When Christopher Cross burst onto the music scene on the finish of 1979 along with his Grammy-winning self-titled debut album, he appeared like a banker or somebody who’d be promoting insurance coverage door-to-door. He did not look something like your common rock star.
He sounded even much less like one. Though he was weaned on the sounds of ’70s classic-rock gods Steely Dan, his mellow, easy-listening 1980 No. 1 hit “Crusing” was like a breezy lullaby that eased audiences right into a post-disco reverie.
However as Cross himself explains within the new movieYacht Rock: A Dockumentary, he was really much more hardcore than he sounded or regarded. The truth is, his huge debut album may by no means have existed in any respect had it not been for his knack for promoting medicine — and indulging in them, too.
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“The unique demos I did, all of the songs ended up on the document,” Cross, 73, says within the documentary, which premiered Nov. 13 on the DOC NYC competition. “I financed my unique songs by promoting weed. I had a really profitable weed enterprise, and I purchased a tape machine and a few consoles and stuff and invested in a studio in Austin.”
He ended up sending his tape to the unsuitable particular person at Warner Bros. Data — an assistant who favored it a lot that he went to lunch with Lenny Waronker, then head of the label’s A&R division, and compelled him to take heed to the tape within the automotive.
“Lenny advised me years later that had I simply despatched it to A&R, it might have been rejected outright, as a result of they weren’t actually accepting something. So it was fairly serendipitous that I despatched it to the unsuitable man,” Cross says.
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He would have a short-lived however impactful profession. His debut album offered 5 million copies, produced 4 hit singles (“Trip Just like the Wind,” “Crusing,” “By no means Be the Identical” and “Say You will Be Mine”) and gained 5 Grammys, together with Album of the 12 months. His fifth single, 1981’s “Arthur’s Theme (Greatest That You Can Do),” would hit No. 1 and win an Oscar.
By the mid ’80s, Cross’ chart period was just about over, regardless of its auspicious begin on the flip of the last decade. Like his profession, his debut album’s first single, “Trip Just like the Wind,” which went all the best way to No. 2 on Billboard‘s Scorching 100 and have become a yacht rock traditional (with Doobie Brother and lifelong pal Michael McDonald on backing vocals), additionally had drug-fueled beginnings.
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“I used to be enjoying at a membership in Houston. We have been doing ‘[Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five]’ by [Paul] McCartney of Wings, and in the midst of that tune, I began doing this [mimics the driving musical hook of ‘Ride Like the Wind’] and other people would go loopy. They began dancing and transferring round. It simply appeared to actually join with the viewers, so we’d simply jam on that riff.”
He continues: “So then we drove from Houston all the way down to Austin to document, and I used to be sitting within the entrance seat of the van and had taken acid, and I wrote the phrases to ‘Trip Just like the Wind,’ driving from Houston to Austin, on acid.”
Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary will debut Nov. 29 on HBO and be accessible to stream on Max, following its Nov. 13 premiere on the DOC NYC competition.
