Toto star Steve ‘Luke’ Lukather stopped dyeing his hair when he turned 65, after his eldest son intervened. “I’d been dyeing it black since my thirties,” the singer-guitarist tells me. “Then, two years ago, my son Trevor said, ‘Look at your pals Jimmy Page and Brian May, they’ve stopped’.
“I said, ‘But I don’t know what’s underneath!’ I was born with dark brown hair. Turns out it’s now white.”
He pulls at some wavy white strands until they stick out like Beetlejuice. “I guess image isn’t important anymore,” he smiles.
Image played no part in Toto’s success. Their biggest hits – multi-million-sellers Hold The Line, Rosanna, and Africa – remain instantly recognisable. But for most, the band are at best a fuzzy memory from decades-old videos.
Yet Lukather points out, “We’re bigger now than ever” – as evidenced by their imminent UK tour, which culminates with Wembley Arena on February 5. “There’s a huge demand for us.”
The only Toto founding member left, Lukather now also manages the band. “If nobody wanted to come to the shows, it would’ve been done a long time ago.”
The quality of the musicianship has never faltered. “I didn’t get a bunch of guys off the internet,” he says. “Everybody’s got thousands of albums they played on.”
Toto formed in 1977 around a coterie of stellar Los Angeles-based session musos, led by 24-year-old Jeff Porcaro – “a great big brother, a fearless leader” – who’d been a pro since he 17, drumming in Sonny & Cher’s band and playing on albums by Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs and dozens more.
Cofounder, keyboardist-vocalist David Paich had credits on hits by Jackson Browne and Hall & Oates. Original bassist David Hungate was another studio vet who was later replaced by Jeff’s younger brother Mike. (Middle brother, keyboardist Steve also played in the band.)
Singer Bobby Kimball was 30 and looked it with his Tom Selleck tache. 19-year-old Lukather was “the kid”. He, too, would appear on hundreds of hits over the years by artists like Aretha Franklin, Alice Cooper, Barbra Streisand, Miles Davis, Elton John, Diana Ross…eventually over 2,500 different recordings.
Most famously, Lukather played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller – still officially the biggest-selling album of all-time. He’d guested the year before on Jackson producer Quincy Jones’s hit album The Dude.
“I was 23 and me and Quincy hit it off hard. He says, ‘I’m going to do Michael’s follow up to Off The Wall. I want you on it’.”
On his first day in the studio, he recorded The Girl Is Mine, Jackson’s jaunty duet with Paul McCartney and the first of the album’s seven million-selling hits.
“There’s Paul and Linda in the room, and Michael. There’s Quincy. I’m like, ‘This is surreal, man’.”
Afterwards, Lukather sat with the other session guys and “sparked up a joint”. The door flung open and in walked Paul and Linda. “He sniffed the air and announced: ‘I smell musicians!’”
Another of Thriller’s giant hits, Human Nature, was originally composed by Porcaro for the next Toto album. Indeed, with its slinky production and tasteful, understated melody it sounds like Toto – fronted by the future King Of Pop.
“Michael was the same age as me and we got on great,” Luke says.
The weirdness now associated with the Jackson brand had yet to manifest itself. “He’d had his first nose job, no big deal. Everyone in Hollywood has something done.”
When Luke worked on Jackson’s 1994 HIStory album, “It was an altogether different story.” But he prefers to dwell on the good times.
“I had hundreds of amazing moments. ‘Stevie Wonder’s playing keys today? Okay, cool’. ‘Dolly Parton wants me on her session? I’m in!’ Sharing a spliff with Neil Diamond. Sitting there while Joni Mitchell plays her new song. Being asked to join Elton John’s band…It’s not lost on me, nor do I take it for granted.”
Toto had been a hit “right out of the box” with their first single in 1978, Hold The Line: Top Five in America; Top 20 in the UK.
It was their 1982 album, Toto IV, “that really put us over top, though.” The first single, Rosanna, went to Number 2 in America; Number 12 in the UK.
Named after Rosanna Arquette, a then 22-year-old movie star involved in “a very passionate but tumultuous relationship” with Steve Porcaro, the song had actually been written by Paich who simply appropriated the name Rosanna for the chorus.
By the time it was all over the radio, Arquette had split from Porcaro. She spent the next decade denying she had anything to do with the song. These days she is more sanguine and admits to bringing beer and sandwiches to the studio while they were recording.
It’s Lukather’s favourite Toto song, “because we all get to shine on it.”
The last track on Toto IV was an even bigger hit. Africa, now their signature song, sold more than 10million copies on its way to Number 1 in America. Here, it went Top 3 and quadruple platinum.
“I don’t think anyone really saw that coming. It almost didn’t make the album.”
Critics gleefully pointed out how error-strewn Paich’s lyrics were; pouncing on geographically impossible lines, like, ‘As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti’.
True, Paich had never been to Africa, but the title was a metaphor and the song was about romantic yearning.
Africa now has over a billion Spotify streams and more than a billion YouTube views. It’s one of those indelible hits, like Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, where everyone knows the song even if not everyone knows the band.
“There was a pub in England that once played the damn song for 24-hours straight. I would’ve killed myself after about the fourth time.”
Huge numbers of Africa cover versions now exist, from Weezer to James Last. A 2018 compilation, Bless The Rain, contains 42 unique renditions in different musical styles. Lukather once joked that it was “like herpes” and just kept coming back. “But I’m very grateful, because it brings people to the show.”
For the past 13 years, Luke has also been a leading member of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band – a touring show featuring the former Beatle performing many of his hits alongside a cast of superstar sidemen.
“Ringo’s become one of my very best friends,” he says. “I just talked to him yesterday. We live near each other, we hang. We’re touring again this year. The fact that he’s a Beatle is a perk.”
Jeff Porcaro died unexpectedly in 1992, aged 38. The coroner determined cause-of-death as occlusive coronary heart disease exacerbated by atherosclerosis, partly the result of cocaine use.
LA-born Luke shrugs and says. “There would be coke at every session back then. Everyone was partying, even the gardener.”
In 2015, Mike Porcaro died after a long battle with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In 2019, Paich, now 70, suffered a seizure on tour, and now only joins the band onstage for the encores. “Dave’s still playing. He can sing. But he’s not built for speed anymore.”
Bobby Kimball, now 77, was diagnosed with dementia five years ago. Ironically, Lukather, whose reputation for ‘partying’ was hard-earned, is now Toto’s last man standing.
“Not by choice, man,” he says. “I’m just holding the candle.”
Twice married, twice divorced, with four kids, two grown-up; he is no longer in a long-term relationship, he says, through choice.
“It’s impossible for me to be with somebody. I’ve had some really wonderful women in my life, but I’m on the road 200-plus days a year. I’d love to have a great girlfriend, but I’m complicated, man.”
The party animal reputation is no more, he says.
“I haven’t drunk in 15 years. It got excessive and I wanted to live. I’m 67 years old. I’ve got white hair, man!”
*TOTO perform four shows in the UK in early February 2025. Tickets available from aegpresents.co.uk/event/toto/
