Michael McDonald Was Stoned the First Time He Saw Rick Moranis' Spoof of Him on SCTV: 'Thought I Was Hallucinating'

If we had a Hall of Fame for unique singers who can’t be copied but are often imitated, Michael McDonald, the lead singer of the Doobie Brothers who powered classics like “What a Fool Believes” and “Minute by Minute,” would definitely be in it.

He liked Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. That’s right Family guy. But the award for funniest Michael McDonald has to go to Rick Moranis. Early 80s, the future Honey, I cut back on the kids star spoofed the legendary Doobie Brother in an SCTV skit and hit it off.

McDonald, 72, discusses the SCTV parody at Yacht Rock: Documentarywhich premiered on HBO on November 29 and is currently airing on Max. The documentary pays tribute to the retroactively titled blend of soft rock, jazz and R&B in the late ’70s and early ’80s that made superstars out of acts like Kenny Loggins, Toto and McDonald.

Michael McDonald performing on Soul Train in 1982.

Soul Train/Getty/Courtesy of HBO

Sitting next to his friend and fellow yachting rock legend Christopher Cross in the film, McDonald recalls the first time he saw the SCTV skit in which Moranis played McDonald.

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

“The whole time I was sitting there, I was thinking, ‘Is this really happening or am I just losing it?’… And years later, Rick Moranis apologized to me because I guess he was wondering if I was offended or something. ‘Quite the opposite, I got a lot of mileage out of it.’ ”

Yacht rock wouldn’t get its name until more than 20 years later, via a web series titled Yacht Rock which debuted in 2005. The 12-episode mockumentary spanned five years, with a variety of actors portraying yacht rock legends such as Loggins, Cross and McDonald.

Michael McDonald (left) and Christopher Cross in ‘Yacht Rock: The Documentary’.

Courtesy of HBO

“My son couldn’t wait to show me this thing he found on the Internet, and he was hysterical,” McDonald recalls. “I couldn’t deny that it was funny. I thought it was strange at the time how they invented these personalities that more or less had some basis of truth, whether they knew it or not.”

“I always thought it was kind of flattering to be made fun of because it obviously made an impression on someone. Whether it’s good or bad at that point doesn’t really matter.

Michael McDonald in ‘Yacht Rock: Documentary’.

Courtesy of HBO

Loggins, who also appears in the documentary, had a different reaction — at least at first. It took him a minute to realize that Yacht Rock the web series was laughing with him, not at him.”At first I felt a little insulted, like we were being mocked,” he admits. “But then I started to see that it was a bit of a hell of a way to honor us.”

“It was pretty funny, the whole kind of alternate reality history that they were creating. They took what we were doing and defined it as a genre. We didn’t really see it that way. For us, it’s just the next logical step in making pop music.”

Yacht Rock: Documentary now streaming on Max.

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Source: HIS Education