rock, it’s a specific subset of soft rock that ideally has those elements."

Soft rock untethered

Whereas the music of the late 1970s and early ‘80s is often associated with the anti-establishment music of punk pioneers like the Dead Kennedys and the socially conscious songs being written by early hip-hop innovators like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, yacht rock is the antithesis of the counterculture.

Yacht rock occupies a world that is completely apolitical and untethered to current events. Between the oil crisis, a global recession, and inflation—not to mention the fact that the U.S. was still licking its wounds from the loss of the Vietnam War and the disgrace of Watergate—the late '70s were a dark time for Americans. Yet yacht rock, at its heart, is a tequila sunrise for the soul, whisking the listener away to a world where they have the time, and the means, to idle away the hours sipping piña coladas at sea while decked out in flowy Hawaiian shirts and boat shoes.

Yacht rock was never edgy, nor did it ever feel dangerous. Yacht rock didn’t piss off anyone’s parents and no one ever threatened to send their kid to boot camp for getting caught listening to Kenny Loggins's “This Is It.” Yacht rock tracks are more of a siren song that invite your parents to join in on the chorus anytime they hear Toto’s "Rosanna."

Yacht rock songs are meant to set the soundtrack to a life where the days are always sunny, but as Ryznar pointed out on Beyond Yacht Rock , there’s “an underlying darkness”—just not the kind that’s going to derail a day of sailing to Catalina Island. No, yacht rock has elements of low-stakes heartbreak with sensitive male protagonists lamenting their own foolishness in trying to get back together with exes or hitting on women half their age.

The aspirational aspect of the genre dovetailed nicely with the overarching materialism defining the Reagan era. “Yacht rock was an escape from blunt truths, into the melodic, no-calorie lies of ‘buy now, pay never,’ in which any discord could be neutralized with a Moog beat,” Dan O’Sullivan wrote in Jacobin .

Some Like it Yacht

Although the cult comedy series Yacht Rock ceased production in 2010, the soft rock music revival it launched into the zeitgeist is still going strong. For the past few years, SiriusXM has been running a yacht rock station during prime boating season, or what those of us without bottomless checking accounts refer to as the spring and summer months. Yacht rock tribute acts like Yacht Rock Revue are profitable business endeavors as much as they are fun party bands. There’s also a glut of yacht rock-themed song compilations for sale and a proliferation of questionably curated genre playlists on Spotify.

Whether you believe yacht rock is an exalted art form or the insidious soundtrack to complacency, any music lover would probably agree that even a momentary escape from the blunt truths of life is something we could all use every now and then.

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Yacht Rock Babylon

By David Browne

David Browne

I n a spacious suite high above the Las Vegas Strip, Michael McDonald extends his left arm, wiggles his fingers, and glides his arm to his right side. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was getting ready for some air piano. But no — he’s actually recalling the day of the floating vomit.

The Seventies were winding down, but no one had told the Doobie Brothers . By 1978, they’d had enough big songs to fill one greatest-hits album already, from choogling rockers like “Long Train Runnin’” and “China Grove” to soul-rooted, McDonald-sung hits like “Takin’ It to the Streets.” Along with gold and platinum records, keys to a city, and the usual on-the-road indulgences, they were also rewarded with their own private plane.

The DoobieLiner wasn’t quite the type of luxurious jet used to fly around Led Zeppelin and Elton John to their shows, but the Martin 404, once used by Eastern Airlines, had coffee tables, reclining chairs, and random copies of Newsweek and Sixteen magazines strewn about; the Doobie logo was painted on its tail. (The Doobie stagehands flew on their own, separate plane, dubbed the CrewbieLiner.) Even better, no one bothered the band members when they were boarding or on board. “You could smoke weed on the plane,” says singer, guitarist, and co-founder Patrick Simmons. “Nobody cared. We had a full bar and drinks and chicks. It was a party in the air, pretty much continuously.” One day, one of the band members even got to fly the DoobieLiner while the pilot watched, and somehow everyone survived.

For their eighth studio album, Minute by Minute , someone had the idea of shooting the band aboard the DoobieLiner — in simulated zero-gravity conditions. Their regular pilot, Sam Stewart, took the plane to 12,000 feet, then nosedived straight down and pulled up again. Even though they’d practiced the process a bunch of times, the Doobies started getting nauseous as they began floating, and McDonald found himself staring at someone’s puke as it wafted by. “There’s nothing worse than someone hurling while there’s zero gravity,” he says. “You’re watching the vomit quiver in midair. Then the gravity goes back into play and it lands on someone.”

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Dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, his trademark beard white and his mane white and swept-back, McDonald recounts this tale with a bemused smile. The photo did wind up on the back of the album, but what about the upchuck? “That’s not in the picture,” he adds.

Roughly half a century after they began, the Doobie Brothers are the embodiment of classic-rock respectability. At the time of this conversation with McDonald — the pre-pandemic America of early 2020 — they are in the midst of their first-ever Vegas residency, at the glitzy Venetian Resort. Although McDonald has not been in the band since the early Eighties, he has flown into town to help them prepare for a planned 50th anniversary tour in which he’ll participate. The group is also enjoying the fact that they’ve been voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame , with a ceremony set to take place in Cleveland just before that summer tour.

The Doobies and McDonald were once something of a punchline in rock: Remember the classic SCTV skit in which “McDonald” races in and out of a studio while singing his part on Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind”? Now, though, the Doobies are having the final chuckle. They have been the subject of a tribute album featuring marquee country artists like Brad Paisley and Blake Shelton; hip-hop acts from the late J Dilla to Meek Mill and Drake have sampled them. Earlier this year, Bernie Sanders rallies would sometimes end with “Takin’ It to the Streets” roaring from speakers. For a band that feels it didn’t even get respect from its record company in the old days (“the rest of us were playing second fiddle to Captain Beefheart,” says founding drummer John Hartman), the recognition is long overdue. To paraphrase one of their album titles: What were once vices are now honors.

But the saga of the Doobies isn’t merely about fame and hit records. Over the course of the Seventies, the Doobies transformed from long-haired biker rockers to shag-cut pop stars — a makeover that doubles as a metaphor for the ways rock was tamed by the end of that decade. After McDonald took over as their most prominent voice, their new style — lightly syncopated rhythms and smooth, high-thread-count production and harmonies — became the definitive example of what’s now known as yacht rock , encompassing everyone from the Doobies and Steely Dan to suave crooners like Boz Scaggs and Kenny Loggins. Given the robust, guitar-driven hits that established them, the Doobies were never 100 percent yacht. But like it or not, they’re now semi-ironically appreciated as pioneers in a cottage industry that spans a YouTube parody series and a satellite-radio channel.

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The mellow rock scene of the Seventies was rarely as tranquil as the tunes: James Taylor and Walter Becker grappled with heroin addiction, Loggins lost himself in a tequila bottle, and Dan Peek of America — those “Ventura Highway” and “Sister Golden Hair” guys — partied so hard that he was thrown out of the band.

But in the air or on the ground, little in the world of yacht-rock matches the turbulence of the Doobie Brothers’ story. As unlikely as it may seem for a band that’s given us the smooth white-guy R&B of “What a Fool Believes” and the lazy-day folk-blues singalong “Black Water,” their saga encompasses Hells Angels, explosive devices, and a degree of debauchery more often associated with louder and heavier bands of the time. Their emphasis on note-perfect record-making, a yacht-rock prerequisite, drove each other to the edge of madness. “It’s so funny to get super-high on cocaine and make music like the Doobie Brothers,” says Nicholas Niespodziani, lead singer of the Yacht Rock Revue, a touring genre tribute band that includes more than a few Doobie songs in their repertoire. “It doesn’t quite compute for me. It’s the chillest music to the least chill drug. They were innocuous on the surface, but pretty rock & roll in real life.”

Anyone who comes upon a vinyl copy of the Doobies’ 1972 album Toulouse Street , home to their breakthrough hit “Listen to the Music,” may be surprised to see what’s on the inside spread: a group photo recreating a New Orleans bordello, complete with naked band members (one covering up his own personal doobie with a hat) and at least one topless woman. “I think the photographer lit up a couple of joints and we had some booze,” Simmons says with a fond and only slightly embarrassed smile when he’s shown the photo. “I couldn’t see that the girl had her top off. By then we were so stoned and at half-mast that we thought the photo was funny or whatever.”

Told that the photo is still somewhat shocking all these decades later, co-founder and guitarist Tom Johnston is surprised. “Really?” he says with a chuckle. “Of all the other stuff we were doing, that was tame.”

In his own hotel suite in Vegas, Simmons is thinking back to his pre-Doobies band. “We were actually called the Pigfuckers,” he says. “But we couldn’t say that, so we were called Scratch.”

At 71, Simmons looks like a well-preserved version of his younger self: Long, stringy hair still glides down past his shoulders, and three silver earrings dangle off each ear. He’s always had the reputation as the most laid-back, easy-going Doobie, but his colorful history is never far away. Simmons remains a motorcycle fanatic — his laptop contains photos of the restored models at his home in Hawaii, which he happily shows off — and draped over a chair in his suite is a Harley Davidson jacket.

Since at least the time the Doobies formed in San Jose circa 1970, the city has been home to a chapter of the Hells Angels. Simmons, who did and still does exude a hippie-troubadour vibe, had enrolled in San Jose State to escape the draft. There, he met Johnston, a self-described “redneck from Central Valley” in California. Simmons and future Doobies bassist Tiran Porter played in a folkish trio in the San Jose area; Johnston was sharing a house in town with Hartman, who had moved there from the East Coast. Everyone remembers the volume on Johnston’s guitar. “When Johnston turned on, it was loud,” Hartman says . “Pretty soon the cops came and said, ‘You gotta stop.’ So we toned it down.” At least until the second jam: “Still too loud. The cops were called. They came back a second time: ‘Oh, crap.’”

In search of players who could fulfill their version of a band honoring their heroes Moby Grape — known for both bristling guitars and vocal harmonies — Johnston and Hartman, who looked a bit like hardened bikers themselves, began cajoling Simmons. Hartman recalls Simmons as being unsure of joining their tough-looking band. “Simmons was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so,’” he recalls. But after jamming with them at their house, Simmons realized that Johnston wanted more than just a typical heavy rock band, and he was in.

Johnston and Hartman had called their band Pud (“a lot of people think it has the other [sexual] connotation, but it was after a cartoon character,” clarifies Johnston), but they needed a new name for an upcoming gig with Simmons in tow. As they were tossing around other options, one of their housemates wandered in, saw them toking up, and suggested that they should call themselves the Doobie Brothers, since they smoked so much pot. “We said, ‘That’s a stupid name, but we’ll use it because we don’t have one,’” recalls Johnston. “It was probably the only time we were gonna use it.” Adds Simmons: “It was dumb, but it was cool in a way. We did smoke a lot of pot.”

The name stuck, and the unseasoned but hungry band took whatever gigs they could find, including pizza parlors. Little, however, matched the Chateau Liberté, a former stagecoach stop in the Santa Cruz mountains that was home to a raucous bar that attracted hippies and bikers alike. As the early version of the Doobies worked out their songs and sound, Angels prowled and the customers partied and hooked up. “It was a meat market for sure,” says Simmons. “There was no attempt to disguise love connections, if you know what I mean. There was a lot of hugging and grabbing and making out. A lot of screwing too, but out in the parking lot in the cars.” Recalls Hartman, “It was one of those places where you over-drink and step outside and throw up. It was beautiful, man!”

Before long, the Angels became part of the Doobies’ world. Johnston remembers the day a couple of them drove through the front door of his rented house with Hartman, parked in the living room, and asked the sleeping Doobies if they wanted to go play baseball — right then and there. “I don’t know how I talked my way out of that,” Johnston says.

Image aside, the Doobies had a surprisingly accessible sound. The combination of Johnston’s power chords and Simmons’ fingerpicking made for an unusual blend, as did their sandpaper-and-honey vocal amalgam. On the basis of a demo tape and aided by a friendship with Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape member Skip Spence, Warner Brothers signed them. “Tommy had a song called ‘Nobody,’ and I kept listening to it,” says producer Ted Templeman. “I thought, “Damn, I like this.’ And they had the most beautiful background vocals in the world.”

While working on the first Doobies album, Templeman, then a new producer working alongside the more experienced Lenny Waronker, was introduced to the other, rowdier side of the band. He recalls Johnston showing up with a biker chain hanging off his pants, and Hells Angels swigging Jack Daniels in the control room. One day, Hartman pulled out a gun, unnerving the producers. “It was a gag — a starter pistol,” says Hartman, who claims he was put up to the joke by their manager. “It scared the shit out of them so bad. I had no idea they were so sensitive or fragile. I can’t tell you how many times I apologized.” Templeman laughs it off now, but adds, “It didn’t make it any easier. There were lots of guns on that scene.”

The Doobie Brothers , their 1971 debut, was not a success; Hartman feels the label practically sabotaged its chances by choosing a cover photo that placed the drummer, who looked the most like an Angel at the time, front and center. Yet the record laid the foundation for their sound, which they cemented on the following year’s Toulouse Street . Johnston had written “Listen to the Music,” his response to the turmoil of the time. “It was influenced by the idea that music could be a language unto itself and for the leaders of the world, if you will,” he says. “From the Vietnam War to the Soviet Union to girlfriends or people in the hills, I thought if they used music instead of talking, they’d be a hell of a lot better off.”

With its mountain-stream-clear sound, the song cracked the Top 20, and with it, the Doobies suddenly roared out of the gate. With Johnston’s burly, Hungry-Man meal voice and songwriting very much at the helm, their streak continued with “Long Train Runnin’” and “China Grove” — indefatigable arena-rock singles that prompted the generally critical Pete Townshend to remark, “Their songs seem to just pop out of the radio speakers and grab at you.” The Doobies also began expanding their sonic palette, using synths on the joyful “Natural Thing” and bringing in a horn section and Arlo Guthrie for 1974’s expansive  What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. Simmons, who played James Taylor songs during his pre-Doobies club days, explored his own balladeer side on tracks like “I Cheat the Hangman.”

In 1974, they were almost derailed when DJs reportedly turned a cold shoulder to one line (“and the radio just seems to bring me down”) in their single “Another Park, Another Sunday,” which stalled on the charts. Johnston is still irked: “I thought that was really lame. I thought, ‘You’re gonna jerk it for that?’ It was about a guy who heard a song that was bringing him down when he lost the love of his life.” Luckily for the band, a DJ in Virginia, home to the Blackwater tributary , liked the flip side — Simmons’ New Orleans-inspired acoustic stomper, “Black Water” — and the song became their first Number One. Along with the Eagles, the Doobies were arguably the biggest rock band in America by then; their Best of the Doobies album would go on to sell 10 million copies.

To maintain that momentum, the band was kept on the road ceaselessly, and they let off steam in every Seventies rock & roll way imaginable. Johnston recalls driving a go-kart into a pool. A crew member who handled their pyro would construct home-made hand grenades out of flash powder and toss them out the windows of rental cars, blowing hubcaps off any vehicle near them. Templeman recalls watching as band members would crush up and snort what he calls “diet pills.”

In their hotel rooms, they’d remove the stuffing from mattresses, or cut lamps in half and put them back together. “I remember putting a TV on the longest extension cord and watching Johnny Carson’s face as it plunged down toward the swimming pool,” says Porter, who was out of work after Simmons joined the band but finally became a Doobie before Toulouse Street .

Taking advantage of their clout, they issued one backstage rider that demanded “six kinds of cheese, six kind of nuts, a carved turkey, German beer [and] German pastries.” One promoter noted that the Doobies were “the only group to take food and booze back to their hotel.” When the first DoobieLiner caught fire during a fuel pit stop in 1974, their fellow yacht rockers Seals & Crofts lent them their plane before the second DoobieLiner — the one that wound up as the setting for the Minute by Minute cover —was leased.

Yet starting about a year after “Listen to the Music” made them rock stars, the Doobies were in peril of unraveling. Johnston says he had ulcer issues since he was a teenager, and never-ending touring, crappy road food, and what he calls “a bad combination of no sleep and crazy, wild times” began to hobble him. His stomach a wreck, Johnston began to force himself to get through shows: At one gig in Arizona, he recalls, “You’d be playing and turn around and puke into a bucket and then turn around and keep playing.” Johnston’s condition forced the band to bail on a bunch of shows, with the band attributing the cancelations to “ill health” or, in one case, a pancreas infection.

Rumors began circulating that drugs played a major role in Johnston’s issues, which were only exacerbated when he and a friend were busted for heroin and weed near his hometown of Visalia, California, in late 1973. Asked if hard drugs were an issue, Johnston pauses. “A lot of drugs were a problem,” he says. “Booze too. All of it … Everybody partied to an extent. So whatever your weapon of choice was, it almost didn’t matter.” Templeman recalls visiting a very sick Johnston at home, but insists the frontman was never strung out. Whatever the issue was — and Hartman, for one, says he never received a straight answer — Johnston’s deteriorating condition was rattling. “There’s your career and life going down the drain,” says Hartman. “You got a front guy who’s faltering.”

In Shreveport, Louisiana, in the spring of 1975 — five shows into a tour to promote their fifth album, Stampede — the tumult caught up with them. Before their gig, Johnston again fell ill and was rushed to a hospital, leaving the band in the lurch. “He was in no shape to play… Ulcer is the main excuse,” says Porter. “I’m sure it had something to do with some of it.”

Johnston ended up in a hospital in Los Angeles, where he nearly died — his heart stopped temporarily — and was then forced to sit out the entire tour. “It was getting bad out there, but I didn’t know how bad,” Johnston says. “I didn’t have any control over it. I was major-league bummed that I had to come off the tour. I felt like I was screwing the band over.” Meanwhile, Simmons, now the de facto band leader, freaked. “When he didn’t come back, it was like, ‘Oh, shit, now what?’” Simmons says, still sounding dazed and confused 45 years later. “I was panicked.”

Fearing lawsuits over a cancelled tour, the Doobies scrambled. By then, they had expanded to include several new members, including drummer Keith Knudsen and guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the walrus-mustached player who had logged time with Steely Dan. Baxter had an idea: A singer and keyboard player he knew from those days was out of work now that Steely Dan had abruptly ceased touring, and he could probably fill in, at least temporarily.

All these years later , McDonald still looks like the last thing from a Doobie Brother. Simmons and the swarthy, mustached Johnston still exude an aura of reformed sinners, but in his hotel room, McDonald looks more like a distinguished professor on vacation.

Even in 1975, he stood apart from them: a kid from Missouri who had played in bands there before moving to L.A. in 1970, where his keyboard chops quickly made him part of the studio musician scene. One of his clients was David Cassidy, then the TV heartthrob of The Partridge Family, and pretty much the Doobies’ polar opposite.

In at least one way, McDonald was a born Doobie. In the druggy L.A. studios of the time, he realized, “If you were the guy who had a gram in your pocket, you were golden.” Using leftover per-diem money from road work, he’d buy coke and sell it to his friends. “Pretty penny-ante stuff,” he recalls. “Anything to pay the bills. That never worked out. I only wound up snorting it all.” In 1971, when he was 19, he was busted for dealing and, miraculously, says he had his sentence reduced to a misdemeanor. As he says now, “I wasn’t making the best choices in my life at that time.”

When Baxter left a message for him, McDonald was singing Top 40 covers (including Doobies songs) at the Trojan Room lounge in Glendale, California, living in in a garage apartment with a hot plate. With zero hesitation, McDonald flew to Louisiana, where he met the other Doobies for the first time and rehearsed with them for all of two days. He was so new to the big-time rock world that when he and his father drove together to the arena for that first show, McDonald didn’t realize there was special backstage access. They tried to enter by way of the main entrance, and it took them 20 minutes to find the right VIP door.

Singing a few of Johnston’s songs onstage — and adding the first-ever piano parts to the band’s live sound — McDonald helped the band get through the remainder of their tour. (Simmons taped a pick to his thumb so he could slam chords as hard as Johnston had.) He assumed the gig was temporary, but with Johnston not fully recovered, the Doobies were desperate for songs when they began making their next album. McDonald had already written a few, including “Takin’ It to the Streets,” inspired by his sister’s high-school thesis on inner-city social strata in America. “I was talking to her about it,” he recalls, “and remember saying at one point, people are going to take to the streets, and that’s how change will come about.”

Simmons had considered folding the band when Johnston was sidelined. The other members insisted on keeping going, and Simmons suggested that Templeman listen to a few songs by their keyboard player. The producer was worried about injecting a new voice into their established sound. But then Simmons told McDonald to play some of his songs for Templeman. “I was standing behind Mike, and Pat remembers me mouthing, ‘Oh my God,’” Templeman recalls.

Johnston did end up contributing a bit to the finished album, but starting with its title cut, 1976’s Takin’ It to the Streets was a showcase for McDonald, his husky voice, and the keyboard-based R&B melodies he was writing. No one knew if it would work, but as with Fleetwood Mac around the same time, the infusion of a brand-new lead singer into an established band clicked: “Takin’ It to the Streets” was a hit, and the Doobies’ unlikely second coming began.

Despite their smoother sound, more rooted in R&B and pop than Johnston’s blues and boogie, the Doobies’ road life hardly calmed down. As part of an onstage stunt, they invited along a gaggle of little people, who turned out to be even bigger partiers than the band. “We thought we were party fools,” says McDonald. “Those guys, we couldn’t hardly keep up with them. They were trouble.”

One night, McDonald, Porter, Knudsen, and writer Cameron Crowe accepted an invite to party at a fan’s house after a show. “I don’t remember the end of that evening,” McDonald confesses. “I remember we drank quite a bit.” If that scene sounds like something out of Almost Famous , it is: Crowe admits it was the inspiration behind a similar sequence in the movie. (The “I am a golden god” segment is pure Led Zep, though.) When they would invariably stumble back aboard the DoobleLiner, Donna, their regular flight attendant and wife of pilot Sam, would hand out packets of vitamins to bolster their energy. Sighs McDonald, “It was probably the one healthy thing I was doing out there on the road.”

During this time, Johnston was a fleeting presence in the band, and when it came time to making their next album, 1977’s Livin’ on the Fault Line , his disillusionment with their artistic makeover was emerging. “I decided I didn’t fit with what was going on,” says Johnston, who pulled a few songs he had submitted for the album and quit the band. “Tom didn’t feel like it was something he wanted to be part of,” says Simmons. “It could have been if he had given it an opportunity. But he was feeling outside of it. I don’t know if he was resentful. I can only imagine there was some kind of rub there.” Johnston retreated to northern California, where he laid low and regained his health (“I just went home and started playing softball and gaining weight”) until a few years later, when he returned with a solo album tellingly titled Everything You’ve Heard Is True .

In search of new songwriting partners, McDonald hooked up with Kenny Loggins. While Loggins didn’t know Johnston well, he sensed the feeling around the band at the time: “Tommy felt the Doobies was his band,” he says. “It was his sound, which was different from Michael’s. It would be Lennon resenting McCartney or vice versa — two radically different personalities.”

One day at McDonald’s house, McDonald and Loggins wrote “What a Fool Believes.” With its boppy keyboard and lyrics from two different viewpoints — a man who wants to believe in the future of a relationship and a woman who doesn’t — it was the pop crossover smash that had eluded the band. The song hit Number One, and the accompanying album, Minute by Minute went on to move 3 million copies (despite McDonald himself, in a sign of his shaky confidence at the time, agreeing with a friend back then that the LP was “the biggest piece of shit I ever heard”). Aretha Franklin covered “What a Fool Believes.” The song and album solidified their retooled sound and McDonald’s role as their new frontman and unexpected sex symbol. “I’ve always thought you were the cutest, foxiest and the most iresistable [sic] one!,” read one fan letter of the time. “If you get a haircut, could you give me a lock of it?” (“That was all publicist-managed stuff,” McDonald says now when told that their publicist shared those letters with Rolling Stone back in 1979.)

To Porter’s relief, the Doobies’ new sound led to something he’d never seen at Doobies shows before: more black fans in the seats. “They were going, ‘Hey, who’s this white guy who sounds black?’” he says. “A lot more of my people started showing up. I was like, ‘Yeah!”” Rod Stewart, who had barely socialized with the band when they opened for him and the Faces a few years before, was now spotted by the side of the stage, attentively watching McDonald sing.

Around this time, their new publicist — David Gest, later known as Liza Minnelli’s husband and manager — landed them speaking roles in an episode of What’s Happening!!, a hot sitcom centered around black teens living in Watts. In the episode, Rerun (played by Fred Berry) is coerced into bootlegging a Doobies show, and the band finds out and confronts him. Simmons and McDonald liked the idea; Porter, who is black, hated it. “I went on strike,” he says. “I didn’t want to go on a show about black people written by white people.” But the band wound up taping the show anyway, and to this day, people come up to them and ask, “Which Doobie you be?,” a line from the show. “David brought a lot of attention to the band from the strangest angles,” says McDonald. “And so much of the time, we’d sit and go, ‘You’re crazy — no one wants to do that.’”

Paradoxically, the Doobies saga grew more dramatic even as their music became silkier. McDonald was riddled with insecurities about his new role in the band and whether he could deliver. He drove the band crazy, making them cut “What a Fool Believes” in the studio more than 30 times before a final version was pieced together. “I was like, ‘I hate this fucking song,’” he recalls. “The band was completely disgusted by that point.” (Hartman agrees: “After 10 takes, you’re pretty much wiped out. There was an expectation that I don’t think was humanly possible.”) McDonald doesn’t deny his studio fastidiousness. “At times I became an asshole, because my basic fear was that I didn’t have what it took to do what people expected I could do for the band,” he says. “That was always my biggest fear, that what we were doing was not befitting a band like the Doobies.”

Meanwhile, McDonald and Baxter were proving to be combustible — in part because the guitarist tended toward flashier, more intricate solos and more conservative political views than the other band members — and after a tense Japanese tour, both Baxter and Hartman quit. “Everything was falling apart,” says Hartman. “I remember sitting in a rehearsal in California and hearing Michael say he didn’t want to get out his car because of some anxiety.”

To deal with a troubled marriage, Porter plunged into heavy cocaine use, which also helped him cope with what he felt was the band’s increasingly uninspiring music. “Simmons always used to accuse me of overplaying,” he says. “I’m playing like that because I’m bored!” Porter recalls the time when AC/DC opened for the Doobies in Florida. “Pat said, ‘They’re too loud,’” Porter recalls. “And I said, ‘I can remember when we were that loud, dude!’”

One can only imagine what was going through Johnston’s head at the time, especially when his solo career didn’t make the same impact as his work with the Doobies. In an interview in 1979, he said, “When I hear the name the Doobie Brothers and the music they’re playing, I shudder.” Asked about that quote now, Johnston demurs. “I don’t remember saying that,” he says. “I’m sure part of me was envious that they were having so much success.”

By the time the band made 1980’s One Step Closer , the Doobie personnel had reshuffled yet again. Three new members were aboard, including guitarist John McFee, who’d played on Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True . Decades later, the Yacht Rock Revue’s Niespodziani watched a performance from around this time and marveled at the changes. “I haven’t seen a band with so many people in and out so fast,” he says. “They’re slaying it. The band sounds incredible. But I’m looking around like, ‘How long has this guy or that guy been in the band?’”

Thrust into a wobbly but hugely popular band (“What a Fool Believes” won the Record of the Year Grammy), McFee found himself almost being choked onstage when an overzealous female fan grabbed his tie. Drummer Knudsen rushed over to untangle it and save him, but things weren’t any calmer in the studio. Drinking and partying had left McDonald a mess. “That was the album with ‘Real Love’?” he asks, sounding as if One Step Closer and its lone hit were indeed a blur. “I was not in very good shape during that whole album.”

McFee still sighs about that era when it comes up backstage at the Doobies’ Vegas show. “We just did the best we could,” says the guitarist, who says he refrained from illicit substances during the making of One Step Closer . “In retrospect, knowing what some of the guys were up to in terms of drug intake and stuff like that, there were things that probably hampered the process somewhat.”

Suddenly, the Doobie yacht was rudderless. Simmons, the lone original member left, lopped off his hair for a new-wavy look after his long hair kept getting tangled up in his motorcycle spokes, and he easily made the shift to more R&B-oriented material on later-period tracks like “Dependin’ on You” and “Echoes of Love.” But now that the band had relocated to Los Angeles, Simmons felt more distanced than ever from the other Doobies. “It was starting to feel like I’m not as much a part of this thing anymore,” he recalls, “and it’s turning into another kind of entity.” McDonald says Simmons called him to say he was leaving; Simmons feels it was McDonald who rang him . Whatever the case, the decision was made — to the shock of some of the other members — to fold the Doobies, not long after their long-sought Grammy moment. McDonald had already begun plotting a solo career. Plans for a new album, possibly with Robert John “Mutt” Lange producing, were tossed overboard.

The Doobies embarked on a farewell tour in the summer of 1982, but before it took place, the band went along with another of David Gest’s schemes. “Night of 100 Stars,” a $1000-a-seat benefit at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, found them on the same stage as actors and entertainers of the previous generation: George Burns, Bette Davis, William Shatner, Ginger Rogers, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly. Again, the band gamely went along with the idea, but Simmons didn’t participate, and McDonald sensed an era had ended. “I knew this was no longer the Doobie Brothers,” McDonald recalls. “And I said, ‘Guys, we all kind of know what I’m about to say — we’re not the Doobies anymore. We’re the guys who are left.’”

Backstage, someone told McDonald that Elizabeth Taylor and Lauren Bacall would like to speak with him. McDonald was thrilled: Could these legendary actress know who the Doobies were? When McDonald was brought over to them, Taylor motioned to him. “They both giggled and Elizabeth Taylor said, ‘Do you know where we could get some alcohol?’” McDonald recalls. “They weren’t allowing any alcohol backstage. I said, ‘Gosh, I don’t have any but I’ll ask around.’ They figured we must have something in our dressing room.”

The bashed-up rental cars and motel pools of their Seventies heyday are gone, along with the DoobieLiner, which was long ago sold for parts. The Venetian Resort, which looms like a fluorescent monolith over part of the Vegas strip, features a gold-plated entrance with cathedral-high ceilings and a man-made canal with gondola rides. It’s a long way from the funky wood cabins of the Chateau Liberté, and McDonald, for one, is fine with that. “ Thank God for casinos,” he says, settling into a plush chair in his room. “Our demographic started going to casinos. Back then it was, ‘No way — I’m not gonna play on some fucking cruise ship!’ But here we are.”

In the late Eighties, after some of their solo careers petered out, the pre-McDonald lineup reunited and returned to their louder, amps-cranked roots. Simmons even grew out his hair again. “It’s a pain in the ass when you have short hair, because I pretty much have to cut it every couple of weeks in order to look halfway decent,” he says. “You gotta comb it and stuff. This is so much easier, not having to think about it.” They’ve since made a few new albums: The most recent LP of originals, 2010’s World Gone Crazy , tried to update their sound with drum loops and other effects. They’ve also toured pretty much nonstop, despite both Hartman and Porter once again bailing after a few years. (“Same shit, different decade,” Porter says of the road grind.) Along the way, a number of founding or later members — bassist David Shogren, drummers Knudsen and Michael Hossack, keyboardist Cornelius Bumpus, and percussionist Bobby LaKind — have died; in the Nineties, Bumpus, Shogren, and drummer Chet McCracken went on the road as “the Original Doobie Brothers” (and other variations) before the actual band shut them down.

Once the current Doobies wrapped up their Vegas residency this year, plans called for them and McDonald to begin rehearsals for the reunion tour, and in February, McDonald has made a quick pit stop into Vegas, on his way to a gig in Florida. He wants to meet up with the Doobies’ touring keyboardist, Bill Payne, to figure out which parts each man will play onstage. The thought of McDonald and Johnston sharing the stage for the first tour since 1976 has created some industry buzz, and fans like Niespodziani are psyched: “This incarnation will be the closest thing to a full-career show.” The tour also has the potential to be unusually profitable: With McDonald in tow, the group can look forward to commanding $300,000 a night, up from $100,000, according to one promoter working with them.

But no sooner has McDonald landed in Vegas than some of the old Doobie chaos returns. The current touring lineup of Johnston, Simmons, and McFee, backed by their latest supporting players, is one week into its Venetian residency when Johnston is suddenly taken ill. This time, instead of puking, he’s dogged by a dry cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath. Rolling Stone is the first to break the news to McDonald. “No, what happened?” he says, taken aback. “I didn’t know. I hope he’s okay.”

The illness is so serious that the band winds up canceling the rest of its Vegas run (and all of Johnston’s interview time), and returning to their homes in California and Hawaii. Johnston’s symptoms sounded similar to those for the coronavirus, and Johnston now says he may well have had Covid-19, although he wasn’t tested at the time. “Nobody was even talking out testing at that point in February,” he says, months later. “So it could have been [Covid]. We’ll never know.” He says a few Doobie crew members may have also contracted the virus in Vegas.

By the time we speak again, the Doobies’ 50th anniversary schedule has been shut down, along with nearly all other live music in 2020. Plans for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction had called for some of the band’s past members, including Porter, Hartman, and Baxter, to attend, and an onstage reunion performance wasn’t out of the question; now those plans are off, too, with the ceremony replaced by a virtual event in the fall (it ended up airing on HBO on November 7th). Even an EP of new songs the band had worked on with producer John Shanks — which included Johnston’s big-rock “American Dream” and Simmons’ folksier “Cyclone” — has been delayed from its planned release in time with the tour. On top of it all, the band filed what seemed like a partly humorous lawsuit against Bill Murray for allegedly not getting their okay to use “Listen to the Music” in ads for his golf apparel company.

As the lockdown dragged on, the band opted for filmed online performances from their separate homes, and in fact, they’ve just made the first one of those with McDonald, playing “Takin’ It to the Streets” and the Staple Singers’ “Freedom Highway,” whose message (“March each and every day/Made up my mind and I won’t turn around”) could easily apply to the protests of today.

McDonald acknowledges that some older Doobie fans are probably much more conservative-leaning than the members of the band. “We’ve talked about that,” he says in October. “A lot of our fans are the older biker crowd, and some of them may be Trumpsters — even though it seems to be not be in their best interest whatsoever, in terms of the potential impact on their life. But the whole point of musicians using their platform is to tell the truth. If art isn’t about the truth, what good is it?”

One issue on which the Doobies themselves are more divided: the yacht rock question. Porter feels the term is “pretty dismissive.” Simmons, who rarely flashes even a semblance of annoyance, is noticeably irked when it comes up. “It’s a little bit of a lightweight perception,” he scoffs. “I don’t know anyone who has yachts. Mike doesn’t. I don’t think Donald Fagen has a yacht . It’s kind of embarrassing even to be included in that. It’s a demeaning concept.”

Informed of the term for the first time, Hartman — who has largely been out of the business since the Nineties — erupts with laughter when it’s explained to him. “Oh my God, that’s perfect!” he roars. “I’ll be laughing for the next three weeks!”

In his room, McDonald grins when the phrase is brought up and says he’s even seen the “Yacht Rock” YouTube parody series that helped launch the revival of interest in the genre. “It’s funny as hell,” he says. “It’s fun to make fun of yourself. My kids couldn’t wait to show me that Internet episodic thing, and we all got a chuckle out of it. It was very funny. But the fact that it became a genre of music was a surprise, even to me.”

Realizing it’s time to meet with Payne, McDonald jams a Billabong cap on his head, heads out, and weaves his way through the Venetian Resort. In the crowded pre-virus casino, no one — especially those plopped down groggily in front of the slot machines — recognizes him. During his entire walk, and even outside the hotel, he’s stalked by yacht rock on the PA: songs like Firefall’s “You Are the Woman” and Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life.”

McDonald flashes one of his what-can-you-do? grins. “There you go,” he says.

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Yacht Rock Revue

• July 7, 2023 Setlist

Yacht Rock Revue Setlist at The Rooftop at Pier 17, New York, NY, USA

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• It Keeps You Runnin' ( The Doobie Brothers  cover) Play Video
• Escape (The Piña Colada Song) ( Rupert Holmes  cover) Play Video
• Somebody's Baby ( Jackson Browne  cover) Play Video
• Breezin' ( George Benson  cover) Play Video
• Guilty ( Bee Gees  cover) Play Video
• Sailing ( Christopher Cross  cover) Play Video
• Steal Away ( Robbie Dupree  cover) Play Video
• Bad Tequila Play Video
• Jump ( Van Halen  cover) Play Video
• Sister Golden Hair ( America  cover) Play Video
• Maneater ( Daryl Hall & John Oates  cover) Play Video
• Reelin' in the Years ( Steely Dan  cover) Play Video
• Your Smiling Face ( James Taylor  cover) Play Video
• Brandy ( Looking Glass  cover) Play Video
• Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) ( Christopher Cross  cover) Play Video
• Africa ( Toto  cover) Play Video
• Dancing Queen ( ABBA  cover) Play Video
• Peg ( Steely Dan  cover) Play Video
• Step Play Video
• Rosanna ( Toto  cover) Play Video
• Smooth Operator ( Sade  cover) Play Video
• He's So Shy ( The Pointer Sisters  cover) Play Video
• Heart to Heart ( Kenny Loggins  cover) Play Video
• Lonesome Loser ( Little River Band  cover) Play Video
• Ride Like the Wind ( Christopher Cross  cover) Play Video
• Baker Street ( Gerry Rafferty  cover) Play Video
• Lido Shuffle ( Boz Scaggs  cover) Play Video
• She's Gone ( Daryl Hall & John Oates  cover) Play Video
• You Can Call Me Al ( Paul Simon  cover) Play Video
• More Than a Feeling ( Boston  cover) Play Video

Edits and Comments

5 activities (last edit by oddi , 5 Jan 2024, 22:07 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Africa by Toto
• Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) by Christopher Cross
• Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty
• Brandy by Looking Glass
• Breezin' by George Benson
• Dancing Queen by ABBA
• Escape (The Piña Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes
• Guilty by Bee Gees
• He's So Shy by The Pointer Sisters
• Heart to Heart by Kenny Loggins
• It Keeps You Runnin' by The Doobie Brothers
• Jump by Van Halen
• Lido Shuffle by Boz Scaggs
• Lonesome Loser by Little River Band
• Maneater by Daryl Hall & John Oates
• More Than a Feeling by Boston
• Peg by Steely Dan
• Reelin' in the Years by Steely Dan
• Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross
• Rosanna by Toto
• Sailing by Christopher Cross
• She's Gone by Daryl Hall & John Oates
• Sister Golden Hair by America
• Smooth Operator by Sade
• Somebody's Baby by Jackson Browne
• Steal Away by Robbie Dupree
• You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon
• Your Smiling Face by James Taylor
• Bad Tequila

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Yacht Rock Revue Gig Timeline

• Jul 02 2023 The Windjammer Isle of Palms, SC, USA Start time: 7:05 PM 7:05 PM
• Jul 06 2023 Leader Bank Pavilion Boston, MA, USA Start time: 7:45 PM 7:45 PM
• Jul 07 2023 The Rooftop at Pier 17 This Setlist New York, NY, USA Start time: 7:40 PM 7:40 PM
• Jul 08 2023 The Stone Pony Summer Stage Asbury Park, NJ, USA Add time Add time
• Jul 12 2023 Cape Cod Melody Tent Hyannis, MA, USA Add time Add time

12 people were there

• chadwilcomb
• echoofwhomever
• fivepastthree75
• George04033836
• Gordon_Zola
• milkymanchester
• rainandsnow98

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<div style="text-align: center;" class="setlistImage"><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/yacht-rock-revue/2023/the-rooftop-at-pier-17-new-york-ny-23a72c17.html" title="Yacht Rock Revue Setlist The Rooftop at Pier 17, New York, NY, USA 2023, Reverse Sunset" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=23a72c17" alt="Yacht Rock Revue Setlist The Rooftop at Pier 17, New York, NY, USA 2023, Reverse Sunset" style="border: 0;" /></a> <div><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=23a72c17&amp;step=song">Edit this setlist</a> | <a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/yacht-rock-revue-63dc3253.html">More Yacht Rock Revue setlists</a></div></div>

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[url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/yacht-rock-revue/2023/the-rooftop-at-pier-17-new-york-ny-23a72c17.html][img]https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=23a72c17[/img][/url] [url=https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=23a72c17&amp;step=song]Edit this setlist[/url] | [url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/yacht-rock-revue-63dc3253.html]More Yacht Rock Revue setlists[/url]

Tour Update

Marquee memories: sleater-kinney.

• Sleater‐Kinney
• Mar 29, 2024
• Mar 28, 2024
• Mar 27, 2024
• Mar 26, 2024
• Mar 25, 2024
• Mar 24, 2024
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