When Christopher Cross burst onto the music scene at the end of 1979 with his Grammy-winning self-titled debut album, he seemed like a banker or someone who’d be selling insurance door-to-door. He didn’t look anything like your average rock star.
He sounded even less like one. Although he was weaned on the sounds of ’70s classic-rock gods Steely Dan, his mellow, easy-listening 1980 No. 1 hit “Sailing” was like a breezy lullaby that eased audiences into a post-disco reverie.
But as Cross himself explains in the new filmYacht Rock: A Dockumentary, he was actually a lot more hardcore than he sounded or looked. In fact, his massive debut album might never have existed at all had it not been for his knack for selling drugs — and indulging in them, too.
HBO
“The original demos I did, all the songs ended up on the record,” Cross, 73, says in the documentary, which premiered …