Why Steely Dan's Donald Fagen Cursed Out and Hung Up on Yacht Rock Documentary Director: 'Go F--- Yourself'

Garret Price reached out to the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to interview him about the genre for 'Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary'

Some things are better left unsaid. So goes the old saying — and the title of a 1985 hit by Daryl Hall & John Oates. And when you're working on a passion project about a genre of music that was cheekily created long after the genre stopped being popular, some things are apparently better left unasked, too.

Director Garret Price learned this the hilarious way when he was working on his new HBO Films documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, premiering Nov. 13 at the DOC NYC festival.

At one point in the documentary, Price rings up Donald Fagen, 76, the surviving full-time member of Steely Dan, the landmark '70s group behind yacht rock classics like "Ricki Don't Lose My Number" and "Peg," to see if he would like to be interviewed for the documentary. The conversation, which is heard in audio, does not go down well.

After Price introduces himself and politely asks Fagen for an interview about "this genre," Fagen's reaction is priceless.

Fagen: "And what genre is that?"

Price: "Um, yacht rock."

Fagen: "Oh, yacht rock. Well, I tell you what. Why don't you go f--- yourself?"

Beep, beep, beep.

Price confirms to PEOPLE that the conversation and the hang-up are "100% real," and says that despite the dramatic end to the phone call, Fagen's manager immediately called him back and granted permission to use six Steely Dan songs in the documentary.

"I think it's a wink," Price says of Fagen's colorful reaction. "It's like, 'I get it. I understand how important this name ["yacht rock"] is to our music. But I'm gonna let you know how I feel about that.' It's him being him."

The documentary explores a genre of music that falls under a rubric that was coined decades after the style of music had been replaced on the charts by new wave, hair metal and other emerging '80s sounds on MTV, which Price calls the "antagonist" of the doc.

The term "yacht rock" originated in a 12-episode online video series called Yacht Rock that aired between 2005 and 2010 and lovingly lampooned the late '70s/ early '80s fusion of soft rock, jazz and R&B and the (almost exclusively) West Coast-based male musicians who shaped it.

It was a style of music perfect to be listened to while sipping expensive champagne on an expensive boat, hence the moniker. Steely Dan were the godfathers of yacht rock. The members of Toto were its architects. Doobie Brothers singer Michael McDonald was its voice. And Kenny Loggins was its poster boy.

"Yacht rock to me is a very relaxing feeling. It's like the singers are all saying, 'Hey, it's going to be OK," comedian Fred Armisen says in the documentary.

Some of its other leading practitioners were post-Tom Johnston–era, mid- to late-'70s Doobie Brothers (epitomized by 1979's chart-topping, Grammy-winning "What a Fool Believes"), Christopher Cross, Seals & Croft, England Dan & John Ford Coley, Robbie Dupree and Boz Scaggs, as well as Black artists including George Benson, Al Jarreau, Grover Washington Jr. and even Michael Jackson, whose 1983 single "Human Nature" was co-written by Toto's Steve Porcaro.

Daryl Hall and John Oates, as the doc explains, were more blue-eyed soul, but they made the yacht rock list with their 1981 No. 1 single "Kiss on My List."

The coining of the term "yacht rock" led to the resurgence of the type of music it described and the musicians who played it. "It's kind of the ultimate comeback," Price says. "There's a rise, a fall and a resurrection."

Related: Steely Dan's Donald Fagen Apologizes for 'Screwup' After Aimee Mann Said She Was Dropped from Tour

Although Fagen, whose Steely Dan partner, Walter Becker, died in 2017, declined Price's invitation, a number of yacht rock practitioners pop up in the documentary to reminisce about the music that made them millions, including McDonald, Loggins, Cross, David Pack from Ambrosia and the surviving members of Toto. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson also shows up from time to time to weigh in.

The Yacht Rock web series creator JD Ryznar and host Steve Huey also appear in the documentary to talk about the genre that they, in a sense, helped create and popularize without ever playing a note. "It's high class music," Ryznar says.

Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary will debut Nov. 29 on HBO and be available to stream on Max, following it's Nov. 13 premiere at the DOC NYC festival.