The Catalyst interview: Toto’s Steve Lukather

With record sales of more than 40 million, and single-song streaming numbers in sky-high digits, Toto is one of the most successful American rock bands of the last 50 years.

Yet for all the California outfit’s many triumphs – “Hold the Line,” “Rosanna” and especially “Africa” are ubiquitous even in 2024 – Toto band members’ name and faces were never well-known. These guys weren’t the “rock stars” kids hung on the walls.

Toto plays Ruth Eckerd Hall Wednesday, May 8. Find tickets here.

Founding guitarist Steve Lukather was one of the top Los Angeles session players in the 1970s and ’80s. Over the course of his career, he played on thousands of sessions for other artists, from the worlds of rock, pop, jazz and rhythm ‘n’ blues.

Drummer Jeff Porcaro, his brother Steve (keyboards) and keyboard player David Paich were A-list studio rats, too. But they were all songwriters and singers, and Toto was forged in 1977 to give everyone an outlet for creating their own music.

With Bobby Kimball sharing lead vocals, Toto took the radio waves, and the Grammy Awards, by storm.

Kimball and original bassist David Hungate were the first to leave, and while other members came and went – including a third Porcaro brother, Mike – Toto soldiered on, even after tastes changed and the hits stopped coming.

Lukather and Williams. Publicity photo.

Lukather, who at 66 is on the road 200 days out of the year (he’s been a member of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band since 2012) now has the reins of Toto, along with vocalist Joseph Williams, who replaced Kimball in the mid 1980s, session pros Greg Phillinganes on keyboard and drummer Shannon Forrest, and others.

(In a Facebook message, Steve Porcaro sent his regards: “I’ve retired from touring of any kind and only wish my friends in Toto the very best,” he told the Catalyst. “They seem to be doing better than ever and I couldn’t be happier for them. Or me!!”)

As Lukather explains in this interview, since re-assembling the original, hit-making band was an impossibility, he did the next best thing.

St. Pete Catalyst: You’ve said publicly a lot, over the years, that you’d grown weary of all the lineup changes in Toto. Several times, you actually said ‘I’m not doing this any more.’ Yet here we are.

Steve Lukather: Well, I’m allowed to change my mind. I’ll tell you, the success of the band right now is staggering. I’m shaking my head in awe: Two million streams a day. I put together the band that we have now with childhood friends and A-listers. So it’s not like I went on the internet and found some kids that could play like that. Everybody in the band was friends with all the people in the original band.

And I can’t have that, because Jeff and Mike are gone; David cannot medically tour any more – if we play in L.A., he’ll get on the stage with us. But he’s not allowed to get on the plane and do it any more. The other guys are either retired, or Bobby, he’s got dementia.

So this is the closest thing to the original. We’re playing it like the records now.

If I’m having fun, I want to do it. Why not? I mean, ‘Africa’ is 2.2 billion streams. ‘Hold the Line’s almost a billion.

Does that blow your mind, those numbers?

It blows my mind, man! And it brings all these young people to the shows. So our audience is growing huge. And touring with Journey in the arenas has brought a lot of new people. Our stock has gone way up, so why not cash in and have a good time doing it? I’m having more fun now than I was 20 years ago.

Why revive Toto at all? You’ve heard about this whole deal with Burton Cummings suing the band calling itself the Guess Who?

I can answer this question before you ask it. Name me one classic rock band, of guys my age, that have a completely intact lineup from the first time. There is none. People die. People fall out with each other. They sue each other. It becomes this big mess of lawsuits over greed and all this craziness.

I’m a musician. That’s what I know how to do. I love to play. I’m having more fun now than I ever have – or I wouldn’t do it any more. Why would I do it if it was a burden to me? I could do other stuff.

I’m keeping our music alive, with great players. I can’t have the original band, but what am I supposed to do, shoot myself in the head and not take advantage of this?

When you asked me why I said I didn’t want to do it any more, I think sometimes some of the people in the band I was touring with had issues, which made it not fun. So that’s what it was, this lineup is done, I can’t do it any more.

I tried some other things, and that was fun for a minute, with the Snarky Puppy-Prince-jazz fusion guys. It was fun; it was different. But it became time to go OK, we need to make a change. I want to get back to the egg and start playing the stuff like the record. To honor what we were.

Toto was never really about the individual guys. It’s like the Steely Dan syndrome – not the people, the music.

Well, Donald (Fagen) is the last man standing, so yeah. Those guys are my second-favorite band of all time, Steely Dan. That was so inspiring to me as a young kid – and then when I met Steve Porcaro, and got in a band with him, his brother Jeff was IN Steely Dan at the time, doing Katy Lied. That’s when everything changed for me and I said ‘I want to be a studio musician.’

So studying, learning how to read and all this stuff, taking it very, very seriously … I shoved 10 years of study into three, and got my dream: I got in the door and I delivered, and met the right people who gave me opportunities. And I made it happen, started a career at a very young age. I was still a teenager when I started doing this stuff.

Once you had such a successful career as a studio guy, and then Toto became a “thing,” what was that like? Couldn’t you have made a ton more dough staying in the studio?

Not really! Well, here’s the thing: I had the best of both worlds. Number One Studio Guitar Player, that’s a pretty good thing to say. I was that guy for a while. That was a great honor, to be the first call that people would go ‘Hey man, we want Lukather.’ I played on a lot of hits, then all of a sudden my career just blew up.

Our first album came out and it was triple platinum. There’s no other band in history that’s done what we’ve done. Being Number One studios guys AND have a 47-year career. Sold 45 million records or whatever, and now if you look at the cumulative streaming between everything it’s like five billion. And it’s going like crazy.

I made a great deal with Spotify when I took over management. I love Spotify. I’m making more money than we ever did. Some people got a shitty deal and they hate Spotify. OK, I’m sorry, but we made the deal that nobody could get – ‘cause when I took over, Spotify was two weeks old or something like that. I got the right place at the right time – I said ‘I want this percentage for streaming.’ They didn’t realize we were as popular as we were, and they said ‘Yeah, you can have that.’ Heh-heh-heh. So we beat ‘em then. So I love Spotify.

What’s the gravy for a musician to play in the Ringo All-Starr Band?

It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done, outside of Toto. First off, to be close friends with Ringo, 12 years in? I cherish that. I love this man. He lives eight minutes from me. We hang out, we talk. It never gets old to get a FaceTime from Ringo, you know?

He’s a brother of mine now. I can’t believe I’m saying that.

Here’s what’s great about this particular version of the All-Starrs, which has been together a long time: Everybody loves each other and respects the music, and everybody plays everybody else’s songs … I have more fun playing everybody else’s songs than I do my own.

And Ringo really takes care of us, man. He shares everything with us. He’s so gracious and generous. We get First Class everything. It’s a vacation gig for me.

It’s a great honor to be in Ringo’s band. And to become a trusted friend of his, is just something I would take bullets for.

With Steve Lukather on lead vocals (and lead guitar):