In the premiere episode of Fox’s Family Guy Season 18, titled Yacht Rocky, Peter’s employers announce that due to cutbacks they would have to let two employees go. Peter falls ill due to stress over fears that he is the one who will lose his job, and he ends up in the hospital. To help him relax, his doctor recommends Yacht Rock music. After the Griffins fall in love with the music, they learn about a Yacht Rock Cruise and decide to join it.
They board the boat, but a piece of bad news damps their high spirits. Peter asks the porter whether the singer and songwriter Bob Welch is on board. The porter tells him Bob Welch is not on board because he died in 2012.
Peter is overwhelmed with emotion when he learns that Welch died in 2012 and tears stream down his face. Trembling with emotion, he says he needs to be alone and runs to his room.
We next see him lying on his back in bed while recovering from the shock of the bad news. The others, Lois, Meg, Chris, and baby Stewie, join him in the room, and everyone is sad. But baby Stewie asks the question many fans must have been wondering.
“Who the h**l is Bob Welch?”
Who was Bob Welch?
Bob Welch was a musician born in Hollywood, California, on August 31, 1945. He died on June 7, 2012.
His father was Robert L. Welch, a screenwriter, and movie producer, and his mother was singer and actress Templeton Fox, who was known for playing roles in several films and TV shows from the 1960s and 1970s.
Welch took an interest in music from early in life and learned to play instruments, including the guitar and clarinet. He was interested in R&B, jazz, and rock music. After high school, he was accepted at Georgetown University, but he left for Paris to attend Sorbonne University. Instead of attending classes at Sorbonne, he spent most of his time hanging out with friends, smoking “hash.”
He eventually returned to the U.S., where he enrolled at UCLA to study French.
But he soon dropped out of UCLA to take up a music career. In 1964, he joined a group known as The Seven Souls as a guitarist. The group’s best-known song I Still Love You was released in 1967. The Seven Souls broke up in 1969 and Welch returned to Paris where he started the group Head West, but the band did not make any impact.
He joined the British blues band Fleetwood Mac in 1971 as a guitarist and vocalist. Fleetwood Mac released the album Future Games in 1971, Bare Trees in 1972, Penguin and Mystery to Me in 1973, and Heroes Are Hard to Find in 1974.
Welch started a solo career and achieved success in the late 1970s. He released his solo album French Kiss in 1977.
He is best known for singles such as Sentimental Lady, Hot Love Cold World, Precious Love, Ebony Eyes, and Hypnotized.
He died by suicide on June 7, 2012, at the age of 66. His wife, Wendy, found him dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He left a suicide note.
Welch had undergone a spinal surgery months before he took his life, but did not fully recover, reportedly in constant pain.
Family Guy airs on Sunday at 9:30/8:30c on Fox