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