Michael McDonald recalls his stoned reaction to Rick Moranis’ parody

If we had a hall of fame for individual singers who can’t be duplicated but are often imitated, it would be Michael McDonald, the Doobie Brothers singer who pioneered classics like “What a Fool Believes” and “Minute by Minute.” definitely in it.

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake have tried it with him. It has that too Family man. But the award for most hilarious Michael McDonald has to go to Rick Moranis. Back to the early 80s, the future Honey, I shrunk the kids The star spoofed the iconic Doobie Brother in an SCTV skit and nailed it.

McDonald, 72, talks about the SCTV parody in Yacht Rock: A Documentarywhich premiered on HBO on November 29th and is currently streaming on Max. The documentary pays homage to the retroactively named mix of soft rock, jazz and R&B of the late ’70s and early ’80s that made artists like Kenny Loggins, Toto and McDonald superstars.

Sitting next to his friend and fellow yacht rock legend Christopher Cross in the film, McDonald remembers the first time he saw the SCTV sketch with Moranis as McDonald.

“We were in a hotel, just sitting there smoking a joint, and in the middle of it I just said, ‘I think I have to go. I’m a little too high,’ and I said, ‘I’m going to lie down,'” McDonald says in the documentary. “So I went into my room and left the TV on and when I walked in there was SCTV on and I thought maybe I was hallucinating.”

“The whole time I was sitting there I was thinking, ‘Is this really happening or am I just going to lose it?’ … And years later, Rick Moranis apologized to me because I guess he wondered if I was offended by it or something. I said, “Quite the opposite.” ”

Yacht Rock didn’t get its name until more than 20 years later through a web series titled Yacht Rock which premiered in 2005. The mockumentary’s 12 episodes were spread over five years and featured various actors playing yacht rock legends such as Loggins, Cross and McDonald.

“My son couldn’t wait to show me what he found on the internet and it was hysterical,” McDonald remembers. “I couldn’t deny it was funny. I found it kind of scary at the time how they came up with these personalities that more or less had some basis in the truth, whether they knew it or not.”

“I always found it kind of flattering when people made fun of it because it obviously impressed someone. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter at this point.”

Loggins, who also appears in the documentary, reacted differently – at least initially. It took him a minute to realize this Yacht Rock The web series laughed with him, not at him.

“At first I felt a little offended, like we were being made fun of,” he admits. “But then I started to understand that it was kind of a completely backwards way of honoring us.”

“And it was pretty funny, this whole sort of alternate reality story that they were creating. They had defined what we were doing as a genre. We hadn’t really seen it that way. For us, it was just the next logical step in making pop music.”

Yacht Rock: A Documentary is now streaming on Max.