Then a backlash happens and everybody hates you. “We didn’t think we were going to win anything. “When we did it was terrifying, actually,” he continued. “We didn’t think our stuff would stack up against McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Donald Fagan, people that are our heroes, you know? “We were taken by surprise,” Lukather said. The album, “IV,” garnered seven Grammy Awards. In 1982, with its fourth album powered by the hits “Africa” and “Rosanna.,” Toto ruled the charts. “When we did ‘Toto IV’ it was sink or swim so we wrote the best songs and played the best we possibly could and stopped trying to chase the trends.” “We were trying to find ourselves on those first three albums,” Luather said. Then came Toto’s most successful album of all - “IV.” “We were left to produce ourselves in our own hands, and we did what we wanted to do. “And we don’t like to repeat ourselves,” he continued. We didn’t like that label, so we kept trying to fight against it. “We were just trying to find ourselves,” said Lukather. The supergroup of players rolled forward with two albums - “Hydra” (1979) and “Turn Back” (1981) - though they didn’t have the same commercial success as the debut. ![]() Toto’s self-titled debut album was a monstrous success with FM radio stations playing the hell out of “Hold The Line,” “Georgy Porgy,” and “I’ll Supply The Love.” Then we had to figure out how to play it live. We produced the hell out of it, you know? Did the big vocals did the big guitars the grandiose production. “We went in and made the album before we even played it as a band. “We had been playing together since we were 15,” said Lukather. He’s the guy who pulled the whole “project amongst friends” together. ![]() The band members were also credited on records by Boz Scaggs, Seals & Crofts, Steely Dan, and many more during the glorious 1970s.įounding member David Paich, who is taking a break from live touring, composed the band’s greatest hits. I had a great time on those sessions and was glad to be a part of something so big, you know? We knew it was going to be a hit record, but we didn’t know it was going to be the biggest record of all time.” “We definitely had our hands in that album, though we don’t get a lot of press over it,” said Steve Lukather. The members of Toto were such sought after studio musicians they were individually recruited to play on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album. ![]() A lot of reviewers have always been confused as to what the look of the band is.” The band is about great songs and great musicianship. The personality of the band was with the six members themselves. “This was a group of incredibly talented studio musicians who worked constantly and then started working on their own project (Toto) as opposed to a front-of-stage rock idol personality. “That was what the whole thing about the band,” said Joe Williams, the son of composer John Williams who joined Toto in 1986 as vocalist. The current lineup is Toto’s fifteenth rendition of the live group. While diehard fans know the individual band members, many familiar with Toto’s music are not in part because the group’s album covers featured artwork of the logo instead of faces. Four decades and some 13 studio albums later, with numerous ups and downs, hiatuses and reformations, they’re alive and well with founding guitarist Steve Lukather and longtime singer Joe Williams joined with bassist John Pierce (Huey Lewis and The News), drummer Robert “Sput” Searight (Ghost-Note, Snoop Dogg), keyboardist / background vocalist Steve Maggiora, keyboardist Dominique “Xavier” Taplin (Prince, Ghost-Note), and multi-instrumentalist /vocalist Warren Ham (Ringo Starr). ![]() Toto burst onto the music scene with the 1978 release of its self-titled debut. Multi-Grammy Award winning classic rock band Toto, known for its late ‘70s and early ‘80s hit songs like “Hold the Line,” “Rosanna” and “Africa,” will be stopping in Newport News on February 16 for a show at the Ferguson Center.
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