Toto: 80s giants are still in session

Review by Jeremy Elwood | photos by Rachel Matthews

These days, nearly 50 years after they formed, Toto consists of original member Steve Lukather and his pick of some of the best session musicians he can conjure up. This isn’t a criticism, nor is it new for the band; from the start, Toto was essentially a session supergroup, and when Lukather introduces the current lineup towards the end of the show, their resumes include everything from Huey Lewis and the News to Hakuna Matata. (Seriously, vocalist Joseph Williams was the singing voice of Simba in The Lion King). Lukather himself is a legendary session guitarist. It’s his riff you’re listening to on Michael Jackson’s Beat It, at least until Eddie Van Halen’s solo staggers in and steps all over it.

It’s not inauthentic, in any way. In fact, it’s almost overwhelmingly authentic to a very specific time and place in music; LA in the early 80s. A time when solos were adulated, drums were thunderous, harmonies were high and tight, and synthesizers washed over everything like the Pacific rolling onto Santa Monica beach. It was also unashamedly commercial, songs that were designed to be played on FM radio, and to sell in the millions.

Toto certainly sold, and the crowd tonight bought in. If you were wondering why Auckland seemed empty of late Boomers and early Gen Xers on Wednesday night, I have the answer. They were packed into Spark Arena singing, dancing and doing some of the most unabashedly uncoordinated air drumming you will ever witness.

First up, though, Christopher Cross brought Yacht Rock to the City of Sails. A talented guitarist, backed by another top-notch band, Cross ran into a major hiccup right after his fourth song, Dreamers, when for some reason none of his electric guitars could be amplified. He gamely opted to play the rest of the set on an acoustic, starting with Sailing, the smash hit from his 1979 debut album. I’m not sure if the guitar switch made much difference, as there was so much else going on it was hard to tell where the synths finished and the electric clarinet began. This must be one of the most substantial touring parties to visit NZ in some time, by the way. Onstage with Cross were Francis Amaud (Drums), Kevin Reveyand (Bass), Andy Suzuki (Woodwinds and keyboards), Jerry Leonid (Piano) and three backing singers Jewelee Peters, Lisbet Guldbaek and Julia Sarr. Cross is definitely on the “soft” end of “soft rock”, and it’s possible that this was a side effect of the technical mishap (he dealt with some feedback for the rest of the set) but his voice has lost a bit of its timbre and range. Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) was a highlight, featuring a truly classic alto sax solo from Suzuki, and Ride Like The Wind brought the crowd to its feet, but other songs drifted by like sailboats themselves do – pretty to look at, but kind of outdated.

After a half hour break to reset the stage, Toto appeared with the instrumental overture Child’s Anthem. From the outset, it was clear that this is a band who know exactly who they are, and who they’re playing to. They never took themselves too seriously, but set their standards high. Sliding Roseanna in as the third song of the set, set the tone for a 2-hour nostalgia trip back to those sun-soaked California dreamscapes that the 80’s music business sold so well.

As mentioned, the band is down to one original member, but the current touring party are mostly old friends of Luthaker and Williams who have been involved with each other, in and out of Toto, for decades. Greg Phillinganes (keyboards and vocals) and John Pierce (bass) go way back with Luthaker, Shannon Forrest provides those booming drums and Warren Ham provides basically everything else, including saxophone, flute, percussion and a snippet of harmonica. The new kid is 27-year old Dennis Atlas (keyboards, vocals) who, when given the spotlight on Don’t Cry Angel, brings a dash of the direct descendants of the Toto sound that followed later in the 1980s. I would put any money down that either this kid has a couple of Skid Row albums in his playlist, or that Sebastian Bach had a fling with a redhead sometime in the late 1990’s. And be honest, he almost certainly did.

The musicianship is superb. There’s no shame here in being a virtuoso. Steve Luthaker is a bona fide beast on electric guitar; his seamless shredding on tracks like I’ll Supply The Love again shows the direct lineage between him and the pyrotechnic guitar slingers that followed.

It adds up though. The clinical precision of the playing can feel mechanical, moving metronomically from one crescendo to another. The moments when the band relaxes a little, like the extended jam at the end of Rosanna, are a welcome respite from the chrome veneer over much of the set. The power ballads haven’t aged as well as the harder rocking numbers, and sometime during I’ll Be Over You I started thinking, “yeah, I might be”. But no one was going anywhere until they played one particular song.

It came as the finale, and there’s no getting past it – Africa was awesome. It’s a standout track, quite unlike anything else Toto do, and undoubtably the reason they haven’t slipped into the same trench of nostalgic obscurity as so many bands of their era.