Now that the L.A.-based rock band Toto has been back in the cultural zeitgeist the last few years, they often get reduced to a single image. They are thought of as studio hotshots. Or as “yacht rockers.” Or as the band that gave us “Africa,” before Stranger Things and Weezer put it back in our collective consciousness.
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With their debut album reaching the 45th anniversary of its release on October 15, 2023, it’s time to recognize that the band is much more than any of that. A revisiting of the first Toto album is a good reminder of this. It was a hit record that defied easy categorization and seamlessly blended a variety of moods and genres. It’s a rare feat in rock, but Toto were able to pull it off because of the vision and leadership of David Paich and the late Jeff Porcaro, and of what each member brought to the band.
Beginnings
Four of the original six members of Toto—Paich, Porcaro and his younger brother, Steve, and Steve Lukather—knew each other growing up in Los Angeles, and they, along with David Hungate, had worked with Boz Scaggs. Each member had a healthy résumé before coming together to form Toto, with Paich and Jeff Porcaro being particularly prolific in the mid-’70s. Paich wrote or co-wrong songs for numerous artists, and his production credits included Cheryl Lynn’s self-titled album and Aretha Franklin’s “Break It to Me Gently.” Porcaro performed on Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic as a 19-year-old and drummed on all but one track of their subsequent album, Katy Lied.
It was Paich and the elder Porcaro who initially put Toto together. While Paich wrote nearly all of the songs at first, he had a vision for the band as a collaborative unit—at least where vocals were concerned.
As Paich tells American Songwriter, “The reason I modeled the band the way I did was that my heroes were The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, who had multiple singers … And there were a lot of great groups out at the time with great backgrounds, like Boston and Foreigner.” The latter band was top-of-mind for Paich, as he had worked on their Double Vision album as a strings arranger.
Toto
Paich’s vision was manifested on Side 1 of the debut album. It begins with the instrumental “Child’s Anthem,” which he wrote when he was studying classical music at the University of Southern California. Paich says the track provided a way to open the album with a grand gesture. “I wanted to start the album off differently than [how] regular rock/pop albums are … I just wanted to say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here we are.’ Almost like an overture.”
The next three tracks that follow—“I’ll Supply the Love,” “Georgy Porgy,” and “Manuela Run”—each features a different vocalist, with Bobby Kimball, Lukather, and Paich respectively taking the leads. On Side 2, Steve Porcaro sings lead on his laid-back composition “Takin’ It Back,” giving the album four different lead vocalists.
The first four tracks of side one are also a microcosm of the album’s sonic breadth. The classical roots of “Child’s Anthem” give it a prog sensibility, while “I’ll Supply the Love” is a straight-ahead rocker, and “Georgy Porgy” has jazz and R&B overtones. “Manuela Run,” like many of Paich’s songs, is driven by a buoyant piano melody and features soaring vocal harmonies.
“Crunchy Guitars” + “Sophisticated Grooves”
Toto’s versatility isn’t just marked by the variation in genres from track to track, but also by the blend of elements in each song. The hard-rock approach of Lukather, the band’s guitarist, was critical to Toto’s unusual fusion of sounds. As he himself put it, “I think I brought the more rock and roll element … the crunchy guitars and a little young, rock attitude to their sophisticated grooves and their jazz and classical backgrounds.” Lukather was the perfect counterpoint to the two-keyboard attack of Paich and Steve Porcaro, all of which was held together by the stellar grooves of Jeff Porcaro and Hungate.
Despite their accomplishments, Toto’s members were initially unsure if their special sound would attract a large audience. However, once “Hold the Line,” the album’s first single, started getting airplay, they began to realize they were on the verge of taking off. Paich said he and his band “were just ecstatic when we heard it over the radio. We were like teenagers … calling each other, calling the radio stations and requesting the song.”
[RELATED: The Meaning Behind “Hold the Line” by Toto]
Joe Williams, who joined Toto in 1986 and is currently in his second stint as a vocalist for the band, not only performs songs from the first Toto album in the band’s current iteration, but he was a fan of the album when it first came out. Williams’ excitement over the album was enhanced by knowing several of the band members before the album came out, even though he was still in high school. But it was his genuine love for the songs themselves that led him to listen to the album “thousands of times.”
Williams cites “You Are the Flower,” which was written by Kimball, as one of his favorite songs on the album. “We’ve performed it live in the last couple of years, and it’s one of my favorite things to perform live, to sing. It just has a lope and a great feel to it.” Though the track is one of only two not penned by Paich, it fits in with the rest of the songs, helping to establish the record’s cohesiveness.
Final Thoughts
That’s the paradox of Toto’s debut. It’s a collection of tracks written and performed in various styles, yet it has a solid consistency. Toto arrived fully-formed as a real band with a real sound and identity—not a mere hodgepodge of in-demand studio musicians. At the heart of that identity is the special way each member fits into the whole—the way that rock meets jazz, R&B, and classical to create something unique and unmistakably Toto.
Photo courtesy of Sony Music
