The annual DOC NYC film festival is underway now, and continues through December 1. I covered this year’s virtually, with access to the online portal and plenty of screeners, and here are some highlights of the music-related documentaries that were shown there:
Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary
Here’s what’s funny about yacht rock: Like soft rock and hair metal, it’s not a musical genre that exists in any real way. No one called it that when the music was popular, but rather adopted that name many years after the fact.
That said, this documentary about the style is a whole lot of fun.
Directed by Garret Price, who made the outstanding Love Antosha, documentary about Anton Yelchin a few years ago, it traces the history of yacht rock, mostly notably in the stories of Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, Toto, and Kenny Loggins, while including interviews with several of the surviving participants (not Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, though, who is heard in a phone call profanely rejecting the filmmakers’ interview request.) One musician asks how this type of music even got its name, asking, “where’s my yacht?”
And while yacht rock and soft rock aren’t exactly the same thing, this covers a lot of the same ground as last year’s Sometimes When We Touch docuseries, including the part about how hip-hop artists all started sampling the music at the same time.
The Yacht Rock film will debut on HBO and Max on November 29, as part of the Bill Simmons-produced Music Box series, which a couple of years ago aired the fantastic Listening to Kenny G.
Diane Warren: Relentless
You almost certainly know Diane Warren’s name, likely from all of the times it’s been read out loud at awards shows. If she ever writes or produces a Broadway show, she’ll have a shot at EGOT.
She wrote such anthems as “If I Could Turn Back Time,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” “Because You Loved Me,” several of Aerosmith’s hits in the ‘90s, and countless others.
The new documentary tells her entire life story, which is much more intriguing that you may have known: It includes everything from a not-very-supportive mother to life spent as a lifelong bachelorette.
Another continuing theme? Warren was nominated for competitive songwriting Oscars 15 different times without ever winning, although she did collect an honorary Oscar in 2022. Such long-awaited wins tend to lead to memorable moments, which is another reason why it’s inexplicable why the Academy doesn’t include those as part of the main ceremony.
There’s no word yet on a release date.
Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf
Here’s a pretty straightforward boomer rock doc, about the band that gave us the late 1960s hits “Born to be Wild” (which was in Easy Rider) and “Magic Carpet Ride,” while led by German-Canadians John Kay and Nick St. Nicholas.
Cameron Crowe may appear as an interview subject, but he’s not the director or the interviewer; the filmmaker is Oliver Schwehm, who goes through the band’s trajectory from Canada to Los Angeles, their consequential but brief heyday, and the band’s ultimate breakup.
As with most projects about the culture of the 1960s, it’s striking just how long ago that was. John Kay, after all, is 80 years old, and St. Nicholas is 83. Still, if you’re a fan of that particular rock era, you’re going to enjoy this.
There’s no word on distribution plans for the Steppenwolf film
