The Yacht Rock Book by Greg Prato;

Author:Greg Prato;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1)
Published: 2018-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Christopher Cross, ‘Sailing’ (from Christopher Cross, 1979; released as a single in 1980)

CHRISTOPHER CROSS I was just at home sitting in this cheap apartment, sitting at the table. I remember coming up with the verse and chorus, and the lyrics to the first verse of the chorus all came out. These tunings, like Joni used to say, they get you in this sort of trance, so all that came out at once: ‘It’s not far down to paradise ... ’ The chorus just sort of came out. So I got up and wandered around the apartment thinking, Wow, that’s pretty fuckin great. I thought, That’s really cool. So then I sat down and had to try to come up with other stuff to make the rest of the song, but I thought I had something there.

Then it took about two years before I had a bridge to that song, because the modality of the modal tuning thing—it gets pretty linear, and you’ve got to be careful. There are writers—I won’t mention who—whose songs can get kind of boring because everything’s [in] this modality. I knew I needed to lift the song out of that modality in the bridge and make key changes. It took about two years before I came up with the bridge that changes all the keys to where it lifts, but it was a pretty special moment.

They released the single after ‘Ride Like The Wind.’ When Mo Ostin with Warner Bros wanted to release it as a single, I thought he was out of his mind, because I thought the song was way too introspective to be a hit. But subsequently, over the years, writers have been very gracious to say to me that the cool thing about ‘Sailing’ is that it’s an artistic song that was a hit. And writers that I’ve talked to say that’s hard to do: write a song that has credibility that’s also popular. So that was one of the really cool moments.

That’s the song that I feel I wrote by myself that’s really good. But there were songs on the record that I don’t think really hold up. And that’s why, over the years, I’ve started to work with Rob [Meurer] and work with other collaborators, because I wanted to get everything at that level. ‘Say You’ll Be Mine,’ I think, is pretty disposable. It’s not a particularly interesting song. So many of the songs, like ‘Minstrel Gigolo’ and ‘Light Is On,’ I think they’re cool. ‘The Light Is On’ is pretty much stream-of-consciousness. I really have no idea what it means. It’s about something, probably. And ‘Minstrel Gigolo,’ I wish that had more words. It doesn’t have a lot of words—I sort of repeat the verse. Now we work much harder and try to say more than that.

‘Say You’ll Be Mine’ is one that I don’t think is particularly good, as much as I love Nicolette Larson and [enjoyed doing] the duet with her. It’s funny, because Warners was really on the fence about signing me, and they still didn’t think the song was very hip.

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