Toto’s Steve Lukather sat down with Backstage Pass to discuss the album that almost made them drop it.
During the chat, Lukather revealed the record company threatened them with not releasing their album if they didn’t have one thing in it: A hit song. The rocker explained:
“Here’s the irony of that: The record company told us if we didn’t have a hit they were going to drop us.”
However, the band decided to oppose to it and just be ‘something’ instead:
“So that’s motivated, and at that point we just said, ‘You know what? We’re trying to be something. Let’s just be. Let’s just write and whatever comes out comes out,’ and then that got you ‘Toto IV.’ At that point I think we had been playing together as a band and we had toured and we had found ourselves and at that point all the dots connected. We came up with this record man. We’re still very proud of that record but it was definitely a sinker swim record.”
Lukather Hates ‘Africa’
Back in 1982, just five years after they got together in Los Angeles, Toto became famous for their pop-rock ballads ‘Africa’ and ‘Rosanna.’ ‘Rosanna’ hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while ‘Africa’ went to the top spot. They both became big songs for the band.
Even though it got so popular, ‘Africa’ almost didn’t make it onto ‘Toto IV,’ simply because Lukather hated it. Al Keller at CBS had to convince the band to keep it. Lukather explained why during another interview:
“I thought it was the worst song on the album. It didn’t fit, the lyrics made no sense and I swore that if it was a hit record, I’d run naked down Hollywood Boulevard.”
You can watch the recent interview below.