A History of Toto: Holding, Thrilling, and Blessing since 1977

<v Speaker 1>This is a podcast from Minute Media.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. Shirley fans, we are so happy to
<v Speaker 2>have you here with our first music episodes of the
<v Speaker 2>season number three.
<v Speaker 3>I know we are diving into two albums that turn
<v Speaker 3>forty years old this year.
<v Speaker 2>And what is fantastic about this is that this first
<v Speaker 2>album throws back to two of our first albums that
<v Speaker 2>we ever covered, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Van Halen Versus
<v Speaker 2>Van Hagar.
<v Speaker 3>The people out there who are listening right now who
<v Speaker 3>are like, I don't really listen to Toto or I don't
<v Speaker 3>not really familiar with Toto, Listen, if you've ever heard
<v Speaker 3>this song you've listened to right, that's Steve Luke. They're
<v Speaker 3>on the guitar, not the Eddie van Halen part, the
<v Speaker 3>other part right, and then David Page is on the keyboards,
<v Speaker 3>Jeff Pickars on the drums. Steve Piccaro wrote Human Nature
<v Speaker 3>by Michael Jackson.
<v Speaker 2>So we even talked about these guys when we did
<v Speaker 2>our first Thriller episode and talked about how they were
<v Speaker 2>heavily involved with all of the music. And I mentioned
<v Speaker 2>at that time. I don't know that I could pick
<v Speaker 2>these guys out at Walmart. And there's a great picture
<v Speaker 2>out there that our friend James Buckley sent us with
<v Speaker 2>the lineup of Toto, and it says, the lineup of
<v Speaker 2>Toto looks like all the guys your mom dated after
<v Speaker 2>divorcing it down.
<v Speaker 3>It's so true.
<v Speaker 2>Man. They are not pretty guys, but they are basically
<v Speaker 2>like the princes of music. And I don't mean prince
<v Speaker 2>the I mean like they are royalty of music. They've
<v Speaker 2>had music passed down to them through families. So it's
<v Speaker 2>neat to see these kind of ugly guys with these
<v Speaker 2>magical musical abilities. And we're going to compare them to
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of pretty guys who really didn't even play
<v Speaker 2>music until somebody said, you know what, you guys should
<v Speaker 2>get together and make a baby.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. It's interesting because these are two sort of opposite approaches. Right,
<v Speaker 3>You've got guys who play instruments really well and are
<v Speaker 3>not good looking and hate videos, right, and then you've
<v Speaker 3>got pretty boys who love that. I mean, that's how
<v Speaker 3>they made their mark on MTV was music videos.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. But as ugly as these guys were, one of
<v Speaker 2>them was still Danty Roseanna arcat It's impressive.
<v Speaker 3>I have a feeling we're going to talk about Roseanna
<v Speaker 3>Arquette yeah before we get started. Yeah, okay, So, just
<v Speaker 3>right off the bat, the guys in Toto have been
<v Speaker 3>on over five thousand albums.
<v Speaker 2>That's not an exaggeration, that's not a hyperbole. Literally, over
<v Speaker 2>five thousand albums.
<v Speaker 3>I heard a stat and I don't know how you
<v Speaker 3>confirm this. It said ninety five percent of the world's
<v Speaker 3>population has heard at least one performance by a member
<v Speaker 3>of Toto. Of the world, ninety five percent of the world.
<v Speaker 2>That is crazy. Well, as we get into it, I
<v Speaker 2>mean Jeff Pacaro, one of the founding members of the band.
<v Speaker 2>They're very young when they start this band, and he
<v Speaker 2>still had been involved in over three dozen albums before
<v Speaker 2>they get going.
<v Speaker 3>Basically, if you listen to music between nineteen seventy five
<v Speaker 3>and nineteen ninety five, you listened to Toto.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, at least one of the members of Toto was
<v Speaker 2>on the album that you were listening to. In all probabila.
<v Speaker 3>These guys are a list session musicians. Yeah, let's dive
<v Speaker 3>into Luca the real quick. Okay, Yeah, when he looks
<v Speaker 3>back on his career. I thought this was very interesting.
<v Speaker 3>He pulled up the top one hundred albums of all
<v Speaker 3>time and he said he was amazed at how many
<v Speaker 3>he had played on. He didn't give a number. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>but when he amazes himself, pretty incredible.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So our story begins with one of the greatest
<v Speaker 2>guitarists of all time, mister Ryanstone Cowboy Glenn Campbell back. So,
<v Speaker 2>did you ever watch the Smothers Brothers Show. I have
<v Speaker 2>seen it, Okay, like in a bit, it's been a bit.
<v Speaker 2>I listened to some of their comedy tapes when I
<v Speaker 2>was a kid. I remember seeing them on laugh In
<v Speaker 2>and they had their own comedy hour and at some
<v Speaker 2>point they had to be off that show for a
<v Speaker 2>little while, and Glenn Campbell was the guest host for him. Okay, Now,
<v Speaker 2>and I say greatest guitarist of all time, I mean
<v Speaker 2>he literally is. He is an incredible like he can
<v Speaker 2>play the guitar, could play the guitar behind his head,
<v Speaker 2>can do all the licks that whether you were rock, blues, jazz,
<v Speaker 2>he was phenomenal.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>But he did such a good job guest hosting The
<v Speaker 2>Smothers Brothers Show that they said, hey, how about we
<v Speaker 2>just give you your own show, And his own show
<v Speaker 2>was called the Glenn Campbell Good Time Hour. That sounds
<v Speaker 2>like a Branson show right right right, Yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>it's it's there for all the pre he Haw folks
<v Speaker 2>for sure. So he has his own show, and he
<v Speaker 2>picks the same guy who did the musical direction for
<v Speaker 2>the Smothers brother Show to do the musical direction for
<v Speaker 2>his show. Okay, guy who's a big band icon, guy
<v Speaker 2>named Marty Pach Marty Pache, Yes, Now, I sent you
<v Speaker 2>some music and I sent it to our friend Pat
<v Speaker 2>from thirty something movie podcastalat Canangallo is a huge jazz fan,
<v Speaker 2>and so I thought, this is big band stuff. He's
<v Speaker 2>gonna know this guy. He didn't really make it clear
<v Speaker 2>whether he knew him, but he listened. He said, I've
<v Speaker 2>been listening to this all day. It's fantastic. If you
<v Speaker 2>like big band jazz music, you pull up Marty Page
<v Speaker 2>and you're going to be happy for the rest of
<v Speaker 2>the day. He's got some fantastic music, and he's got
<v Speaker 2>some pretty cool album covers as well.
<v Speaker 3>The album covers were ahead of their time.
<v Speaker 2>My Gosh Naked Women on Big Band jazz I go Marty,
<v Speaker 2>That's what I got to say.
<v Speaker 3>My personal favorite was the woman behind the shower door
<v Speaker 3>that was clearly naked, but it was you know, sort
<v Speaker 3>of opaqu where you couldn't see it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's it's it is good stuff. So Marty Page
<v Speaker 2>is the band director and music composer for the Glenn
<v Speaker 2>Campbell Good Time Hour. Okay, And one day they don't
<v Speaker 2>have a percussionist. Their drummer is out for some reason
<v Speaker 2>or another, right, and so they say, okay, well who
<v Speaker 2>do we know? And there's a guy who's been in
<v Speaker 2>town for a few years. He's moved in from Connecticut,
<v Speaker 2>and his name is Joe Pkara.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, this sounds like the birth of a great band. Right.
<v Speaker 2>So Joe is a drummer. Right. He's an Italian guy
<v Speaker 2>who's his grandparents immigrated over they lived in the East
<v Speaker 2>part of the country, moved over to LA so that
<v Speaker 2>he could get involved with some of these big band shows,
<v Speaker 2>and has always been a drummer. Right, has three boys,
<v Speaker 2>and a girl raises those boys to be musicians. And
<v Speaker 2>he gets a call and says, hey, we need a
<v Speaker 2>drummer for the Glenn Campbell Good Time Hour. He says,
<v Speaker 2>I'm coming over. Yeah, And so he becomes the drummer
<v Speaker 2>for that band, for Glenn Campbell's band YEP. And as
<v Speaker 2>it turns out, Marty Page has a son named David
<v Speaker 2>David Page, and David is a musical prodigy, and he
<v Speaker 2>has David come and sit in and play piano whenever
<v Speaker 2>the piano player is out. And so David, although he
<v Speaker 2>does play the piano, is very interested in the drums,
<v Speaker 2>and so he starts hitting up Joe and says, hey,
<v Speaker 2>can you teach me some stuff on the drums? And
<v Speaker 2>Joe's like, yeah, sure of course. And he's like, so,
<v Speaker 2>you know, where do you go to high school? He's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to Grant High School. He's like, oh, my son,
<v Speaker 2>he's going he's your same age. You should meet up
<v Speaker 2>with him. He's forming a band. His name is Jeff.
<v Speaker 2>And so David says, I'd love to meet him, and
<v Speaker 2>the next thing, you know, history has changed forever.
<v Speaker 3>We talked about how interesting this is, right, So, the
<v Speaker 3>idea that a famous dad and another famous dad get
<v Speaker 3>their sons together, it's kind of a unique situation. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>but if there's ever a place in the entire world
<v Speaker 3>this is going to happen. It's Los Angeles, California.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So these guys all went to Grant High School.
<v Speaker 2>They were born in fifty four, fifty fivefty six, that
<v Speaker 2>area that all the members of Toto. Well, if you'll remember,
<v Speaker 2>there were some guys who were born in fifty three
<v Speaker 2>and fifty five that we talked about a few years
<v Speaker 2>ago who were in high school at the same time
<v Speaker 2>in Pasadena. These high schools are less than thirty minutes apart, right,
<v Speaker 2>So Eddie van Halen and Alex van Halen are playing
<v Speaker 2>in Mammoth in high school in somebody's backyard at the
<v Speaker 2>same time that Jeff Bacuro and David Page are playing
<v Speaker 2>together in their band called Rural Still Life. There are
<v Speaker 2>people who probably went to high school in the seventies
<v Speaker 2>in California who saw both of these bands play before
<v Speaker 2>they were anything famous. Isn't that crazy?
<v Speaker 3>That's amazing? But you know, just to kind of double
<v Speaker 3>down on that. In nineteen eighty two, when Toto was
<v Speaker 3>recording Tote four right next door in the studio, literally
<v Speaker 3>right next door van Halen's recording.
<v Speaker 2>Diver down, so Studio one, van Halen's recording diver down.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, Studio two, Toto four.
<v Speaker 2>So these guys are literally probably crossing paths and saying, hey,
<v Speaker 2>how are you doing? What's going on? Man?
<v Speaker 3>They're standing next to each other at the Arnold going hey, man,
<v Speaker 3>how you doing.
<v Speaker 2>You got a bump? Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, exactly, Hey, just another story about Eddie Van Halen.
<v Speaker 3>I thought this was really cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So Steve Lucather is another member of Toto, which we'll
<v Speaker 3>talk about here in a minute. As he is growing
<v Speaker 3>and becoming more well known as a guitar player, there's
<v Speaker 3>this particular guitar store in La that he likes to go,
<v Speaker 3>and when he gets there, he always gets down the guitar,
<v Speaker 3>plays a little bit, puts on a show, and the
<v Speaker 3>manager of the guitar center is like, well, this kid
<v Speaker 3>can really play. When he goes up to him, he says, hey,
<v Speaker 3>what's your name, kid, And he's like, my name is
<v Speaker 3>Steve Lucather. He's like, okay, Steve. There's another kid that
<v Speaker 3>comes in here and plays and he's really good too.
<v Speaker 3>You guys ought to get to know each other. That
<v Speaker 3>kid's name Eddie van Halen. Wow, those two guys come
<v Speaker 3>together and make perhaps Michael Jackson's greatest.
<v Speaker 2>Song arguably arguably, and then the other brothers are involved
<v Speaker 2>as well. So Jeff Percaro is the oldest brother. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>he's met up with David Page. They're playing together because
<v Speaker 2>their parents are both involved in music, they start doing
<v Speaker 2>studio sessions together. Jeff Pacaro is one of the greatest
<v Speaker 2>drummers of all time. So this isn't just me saying this.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not a drummer, but all music this is a quote.
<v Speaker 2>Jeff Pacaro is arguably the most highly regarded studio drummer
<v Speaker 2>in rock from the mid seventies to the early nineties.
<v Speaker 2>And it is no exaggeration to say that the sound
<v Speaker 2>of mainstream pop rock drumming in the nineteen eighties was,
<v Speaker 2>to a large extent, the sound of Jeff Piccaro.
<v Speaker 3>That's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's great. And like I said, he's like
<v Speaker 2>air to the throne of his dad. Not that his
<v Speaker 2>dad was some huge musician. Now, Marty Page was a
<v Speaker 2>huge musician. I mean he was gigantic. He was an
<v Speaker 2>icon as far as big Man and stuff goes. And
<v Speaker 2>Joe was really just a session drummer, right, but he
<v Speaker 2>encouraged the boys and music and the beautiful part is
<v Speaker 2>because he was involved with all of these musicians. They
<v Speaker 2>would say, hey, you know, can you teach my kid
<v Speaker 2>some drums? Yeah, and he would say sure, and they're like,
<v Speaker 2>what did what do you charge me? Head goes, how
<v Speaker 2>about we just trade out. You teach my kid how
<v Speaker 2>to play piano, I'll teach a kid how to play drums.
<v Speaker 2>And so everyone of Joe Pacaro's kids got exposed to
<v Speaker 2>multiple musicians who were masters at their craft for free,
<v Speaker 2>like for drum lessons.
<v Speaker 3>That's insane, that's insane. Hey, you know who else lived
<v Speaker 3>in kind of their same neighborhood area, John Williams. Oh
<v Speaker 3>that's right, John freaking Williams.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, who also had a son their same age named Joe,
<v Speaker 2>and Joe later becomes the vocalist for Toto. Yeah, but
<v Speaker 2>before that, they knew him.
<v Speaker 3>As like crazy Joe, Like he's just like another kid
<v Speaker 3>in the neighborhood, you know, and they all just running
<v Speaker 3>around each other's houses.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's insane if you think about it now. Like
<v Speaker 2>I said, John Williams is a big band guy too,
<v Speaker 2>before he started hitting it big in music, composing for movies, right,
<v Speaker 2>But the youngest of these guys graduated in seventy five. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>seventy five was of the year the Jaws came out, Like,
<v Speaker 2>John Williams is not a household name until about the
<v Speaker 2>same time that these guys are forming their band together.
<v Speaker 3>So it's literally possible that some of the guys from
<v Speaker 3>Toto were in the living room going, can I have
<v Speaker 3>some juice while he's composing the Jaws theme.
<v Speaker 2>I guess, So, I guess that's a possibility. Okay, So
<v Speaker 2>we got Jeff, we got Dave, So let's talk about
<v Speaker 2>a couple of the other guys. Okay, we got Steve
<v Speaker 2>Lucather and we've got Steve Piccaro's Jeff's younger brother.
<v Speaker 3>These guys were in the same class together as well,
<v Speaker 3>and they were friends. Yeah, but they were like younger brothers. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So what happens when David and Jeff graduate as they go,
<v Speaker 2>when they start being studio musicians, they start touring with
<v Speaker 2>some bands, and the younger brother and his buddy Luke
<v Speaker 2>is what they call Lucather, they take over the band
<v Speaker 2>and it changes the name from Rural Still Life to
<v Speaker 2>just Still Life, right, And so these guys are the
<v Speaker 2>new high school band. Steve Pacaro, who plays the keyboards
<v Speaker 2>and Lucather who plays the guitar, right right, And so
<v Speaker 2>they're carrying on the tradition. There are another prints along
<v Speaker 2>the way, and so the older brothers come back, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and listen to them play, and they're like, hey, they're
<v Speaker 2>actually doing a pretty good job.
<v Speaker 3>These guys are pretty good. And in fact, they would
<v Speaker 3>come back and play the occasional prom with them, right right.
<v Speaker 3>Imagine a prom where you've got David Page, Steve Lucather
<v Speaker 3>and the two Pacaro brothers. Yeah, and they're playing, you
<v Speaker 3>know whatever, the sophomore problem. So let's dive into Lucather
<v Speaker 3>real quick. I love this story. He auditioned when he
<v Speaker 3>was in high school, so like seventeen, Frank Zappa was
<v Speaker 3>looking for a guitarist, and like anybody worth anything in
<v Speaker 3>the guitar world at that time in that area was like, heck, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I want to be in the Frank Zappa band.
<v Speaker 2>Sure.
<v Speaker 3>So he shows up and he's just a kid, just
<v Speaker 3>a young kid. He's pretty good guitarist. But they get there.
<v Speaker 3>Frank walks in the room. He's got this real sort
<v Speaker 3>of big personality, imposing character, and he looks around and
<v Speaker 3>he finds the mousiest kid in the room. Lucather's in
<v Speaker 3>the back, just trying to hide, just trying to take
<v Speaker 3>it all in. He's like you up here, you first.
<v Speaker 3>So lucas like, uh okay. So he goes up. Frank
<v Speaker 3>zappas like, see the sheet music, you know how to
<v Speaker 3>play sheet music? Play this, and Lucather said it looked
<v Speaker 3>like somebody had wiped their butt. It was so black
<v Speaker 3>with notes that he was like, what is this? You know?
<v Speaker 3>So he fumbles around and it's it's bad, right, It's bad. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>And Zaba was like, all right, forget, I forget it.
<v Speaker 3>Just follow me on this, and Zappa would play a
<v Speaker 3>whole bunch and He's just trying to keep up, and
<v Speaker 3>Zappa is like, that's it, you suck, get the hell
<v Speaker 3>out of here. And so Steve Vai is, I guess
<v Speaker 3>in the same room. And Steve Iai was in Frank
<v Speaker 3>Zappa's band later and he said that that was a
<v Speaker 3>practice by Zappa. He didn't want to listen to one
<v Speaker 3>hundred and fifty guitarist audition, so he wanted to humiliate
<v Speaker 3>one scare off eight and then get down to business.
<v Speaker 2>And Luk at the.
<v Speaker 3>Luc At there was the guy like that. He said
<v Speaker 3>he went home and just cried, Oh my god.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's devastating. Well at least he didn't quit I could.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if that happened to me, I'd be like,
<v Speaker 2>forget it. I'm just gonna quit. I'll go be in
<v Speaker 2>a turn.
<v Speaker 3>It's like Walmart.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So we've talked Jeff talk, Dave talk, Luke, let's
<v Speaker 2>talk Steve Picaro. Okay, yep. So Page already plays keyboards
<v Speaker 2>and he's good. I mean, he's freaking phenomenal good, arranges everything.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, he's a genius. He comes from Musical Genius
<v Speaker 2>three and he is a genius himself.
<v Speaker 3>Genius.
<v Speaker 2>Read that's a word that I'm picking up.
<v Speaker 4>Right with you.
<v Speaker 2>Keep going, Okay, But Steve is not as proficient at playing,
<v Speaker 2>but he is an expert technician. So when he was
<v Speaker 2>a little kid, his dad, Joe, buys him a Realm organ.
<v Speaker 2>Now have you heard of the brand Realm air conditioners?
<v Speaker 2>Air conditioners? Yes, not musical instruments.
<v Speaker 4>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So he's like thanks dad. Just a little while later,
<v Speaker 2>he convinces his dad to go with him to the
<v Speaker 2>music center and he's like, I'd really like to trade
<v Speaker 2>out this realm organ as much as I appreciate your
<v Speaker 2>gift for for FISA organ, and this is an organ
<v Speaker 2>that like Pink Floyd is used and Blondie and he's
<v Speaker 2>like that and maybe this Leslie Preamp over here and
<v Speaker 2>that's like okay. Sure that was his first rig were
<v Speaker 2>those instruments. But he was fascinated by how to manipulate
<v Speaker 2>the sound on these new synthesizers style organs, and so
<v Speaker 2>he became basically a music tech nerd, and so he
<v Speaker 2>didn't have to be phenomenal as a piano player. He
<v Speaker 2>was just the guy who could find that perfect sound
<v Speaker 2>and create it on the synthesizer.
<v Speaker 3>Well that's great.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And once you listen to Africa and you hear
<v Speaker 2>those marimbas that are coming out of a synthesizer, you're like,
<v Speaker 2>holy crap, this guy is phenomenal. And that's the way
<v Speaker 2>he made his name really other than the band obviously,
<v Speaker 2>is he's the guy who knew how to progre like
<v Speaker 2>the way he said it was. You know those things
<v Speaker 2>on the back of the keyboard, the ports that everybody's like,
<v Speaker 2>I wonder what those are for. I knew what those
<v Speaker 2>were for.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, that's great.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I learned it. I learned what those things were for.
<v Speaker 2>So he became the guy who could make the sound.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I did hear that he would do certain keyboard solos. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that would take three weeks to perfect. And the guys
<v Speaker 3>were like, God, dang, this is taken forever. And they
<v Speaker 3>started to say, maybe we don't give him as many
<v Speaker 3>solos because so I thought that was funny. A little
<v Speaker 3>bit of a perfectionist, I could tell you.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, looking at him now, he's this older man,
<v Speaker 2>gray hair, very reserved looking guy. He's always in his
<v Speaker 2>studio where he now is writing, composing music for TV
<v Speaker 2>shows and other stuff like that. But you watch in
<v Speaker 2>the old like live performances from the early eighties, and
<v Speaker 2>he's got on like the Michael Jackson V cut, but
<v Speaker 2>even gaudier and it doesn't quite fit right, and you
<v Speaker 2>can see his belly button and he's throwing himself around,
<v Speaker 2>and he's got long hair and still the big thick
<v Speaker 2>coke bottle glasses. It's very eighties style. Yeah, neat to
<v Speaker 2>see him now. I can't say anything because if you
<v Speaker 2>go back to my eighties pictures, you're gonna see a mullet.
<v Speaker 3>Well, you know, Steve Bacaro wrote all the music for Justifying.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, won the Grammy for it, or an Oscar I think,
<v Speaker 2>I mean he won for Best Musical Composition in a
<v Speaker 2>TV Series.
<v Speaker 3>That's a fantastic show, Tony.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe I don't know whatever you get for TV shows.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, he got that show because they had
<v Speaker 2>a great relationship with another guy that we've talked about
<v Speaker 2>named James Newton Howard. Remember James Newton Howard. He was
<v Speaker 2>the one who composed with Hans Zimmer on the Batman
<v Speaker 2>Begins and the Dark Knight soundtracks. He was a big producer.
<v Speaker 2>He was involved with all these sessions shows. He's involved
<v Speaker 2>in the album we're talking about today. He's a big
<v Speaker 2>producer at the time. But they stayed friends, and you
<v Speaker 2>know we're talking about Justified, which came out what twenty ten, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so yeah, twelve years ago he's been working with James
<v Speaker 2>Newton Howard on doing these scores and James is like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>do you want to just do this? You know, and
<v Speaker 2>he's like, I don't really know that I could do.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I don't like deadlines. I don't you know,
<v Speaker 2>you have to have this done by Thursday. I don't
<v Speaker 2>like that, right, He goes, well, let's try it anyway.
<v Speaker 2>And so he go, like, the guys from Justified are
<v Speaker 2>coming to James Newton Howard and they're like, hey, we
<v Speaker 2>want you to compose for the show. And he says, okay,
<v Speaker 2>I'll tell you what. I will compose the opening theme
<v Speaker 2>if you let Steve compose all of the other music
<v Speaker 2>for the rest.
<v Speaker 4>Of the show.
<v Speaker 2>And they're like okay, done, And so then it becomes
<v Speaker 2>now he's got to do it. He's got to have
<v Speaker 2>the music in by Thursday. And he goes, I learned
<v Speaker 2>that I work better with a deadline.
<v Speaker 3>Oh that's good.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's good.
<v Speaker 3>Here's my James Newton Howard story. Okay. So James Newton
<v Speaker 3>Howard worked with Lucather later when Lucather got involved in
<v Speaker 3>these sessions, okay, and so he had this seventeen year
<v Speaker 3>old prodigy in the studio. So he brings Lucather in.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, Okay, we're going to record some of your guitar.
<v Speaker 3>This is my production assistant. He's going to take care
<v Speaker 3>of you.
<v Speaker 2>Some sort of musical genius, right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>He's a musical genius. He's a prodigy. The kid doesn't speak.
<v Speaker 3>Dead shy won't speak. Lucather said he never even addressed me. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>so he knew what he was supposed to play. He
<v Speaker 3>goes in there, he gets the nod from the kid,
<v Speaker 3>the seventeen year old, and when the kid gives him
<v Speaker 3>the nod, he sort of shrinks back behind the counter
<v Speaker 3>where you can't see him, and Lucather starts to play.
<v Speaker 3>And when he gets after it, he really gets after it.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah. And he said that I was wailing away
<v Speaker 3>on this guitar and all of a sudden, this little
<v Speaker 3>head pops up from behind the counter, like what is
<v Speaker 3>going on in there? And then slow lower back down.
<v Speaker 3>He's like it was the weirdest thing that kid. Yeah, Prince,
<v Speaker 3>Oh my god, how about that?
<v Speaker 2>Holy cow, that's amazing, fantastic story. Okay, So now we've
<v Speaker 2>got Lucather, we've got Steve Pacaro, We've got Jeff Pacaro,
<v Speaker 2>We've got David Page.
<v Speaker 3>Jeff Piccaro and David Page had played on a Steely
<v Speaker 3>Dan record, You get your name attached to Steely Dan.
<v Speaker 3>That was sort of like these guys are really good,
<v Speaker 3>and so it sort of made a name for them, right,
<v Speaker 3>And they played with Sonny and cher Yeah, right, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>And the funny thing is is that Lucather's dad was
<v Speaker 3>involved in like television production, and so they had shot
<v Speaker 3>a movie with Sonny and Cher and Share kind of
<v Speaker 3>doated on this little boy Steve Lucather, who then later
<v Speaker 3>when he grows up, plays on if I Could Turn
<v Speaker 3>Back Time and all these other share hits.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Jeff, when he was seventeen, that was his first
<v Speaker 2>professional gig, was playing with Sonny and Cher as on
<v Speaker 2>their touring band. And by the way, this is just
<v Speaker 2>a total sidebar here. He at that time called Jim
<v Speaker 2>Keltner and Jim Gordon his idols as far as drumming
<v Speaker 2>was concerned, right, Okay, So Jim Gordon not the commissioner
<v Speaker 2>from Batman Commissioner Gordon, but a very proficient drummer. At
<v Speaker 2>the time that Toto four is hitting big June nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty three, Gordon attacks his seventy two year old mother
<v Speaker 2>with a hammer and then stabs her to death with
<v Speaker 2>a butcher knife. What He claims that a voice told
<v Speaker 2>him to kill her. It's only after he has arrested
<v Speaker 2>that they realize he has got severe schizophrenia. He has
<v Speaker 2>been in prison since that time, refuses to go to
<v Speaker 2>his parole hearings. He's right now and basically a mental
<v Speaker 2>facility for prisoners. WHOA, This was one of Jeff Pucara's
<v Speaker 2>idols as far as the drums are concerned.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, crazy, that is crazy.
<v Speaker 2>So during his twenties, Pacaro plays on hundreds of albums,
<v Speaker 2>including like you said, Steely Dan and I looked at
<v Speaker 2>the list and I counted over three dozen albums that
<v Speaker 2>he was involved with before toto debut album comes out.
<v Speaker 2>Over three dozen he's what nineteen twenty. Yeah, it's nuts.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Well, here's the interesting thing about that. So Toto
<v Speaker 3>is got we got two keyboardists. Yeah, but we pick
<v Speaker 3>up David Hungate through the Boss Gags tour that we did,
<v Speaker 3>So we've got him. We've got the best drummer in
<v Speaker 3>the entire world. We've got Steve Lucatur, who's guitar legend.
<v Speaker 3>Now we need a singer. So who do they go to?
<v Speaker 3>Michael McDonald right right, think about this, Michael McDonald says, oh, man, guys,
<v Speaker 3>I just joined the Doobie Brothers. Yeah, like you just
<v Speaker 3>missed me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god.
<v Speaker 3>If you'd asked me last week, I probably could have
<v Speaker 3>done it.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's amazing. A week's time and we might have
<v Speaker 2>had Mike McDonald's singing Africa and.
<v Speaker 3>Sweet Freedom, I mean Toto's version of Sweet Freedom. But
<v Speaker 3>the interesting thing so he goes on to do the
<v Speaker 3>Doobie Brothers, but think about what could have been? Well
<v Speaker 3>what ifs there?
<v Speaker 2>And Michael McDonald has this fantastic story about he when
<v Speaker 2>he was he's walking out of the studio and he
<v Speaker 2>sees this guy come up to him and he's like
<v Speaker 2>thinking he's a homeless man, Like he's rough looking, and he's,
<v Speaker 2>you know, trying to make his way to his car
<v Speaker 2>back into the studio. And this guy's like, hey, hey, hey, Michael, Michael,
<v Speaker 2>I got this. I got this idea for Somewhere over
<v Speaker 2>the Rainbow with you singing the lead on it. And
<v Speaker 2>he's like, okay, all right, yeah, yeah, it sounds good,
<v Speaker 2>sounds good, and brushes into the studio and when he
<v Speaker 2>gets in, somebody's like, hey, did Marty Page see you?
<v Speaker 2>He was out there trying to find you. So he's like,
<v Speaker 2>I literally ran away from the best stream and brass
<v Speaker 2>arranger in the world because I thought he was a
<v Speaker 2>homeless man. So if you look at Mike McDonald's debut album.
<v Speaker 2>These Guys are on it, and Marty Page is on.
<v Speaker 3>It well, and one of their best known songs in
<v Speaker 3>the eighties, I'll Be Over You, a huge hit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Michael McDonald's singing back up vocals on that. He's in
<v Speaker 3>the video too, which is pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so we got basically now one more guy to
<v Speaker 2>talk about in the band, mister Bobby Kimball. Mister Bobby
<v Speaker 2>Kimball lived in Louisiana but was born in Texas because
<v Speaker 2>they didn't have a hospital in Louisiana where he's lived.
<v Speaker 3>I know, our buddy James Buckley is very proud of
<v Speaker 3>this guy's from Cajun country.
<v Speaker 2>So Bobby Kimball.
<v Speaker 3>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>So when Bobby is four and a half years old,
<v Speaker 2>he watches his mom and realizes, I mean, he doesn't
<v Speaker 2>know what it is at the time, but she's got
<v Speaker 2>perfect pitch. She can listen to a song on the radio,
<v Speaker 2>walk over the piano and play it all note for
<v Speaker 2>note whoa, And so he just watches her and watches
<v Speaker 2>her four and a half Her old little kid is
<v Speaker 2>just fascinated by her ability to do this, and finally
<v Speaker 2>she's like Hey, come over here, I'll teach you how
<v Speaker 2>to do some stuff. So from four and a half
<v Speaker 2>to five years old, she teaches him three hundred chords.
<v Speaker 2>So at five years old, this Bobby Kimball knows three
<v Speaker 2>hundred chords. And then he's like at a barber shop
<v Speaker 2>and he sees this guy. He's in Louisiana. You know,
<v Speaker 2>he's an old black guy out there shining shoes and
<v Speaker 2>he's listening to the guy shining shoes and he's listening
<v Speaker 2>to the pop of the rag. He's like spoppopsh and
<v Speaker 2>the guy's like humming a tune as he's doing this.
<v Speaker 2>And again, five years old, fascinated, walks out and he says,
<v Speaker 2>what do you doing with that pop? He goes, well,
<v Speaker 2>that's rhythm, and he says, at that moment, I learned
<v Speaker 2>what rhythm was. So I had the chords, I had
<v Speaker 2>the rhythm, and it was at that point that I
<v Speaker 2>started writing my own music. Five years old.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, yeah, that's incredible. I saw an interview with Bobby Campbell. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>he's got this big personality, right, and he's kind of
<v Speaker 3>a loud guy, you know, and he was very center
<v Speaker 3>of attention, right, And when I listened to him with
<v Speaker 3>that sort of I don't know if it's a creole accent, but.
<v Speaker 2>He's got a weird accent because his family is from German,
<v Speaker 2>Like he's a quarter German and he went out there
<v Speaker 2>and lived for a while. So like when I hear him,
<v Speaker 2>I can't place the accent. I mean it sounds a
<v Speaker 2>little German, a little creole. I mean, it's weird.
<v Speaker 3>Here's what he sounds like to me. He sounds like
<v Speaker 3>a televangelist. He's got that bombastic personality and he's got
<v Speaker 3>this funky accent.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, that is fantastic. So when he graduates from college,
<v Speaker 2>he moves from LA to LA. He goes from Louisiana
<v Speaker 2>to Los Angeles, yep, and he meets up with the
<v Speaker 2>guys from Three Dog Night and they decide to form
<v Speaker 2>a new band called SS Fools. They record an album
<v Speaker 2>with CBS Records, which promptly does nothing fails. A year
<v Speaker 2>and a half later, band is done. It's washed up.
<v Speaker 2>So what's Bobby Kimball going to do? Well, As it happens,
<v Speaker 2>there's a couple of guys looking for a singer in
<v Speaker 2>a band. So you mentioned a couple of keyboards fantastic drum,
<v Speaker 2>you got bass, you got all kinds of lead singing possibilities,
<v Speaker 2>because not only can Bobby sing, but David sings and
<v Speaker 2>Steve lukather sings. The other guys don't really sing so much.
<v Speaker 2>A little bit and they'll do some backing vocals, but
<v Speaker 2>it's mostly those three guys. And then they also because
<v Speaker 2>they're so familiar with all these other studio musicians, they're
<v Speaker 2>also bringing in all kinds of other instruments, one of
<v Speaker 2>which is Lenny Castro, which is he's been on every
<v Speaker 2>single album that they've ever done, I think, except for one,
<v Speaker 2>and he's a world renowned congo player. You can't miss
<v Speaker 2>him on Africa.
<v Speaker 3>He's in the Africa video. Yeah, by the way, So
<v Speaker 3>just to touch on that. So David Page is kind
<v Speaker 3>of the architect of the band. Jeff Bacaro is the leader.
<v Speaker 3>So you and I were talking and we were like, wow,
<v Speaker 3>this is interesting because they kind of have like three
<v Speaker 3>lead vocalists. Right, David Page sings Africa, Ye, Bobby Kimball
<v Speaker 3>sing's the high chorus that we all know, right, look
<v Speaker 3>at their sings on several songs.
<v Speaker 2>Rosanna, He's singing the first part of Rosanna and Bobby
<v Speaker 2>Kimble singing the Higher.
<v Speaker 3>Party, and it sounds like two people are singing. It
<v Speaker 3>is two people are singing. Ye, but we found that interesting. Well,
<v Speaker 3>it turns out they modeled themselves after the Eagles and Fleetwood.
<v Speaker 2>Mac right who both both bands have multiple multiple singers
<v Speaker 2>and multiple songwriters right, and their recording is based upon
<v Speaker 2>what they learned by the Beatles recording. I mean, you
<v Speaker 2>want to talk about a produced album. This is a
<v Speaker 2>polished produced album, as are almost all of their albums,
<v Speaker 2>and they got that. I mean, say what you will
<v Speaker 2>about production. I feel like it's.
<v Speaker 3>Kind of I love it. I don't care what anybody says.
<v Speaker 1>Nut.
<v Speaker 2>I know, I know. I think I can identify with
<v Speaker 2>those folks who go well too produced, and I can
<v Speaker 2>also identify with those folks who are like, did you
<v Speaker 2>guys do any production at all? It sounds like you're
<v Speaker 2>in somebody's garage. Right, So it's like a speedometer, Right,
<v Speaker 2>you go too far one way and it's not really
<v Speaker 2>so good. You go too far the other way, it's
<v Speaker 2>really not so good. You need it kind of somewhere
<v Speaker 2>in the middle. Right, You need a little bit of
<v Speaker 2>a rough sound for certain music. And you need a
<v Speaker 2>polished sound for others if you say so, Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 2>that's where I am on that. But anyway, so they
<v Speaker 2>modeled their production style after the Beatles, which again also
<v Speaker 2>had multiple lead singers. Yeah, every single one of those guys.
<v Speaker 2>Actually we're staying yep, Ringo. He's saying, yeah, he's a submarine, right,
<v Speaker 2>he saying The Beatles did so many drugs. They even
<v Speaker 2>let ringosun.
<v Speaker 3>I've heard with a little help from my friends.
<v Speaker 2>So is this the point that we talk about how
<v Speaker 2>they came up with the name Toto?
<v Speaker 3>I think, so let's do that.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, do you know? Because I don't. I've heard like
<v Speaker 2>four different stories.
<v Speaker 3>So there are four different stories depending on who's telling
<v Speaker 3>the story.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 3>So I've heard that Toto means like all encompassing, like
<v Speaker 3>all types of music. I've heard that they got stoned
<v Speaker 3>watching The Wizard of Oz. I tend to believe the
<v Speaker 3>stoned Wizard of Oz story.
<v Speaker 2>Well, if you listen to Bobby Kimball tell the story.
<v Speaker 2>Even now it is David and Jeff we're talking about
<v Speaker 2>all of how to put the band together, and the
<v Speaker 2>TV's on. While they're talking about how to put the
<v Speaker 2>band together. Now we know that these guys did a
<v Speaker 2>lot of drugs. I mean, you're with musicians, that's what's
<v Speaker 2>going to happen. I don't know whether they're on drugs
<v Speaker 2>while Wizard of Oz was going on or not, but hey,
<v Speaker 2>if you're going to watch The Wizard of Oz as
<v Speaker 2>an adult, you probably should be on drugs. No. But
<v Speaker 2>and so then the once they get done with who
<v Speaker 2>do we want to be in the band, then they're like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>what should we call the band? And yeah, they see
<v Speaker 2>somebody yelling Toto, Toto come back, and that's where they
<v Speaker 2>come up with total.
<v Speaker 3>From bands at the time, like kiss. I mean, it's
<v Speaker 3>an easy word, it's easy to remember. It stands out
<v Speaker 3>from the crowd. I get it.
<v Speaker 2>And so the other potentially urban myth that's out there,
<v Speaker 2>we've got Latin. You know, in Toto means all encompassing,
<v Speaker 2>which that's the type of band they come from, all
<v Speaker 2>different genre was, all different styles. Then you've got the
<v Speaker 2>Toto from Wizard of Oz. And then there was this
<v Speaker 2>idea that they wanted to be overprotective of their music,
<v Speaker 2>and so Jeff would write Toto on every one of
<v Speaker 2>their cassettes just as a I mean too too, just
<v Speaker 2>that just kind of random letters thrown together to go
<v Speaker 2>this is ours, don't touch it. And once they got
<v Speaker 2>all of their cassettes together and had to put together
<v Speaker 2>a band, they were like, well, let's just call it Toto.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's good works for us.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, makes sense.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't know which of those stories is true,
<v Speaker 2>don't care. I like that there are multiple stories. As
<v Speaker 2>we do this, we find out that time can change
<v Speaker 2>a lot of what history is.
<v Speaker 3>There's about four different versions on how Rosanna the song
<v Speaker 3>got its title too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah so, and the writing of Africa, and I
<v Speaker 2>mean our whole catalog of episodes, we've heard multiple stories
<v Speaker 2>on how things happen.
<v Speaker 3>That's right, So don't kill a messenger exactly. I find
<v Speaker 3>it interesting that Columbia offered them a record deal without
<v Speaker 3>hearing a single note. Well, their demo was three dozen
<v Speaker 3>other songs that they had been involved in since right,
<v Speaker 3>we know what you guys can do. You guys are
<v Speaker 3>forming a band we want in sounds good for record deal. Interestingly,
<v Speaker 3>when they form Toto, it's a six way split. I
<v Speaker 3>found this fascinating. Okay, even though Jeff Piicaro is the leader,
<v Speaker 3>David Page is the architect six Way Splits real band.
<v Speaker 3>They were encouraged to bring guys in his hired hands.
<v Speaker 3>They're like, nope, we are a band, right, Okay. So
<v Speaker 3>it's nineteen seventy seven.
<v Speaker 4>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Steve Picaro is asked to join up with Gary Wright
<v Speaker 2>because they're about to do their dream Weaver tour.
<v Speaker 3>Wait wait wait wait wait, dream Weaver that one, that's
<v Speaker 3>the one.
<v Speaker 1>Woo.
<v Speaker 2>You can see how his keyboard skills would come in
<v Speaker 2>great for that particular song.
<v Speaker 3>Such a good one man.
<v Speaker 2>All right, And then they all get together and they
<v Speaker 2>form Toto, and that we have the release of the
<v Speaker 2>very first Toto album, Toto.
<v Speaker 3>Let's talk about hold the line for a second. David
<v Speaker 3>Page came to the band. He's like, hey, I think
<v Speaker 3>I've got something cool. And it starts off with that
<v Speaker 3>real heavy piano, but it's a rocker. Lukather adds that
<v Speaker 3>crunchy guitar and it's one of the great songs of
<v Speaker 3>the seventy.
<v Speaker 4>It's not in no way you look absolutely.
<v Speaker 3>I love So when they were putting it together, they
<v Speaker 3>started laying down the parts of it and it came
<v Speaker 3>time for Luca Third to play the guitar solo for
<v Speaker 3>this one, and they knew they had a hit, right,
<v Speaker 3>and so they're like, listen, this is a great song
<v Speaker 3>and they go to look through. They're like, dude, you
<v Speaker 3>really got to come with it because this is the
<v Speaker 3>one that's going to put us on the map. And
<v Speaker 3>so look, there's like, oh, okay, no pressure, right, And
<v Speaker 3>so he goes in and here comes his guitar solo
<v Speaker 3>and by the end of it, they're in the control
<v Speaker 3>room jumping up and down.
<v Speaker 2>Look at there is such a master of course, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>and to have them go it's all, it's all depending
<v Speaker 2>upon you and then deliver to the point that those
<v Speaker 2>guys are jumping up and down. That's fantastic, isn't that awesome? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the way he does it, he says, if the solo
<v Speaker 2>doesn't come to me in like the first or second try,
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna just quit for a little while and come
<v Speaker 2>back to it later. If it doesn't come, then you're
<v Speaker 2>just not feeling the music the way you should, and
<v Speaker 2>you should just step away and come back later on Okay, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So one of the other albums that he's a part
<v Speaker 2>of right after they've done Toto for is Lionel Richie
<v Speaker 2>can't slow down right Yeah, And one of the songs
<v Speaker 2>is running with the Knife. They want him to play
<v Speaker 2>the solo. They're like, we want you to play the
<v Speaker 2>solo for the end. It's like the tro to the
<v Speaker 2>song last couple of minutes. Just you know, that's what
<v Speaker 2>we want you to do. He's like, okay, he goes
<v Speaker 2>play it for me and I'll listen to it and
<v Speaker 2>see what I can do. Right, But he just keeps
<v Speaker 2>on going like this for two solid minutes, the last
<v Speaker 2>two minutes of the song. He just keeps rocking. It
<v Speaker 2>gets better and better as the song goes along, and
<v Speaker 2>so he finishes and they're like, okay, great, thanks. He's like,
<v Speaker 2>wait a minute, what now? I was just noodling around.
<v Speaker 2>What do we I'm ready to go and they're like no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>what you did is fine. That's good. Thanks.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>So what you hear on that album his very first attempt,
<v Speaker 2>and it wasn't even attempt. It was like I'm playing
<v Speaker 2>around to see what I can hear before I make
<v Speaker 2>my first attempt. And they're like, nope, what you did
<v Speaker 2>was fine. We're keeping it.
<v Speaker 3>That's awesome, man, that's awesome. By the way, Just to
<v Speaker 3>add on something about Hold the Line. Yeah, such a
<v Speaker 3>great song. Yes, it peaked at number five January thirteenth,
<v Speaker 3>nineteen seventy nine, and I was like, man, what songs
<v Speaker 3>are better than Hold the Line?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 3>I mean there's four better songs?
<v Speaker 2>Right? I love it when you do this. That's my
<v Speaker 2>favorite part of our podcast. You say, what song beat
<v Speaker 2>this song?
<v Speaker 3>What song is better than Hold the Line? Here you go? Ready?
<v Speaker 3>Number four You Don't Bring Me Flowers Barber Streisan Neil Diamond,
<v Speaker 3>not better but iconic song seventies okay, yees? Iconic Number
<v Speaker 3>three My Life Billy Joel, the theme from Bosom Buddies.
<v Speaker 2>I love that song, huge song, okay.
<v Speaker 3>Number two Left Freak by chic.
<v Speaker 2>Oh Wow, okay, huge huge.
<v Speaker 3>Song in the seventies, right yeah, now Rogers yeah, and
<v Speaker 3>number one Too Much Heaven by the Begs. Wow, those
<v Speaker 3>are all hugely iconic songs from the seventies.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean you can't. I mean talk about defining
<v Speaker 2>moments in nineteen seventy nine for sure?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's okay, okay, fair enough, fair enough.
<v Speaker 3>I're not gonna cover too much Heaven here in a
<v Speaker 3>few weeks, right, yeah, right, we're gonna do Dive into
<v Speaker 3>the Beg's.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we're gonna do Saturday Night Fever versus Dirty Dancing.
<v Speaker 2>Whoo Hey, everybody be sure and right now tap your
<v Speaker 2>screen the little three dots on your podcast player and
<v Speaker 2>hit that follow button so that you're sure to catch
<v Speaker 2>that one. And oh, here's a little contest that we're
<v Speaker 2>gonna do. All right, yep. If you write a review
<v Speaker 2>five star review for us and you use the word
<v Speaker 2>kill him and Jarro or Sarngetti in your review, you
<v Speaker 2>will be entered in a contest to win a custom
<v Speaker 2>engraved surely you can't be serious aluminum awesome yetti cup that's.
<v Speaker 3>Fanta, and you get a shout out from us on
<v Speaker 3>the podcast absolutely fantastic, Sarah Getty or kill him in Jarl.
<v Speaker 2>Right, find a way to fit it into your review,
<v Speaker 2>and we're gonna you're gonna be interested entered into that contest,
<v Speaker 2>all right? Yeah, okay, So, also on that album, in
<v Speaker 2>addition to Hold the Line, they had all supply the
<v Speaker 2>Love and Georgie Porgy, which had sheerl in on it,
<v Speaker 2>and it was a big I mean, got nominated for
<v Speaker 2>a Grammy for Best New Artist. And then After they
<v Speaker 2>closed that tour, they start work on their next album,
<v Speaker 2>which is titled Hydra Right it's released later that year,
<v Speaker 2>comes out with a single ninety nine you know this one, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>inspired by George Lucas's film THHX eleven.
<v Speaker 3>Thirty fantastic Yeah, starring Robert Duvall, who we just covered
<v Speaker 3>in The Godfather exactly.
<v Speaker 2>So Steve Lucatherer, by the way, hates that song.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's great when people say that Hyder was.
<v Speaker 2>Not a big commercial success. Still went gold, but compared
<v Speaker 2>to their original album, it kind of paled in comparison.
<v Speaker 2>And then in nineteen eighty one they come out with
<v Speaker 2>their third album, turn Back.
<v Speaker 3>That's a big fizzle too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's so what they tried to do on this
<v Speaker 2>one was some arena rock. They pulled back on the keyboards,
<v Speaker 2>they heavied up their guitars. But this is just not them,
<v Speaker 2>This is not total Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>It just didn't work for him.
<v Speaker 2>So at this point, major successful album on their first
<v Speaker 2>album and then two disappointments, and the record company comes
<v Speaker 2>to him and says, guys, if you don't give us
<v Speaker 2>some hits on this next album, we're going to drop
<v Speaker 2>you off the label. Yeah, Pressure's on, right, pressure is
<v Speaker 2>on now. I will say this, Okay, this is interesting.
<v Speaker 2>Turn Back is a hit in.
<v Speaker 3>Japan those Japanese people. Yeah, they up.
<v Speaker 2>And we're going to talk a little bit later on
<v Speaker 2>about Africa and how Africa became what it is again
<v Speaker 2>in the twenty first century. I think Japan has to
<v Speaker 2>have something to do with it. But Toto is one
<v Speaker 2>of those bands, I mean Toade's probably in like Beatles
<v Speaker 2>League as far as Japan is concerned.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, before we get too far down the road,
<v Speaker 3>December fifteenth, nineteen eighty one, Bobby Kimbell gets arrested for
<v Speaker 3>selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. Right, but he
<v Speaker 3>didn't really sell it to the police officer. He sold
<v Speaker 3>it to a couple of girls who sold it to
<v Speaker 3>a police officer.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, or they fingered him something.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's kind of and the details on this are weird.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>The amount that he sold four ounces, four ounces, that's
<v Speaker 3>ninety grams cocaine.
<v Speaker 2>A lot as far as cocaine is concerned. It's not
<v Speaker 2>much for a cannon coke, but for a bag of coke,
<v Speaker 2>it's a lot.
<v Speaker 3>That's like al Pacino's scarface levels of cocaine.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So pressures on they have to have maximum success,
<v Speaker 2>big hits on album number four, which they decide to
<v Speaker 2>call Toto four. So what they decide to do is
<v Speaker 2>go back to the formula that help them succeed on
<v Speaker 2>their first album. They are going to do a highly polished,
<v Speaker 2>highly produced album where they utilize all kinds of outside
<v Speaker 2>musicians to give it a more full feel and as
<v Speaker 2>clean and awesome as it can be. It takes the
<v Speaker 2>months they record during nineteen eighty one and nineteen eighty two,
<v Speaker 2>and they get a bigger budget for this one so
<v Speaker 2>that they can bring these musicians in. Okay, normally when
<v Speaker 2>you're doing a recording, you the band will have a
<v Speaker 2>twenty four track recorder. Toto used three twenty four track
<v Speaker 2>recorders at the same time.
<v Speaker 3>It's cool that the record comany still believed in them
<v Speaker 3>that much at that moment.
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's like we said, like, not only did they
<v Speaker 2>do a lot of stuff before they became Toto, they
<v Speaker 2>did a lot of stuff while they were Toto. It's
<v Speaker 2>not as though Toto was their only job. They continued
<v Speaker 2>to be session musicians and appeared on all kinds of albums,
<v Speaker 2>of other artists while they're releasing their own albums from
<v Speaker 2>seventy eight through eighty two. By the way, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Luke at they're played on Olivian Newton John's physical and
<v Speaker 3>listen to this. This blew me away. The guys in
<v Speaker 3>Toto played on Quincy Jones album called The Dude, The Dude,
<v Speaker 3>The Dude.
<v Speaker 2>El Duderino. If you're not under the whole brevity.
<v Speaker 3>Thing, I didn't know Quincy Jones. Oh heck, yeah, dude,
<v Speaker 3>I didn't know. I mean, of course I'm okay, so
<v Speaker 3>I will say this. I wanted to find out if
<v Speaker 3>Marty Pach I mean just because keep in mind, all
<v Speaker 3>these guys are been big band jazz guys. I wanted
<v Speaker 3>to see if Marty Pach ever played with Jan van
<v Speaker 3>Halen because Jan van Halen, remember, was also a big
<v Speaker 3>band guy.
<v Speaker 2>Right. I just Yan didn't appear to be the success,
<v Speaker 2>and I can't find anything that shows that they ever
<v Speaker 2>played together.
<v Speaker 3>What is to think about.
<v Speaker 2>What is interesting is that Joe Pacaro, the guy who
<v Speaker 2>said hey, you should meet my son Jeff to David Page,
<v Speaker 2>was involved in all four of these albums.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he arranges and does all kinds of stuff. Behind
<v Speaker 3>the scenes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Marty Page is involved in the first one. I
<v Speaker 2>think some of the others as well, and so it's
<v Speaker 2>really interesting to see how the dads have helped out. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So they had a producer that they wanted to be
<v Speaker 2>the producer for Toe of four, but ultimately could not
<v Speaker 2>reach an agreement with him, okay, and so what happened
<v Speaker 2>was they had been working with this engineer named Al
<v Speaker 2>Schmidt on some of the session albums that they had
<v Speaker 2>done just before Tota four is about to start recording,
<v Speaker 2>and so whenever that deal with the other producer when
<v Speaker 2>falls apart, they all say, well, what about out, let's
<v Speaker 2>let's have him engineer and we'll just we'll be the producers.
<v Speaker 2>But he can he can engineer the whole thing. So
<v Speaker 2>he engineered primarily the entire album himself.
<v Speaker 3>So let's just touch on a few things Toto four.
<v Speaker 3>The interesting thing to me is once they had recorded
<v Speaker 3>the majority of Toto four, they're sitting there in the
<v Speaker 3>recording studio one day and these headphones go flying across
<v Speaker 3>the room, smashing into the wall, and they turn around
<v Speaker 3>and it's David Hungate and they're like, dude, what's going on?
<v Speaker 3>He's like, I can't take any more of this crap.
<v Speaker 3>I quit. I'm out of here, see ya.
<v Speaker 2>So bizarre.
<v Speaker 3>They were totally taken back. Look at theirs, like, what
<v Speaker 3>what are you talking about? We're about to have this
<v Speaker 3>the best album we've ever put out, and you're quitting. Well,
<v Speaker 3>it turns out he wanted to produce and compose and
<v Speaker 3>do some other stuff. He had already moved his family
<v Speaker 3>to Nashville, so he wanted to make his mark on
<v Speaker 3>this album, and then as soon as that had kind
<v Speaker 3>of come to a close, he quit.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So that brings us to Toto four.
<v Speaker 3>That brings us to the Album of the Year in
<v Speaker 3>nineteen eighty three, right the make or break album for
<v Speaker 3>Toto where they had to have hits and hits they had.
<v Speaker 2>So come back next week and join us as we
<v Speaker 2>hit Total four track by track.
<v Speaker 4>A mover.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just rays down in Astrica. We gotta take some
<v Speaker 3>time to do the things we never