Toto reunited in the 2010s to help with bassist Mike Porcaro’s medical bills – but thanks to popular demand it became a fully-armed return to action. They released their 35th Anniversary: Live In Poland DVD in 2014, but as larger-than-live guitarist Steve Lukather entertainingly ranted to Prog, it had taken three attempts to get a concert movie onto the shelves.
If there’s any guy out there who pulls no punches, it’s Steve Lukather. He’s on a rant about the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. “Our new stuff is everything the folk over at Rolling Stone magazine hate,” says the guitarist. “Let me tell you, I’m not expecting Toto to be inducted – even though we’ve collectively played on about 5,000 records, received 225 Grammy nominations and are featured on over a half a billion records sold.”
He continues: “I’ve played with 75 people that are in the Hall Of Fame. As Toto we’ve sold 35 million records ourselves, and they have the gall to trot out some guy you’ve never heard of from 1953 and vote them in!”
He’s not finished yet. “We’ll never be in there because it’s a personality issue. We’re considered a laughable footnote to these people. Well, guess what? My hall of fame is the fact that I’m a successful musician, and being asked by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to be part of the 50th anniversary of The Beatles. I get texts all the time from Ringo. So fuck everything else – I’m living it. My dream has come true.”
He’s in full battle mode and it seems rude of me to interrupt. Good job, then, that attention is suddenly switched to Toto’s recent live DVD, a superlative work of art filmed in Poland last year in front of a capacity crowd that appeared to know every word of every song.
A couple of years ago they reconvened for a European tour, prompted by the illness of bassist Mike Porcaro, who’d developed Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a debilitating disease that attacks the central nervous system. The reunion had started off as a handful of US dates to help with Mike’s medical costs, but soon ballooned into a much larger situation, bringing Toto back to Europe, where they’d never fallen out of favour.
One balmy night at a suitably grandiose outdoor show in Verona, Italy, fans spotted a multi-camera film crew obviously there to capture the band in all their pomp-rocking glory. But no DVD ever found its way on to the market.
The director got in a car accident and the tapes burned up. Can you believe that?
“A lawsuit over who owned it and stuff that our ex-managers did meant we had to shelve it,” Lukather explains. “Get this: on the day of the shoot, our managers hired a different lighting guy who didn’t know the show, and literally kept most of us in the dark. It was a decision made just minutes before we went on stage – we didn’t even know about it.”
Co-founding Toto keyboardist David Paich explains more. “The show had been woefully underlit, and we weren’t great on stage that night – bad moods, sickness, fatigue, the lot. We weren’t enjoying the show like we normally do. Also our presentation and appearance wasn’t quite up to snuff. We didn’t want to issue something that wasn’t right.”
That project joined an earlier one that never made it: “Funnily enough, we’d filmed another show back in 2010,” Lukather says. “But the director got in a car accident and the fucking tapes burned up. Can you believe that?”
Fast-forward a couple of years to Poland’s 13,000-capacity Atlas Arena in the city of Lodz, a spacious and jam-packed venue in a country that Toto had never played before. “It was totally the antithesis of the other video – the perfect setting, actually,” Paich says. “The audience was great, and was with us from the very beginning. Before we even got on stage the audience was singing Happy Birthday to me. They knew everything about us.”
Indeed they did. The DVD is a revelation for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you can’t take your eyes off the footage – it’s so well filmed and edited. Secondly, the band is on tip-top form. What’s more, the song selections are off the chart. In a world where there’s a YouTube document of every performance you can imagine, constantly making you flick to another clip, this DVD will have you riveted to the screen for its entire length.
We didn’t go back and fix anything on the sound bed. There are a few wince-able moments from myself, I might add
Paich is delighted with the way the band are portrayed. “Contrary to popular opinion, it’s actually fun being in Toto – but it’s also very challenging; you can’t blink or fall asleep in this band for a second. It keeps you on your toes. I always like to say that when I die and go to heaven I want to play in Bruce Springsteen’s band, just so that I can relax for a moment!”
“The thing I dig is that it’s warts and all,” Lukather adds. “We didn’t go back and fix anything on the sound bed. There are a few wince-able moments from myself, I might add.”
He continues: “We’ve always had people say that we’re boring and faceless, but we’ve hung in there and taken our punches. This DVD is a great document of where we are now – we really enjoy playing together. We’re not phoning it in. Some guys shuffle on stage, walk off and take their paychecks, just like a bunch of miserable old fucks. We’re laughing, having a great time, and honoured to still be here. Actually, we’re enjoying this resurgence of success right now more than we ever did first time around.
“I tend to be my own worst critic, but I think as a band we’ve matured into older guys who still have fire left in ’em. We’re not trying to compete with the fastest gun in the West. We’ve grown into it; there’s a confidence that we’ve built up, and we’re feeling pretty good about it. I’m having a blast.”
The guitarist confirms Toto are eight songs into a new album. They’d wondered for some time whether it was worth returning to the studio after a decade away; but another backstage wrangle informed their decision. “We were up against someone who said they had ownership of us and that we owed them another album. We disagreed, and we got into a legal battle, which partly resulted in the shelving of the Verona DVD.
Perhaps God and our dead brothers have smiled upon us and said: ‘Let them have one more victory lap.’
“It finally came down to the fact that the easy way to deal with this is to make another record. We had never intended to do that for all the reasons that you might think. So we thought, y’know, let’s do one, but make it killer.
“We’re going about this in the old-school way,” he states. “We’re putting out product and playing in front of people – and winning over new people too. That’s the old grassroots way of doing it. It’s mainly a touring world nowadays.
“Perhaps God and our dead brothers have smiled upon us and said: ‘Let them have one more victory lap.’ We’ve earned it; we’ve taken all the knocks, and all these years later we’re still here. So anyone who says we haven’t paid our dues can kiss my ass.”
