The Lost Prince of Yacht Rock: In 1978 he was music’s next big thing. Then his album bombed, he began a long slide into obscurity, and a bizarre fraud sent him to prison. Will Dane Donohue finally get his encore? (Keith Barry, March 25, 2021, Narratively)
Donohue’s only album fits squarely into a genre that’s now commonly called “yacht rock,” a neologism for a sound you’re probably familiar with even if you weren’t alive in the 1970s. Think Michael McDonald’s husky “I Keep Forgettin’” or the shuffle beat of Toto’s “Rosanna.” The genre has cycled through popularity, ridicule, nostalgia and respect, all the way back to popularity again: There’s a “yacht rock” station on SiriusXM that plays ’70s soft rock hits, and hipsters in captain’s hats sing Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” at karaoke. There’s even been a yacht rock–themed Peloton workout.
Since its release in 1978, Dane Donohue has gained a cult following among yacht rock fans. That’s because it’s a seminal work in the development of the genre, says “Hollywood” Steve Huey, a former AllMusic critic. Huey would know: Along with JD Ryznar, David B. Lyons and Hunter Stair, he co-created the mockumentary that gave yacht rock its name. They also hosted the Beyond Yacht Rock podcast, and they are writing a book about the genre too.
“You can hear this older kind of David Geffen, Asylum kind of sound — it sounds like the whole Laurel Canyon kind of scene, the early ’70s stuff,” Huey says, referring to the Los Angeles neighborhood where folk-rockers like the Mamas & the Papas and Joni Mitchell lived in the ’60s and early ’70s, and where the Eagles honed their sound. You could mistake the first few songs on Donohue’s album for Jackson Browne. But then you hit songs like “Woman” or “Can’t Be Seen,” and it’s a total paradigm shift. “You can also hear where the music is going, where the Southern California sound is about to go over the next few years.” More horns, more rhythm, more jazzy chord progressions.
Dane Donohue was lucky enough to be in the studio at an important moment in the L.A. music scene, when studio musicians started merging the tight ensemble work of funk and Motown, the screaming guitar solos of rock, the creativity of jazz, the rhythms of Rio, the blues-tinged R&B of Stax, and the introspective singer-songwriter melodies of the Laurel Canyon era, while superstar producers started using the latest technology to make slick, flawless recordings. And Donohue’s voice — which blended the airy twanginess of a Nashville tearjerker with the drama and clarity of a Broadway first act finale — was an ideal vessel to cross over between the old and new worlds of Southern California soft rock.
Yacht rock lyrics tend to deal with divorce, male loneliness and suburban ennui — a far cry from the vitality of war protests and civil rights anthems of a decade earlier. But more important, yacht rock is a sound, and that sound was defined by the tight-knit group of studio musicians who inadvertently created the genre. The guys behind yacht rock — and with the exception of a handful of backup singers, it was always guys — were among the most talented in the business. They made names for themselves as “first call” musicians, who artists and producers would specifically request for their albums. And the best of the best played on Dane Donohue.
Critics dismissed what came out of the Southern California studios as radio-friendly soft rock, but it permeated popular music for nearly a decade, its influence seeping into every genre from disco to hair metal. Some of the musicians on Donohue’s album were already famous, while others would go on to write, record on or produce some of the best-known songs of the 20th century. Put together, they would win more than 30 Grammy awards during their varied careers.
