David Paich

cohorts and colleagues, Steve Lucather and uh Joseph Williams. We're making solo records pre COVID and uh I got involved with their solo records and uh uh uh they prompted me, They said, well, what you need to put out solo record out? And I said, why I don't. I don't do solo records. I do my band records. And he said, no, it's time for you to do that. You have some material lying around. To get that material out there and

so people can hear it. So I got in uh uh, I got Joseph Williams to co produce with me, and uh we just got in the studio and started uh uh pulling open pieces out and uh I decided to start the album. And this is about two years ago. Okay, do you have a lot of old pieces around and why were they not previously used? Uh, they just didn't have a home. Sometimes you come up with us just little sections of songs and uh, sometimes you work them into framing them into as a song, or sometimes they're

just uh forgotten about. You know, by the way that the album titles forgotten Toys. Sorry, that's okay. No I mentioned that it was originally broken Toys, but it is Forgotten Toys now, so they're all forgotten songs that needed dusting off and uh and to find a new home. You know, So how many did you have to go through to find the one you want? Oh? Probably maybe

about twenty pieces? Little pieces and stuff like this, because this is a song an album that was put together kind of like a puzzle where we said, we we have these pieces of music, but we don't know what the puzzle looks like. So we had to frame it, get the forum on it, and uh uh, get lyrics written and get melodies written to it. So it was a work in progress the whole time. Okay, so you started two weeks two years ago, not two weeks ago,

and it is forgotten Toy. Sorry for that. Funk up okay and uh, so when you started with Joseph, what were the first steps? The first step was Joseph came in and heard a demo that I had done, and this is on the song first Time, uh, which is like the third cut on the EP, and uh, he said, give me that. Let me take that and make a

blueprint of that. And what he did was he took my original scynth little synth riff that I was playing uh on on a keyboard, and he added his samples to that and made a little rhythm track of that what he calls getting ready for Musicians, where he makes uh these little uh almost demos, but they're really fat good demos before we started adding the human element, which are the musicians. So he gave some stuff. How did you end up with the total compliment of songs? I mean,

there are seven songs on the album? How do you get seven? Uh? I tried. There were some a couple of extra songs, but I didn't feel I wanted to convolute the record and and have songs that people skipped over. I don't what didn't want any filler in there, and this is just what I had at the at the given amount of time. Uh, it's just what I came up with. And I didn't want to include a little pieces that weren't together, you know, so uh uh these these were my favorite ones. Okay, So where did you

cut it? We cut it at my studio here, which is called a t S that stands for across the street, and at Joseph's place also as well, and then we went to a few studios to get musicians. Steve Jordan, I sent him a track. Steve Jordan, who is now the current drummer with Rolling Stones. Uh. He did his in New York on Queen Charade and Uh. I went to Don Felder's house for this Queen Charade as well to have him put slide guitar on it. And he

was great. He's a fantastic slide player. I can't say enough about what a great guy Don Felder is and how much he added to Uh. What a magical experience that was watching him play slide guitar. How do you know Felder who used to be in The Eagle, Um, he I have a common uh colleague of ours. Uh asked me to do overdubs. He was the producer of Don's album and he asked me to do some overdubs for Don's record, and so I have the last three or two or three albums I've worked on doing overdubs

for Don. And then when I asked him to to uh play on my album, he didn't even flinch. It was just a big yes, with what time do you need me? You know, he was so great. Now in the old days, your studio musician, you're making, you know, uh the raid or double or triple. When you call in your friends, people are interested in how it works. Business is totally different. Everybody works for free and how

does it work a combination of both? You know, I don't expect professionals to come in and work for free, but I have certain friends that won't, that refuse to work for money and stuff that will just their their returning favors. It's kind of like the old barter system. You know, you play on my record and I play on your record, so some sometimes it's exchanged that way. Sometimes I write the person to check that's right here, right after they finished playing, and it's uh, it's done

deal okay. And how extensive is your home studio? Uh, it's fairly extensive. I have an isolation booth. I have a control room. It was put together by the people that by a mastering house called the Mastering Lab, which is a was the famous mastering facility in l A. Well, those are the gentlemen that put in my sound system because I wanted a studio that sounded, uh, that you could listen to professionally at two recordings at home, and when you took it out of here, it wouldn't sound different.

So I have a very professional small it's really for a keyboard player kind of producer. But yet I have a right behind me, I have a nine ft grand piano. But I've used on all the total records, and I've recorded vocals and brass players in here before. And uh uh that's about it. And what kind of equipment do you have? What kind of equipment? I've got old and new, just like me, bob old and new. Okay, uh, I've got um. I've got a ham and organ sitting right in front of me. Here, I've got a nine ft

Baldwin st ten and back of me. But I've got also uh Nord instruments. I have core instruments. And I'm mainly using a computer now with a logic program and pro tools to do the recording. And I still have two analog machines sitting here just to remind my digital uh computers, uh that there once was a past there. You know, they're still sitting here watching, watching behind them. I've got a twenty four tracks student, had a two tracks student sitting in my studio. How long have you

had those students? Since? Total four? Okay, I've had them, and I kept waiting to use them, you know, to start doing uh the old analog thing where we cut on analog and but the overdubs are done digitally. You know. I found that just doing everything on pro tools uh and eliminating tape is the way to go as far as my years go. And when did you last use the studs? Uh? Probably about that time, probably the early uh two thousand. I haven't used them. And what do

you have for a board and speakers? Uh, it's just a virtual board right now. It's a I've got altic big reds in my studio. Um and uh, I have a little mini but just small board for opera for so you can manually do mixes and stuff. Uh, small mixing but nothing nothing, no large mixing and uh uh I don't know which really brand what my little board is, but it's it's all computer based, you know. Okay, do you have a sponsorship with Balden or do you for ball when to Steinway or Yamaha. I don't have one

because I just used. I used whatever is the best for me. And uh, I was linked up with a couple of companies at one time, but now I'm a free agent and I'm linked up with nobody. And it's kind of hard to get to keyboard endorsements because they don't really give keyboards away that often. And uh, but I was. I was associated with a larger company um which was Yamaha for for many years. And uh I used a lot of that stuff on like Africa and Total four record. So the bald when you have behind you?

When did you get it? Where did it come from? It came from a piano tuner who was famous in town named Keith Albright, who tuned all the pianos for the best playing pianos in town. I bought it from him the day before we cut the first tracks of the first Total record. So the piano, my piano was there. Uh on hold the line, which was the first track we cut in the studio. It was there, uh for Hydra, for Turnback. I used it on Rosanna, I wrote, used it on Africa and uh all all our other records.

I've always used this piano. So it has a special place in my heart. And uh uh it's been very good to me as far as playing on all uh are good our best records. Okay, when you used it for the total records, was it in your house then or did you have it slept to the studio? I had it slept, good word, I had slept to the studio. And as we went later on, when I finally got my new studio here, we started, I started doing overdubs here.

But it wasn't until you know this this millennium here that uh I started recording it uh away from the studio. Otherwise I had it brought there and tuned up and uh I brought my own mics with were chefs, uh stereo mics to put in the piano and uh uh that was it. So how did you ultimately learn how to mike the piano and what mikes to use? Asking a lot of engineers, a lot of questions and just seeing whatever whenever I was in the studio, which was

many times playing piano. I'd watch the different guys mike the pianos. It's funny when I went in with the I used to work. I used to be a Neil Diamonds band and uh uh. Garmin Steiner, a very famous engineer, would use two k m a t eights on the piano. But when Neil came in, he would change the mic. It was like a secret his secret miking, which is to do a mono one mic uh you forty seven and to put it on the piano and it sounded.

It would sounded zing. So I've gone anywhere from doing stereo pairs here was C. Twenty four's uh chefs mix, to using a mono. There's different ways, different sounds for different songs. Okay, if one looks at the credits of the new album, which of course is Forgotten Toys, not Broken Toys, it's a who's it's a who's who famous musicians you know, looking through How do you know Brian Eno and how did he end up working on the record? Well,

actually I didn't. I didn't use any of those people on the cover right there, I just said I used them. I just put those up just to sell more records. Actually, no, I never met Brian, you know. Funny enough, I've never I've never met Brian. You know he worked on the first Dune record directly with David Lynch and uh, the same producer that produced Don Felder. Uh knew him through association because he was playing with my friend was playing with um uh Paul Siman, and Brian Eno happened to

be co producing Paul Simon's record. So Uh, my friend played him a couple of my early roughs on my album here and apparently this is what he told me. Brian sent him heard the thing and sent him a couple of samples uh to include on this one song called All All the Tears That Shine, which is in the very beginning you hear this little pulse sating beacon, and you also hear throughout the song and at the very end. And that was his contribution. And I thank him for that, uh, and I hope to meet him

face to face one day. Okay, you used Mike Laying on piano, who unfortunately recently passed as a piano player. Why would you use Mike? Mike and I go back,

uh to when I was fifteen years old. My father was the musical director on the Glenn Campbell Show, and he put together a great rhythm section for that, one of which was Mike Lange, one of which was Joe Pricaro Jeff Percarro's dad on percussion, one was Louis Shelton uh steals and crops producer, and Paul Humphreys on drums who played on Let's Get It On, and all these great musicians. Well, he was the piano player and I used to sit next to him every Sunday during the

Glenn Campbell Show and UH. He would teach me things like how to play Hammond organ. I didn't even know how to turn a Hammond organ on back then, you know much, Let's play it, and UH I learned. He he was my mentor, and so we started talking about doing UH. As the years kept going by and we kept playing together on various record dates. UM we did.

We talked about possibly doing a record together sometime so about eight years ago, I started him and I started kicking around some ideas, and one of them was Lucy UH that we did. We ended up writing together. I played the head on it and he plays the incredib solo that's in the middle, and then I finished it on Hammond, Oregon. So it was just one of those things where we kind of started a duet album, but it didn't come to fruition because he was so busy and I was quite busy. So I just I grabbed

this track from my solo record. And what about Davy Johnstone, Elton's guitarist. How did he end up on the record? Davy has been a friend for over thirty years. He's been a close friend of mine, and uh, I just called Davy. I knew he was in town from Elton, and uh I asked him. I said, Davy, would you mind playing acoustic? And of course, Davey's the sweetest guy

in the world. He said, of course I will. And because I wanted this certain uh texture uh that he plays when he when he plays acoustic guitar that you hear on all these Elting John records. Now, what's unique about Davy's playing is every time I thought it was a high hat or a shaker plane, keeping like songs like Daniel together, it was Davy's guitar. His acoustic rhythm guitar is like a percussion instrument. And all the Elton John records are are nine of them where you heard

Davy playing the rhythm to the guitar. So I thought he would be a great element to have. And like I said, he's a he's a dear friend, and uh it was just it was a magical experience. Okay, Yeah, Steve Jordan you mentioned earlier on drums, but you also have Greg Bissonette we all know, and Robin DiMaggio, who I don't know. Why are there different drummers and why are these particular people playing um When I'm making a record, especially when I'm making records have made records outside of Toto.

You have to cast the music, and you cast the music by casting each song, who would be a good player on this song? So by having the luxury of doing a solo album, I was able to cast each song and Joseph helped me with the casting. But I knew definitely that I wanted to get to uh someone like Steve Jordan's for uh Queen Charade, because that's the kind of drummer he is. He's very reckless and cavalier and and loose with his plane. So I knew he'd be the right guy. And uh uh we got We

knew hum Greg Bisonette from Ringo Starr. Of course I played with Greg before on he's played with Toto. He went out in the road with Toto for a week when our drummer got sick one time. And uh, he's been kind of an honorary member. And uh, we just cast these people, like I said, like their character actors. Whoever is right for the part, you know, And we just felt each of those drummers was right for the

parts that they played. Now, if for some reason you couldn't play, who would you cast to play your part? That's very easy. I would have Greg filling games in a second. Well, he ultimately played with Toto. But why do you say Greg great player? Because Greg is like a brother from another mother. I know that the phrase is used a lot, but he does a version of me. When I sit down and play the piano. He goes, oh, this is what you this is what you mean, and

he sits down and plays exactly what I'm doing. But it's the way he plays it, and he just adds his little touches to it. He's like a it's like a doppelganger. It's weird. It's a him, but he's he's got ten times the technique that I do. I'm not comparing myself with him because he went out with Stevie Wonder. I mean, he joined Stevie when he was eighteen years old, and he's just a phenomena. He really is. He got perfect pitch and uh, I hate him for being as

talented as he is now. The signal from the album was Spirit of the Moon Rise. But my favorite song is will I Belong to You? What's the story with the title, How did will I Belong to You? Come together? That came together from Joseph Williams. He just had a piece, and he had a piece, and there was really the chorus to the song, and that's all he had was that little piece. So I said, I really I got to write a song for that chorus because it was such a beautiful chorus, which is who I belong to

Who I belong to you? And uh, I came up with this little uh verse um that I thought would would be a nice uh uh bookend to the chorus. And uh, I'm again. I'm a big Paul Simon fan and Paul McCartney fans, So I like the acoustic I

um brought in acoustic. Dean Parks on Acoustic guitar and uh uh Nathan East on bass, and I just thought that Uh, Joseph and I filled it out, filled the rest of the between the course and the verses, filled it out with some transitional music and kind of just tried to get the imaginative with arrangement and how much of the record was cut with everybody in the room playing simultaneously, if at all, none of it. None of

it was. But but the idea was to make it feel like that, and I think I achieved that pretty much because every time I listened to the record, and I've listened to this album hundreds and hundreds of times, I always feel like I'm listening to a live performance from the guys, because that's the specialty of the end of the instrumentalists that I called in have the ability to overdub and make it feel like it's here, it's being done live right there. It never sounds like an

overdub to me, at least with these particular players. And Clear Mountain mixed. Did you just give him the tracks, say do what you do? Or do you give him a lot of instructions? And why Clear Mountain? Not that he's not great, but why him? Yes, yes to both of those. I always loved Bob clear Mountains mixing. He mits the Toto's album called Kingdom of Desire and I first we first made contact with him. Then I was a big Brian Adams fan with all of his records.

Box was. Bob's done everything from in Excess to Uh, David Bowie and one of my favorite records, which is what I really liked him to be mixing Queen Charade on. He'd bixed Start Me Up for the Stones, and so it was a real treat having him the guy that mixed that record. Mix mix our record with Bob, I've usually had with mixer's I've usually had a a notepad with that had a couple of pages and notes on it. With Bob, I had I had a whole notepad and

only had two uh suggestions on it. One was like, uh, turn the vocal up a little bit and turned the base up a little bit, and it was like two suggestions and the records done. He's so fast, he's uh he's another uh woonder kid, you know. So Needles just say, the record business is very different from the heyday of Toto to what Okay, so you're making the record at what point do you get a record company distributor? And are you still motivated to do it even though it's

so hard to get anything recognized today? Those are all good questions. Uh. I I made the connection with the record company was his mascot through Steve Lucather, who has had solo albums more I think ten solo albums or more probably, and Joseph was on the label too, and I've hadn't heard nothing but good things about Mascott. So Luke started telling them, well, you know, David Pace might because they usually have good whole do guitar players the

majority of their artists or guitar players. And uh, so Steve was touting me the fact that I was thinking about doing a solo record, and so he slipped them, he slipped them, slipped it in their ear. And I think that as my as I started gaining momentum and

getting some tracks finished, uh, it started coming together. And then I got Steve Carris involved from a management standpoint, and uh they were kept waiting for waiting and waiting for me to get it done because I work at a snail's pace, and uh, because I have the luxury of having my studio here at home. So uh, they said they were interested, and I financed the record myself up until the point where we made the deal with them,

and then they came in. Uh. But it's not like the old days where you can shop around all the majors and you're holding gold in your pocket, because no one's really waiting for my record to come out, you know what I mean specifically, So it's a it's a harder sell and I try and let the music sell itself. That's another reason I did the e P because I wanted to make sure I had all my best songs,

all my best material uh in there. And uh the business has definitely changed from when we started a shopping it for a deal uh back in Okay. Now, we delayed this podcast for about a month because you were going on the road. What was being on the road like. Being on the road was me flying into specific places uh uh two places like uh New Orleans at Nashville and Sacramento. I flew into and I played uh the Staples Center, which is now not the Staples Center anymore.

But uh uh and I I do like the last five songs in the show, and it's just because I'm I'm the Steve Luca there made me musical director for Toto, And what I do is just kind of oversee the rehearsals and make sure all the fine tuning and details are are maintained. And uh, and they asked me. They told me they wanted me to come out on the road whenever I can make it, to come out and

do that. So I started getting the road itch, and I wanted to play with the band because it's one of the few last venues where you can actually play live music. It's not hardly done in recording studios anymore, which whereas where we used to play every single day all day long is in recording studios. But uh uh now uh it's on stage live, which is which is why I think so many artists, premiere artists and smaller

artists are touring. It's just the fact that they're keeping a music alive and able to do the live experience where you commune with the audience there and it's a special as a special uh moment. Like I said, it's a magical experience. When you're out with an audience, they give you energy. You feed off that energy, and uh, I think that's why people love playing live now you were dropping in on these dates? What's your you know?

Going on the road. There's a million songs. You know, the hour on stage pays for the other twenty three? Are you someone who likes the road? Who hates the roads? Done? Enough of the road? I've I love the two hours on stage that I play the last half an hour of But I am I'm past the road. Uh, I'm move have moved on to uh being a homebody here, and I still like to travel. I liked you know, but I've spent years on buses and uh have done the road thing. And uh as I'm getting not old

but a little bit older here. Uh riding on a bus doing one night ors is a little heavy for me. Now, okay, you say you work at a snails Peace, go a little deeper. Why so slow? Why so slow? Because I'm a perfectionist and I know I know how to I

pay attention to details. Now. The way the reason I got into details was when my first record date hit record was a song called Diamond Girl with Seals and Rofs, and Uh, I learned from Louis Shelton and Jimmy Seals specifically to not let anything go by, to make sure everything was just just right with either vocals or the rhythm track. And I'm talking about microscopic details that the

normal listener would never pay attention to or notice. And this is how you get those clean layered records like Seals and Crops used to do. Steely Dan is another group that we learned from Jeffrey Carl and myself. We're paying attention watching them while they made Pretzel logic and Katie lied and they were they were so uh uh microscopic with all the details and the little ticks and pops in the tape and anything that would make a

little sound. They were fanatical about having clean records. And uh, this is back in the analog days, so it was a little bit more of There was more had to be maintenance done with machines and cutting tape to edit and all these kind of things that they don't do anymore. But uh again back to your Wigan saying, well, I move moving to Snail's place because I like to take my time and uh, I cover a lot of details,

but I also have a life here. I like to go out in the water my garden and uh I'd like to swim occasionally and ride my bike, and uh do things that to keep me in shape. So it's not just music. Your music used to be seven since I was ten years old up until you know, just recently when I started uh uh you know, just balancing my time. I think life. Life's a matter of balance. Okay, we know about Becker and Fagin. Tell me a little

bit more about working with Louis Shelton. Louis Shelton was one of the great guitar players, session guitar players in town. He's right up with Dean Parks, Larry Carlton, one of those kind of guys. But he was the first real session guy that started producing music for people. So he would do it like a session guy would do it, which is to pay potential particular attention to these details.

And uh he was I gained a relationship again on the Glen Campbell Show when I used to see him every Sunday, so I was familiar with jamming with him a little bit. But he was such a good record producer that uh he let me actually get my hands on the knobs and turn pan pots and turn echo knobs and turned faders and and actually uh taught me how to produce. So he was a huge mentor along with Jimmy Seals. Another thing I wanted to just back up for a second and mention about doing synthesizers and

keyboards on on albums. Quincy Jones when we were doing Thriller. Quincy Jones said that doing synthesizers synth over dubs on Thriller was like painting a seven forty seven with a toothbrush. Okay, that gives you an ideal. That's why I take so much time making my records, Okay, because that's that's a kind of detail and a kind of it's a combination of science and music when you get into synthesizers and sonics. Really, you know, with engineers microphones, I have a good microphones here.

I've got c C, I've got used forty seven's, I have uh telephone in two fifty, I've got cheps mics. So uh, you know, we're all trying to do this. Does does this need to be acoustic or it shouldn't be sampled? We're in that age right now. Okay. You talked about life balance. Was this a revelation at some point that man or you just said, I don't want to do that anymore? And what does this balance look like. Well,

the balance came from my upbringing with my parents. My father was a jazz arranger and jazz pianists who became a big orchestrator and orchestral conductor for people like Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra streisand and my mom was a bookkeeper. So they taught me there's got to be a balance in life here and made sure that I always was able to play a little bit of sports when I was growing up, as well as practice

the piano. But they always wanted to make sure that I had a normal upbringing, you know, that it wasn't just all Hollywood and just all music music music. So I got that from my ingrained uh infused on my d n A from my folks. But uh, I think as I got older here, I think I had a couple of wake up calls that, uh let me know that the touring thing, I just wasn't able to uh keep up, uh physically with the touring thing, and I ended up suffering from fatigue and exhaustion and a little

bit of depression and anxiety. And uh, those who were kind of all warring signs that I needed to try and hang up my road boots. Now you've only been married once, right, this is true. This is an unusual in this business too. That's why I'm asking why did your relationship sustain when so many don't. I think because my wife has a sense of humor about me. She doesn't take me seriously, I think, and we get along great and we keep laughing, and I think it's mutual respect.

You know. She was a professional food stylist and used to go on location and I used to go in location when we first got married. So we'd meet up every once in a while to discuss our marriage a date and UH ended up just hitting it off immediately. So how did you actually meet her? Oh? Boy, I promised myself I'd never tell this story. Uh. I met on a blind date. Our engineer Greg Ladonni Uh was working with us and his wife was work with my uh with Lorraine, my soon to be wife, and so

she set me up. She said, Greg, I've got a girl that David needs to go out with. So I hired a limousine and then she got cold feet, and so I invited my band because I was gonna take him to a fancy restaurant that I had invested in blah blah blah and uh the band. Lorraine decided she wanted to go on the on the on the date,

so it caught me off guard. So my band showed up just before she showed up, and they ended up sitting in a limo and I sat in the front seat with my girlfriend Lorraine with the limo driver all the way to the restaurant. That was my first date experience, which was like, it couldn't be worse, but she made it. She was laughing the whole time. She thought it was hysterical. And that's why we're still married. And how often do you play? I try and play every day, and I

just about do. I try and practice at least a half an hour a day, and uh sometimes I play a couple of hours at least, and I find that I need to, uh, even when I go on the road. I just got back from the Zurich Film Festival. Uh. And I always bring a little keyboard with me so I can practice in my room to to keep up my chops. Otherwise, if I go two or three days without playing, uh, I just everything starts tightening up a little bit. Okay, So you grew up in the valley

where I grew up. I was born and raised in Rosita, and uh that's where my folks lived on Hesperian sati Quoi in the valley. And when they were five years old, my parents moved to Hidden Hills, which wasn't all fu food at the time, and it was just hardly anybody but pours people out there and my dad. They told my dad he had to get out of the valley and moved outside after the outskirts because he wasn't getting enough sleep, uh, writing arrangements and stuff. So it was

for health reasons. He ventured out into the Hidden Hills area, which has become you know, the home of the Kardashians now. But that's where I lived. That's where I lived from five until one that when I entered college. And uh so that's that's how I grew up. That's where I was a valley boy, you know. And where do you live now? I live in Calabasas, I know, but I kind of where I grew up, right across the freeway

from where I grew up, off a mahole and drive. Okay, when did you realize your father was a musician and when did you become interested fascinated by that. Uh when I went to my dad took us to a concert I think, and I think it was al Hurt who was playing trumpet, and they introduced my father in the audience at the Greek Theater and he stood up and took a bow. And that's when we did. That's when

we knew that dad was something. Yeah, my dad used to get singled out because he was a very prolific arranger, and they would single him out and make him stand up and take bows whenever he was with somebody, like because he arranged for such so many of the greats. I mean, he ranged for Sinatra, He arranged for Sammy Davis Jr. Dean Martin, Ella Fantzgerald, Lena Horne, and the list goes on. You know, he was because he handled

big orchestras. That's what his claim to fame was that he wrote classical style or string parts and orchestral music. Uh like take the take for instance, The Way We Were. My dad produced and arranged that record for Barbara Streisan. So he was he was pretty much of a icon and alleged you know, how did he get into it? Interesting question. His father was from Croatia originally and wanted

him to be an accordion teacher. So he bought him an accordion when I think my dad was elect twelve years old and hopes that he would be an accordion teacher. And my dad loved jazz so much he started uh learning how to write music and learning how to play jazz, and UH ended up joining the Air Force ban in the army, which he still played accordion, believe it or not,

in the jazz band. I have a picture of that, and uh uh he just kept at it, at it and then he finally UH went to USC and the l a conservatory of with by the way, which is because his colleagues at the time where John Williams and Andre Prevan. Uh, and he learned he got a master's degree in composition from USC, and UH learned how to write fugues and uh and uh all the classical training

that he needed to UH launch into doing orchestras. So how many kids in the family my my family, I have one daughter, No, when you were growing up, brothers, sisters? I have one. I had one sister, one older sister. Okay, So at what point do you start taking lessons? I started taking lessons around eight years old, I started playing the piano, and it was about five I think my dad had done two versions of a song called Blues

in the Night. My mom and then told him that that little riff right there was the first thing that I ever picked out on the piano, and my father noticed it. I think he was doing it for meltor May, either him or Elphitzgerald at the time. I think it was Meltormey though, and uh, I just picked that out on the piano. And then uh, I decided, after sitting next to Shelly Man and Louie Belson, I wanted to be a drummer when I was very young, about five

six seven years old. So I get to use next to drummers like Shelley Man, Louie Belson and and uh uh my dad, I said, I wanted to do this for a living like my father, and I was only seven or eight, and he says, well, you're gonna have to start studying seriously if you really want to do that. So I started with my piano lessons at eight years old, and uh uh. When I got to be twelve, my dad says, now you've got to really take it seriously.

I was playing little league at the time, and I was a catcher and uh he told me that I would end up hurt in my hands if I kept on doing a catcher because he had a cousin that was a professional catcher and he had all broken fingers and stuff. Anyway, I didn't want. I definitely uh nudged me to being a musician. And at thirteen I got a classical uh pianist teacher that trained me for the next four or five years. Uh and uh it gave me all my sound and technique. It really changed my life.

So you're taking piano lessons, I how much are you putting into it? You know, I took piano lessons. The big thing was practicing and we didn't so right, well, not enough, you know, you go back the next week whatever. So what you know? You were dedicated. And what happened to the drums? The drums? Uh, I found out just another funny story, not funny to me, but funny. Uh. Louie Belson ended up giving my dad a set of

drums to give to me. Okay, well, my father, who wanted me to be a piano player, not a drummer, never gave me the set of drums. I was supposed to get so okay, so when I never knew that all I had was a snare drum and a ride symbol from Louie Belson, which was to me, I was, I was in heaven. I was in paradise just with that. And I had a snare drum and a ride symbol Zilgian and uh because he figured that if push comes to shove, the only eye that gets hired. Uh, it's

always the piano player. When they don't have a budget for anybody, you always see uh piano players and lounges and hotels and parties playing by themselves, which is what my dad did primarily before he became a professional jazz musician, was to go on the road and play for singers. Uh Dorothy Dandridge was he accompanied her, and uh Peggy Lee also and uh uh so he instilled in me that uh uh, he said, you don't want to be an old guy having to lug all your drums around.

There's always a piano there. And now I told him, I remember I called him and said, Dad, now I have three and a half tons worth of gear. I got a transport from one stage to another, and the irony and that just uh, it just made us both laugh. Okay, you're a year younger than me, so we're essentially the same time. I'm growing up on the East Coast in the suburbs. You're in the heart of the action. So

what do I remember? I remember the folk scene and then the surf and car scene, and then the Beatles came along and everybody formed bands. What was going on for you? I was playing drums at a surf band. I was eight years old, and uh doing wipe out, doing the solo to wipe out, and then um, I had a uh an epiphany. My dad did a record with Johnny Rivers called Poor Side of Town. It was Johnny rivers first hit single, and there was a piano player that played the track on it named Larry Nectel.

Now I know he's not defamiliar with a lot of people out there, but he played the piano on Paul Simon's Bridge over Trouble Waters and he was the most incredibly talented new funky player I'd ever heard in my life. Brilliant player. I mean, if you hear a Bridge over Trouble Waters, you can see what kind of player this guy is. And he played on so many people's hit records.

Also played bass on Uh You've lost that love and feeling, and uh, that was my epiphany as soon as I heard what he was playing, because he didn't play rock and roll like the older guys, jazz guys where they played the triplets up high. Uh, he was down on the last low two octaves of the piano, rolling it sound, so it sounded like a rhythm guitar. And I was just amazed by that. And I uh just gravitated towards that and started following and sitting next to him on

sessions so I could steal everything that he knew. Okay, you're growing up when I was growing up at the same time, had the transistor under the pillow. But you were in Hollywood. You know, to what degree were you a fan of popular music listening on the radio, dedicated or it was more about playing sports. What was it like? I was credibly submerged in music. My dad was working with great artists. I was just taken by all the artists at the time. I love folk rock, I love country,

I love classical stuff. Uh. I loved all the music at the time, especially the Beatles. I'm still a huge Beatles fan and a Rolling Stones fan, and uh to this day. Uh again, like you said, we kind of dropped off the surf music dropped off, and we started wanting to play in bands that were playing Jimmy Hendricks and the Beatles and uh uh traffic kind of songs I play. I got a band that we did nothing but traffic and Hendrick songs. So uh, I was an

interesting combination. It is, it is, but those are the kind of songs that we did. That was back in the day. You know, you'd see how sly Stone on a bill with Hendricks and Chicago the Stadium, you know, so that was kind of they were more diverse back then when it comes to putting acts together, I think.

And because my dad was required listening, he was he got all these free records all the time because he was doing TV shows and they'd give him a not for sale um demo demonstration record and uh, so I was listening to the Beatles before people were, and uh uh, people like Glenn Campbell I was. My dad was friends with all the Wrecking Crew, so I used to sit next to those guys all the time, and the Wrecking

Crew individually. But my dad never really used the Wrecking Crew, but he did use um Lou Adler put a version of the Wrecking Crew together which was Hal Blaine, Joe Osborne, Larry Nicktol, and Tommy Tedesco along with John Phillips and there these were made up of all the moms and Papa's records which my dad started to arrange strings for. He did Johnny. He was doing Johnny Rivers at the time that he did The Fifth Dimension, which is where

I met. This goes into my songwriting beginning, which as I met Jimmy Webb when I was ten and Jimmy Webb was seventeen and had a huge influence on me when he was doing the first Fifth Dimension album and uh uh to this day, Uh again, Uh, that's where I started getting into songwriting and wanting to become a songwriter. And right after that, Elton John's first album came out, and I just it's just opened the whole door for me. You know, when did you actually start writing songs and

how frequently and how good were they? I started writing when I was about thirteen. I think it was about the time the first Elton John song came out and I started, uh trying to imitate him all my first songs were horrible, you know. They were just imitations of Elton John's first album, The King Must Die. Uh yeah, I love that record, and uh uh. I wasn't writing too often because again I was a little bit slow, but I liked I I really wanted to do to be Elton John and to perform on piano and write

songs like that. And I just kept at it, you know, uh, writing bad song after bad song. Of course, they were incredible to me because I was trying to trying to be like Elton. Uh. But I was going to an all boys prep school at the time called Shamanad, which people will probably know in the area. It was an all boys school, and I had short hair and horm waring glass. It's kind of like Elton you see on it in his pictures, so I could really really relate to him also as a as a dude. And uh uh.

I just started writing and trying writing and writing, and then I wrote a song. Uh. My daddy started doing the Glenn Campbell's show at about seventy one, I think, and I wrote a song. My first hit record was semi hit record was a country western song called Houston, I'm Coming to see you, and it was Glenn Campbell made a title track on his album, and so that gave me the confidence to keep writing and to keep at it. Okay, a little bit slower. How did you

write that song? How did it get in front of Glenn Campbell? And how did you feel when he did cut it? Okay, good questions. Uh again, My my dad was doing the Glenn Campbell's show. Jimmy Webb had been writing all of Glenn's uh uh hit records, which had to do with by the time I get to Phoenix, Galveston, Wichita, Lineman, all these city songs. So I thought, well, I'll just do I'll just follow along Jimmy Webb's lines and write

a song called Houston. And so I made up a little ditty and if you get a chance, you listen to it, you'll see how I'm kind of trying to be like Jimmy Webb on it. And then my father, unbeknownst to me, was so impressed with it, and I just did it. I had a little Revox two track it would be belonging to my father where you could do sound on sound and you could overdub with it.

So my father snagged the tape and you played it for Glenn Campbell, just my little rough demo that I would have never in a million years played anybody to this day. And Glenn said he liked it and he wanted to cut it, and I just I was taken aback. I was just flabbergasted, you know that we he actually wanted to do my song. So immediately I'm thinking, well, we gotta get how blamed Joe Osborne and the Cracking

Crew guys cut my song? Like you know, I thought I was one of the wrecking Crew myself, you know at the time, And uh, that started it all for me. Got on a station, now checked this out. There was this country western station, uh I used to listen to when I was going to USC called K Barbecue. How's that for a radio station? K b b Q, And they played it all the time. Did you ever get paid for it? Sure did. I got a Union's double

scale and I got uh, I got some royalties. I also won publishing award that year, uh for the most played Songs as CAP award I think I got. And I got flown to Nashville and met Roy Clark and uh all the the big country stars there. What do you do with the money. What I do with the money? Uh? Put it toward a car. Well that's what I figured, Yeah,

put it called all all my money. All my money came from bar Mitzvah's weddings and that song, but mainly bar Mitzvah's and weddings for four years, all all to pay for a car. What was the car? Ultimately it was an Econoline Van three hundred. Because of course I'm a keyboard player. I have to be able to be able to fit Fender Rhodes or Hammond Oregon to to get to the gig. So I bought an Econoline three hundred.

Now the interesting part about this stories. I used to go on the road with Sonny and Share and I would park. My parents had another ranch up in santy Andez Valley, and uh uh, I used to keep my van at the ranch when I go on the road with Sunny and Share for six weeks or seals and crops. I tour with them and I came back off the road one day and my van was gone, and I said, what where's my van? And my dad said, I sold it? And I and and I said, what do you mean

you sold it? He goes, it's on my property. He goes, uh, it's mine. When it's on my property, it's my dad who was like he was like a junk collector also, and uh he said, yeah, it was on my property. So I sold it. I said, well, how much money did you get for it? He said fifteen hundred dollars. I said, what did you do with the money? He said, I spent it, you know, and and it uh uh, it's just solidified our our relationship so much more. That sounds like a bad Sorry it is. It isastic. I'm

being sarcastic right now, trying to be okay. So your relationship with your father was not good as you got older, well, you know it was. I always had a great relationship with my father, him and I. I used to get to work with him. I was his like his wingman on sessions. I started out as a pencil sharp there, which would be and Joseph Williams talk about this all

the time. He did the same thing I did with his dad, John Williams, which was all we did was sharpen our dad's pencils when we were allowed in the room with him to listen to them writing music because it was very little music being played on piano. Most of it was writing between his father and my father. Well, let me know the so I'll talk about the relationship

with your father, but let's just move on. You play in that band with wipe out and drums at eight, the Beatles hit, When the Beatles hit, When you're ten, At what point do you start playing in bands? I started playing and balanced, well, look again, the first band I was on drums. Okay, that's my surf band thing. But then I started getting There wasn't any really electric piano instruments, so I started playing acoustic piano when everybody

else had electric guitars and bass. I was playing an up spin it's spinet pianos at dances for schools and stuff like that. I must have been eleven eleven years old when I started playing in bands with acoustic piano. Of course, you couldn't hear me, so we'd always put a vocal mic into another channel in the amplifier and stick it down in the piano so you could hear the piano, which I think a lot of piano players had to do that at that time because there was

no Fender Rhods yet. But then it's a life changing situation happened. My dad got me a Fender Rhodes and that just all of a sudden, I was able to be joining a band. That's when you saw Kate Ja giving away all that Fender gear and they were giving away Fender pianos. When my dad happened to know someone that had an adornment, which was Louis Belson, the drummer, and uh, I got a Fender Rhodes. And shortly after that was when my dad did the Glenn Campbell show

and he he hired Joe Pracaro. No, this is no Lie hired him. Uh, and he just Joe had just moved out from Connecticut and Joe Pracaro's son was Jeff Pricaro, and Jeff's band, which is called the Merciful Souls, had just won the Battle of the Band's contest in the Valley in the San Fernando Valley and they just lost their piano player. I think he passed away, and Joe says, they're looking for a piano player, you should get together with my son and arranged for us to switch numbers.

And that's when I met Jeff Pricaro when I was like fourteen and a half fifteen years old, and uh we became best friends and I played with him ever since. Okay, So those bands that you play did bar mitzvah parties, etcetera. That was with the poor Karo Brothers. No, those are different bands. There were the Shermer brothers and Dan Holtzman and his brother and these were specific, specific bar Mitzvah wedding bands, like the weddings like when you see the

movie the Wedding Singer. Well, that's why these bands were. But all the musicians of the bands were like that. So I was a little bit. I was a better musician than the guys in most of the bands. But every once in a while a good drummer would come in and we'd started taking freedoms with the songs and turning them into jazz songs and everything like that. So I got a lot of experience. I got a lot of time, a chance to play different standards and learn

how to, uh basically play weddings and bar mitzvah's. And how often did you play? I did about two, three, between five and six uh engagements every weekend for four years. Wow. Yeah, two engagements a day. Wow. Okay, So that was work, although you're gaining skills. What about playing traffic? Playing Hendrix? Was that with the procrlos? Where who's that with? That was with the perk Carlo's that's and and also I had there was an intermediate band before I met Jeff.

Uh there was in a band with a guy named Dan Ferguson, who's uh one of our best friends and credible guitarist, and him and I started a band together with another singer and we all brought a drummer in from Canoga High I think, and we started doing Hendricks songs and Traffic songs. Uh. For there's a in hitting Hills. There was a place called the Hitting Hills Pool and they used to have dances there and we got the

gig playing a dance at the pool. So we had a stinger who had a strobe believe it or not, had a microphone and a strobe light, which is why we hired him. Okay and uh uh it turned out to be a incredible gig and uh uh this time went on uh and we broke up kind of in high school. And that's just when I met Jeff. So did you ever meet her? Works with Stevie Winwood? I met him one time on the phone. No, I met him.

I met him, also met him. Uh. They were doing a tribute to Mike Yamaha did a Mike McDonald I think tribute, and I think Stevie Winwood was there and I got to meet him. But Jim Horne, there's a very famous saxophone player who I met when I was twelve years old, very famous guy named Jim Horne who's played with the Beatles, He's played with Clapton and the Stones. Everybody knows Jim Horne. Well, uh uh. He introduced He said,

I want to someone's gonna call you today. And I was in Nashville, Jim, and the phone rang and it was Jim. It was Stevie Winwood on the phone because he knew I was a Stevie Winwood fan, and he had introduced himself to me on the phone. And I just I was in heaven. I was just like I was walking on clouds, you know, because Stevie Winwood was a big, big influence on me. And when you played with the Porcaro's, did you ever play for money or were you just playing in the garage. We were at

the first time, we were playing in the garage. But there's an old joke that says, how do you want how do you get a band to get together and play? You find? Get him a gig, you know. So they were rehearsing for a gig at the time. We were learning all these songs. So they had to teach me all the new songs, which are mainly blood, Sweat and Tears songs, Uh, Buddy Miles songs and sly and the family's own songs, you know. And Uh, I brought in a little bit more of the rock and roll stuff.

I brought in the Rolling Stones, Give Me Shelter and three Dog Night, and that's what kind of stuff I was listening to. Okay, many musicians in that era did not go to college. How did you end up going to college? And did you finish? My dad went to college, and I had a long talk with my dad, dad should I go to college? And he goes, He told me, he says, that's a good question. He goes, Musically, I'm fine.

I'm gonna be fine musically. But he says his advice to me was, you're gonna go to college one day, and that one day you're gonna learn something that's gonna change your life and be with you for the rest of your life. And so I just took his advice. I had total faith in my father, and I went to USC for two and a half years, and in fact, there was a day came when they taught modulation UH in USC, which is how to modulate from transition from

one key to another key. Well, I found out that you have six six different possibilities because you have three three notes on the left hand, three notes on the right hand, and for chords, actually four notes on each hand, so you can uh pivot between any of those sent four or eight notes as far as changing keys. So I've used it to this day and as far as

my songwriting. That's why I'm able to uh navigate through the song structures and always find something interesting to do because I know how to pivot and modulate into uh lots of different keys. Why did you drop out? And then what do you do? Uh? I started stopped attending classes because I was on the road too much. I was I was conducting for Sunny and Share and unfortunately

they didn't have any internship program at USC. I mean, I told him and I asked me how much money I was making and I was making twice as much as the teachers, so they kind of got a little bugged at that. And then I always thought you didn't have as long as you took the test, you could pass college. Well, they started marking me down for attendance because I was I was on the charts. I was working with Seals and Crofts and Sunny and Share and

doing professional gigs. But they they they I might as well be playing billiards at a pool hall where all they cared at the time. There. You know, I'm sure it's changed now because they have a thought in school of music and they have movie sound stages and they teach record production. But all that was that was like joining the circus at the time. So how did you first get these road gigs and who did it start

with and who did it evolved too. My first road gig was with Sunny and Share, and funnily enough, Jeff Ricaro had just gotten the gig before I did. So Jeff was the first guy, and he left high school early, didn't graduate high school. He went back and got his diploma, but he left high school early to go on the road with Sunny and Share, and they were huge at the time. They were like, how did you get the gig? I got the gig because my dad ended up Sonny Bono.

They called my dad to arrange a song for Shares album. I believe he was producing, and he'd heard about Marty Page. He knew Marty Page, and he asked him to arrange a couple of songs. Well, my dad dad hired me, which something he rarely did back then, hired me to play on this song, and Sonny Bono heard me and really flipped out over my plane. So Jeffercarlo calls Sonny and says, I have the new keyboard player for you, and Sonny goes, let's tell that guy to stand down.

I just found a new keyboard player. So when I showed up at Jeff's house, Sonny Bono showed up and he goes, here's the new keyboard player. And Jeff goes, well, that's the guy just joined my band. Right there. It was I was the same guy. And that's how I got the gig because Sonny hired me and Jeff recommended him to me. So how long did you work with Sonny and chair? What was that like? That was probably

about three years. That was fantastic. Uh, they had private jets at the time, and uh, believe it or not, I came right out of all boys high school and the jet that they hired was the Hugh Hefner Playboy Jet. So so it was like, uh, put put us in a in a candy shop, you know what I mean? And uh I was on the road with him for three years. But this is they go on the road for six weeks and then come back for three months. Go on the road for six weeks, come back for

three months, that kind of thing. But we did a little time in Vegas. I was a musical conductor at the Sahara Hotel. My main name was up on the Marquee and I was about nineteen years old. And uh uh that's my sunny and share experience. Okay, were you taking were you partaking of the fruits of the road. Well, funny you should mention that, Bob, because I just I had to send a sign an n d A before I did your program today that forbids me to talk

about any rock and roll mischief during that time. Okay, Well that would imply that you did partake in rock and roll. We had a couple of cups of coffee and uh Uh. Like I said, there was the eighties, seventies and eighties and uh uh, we'll just leave it at that. Okay. So, uh, you're working with Sonny and Share, they're working like you know once every couple of months. Are you doing any sessions or you just going to school? How do you start doing sessions? I'm uh once I did.

I was going to school. They were even flying me in to go to school because they wanted me to keep me and my dad says, well, he's going to school. They said, we'll fly him into USC So I go to school once a week on their ticket, and uh what happened. Then the big day came when I did Diamond Girl for Louis Shelton. And as soon as that became a hit record and there's a there, you can pretty much here my piano part on it pretty good.

Uh Uh. The word got around and I started getting higher for sessions, a lot of sessions, but I was still doing our myth physic and weddings at the same time. I carried that on because it's always musicians need to pick up money where they can get money. You know. It's not a steady, steady job like a nine to five or although it became that later on when I

started getting really busy with sessions. Okay, so you work with Sunny and Chair for three years, why does that end and you go out back out on the road or what that ended? Because I think Sunny and Share we're having they broke up, their marriage broke up, but then they kept it together for a little while and we were we were. My dad became the musical director on the Sunny and Chair show after that, and Jeff

and I were both playing on that show. And then I think the show either got canceled or something else took it for a break. I think another show came in and replaced it, and uh, so we all started looking for gigs, and that's when Jeff joined. I thought we were gonna get out of the ending result out of doing all these gigs was gonna be putting another put our band back together from high school after we

eventually got experienced down the road. But Jeff got an invitation and joined Steely Dan, which he accepted because he was a giant ganic Steely Dan freak and uh and he joined Steely Dan. So I thought, well, there's there's goes my dream, you know, and there we will never be able to put the band together and I won't be able to beat Elton John and uh uh it's

just looked dismal. And then uh Steely Dan broke up and start hiring session guys, which they've kept hiring Jeff, but they had more no more road band, So Jeff decided, Uh, after silk degrees, which I'm jumping ahead here. After silk degrees, a lot of what do I wait, wait, wait, don't jump ahead, I won't jump ahead, Okay, Sonny and Share. Do you go out with any other bands after Sunny and Share? Yes, I went out with Seals and Crofts, and uh, the only people else I went out with

was We're getting to that, which is boss ex. Okay, So you work with Louis Shelton, you start to get, uh studio gigs. At what point can you give up the weekend gigs and just be a studio musician. A couple of years after uh, I think Diamond Girl hit. I think I was doing three days a day, five days a week, which is pretty good. And uh uh you know, I think I stopped taking barn Mitts visit Weddingston I was able to afford that. Okay. Most musicians

are heavily networked. Did you get all these studio gigs through your network? Were you working it? At what point? Could you just wait for the phone to ring? What was going on? I was waiting for the phone to a lot of times. A lot of musicians like the network and hang out or my father was always the thing. My father never called anybody for work, so he was always wait, they'll call you. Don't call them, they'll call you. So I was basically sitting around waiting for the phone

to ring. And sometimes it would be a contractor saying your father wants you for a date. Sometimes my father would hire me and it would be great because I would be on the inside of the loop as far as the parts go. And uh so uh uh is mainly word of mouth, and that's how musicians get their things, credits on albums. Was that's how networking was done back in the day, you know. And then what kind of sessions were you doing? I was doing R and B sessions.

I started working at Motown which was called mo West, where I got to work with uh people like Dean Parks, people like Clarence McDonald. Uh we very rarely knew who the artist was, because on the top of the page they wouldn't put the artist names. They would just cut a track. And because sometimes it would go to Diana Ross, sometimes it would go to Thelmy Houston, and sometimes you

just didn't know who the artist was on it. So I I think I worked on some things for Thelmy Houston and Diana Ross, but uh, other than that, I was working a lot of motown. I started doing more seals and crops records and what else was I doing? Just a lot of demos and a lot of freelancing sessions of people that you never heard, you know. So how does it turn into silk degrees? It turns into

silk degrees. Uh. One of those dates that Jeff did, uh bos Skaggs decided he wanted to produce a blues guitarist named les Do Deck who was in the Almand Brothers at the time, and Jeff got the call to go play with them. Well, they needed an organ player, so Jeff through my name in the basket and they called me, and so I got to play Oregon and jam and me, Me and Jeff were jamming with him on this album Untiled Less Do Dick. But that's where I met Bozz Skaggs through Jeff Precaro, which I'll I'll

always be grateful for, you know. Okay, so you're playing on the Less Do Dick album, which I actually own,

and how do you end up working with Boss? Boss is looking to do work with a co writer, which he never did before, and he wanted to be a keyboard player, he thought, and Uh, Jeff sold him, I've got the perfect guy for you, David Page, because I've been playing my songs start the beginnings of my songs on the first album I. Every time we had a session, I would always we'd always start jamming on our songs that we wanted to record eventually when we made a band,

which wasn't existing yet. So uh, Boss decided he wanted to co write the next album with me, and so we went up to my dad's place up in santy Ennez, the Ranch, and uh, he sat down on my dad's piano and we wrote half the album. We wrote low Down, we wrote leto Shuffle, we wrote jump Street, we wrote It's Over uh and UH We're All Alone was on that. We wrote that there Boss Binley wrote that, uh, and

that's how it happened. Then I got Cheffer, Carl and David Hungate the sunny and share rhythm section, who became the total rhythm section. Uh, and Louis I added Louis Shelton to that compliment. So you're talking about on the Boss Skaggs record. I just took the Luish the Seals and crops rhythm section which was Hungate, Cheffer, Carl and myself and added Louis Shelton to it. And that's that's that was almost total because Louis, Louis wanted to be

in the band real bed. Okay, so wait, Louis wanted to be in Boss's Banter he wanted to be and what became Toto he wanted to be and what became Toto? But really, yeah, but we found but we we ran into Luca or too too early, you know. Okay, before we get to Luca third, did you have any idea how big those songs were gonna be? No, we were trying to just make great music and uh, we had done. You know, this is my first chance. I really got to do all the arranging on it and uh and

laying the tracks out. But we had no idea because we were trying to do sophisticated stuff. I mean the Lowdown is more of a assistant excuse me, sophisticated song than most songs at that time. We're getting radio play. I have to admit it sounds jazzier to me. And uh so that caught it every That was the first

big single off of it. No, I think It's Over was the first single, and then uh uh low Down became the next one after that, and it's just started getting It took off like a bullet, and I think I got the number two with a bullet, and uh that's when we got an ideal. That when then Boss got management at right after that, and it was Irving as off well. Irving had the Eagles and he had Boss Gags, so he just started selling a shipload of records.

Uh they were still was sounding like a hundred thousand records a day at the peak of Silk Degrees, and the only album that was ahead of that we never got the number one was Frampton Comes Alive was number one for like twelve weeks. So we were always at number two with a bullet, never got the number one with Silk Degrees. What did Joe Wizard ad or not add?

He took care of most of the vocals with Boss and Uh and he you know, picked, helped pick the takes and just in general the overdubs, the background vocals and stuff. But it was a combination of me and him that made the album. Okay, So when Bobs went on the road, did you go the road with him? Yes, I went on the road. Uh, Jeff went on the road, and I think Hungate went on the Hungate went on

the road too. And I forget who was playing other guitar part, and I think that Steve Riccaro at this time had just left Gary, right and I think he was looking for a job. And Bobs we needed a second keyboard player to do over for the overdub parts, and we hired Steve Riccaro UH to come in and being part of the rhythm section. So now we had Jeff, David Hungate, myself and Steve Ricardo. Okay, you must have made a fortune on silk degrees. I had a couple

of nickels to rub together. Do you still own that publishing? Yes, I own all my publishing. Okay. Would you in this heyday of eighteen to twenty two, multiple would you ever sell it? Not on that kind of multiple. Maybe you give me a twenty seven twenty eight multiple and uh and we'll we I'll consider it. You know, I don't really don't want to sell my publishing at this point.

I know everybody else it's the big fads to do and it's and it's a little bit touchy because of the way the financing is going in the United States and how the economy going, and uh uh it's tempting, uh uh, but uh, I would not sell my publishing at this point. At the moment, I I don't believe in it. You know, the light you know, the term of copyright is life plus seventy years. That's a long time, you know. And what are you gonna do with the money after you get it, never mind the wax that

the government and other people take from it. So after bos uh silk degrees, what's the next thing you're working on? What did we work on? I think we worked I wasn't sure when we worked on Steely Dan Katie Lide album. Well I did. I've worked on Black Friday and Dr Woo on the Katie Lied album and that was salt and peppered in between the Boss Skaggs years. Because I remember Donald and Walter had heard Silk Degrees and really loved it. So that's why they think. I think they

hired me and Jeff to play on Katie Lied. I may be mistaken, but that's how I remember it, and I'm sticking with that story. So. Uh. Then after that, I started getting into the Quincy Jones camp, which he was doing James Ingram and Donna Summers at the time. How I got in there was Steve Bracaro was a very sought after synthesis. He was a programming sense and playing sense for people like David Foster who did all

the Chicago stuff. And uh uh, Steve started doing all the Quincy Jones stuff and he got me into the session. I actually kind of snuck into the session. Uh. I was carrying a piece of gear and Steve said, well, why don't you have David play the part? So I started playing parts. They were like the engineer was like, well this, you're pretty good. You should stay. I was

kind of a snuck in there. You know. I had actually known Quincy Jones met him when I was fourteen because my dad had been a ranger on some of his solo records. So I had met Quincy at a very early age, so he knew of me, but really I wasn't in his loop, you know. So I got into that, started doing James Ingram record, Donna Summer Record, and then the Michael jab Big Michael Jackson record game. Okay, before the Michael Jackson how come you didn't work on

the follow up bozz Gags record? Mm hmmm mm hmm, good question. Uh. It really came down to two credits and and and value how much they valued me. I wanted to co produce on their album, and uh that wasn't flying with him and Joe Wizard for some reason. Uh, they just didn't work out. And so my dad said, I said once and I formed my band. He said, well, you should do this album if you can do it. But if they say no, uh, now is the time to probably form your band, you know, because uh uh

you have. There was a lot of people uh smooziness at the time for big record companies because of the boss s Gags thing. And we've been as we went on the road, we kept telling people we're gonna be forming a band, and everybody we got cards from everybody's before cell phones and everything. Everybody had cards. People that we contacted or would play our demos for to get a record deal. So uh it was uh that's because I didn't. I wanted to co produce and basically couldn't.

And did he ever come back to the table because he never had as much success as he had with you? Yes, and I did. Uh. I co produced an album called Dig with him that came out and uh I co produced that with him and a couple of other songs off we did remade Low Down and uh Lido Shuffle to do so he could own. He wanted to own the masters on it, so we remade him. So tell me about working with Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was a perfectionist. I would love him. He was the sweetheart to work with.

He totally gave a total autonomy whenever you were doing something too. If you heard doing this or heard in a choir or one of an orchestra or one of you, just say, just think big, use your imagination, he would say. He would say, I think, imagine you're Michael Angelo and your painting the Sistine Chapel. That's why I want you to produce, arrange your your part. You know, because he didn't treat you like he were just a musician. He treated you like he were a creative force in making

a part of his music. So, uh, I got in a room with him and we were just playing music. I was playing I think it was Billy Jean, which I didn't end up playing on, but I played. I did a couple of overdubs on it, and he he let a couple of mistakes go by, and I stopped him right there and I said, Michael, you're you're sloughing off. I said, I'm a perfectionist and he goes, well, so am I. He goes, you don't mind. You don't mind if I say you're you made a mistake there. I said, no,

I want just to bust me on it. So I went back, cleaned up all my stuff, and from there on her him and his relationship was great because he said he'd go in a room and go, yeah, David's got to be in the room with me when I do vocals. He's a perfectionist like I am. He say this to people, and I'm Quincy Jones would be in the room and be a get embarrassing after a while, you know. So why was it a phenomenon? Was it? Michael was a que who do we give the credit to.

I think you can start with them. I think you can start with Quincy Jones. Uh put Lane the groundwork of again, giving him a cast of characters to choose from, uh to play on all these albums, I mean all the bets best players were sitting out in the hallway ready to go in. It was like relief pictures for the Dodgers or something, you know what I mean, bad example. Um Uh. There was Foster, there was Me, there was filling Games, there was Michael Boddicker, there was Steve Racrl,

all sitting in the hallway to go. Each go in for whatever duties you need to do, either tune in a scent or getting figuring out the tempos or uh uh one of a million things that you could possibly

be doing. So back to your what you were saying, I think Quincy had framed the whole package and let Michael just be a great artist, which he is incredible artist, and Quincy uh is a song man and made sure that all the songs were up to par and uh uh he even called McCartney and uh, I think McCartney may have approached him, but Quincy may have approached McCartney.

I'm not sure I got to check that out about the Girl is Mine because they wanted to get a duet on the album, and who other than Paul McCartney, you know, perfect call, perfect casting right there, So uh uh, that was I think Quincy and Michael, and not to mention all the great musicians that played on the record too, you know, and a guy who I love dearly who's not with us any doing more named Rod Temperton who

wrote most of those songs on the Thriller album. He was he made great demos and was a great songwriter. And do you think Michael changed with the success? Uh? I think that success changes alters everybody a little bit. Not maybe everybody, but most people are affected by it somehow. And I think that when that album became so big, I don't think Michael was insulated enough to keep all the other people away from the people that weren't interested

in him for his talent. And uh uh, he started making bigger deals with outside people and and just becoming a larger than life figure. So I think that I think I can't actually put my finger on it, but I think success may have put him in a certain perspective let him view everything for a certain lens and uh that maybe the normal person wouldn't view the world, you know. Okay, so you're out with the bos. How

does the how do you meet Lucather? To begin with good question, I met him uh at a high school we were playing. They were playing a gig. The follow up band. You have to understand our band, it's called

still Life in high school. Well, when we all left with Mike Ricaro and Jeff and Jeff and I left, Steve Pricaro and Steve Lucas took over our band, which was called still Life, so they became still Life And excuse me, uh uh, so I world start getting around when we started looking for a band to put together. Uh that there was this guy, Steve Lukather, and you guys ought to really check him out. Actually, there was two guitar players, Steve Lukather and Mike Landau. They were

both in the same band. And but me and Jeff went down to Taft High School, which is right down the street here, and I saw somebody running around on stage and it looked like some derelict or something like this,

some older guy. And as I got closer to the stage, I realized that the guitar player was a guitar player, and he had a monkey mask on on stage wearing it, and the when when I got up closer to the stage you could see him, he ran and jumped through the air like Pete Townsend and slid on his knees and got up and saying Johnny be Good with his impression of Johnny Winter kind of voice on Johnny be Good, and Jeff says, Jett goes, there's our front man right there,

Jeff pointing to him and says, there's our front man. You know. I was just listening to the guitar playing and he was just playing faster than ship. And Landau was playing a strato caster, which I was a big Strap fan, so I was kind of leaning towards Landau because uh of a strato caster playing, But Jeff Saud said, that's what we need. He's a star. Jeff recognized that Luca there was a star from the beginning there. So

that's how we met. And I started going to some of their gigs, sitting in on some of their gigs when they would go play UH Beverly Hills UH High School and they'd have their their gig at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I showed up, uh did a cameo performance and played with him a couple of times. So uh, I think even jeff Off got Steely, Donald and Walter to come down to one of their gigs because they were so fabulous and hear the band. And how did

Lucather get into sessions? Lucather started, Lucy got into our band, and that's how he got sessions. Once once with Jeffrey, Carl put his arm around you. That was the guy to be, you know what I mean, because everybody, a lot of other people we go that should uh go nameless. A lot of people wanted the guitar spot on on the total thing. But Lucas showed up. He just showed up when we were making our demos and we didn't put the word out or call or anything. He just

shirt up, showed up. We sat in the hall and learned the tunes out of the hallway and came in and just roasted the four songs like a guy that's been playing him for twenty years. It was unbelievable, you know, it was phenomenal. We just Jeff and I were just looking at each other, was shaking our heads. We couldn't believe it, you know, because these were just songs that were just freshly written that you know, And so he

put the original guitar parts on. So Jeff started taking him around when Jeff would do a session, because you gotta meet you gotta use Steve lukeather on guitar. You got and introduced him to Larry Carlton. So guitar players started recommending him when they couldn't make gigs, you know where. He got around very fast about Luke. He was a quick learner. And how did Bobby Kimball get in the band?

Bobby Kimball was in a band I was gonna co produce called SS Fools, which is the old Three Dog Night rhythm section, and they had a band, and Jeff and I had been rehearsing with that band with those guys uh before to make a band called SS Fools, But me and Jeff didn't want to join the band.

We just wanted to make the record. So we were playing with this guy Joe Schremy and a couple other ex guys from Three Dog Night and Bobby Kimball was one of the singers, and uh, he would I all I noticed when he would sit and play a song by himself, it would practically shatter windows. And he could sing really high, really high, and really powerful and really bluesy because it was from New Orleans and so it was very powerful and very very funky, and uh uh,

we try to contact other singers. I asked Mike McDonald to be in the band. I asked Kenny Loggins to be in the band. I was Mickey Thomps Thomas to be in the band, and they were all wanted us to join their bands. Uh So it was a kind of a stalemate. It was a push and uh at the last minute because I had done the vocals on the demos, which were barely acceptable, but they were okay for people to listen to. I finally they kept saying,

how's your vocals gonna be? People kept questioning, well, what's Total? We know Total can play, but who does their vocals? Who's the singer? And how are the vocals gonna be? Now, you have to understand, this was a time when Boston had just come out and owned the charts and Foreigner was out, So backgrounds were heavy and they had to be high and powerful. So I just took a chance and we Uh. I brought Bobby Kimball in and to audition with us, and the first thing we did was

hold the Line. We we rehearsed that. On the first time we played it, it sounded al just like the record with him singing, Luca there on guitar, me and Jeff on our instruments and Hungate on drums, and that's what sold us on him. Okay, So hold the Line came before the record deal or vice versa. Hold the line came before the record deal? Yes, and how did you get the record deal? And how did you end up on Columbia? Uh? We were, Jeff. Jeff always kept

a cassette. We always kept cassettes of our demos in our pockets. And because we visited every session in town, we would also meet all the record executives from every company. So every time there'd be a break on the session, Jeff would pop in our cassette and let the executives listened to it from that company. So every company knew about us, Warner Brothers, UH, CBS, you name it, they all knew about us, and uh we were. Warner Brothers

was bidding against CBS. Uh, because CBS wanted to sign us, but Warners wasn't bid, wasn't was bidding against Warner CBS. So we got a call from Walter yet Nikov, who was president of CBS at the time, to Cheff South and he said he wanted us to go. He would he wanted us to be on CBS. So he wanted to stop this uh bidding war, bidding war nonsense and uh uh he wanted uh. Two managers called Fitzgerald and Hartley, Mark Hartley and Larry Fitzgerald managers because they were managing Chicago.

And I know Larry had been tour manager from McCarty on this tour, so I know they had touring and they knew how to work the record company. The reason the manly higher managers is at that time was because they knew how to manipulate the record companies. So we knew that they had were in good standing with Sony, and yet Nikov had requested that we do it that way. So we followed Waltri Yetnikov's lead in there and went with Sony. Uh instead of smaller labels and stuff like that.

And uh uh it was they signed us without even seeing us performed live. I think the guy that signed us got fired because of that, but they were. There was so much confidence in a total at that time unseen that just the word of mouth got us signed. Now, in the first album, you wrote almost all the songs. Uh. I think that's probably because I started to writing songs before everyone No, everyone else was kind of there were

mainly musicians not songwriters. Where I had been writing songs for the last I don't know, ten years be time to be between uh, let's see, or maybe five years, five years before the band, and so I had this backlog of pieces of songs, not unlike my my solo record here, which had pieces of songs. But I started putting the pieces together and made these songs, made the most of the songs that you heard on the very first album. It's just that I had a head start

and I had a backlog of songs. Uh to popularly, plus so I wrote, I wrote why we were doing the record too, so uh uh, maybe I just was a little bit of because I'm a little bit older than Lucather and uh and Steve Riccaro and the guy. So I had a little bit of head start. Those were like undergrads. Okay, did you know whole the line was going to be a hit. No, but I was hoping it would be a hit, but I didn't know. All I know was is catchy. It was very catchy.

And uh, I loved hot fun in the summertime by Slice Stone. So I wanted to write something that made me feel like that, and so I, uh, I started playing this riff when I got out of when I moved out of my parents house and I got an apartment in Westwood, and I got an upright piano and I started playing this riff and I didn't stop playing the riff for about three days. I started to keep playing the song, working on the song, and the neighbor next door neighbors started pounding on the wall for me

to stop. It got so monotonous. So we we we we rehearsed it. That's when we went to the studio and rehearsed with Bobby Kimball and found out that, yeah, we have a band here, which meant all these little pieces of songs, whatever I have possibly going, we have a band. We have an outlet for where there's a vehicle for it. Now, UH that that we proved ourselves withhold the line. So we started rehearsing the other songs

to go in and cut the first album. So it's a success, you know, back and there there, I mean the record was everywhere. What changed? I mean then you have to go on the road, you have to go to photo shoots. What was it like? It was? It was we had a lot of smiles on our face.

You know. The album went double platinum and uh we were supposed to We got an agent, uh uh the booking agents and what we kept telling people we wanted the headline the first time out because we'd heard of other bands doing that successfully if they had a great live show. So we kept telling our They kept wanting us to open for people, and we didn't want to do that. So they booked us and we started working small gigs uh around as as the headliners. Of course

there were just small venues at the time. But we started going on the road and as our records started taking off. Uh, we got an offer from Japan to play big, big places because our our record became a huge hit in Japan right after that, and we went over to Japan and it was like total mania there.

It was like the beat It was not unlike not quite the Beatles, but it was a lot of fan uh fan boys and fan girls over there that just followed total from from gig the gig on the trains and uh sold out concerts and it was really great for our egos and for our to validate our band, and uh Uh a little by little our records started. Records helped enormously at that time. You gain recognition if

you had to hit record. There was a guy named big Uh big Al in UH Amsterdam that broke hold the line there, which is why we ended up being so huge in Europe as everybody heard the station in Amsterdam and UH we just played totally, just played the Zygodom in Amsterdam and it sold out the seventeen thousand people. So it shows you how our success story started with just a radio play at that time and knowing the DJ.

You know, back in that day, swing by knowing if you knew the DJ or had a relationship with our managers. Had a had a relationship with a guy named Steve West at kJ R in Seattle, and he broke all the line in the United States and all the other registers, all the other stations went on it because I think they're called p ones or something like that, Regio stations

and popular market right. So that's how that's what we were doing, was playing live and uh and getting ready for to make another record, but mainly touring live and uh enjoying being rock stars. You know, you were very experienced guys. Most people who have success like that out of the box end up being ripped off. They're so busy working they don't know what the hell was going on. What happened with you guys? Uh, we're pretty luck when

it comes to that stuff. But you had a lot of people watching us, my father and my mom who was and my mom was a corporate bookkeeper. She was always looking at my checks. And because I I had already had a career doing sessions, so uh, and I was I had a publishing. I was already published and was had my own publishing and so uh uh, but they were it was more transparent with uh. My parents had to relate. Uh. We're able to talk to the managers and ask around to see who's honest and who's

not as honest. And we found out that our managers were were more honest than all the others out there. I say more honest, you know, because there we put the name manager in front of anybody and they can't be that honest, you know. Uh. But anyway, Uh, we had people looking at the books all the time. You know. We had an accountant to a band had an accountant, the managers had an accountant, and I had my own accountant.

So there were three people. What loved watching keeping an eye on everything at the time and making sure we didn't move too fast too quickly, you know. So tell me about making the second record. The second record, we had been playing live to bigger venues, and we had seen that there's bands out there doing stuff that was working specifically for live audiences. Bands like Queen, bands like

Jethro Toll, bands like General Giant, bands like Genesis. We're making a noise out there, but they were doing not necessarily hit singles, they were doing great concert music. So we started writing a few things, like the word the next album is called Hydra, which I got from a

Leonard Cohen poem called Hydra. Uh and uh, we we kind of start experimenting with that as an opening a show opener, which it did open our show live for a tour, and it ended up being great and we ended up had getting a lot of fulfillment and and crowd pleaser from doing more extended work on that album, and again I had a couple of songs lying around that I had written. Again in the meantime after the first album and the second album, we're still doing sessions

all the time. Jeff and Luke are are over with Elton John and France cutting an Elton John record. I'm in the studio doing some keyboard overdubs with Steve Ricaro and so, uh, we're working and I was constantly writing songs, trying to write some new material for the second album, and that's what we ended up with was a couple of uh. There was a step Er Carlo song, and I think I wrote most of the rest of the songs, although I'd have to look at it again. Okay, this

is how I really got into that album. I was on a plane and they played ninety nine in the old days when you use to listen to the programming, tell me about nine and why that's the name of the song, and had that come to you. I've just seen a George Lucas movie called t Checks. I think it is one eighty three something like that. Anyway, the premise was everyone in the future. It was about every futuristic a dystopian society where everybody had numbers and not names.

So I thought it was really would be clever to write a song about a girl or mate as it may be, that had a number and not a name. And I just picked up ninety nine. It just came out of my mouth. I was just saying, playing the groove to nine, and I went nine and nine. It's

been waiting so long, and that's how it happened. And I just finished the song, and uh, like I said, it probably doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people, but I thought it was one of totals better tracks that we cut, and I thought it has extended guitar, has extended guitar and bass solos on the end, which were pretty innovative for that time, and they played all till the very end. It just shows you what a great rhythm section, uh total was is on that record

is very indicative. David Hungate, Jeffrey carl and drums, Steve Lucather uh on guitar, and Bobby Kimball didn't sing on that at all, right, and so the album holds together. But nine had some chart impact, but not as much as hold the line. What did you guys think and

what did the label think. We thought that we had we were hoping for bigger numbers within but we we saw that it was kind of a minor hit, kind of adult contemporary kind of thing, so uh, you know, we were I think we were so busy trying to get our touring show together that we weren't so interested in singles. We thought we thought maybe all as boys or uh, I forget what else is on their MoMA or something like that. I don't know. I think the record company also once once the album didn't take off,

they started losing interest a little bit. And I think maybe though one of the record presidents h Man. They may have changed presidents at that time from Bruce Lundball to another guy, but I remember, uh that has a devastating effect on bands when you're the person that signs you gets replaced by another person because they bring it

a whole another team. So I think it was maybe the lack of uh uh the fact that there was no hole the line uh on or Georgie Porgy for that matter, on on the second album, and uh it kind of h we went by the wayside, I think for a little bit, and then the third album comes out and is less commercially successful. What what do you guys think? We're thinking more live show again, this is

more We've seen Queen in concert. Uh, we'd heard Queen records, and we even hired Queen's engineer, Jeff Workman to engineer the record, uh because he used to record for Roy Thomas Baker r RTB and uh. Uh so we thought if we sounded like Queen, we'd be we'd we'd beat Queen, you know, kind of our Queen thing. But we still did our own Total stuff and we thought we had it was. It was just a change of one eighty degree change from Total into the big leagues of rock

and roll. We thought our sound would be bigger and more like Zeppelin, e more Queenish on record, and it would be driving, driven harder and sound like a big, big rock show, you know. And we were playing with music more geared for live playing, I think than it was for making singles, although we thought there was a few singles on there. But uh, again the record company changed precedents at that time, right right when that album came out, and uh, it had a deaf ear turned

turned to it. I think. Okay, so what are your thoughts, the band's thoughts going into Total four, which in retrospect is huge, but you don't know that going in. Yeah, we know that we have one more record. The record company, let's just know we have one more record to do good or that's gonna be it. They thought they wanted to prove that we weren't a one hit wonder, which by the way, we had more than one hit on the on the first album. But we had to prove

that we still could make hit singles. Uh for the record label. You know, they were getting tired of these album cuts on Hydra and turn Back. So uh, I decided I wanted to make an album that was so powerful that was the absolute best we could possibly do. And uh so the first song, I started constructing a song that I thought would be idea if UH throw everything that I know into one single to make a hit record, and if that didn't work out, I'd I'd

hang up, I'd hang it up. And uh I wrote Rosanna right then and there kind of constructed it from all my all my favorite little devices and riffs and and part of my soul, so part of my heartfelt lyrics and uh uh while ah we did we I got Al Schmidt to engineer it. We called him in who's the greatest engineer in the world at that time and still has the most Grammys of anybody. Girl Al Schmidt.

Everybody knows him, and he cut all of our tracks at Sunset Sound and from the big beginning of Rosanna, Uh, we knew that we had something there. We vited the President down who heard the Rosanna and the rough rough mixes, and they loved it and told us to keep working on the record because we were spending a lot of money in studio time doing all the overdubs. At one time, we had all three studios at Sunset Sound working on

our record right there, so we knew. We knew Total four was gonna be something special, and we treated it as such. We hired, you know, hired Tim Schmidt came in saying backgrounds, but Joe Percaro played some percussion. We hired James pink how to play trombone on the Rosanna I got. We hired heard a lot of great professionals to work on that album as well as Uh. I think with Miles Stone in the album was when I

went to U C L. S O in London. McCartney had just come out with Live and Let Die, and I was so impressed with the orchestra and Live and Let Die that I wanted to write something that showed off the orchestra, which we ended up bright doing Lucather and myself. Uh started work did Afraid of Love, which features the L H L S O on it, And I think that in an impact and powerful was was really powerful. Uh that addition to our sound and uh, I just think there was a lot of more co

writing on that album as well. So I think that our our whole uh standard or the bar was raised on that album. Okay, a lot of great tracks on that album. Make believe who says the Crimson Moon doesn't shine? If you remember I wrote that, Yes I do. Don't ask me what it means, but uh, that's just one of my lyrics, you know what I mean? You know, I was, I was. I was in love at the time. I think. You know. The album is gigantic, sells twelve

million copies, wins all these Grammys. What was it like being on the inside, Uh what of the Grammys or being on the inside of the time period, Being the inside of the success. Grammys are secondary. It was great because It just validated a lot of stuff that we already thought that we were. We already knew that we were pretty good because we had confidence from doing sessions and from our first album, so we already knew that kind of Well, this helped validate our band and gave

us confidences. Mainly, we gained a whole lot of confidence and uh uh you know, we had our fifteen seconds of uh fame there and everybody was interviewing us. Everybody wanted to know Toto, and uh, we just kind of took the stride. But we've been around success in stars before, so we didn't let it go to our heads because we had all the other producers and all the other our peers and colleagues were there to keep us in line. You know. So the next album, how does Bobby Kim

Believe and Frugie Frederickson come in? Okay, Um, I'm not gonna ponder this, uh stay dwell on this subject too long. But Bobby ended up being one of those persons that couldn't handle success as well as the rest of us good and uh it got out of hand uh to where uh we were trying to record and he was

stopped showing up for vocals. So Jeff just put his foot down and said, we've got to get someone here immediately, because we had a we had a half of an album written that we had recorded with him, was Those Isolation, And Jeff said, heard this singer, Fergie Frederickson from this Louisiana band, and at that moment, it seemed just like a beam of light, uh, a guy who could sing up high, a guy who looked good, who could uh perform good on stage. And we we thought total thought

our rhythm section. We really thought we had the magic, the mightas touch with singers because we had worked with Leo Sayer, Boss Scaggs, just about every singer out there, and we had been made hit records with people. So we thought, it's just another sing We'll bring this singer in and we'll mold him into being that that front

man that you need so badly for your identity. Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd gone in a different direction and we and we'd had still uh you know, made uh some course corrections back there and kept bobbying the band. But it's just what didn't work out that way. Well, needless to say, you have this gigantic album and it's not commercially successful. How disheartening was that? It was very disheartening. First of all, the they shipped a whole lot of records,

and a lot of records were rack jobbers. Got stuck with their records, and they weren't happy about that. So we got a bad rap on the fact that the album was overhyped and this wasn't the same singer, and uh, it's just kind of uh uh boomeranged on us a little bit there. Now, if you talk to Steve, he will talk about the backlash people talking shit about Toto. Did you feel the same way? Um, I got a

little thicker skin than Steve does. But yeah, you know, when every time anybody starts picking apart lyrics are picking up art songs, I you know, I have feelings the same as the other guy, but I I've learned to let him roll off my back a little bit more. But but there's certain times when we were a band where we all jointly we're reading bad press for us and getting a piste off about it, you know, because we do something we thought would be great in Rolling

Stone magazine. We were doing great work with other artists, and every time they just find a total member in on the album, they would say something bad about the total member, you know what I mean. So everywhere we were getting bad pressed. You know, So, how do you kick Freddie Frederick Fergie Frederickson out of the band. You're going deep on me. Uh again, when you have personnel

that you go through, how can I say this? There's like a like a team that puts in a player and they don't work out and you have to bring in a new player. We were having to. We were treating the lead singer positions just like it was a variable, a concert spot that we could fill with somebody else and we could replace that person. Uh. Fergie just it wasn't a fit, That's all I can tell you. It just it just wasn't quite a fit. And people's reaction

to him wasn't that good. And our record sales um record company again we had to tell the president that wasn't running, wasn't in our pocket as far as the records go, and so uh uh uh we weren't getting much help from the label because of a single nut popping off there which we thought they chose the wrong single.

But uh uh so that helped. Uh. We just started looking around, and Steve Lucather started singing more and more and uh, uh we had started having background singers singing some lead vocals and stuff to replace our lead vocalist. And uh, he just kind of evolved out of the band. And why did hung Gate leave? Hung Gate just didn't like going on the road home. Gate was a home home body and he didn't like like touring that much. He had been touring with Sunny and Share ever since

he was in college. And uh, when Toto kept wanting to tour, Uh, Toto originally was gonna make records, tour a little bit, but still do sessions all the time. You know. It was kind of like our our side gig Toto was gonna be until it became our full time job, you know. And uh, he just wanted to stay home. Okay, how does Joseph Williams get in the band? Joseph? Good question. Joseph knew Lucather back when they were fourteen

years old. Uh, from high school, I think, And uh, Jeff was aware of his talent and I was aware, and I became aware of Joseph on twilight Zone, the movie the Spielberg produced which Joe Joe they had called in Joe to do a demo vocal for the song that he wrote for the opening sequence in Twilight Zone the movie. So I went down to where they were recording it because I played on the track, and they said, well who should we get to sing? And Joseph was

standing there and he sounded amazing on the vocal. I said, well, you have your singeries right here, get him to sing. So I had heard him sing. But then when we were looking for another sing we're looking for this is just after Isolation, We're looking for another singer, and we tried out some singers, but then we jammed with Joseph in a in a rehearsal hall, and Joseph so fast and had such good pitch and it was so hip that it was just undeniable that he should be the singer,

our singer, because he was. He just he clicked. It was a fit. That album is my favorite Toto album. Certainly had a hit with I'll Be Over You. Do you feel like the engine was running on high test again? What was it like being on the absolutely absolutely when Lucather had I'll be over You? Uh and Steve Is his songs are like my favorite songs there I think they're the best written, the most well written songs in our catalog, which is Won't Hold You Back and I'll

be over You. That comes from me. Who's you have yet as yet to write a love ballad? Okay, Well, the funny thing is those are such sensitive songs, and he really is a sensitive guy, but he presents so differently. He certainly does. That's the He's a real paradox, you know. And uh, uh, Luca, there will I'll be over you. We brought in Mike McDonald to sing backgrounds and I'll be over you, and again we had an album budget

to do videos. That's when videos are really big. We did a video for that and uh uh again I thought, I thought that, uh, it's not the same without your love was gonna be a smash hit and it didn't be. Wasn't a hit, you know, same way Africa. No one thought Africa was gonna be a hit, but it became a hit. So odd things happen. Sometimes magic just happens

out of nowhere, you know what I mean. But back to the alb over you, Uh, Steve started coming along singing more, and uh that was a really good sign of our being able to say, well, we still got the core guys. We still have David Page who sang on Africa, and we have Steve Lucather that sang on I won't hold you back. Okay, you kick Williams out of the band, How does that happen? Uh, I'm gonna love move along faster. This just some of our road habits.

Just people weren't taking the care of themselves. I wasn't taking care of myself. Joe wasn't. The road is very hard and uh, it's hard enough when you have to go out and wine and dying. Uh. Promoters and uh and uh have different managers after each show, and there's a lot of drinking going on, a lot of uh this going on, um Joe uh uh, it just didn't become a fit uh after that, and we had to make a change. And I'm just gonna make a left turn right here and move on and put that into

a rear view mirror. Okay, But he does sing on the seventh one, which you have a hit again. So what's the vibe in the band? Then? Vibe is very good, very positive. Joe's doing great. Uh uh. He sang on that whole record and uh, um, the Vibe. On the seventh one, you and I had co co wrote a song called Pamela, which became a believe it or not,

a very big record. It was it was destined to be number top ten and it was headed it was the top thirty with a bullet and again CBS closed their doors Sony and fired the president at the time, and they dropped the Springsteen record, which was number fifteen with a bullet that fell off the charts, and our record, which was top thirty, which is called Pamela. We had every station in the country except a big station in New York that we needed, and it would have been

top ten. But anyway, back to Joseph, him and I wrote a Pamela together and that kind of uh uh, blew some wind back into our sales. Okay, then it ends with Sony. Why is it end with Sony? I think just there lack of interest, lack of participation with us. You know, it's hard to it's hard to say what exactly put your finger on it. You know. I think if you're not the flavor of the month and you're

in the team that signs you, isn't there. I think that you don't have the same kind of support that you do when you have like you know, look at Moe Austin, how long he was at Warner Brothers. Look at her Aboutpert with a and m how long these guys and they with sign these acts and they nurture them and they believe in them. You know where other companies uh uh they change presidents and they change uh

support teams. So uh uh it's hard to say, uh what exactly why we got We kept being on Legacy, which is a subsidiary of Sony, because we were making smaller out we were making we had lesser of a budget, and we were uh starting to record in our home studios a little bit more. You know. So how do you feel? Do you you're not gonna have another hit single? Do you realize that? What's you know, what's the vibe? Well, this is what I do. I'm gonna continue to do it. Yeah,

that's so that's the vibe. We're not going to rely on our singles. We always feel we have that uh plenty of singles left, but we're not intentionally writing like that big hit single. Uh. We were trying to be more of a rock band at that time and be

a live, a big live event band. You know, So after the hits, after the Columbia Days, are you are you basically in Toto and that's your career or do you go back to doing sessions or I don't think the sessions of every really stopped, but yes, everybody went back to sessions what there were of them. I think that that around that time, Um, after we did Kingdom of Desire, because that was with Jeff and and Bob clair Mountain, we eventually got did uh Through the Looking Glass,

Through the Through the Looking Mirror anyway. Uh, it was a total album where we did all cover songs where we weren't on any label at all. We just did it ourselves and did it uh at Simon Phillips House, recording the whole thing, and uh it was amazing, and uh that's we kind of just chummed around and uh uh did the record dates and kept working on our our albums. Meanwhile, I think Luke was working on solo records in between that. I think I have my chronology right.

Probably not. Lucather has a steel trap memory and he can recall any date, any concert, any day. It's amazing. I'm an exact opposite. Uh so, Uh I hope that answers your question. Yeah, and how does Bobby Kimball get back in the band? Huh? Well, he kind of got his act together and everybody had heard that he was doing well and cleaned up, and everybody was dying to

get here Kimball sing back with the band. So we were like, well, if he's together, if he's in shape and physically and hew theme mentally, mentally and in into it, we thought we'd give it another shot. And how did it end with him again? And then Joseph Williams come back again? Boy, this says you're gonna be a broken record on that. Huh. Now, I'm just kidding. Um uh, let's see Bobby uh again. Uh, I'm I'm not really sure.

It just was kind of falling out I think personality wise, and it was never really a fit with Bobby in the first place. I mean, because we all used to hang out in high school. Bobby was older than we were, okay, so we weren't. He kind of kept to himself and we kind of all chummed around together from high school days. So, uh, I think it was just chumming around and getting going.

You know, we're this isn't he's not working out live because you start falling back into some of the old UH problems and habits UH which prevent you from going on the road um and performing every night, you know what I mean, and taking care of your voice and doing all this stuff. And that's when we realized that we needed a singer that knew us but could could go on the road because the physical aspects of going on the road are are terribly hard, you know, to

travel and bus plains easier. Okay. The music business, meanwhile, starts to change, Rock starts to fade, hip hop comes in, the napster comes in, and today everything's blown apart. So where do you see yourself in the landscape or do you just feel I'm separate from the landscape and I do what I do a little bit of both. I feel ingrained in the landscape, musical landscape. I feel part of it for the last forty years, and uh uh, I I roll with the punches. You know, music is funny.

Everybody in the band has their own opinion about the direction music takes. You know. I I opened my arms to wrap rap music when it came around, not the original stuff, but when they started covering some of my songs and and and cutting and pasting them and mashing them up. I was like more way into it, you know, just like I always took the Quincy Jones attitude, which is the more of the merrier, and and music has to move on, you know. So Uh, basically we're a

half rock and roll and half of it. Half of us wanted to move on a little bit with hip hop. But again back in the talk about hip hop, Waiting for Your Love was the song on the Total four record that was like one of the first hip hop songs as far as I'm concerned. In the band was concerned too, so we all, well we understood it, why people were digging it, and and uh one of the the uh classic songs that came out and showed showed us all what we should be doing with rap was Aerosmith,

who did Walk This Way with the run DMC. There there was the there was the guiding light right there. That's how rock and rollers should treat rap music and rappers, you know. So in any event, Uh, I've tried to uh you know a lot of people have covered uh Georgie Porgy and Africa and stuff. So I've opened my my heart to uh wrapped my arms around uh people mashing up records of mine. And eventually Lucather got into it too when they started doing his uh making disco

mixes of his songs. So uh, a little by little, uh you started the the old horses started learning new tricks. And did people reach out and license or did you have to find out people who ripped off your records? Uh? There were people that would you would think I would never call it ripping up people without permission, without sync permission had performed our records. But all we would do is call them and let them know that you guys will have oh this money for our record. And they

were gladly. They were like, here, take half the song, take all the song. We're we're we have no problem with that. We would we would make people aware that they were uh in potential breach and uh uh they would gladly split anything he wants uh and make a deal. So we grew up in the era where the Beatles broke. Everybody picked up an instrument, they played in bands. There was a band everywhere, and there were ups and downs. There were some disco DJ whatever, But that scene has

really been undercut. You know, the old scene of well, I'm gonna play in my band, I'm gonna work the way there aren't some people who do it, but most stuff is cut it home and most stuff is electronic. How do you feel about today's music do you think and the fact that rock is not primary? Uh? I have mixed feelings about it. I I I like a lot some of those stuff that's being done today. I understand it. Maybe it's because I understand the process of how it's done on pro tools and with logic and uh,

and how they humanize it. Uh. Funny someone said something to me the other day and he just hit home. We grew up in a band of when bands were popular, and now singers are popular singers because singers are everything they make. They make everything humanized. You hear all these incredible girl vocalists and some incredible guys out there too. But you put a kick ass singer on a on a sterile dance track and it's gonna sound incredible, you know.

So Uh, and some people make musical strides and uh, Kendrick Lamar, I guess he is doing some some good out there, and uh, he seems to be ahead of the game. And uh. Um I I like. I like the process of using the modern technology with why I make records personally, uh, being a chance that I don't have. I don't have the luxury of being able to have these people that live in different cities at my beck and call to get in a room and play. I try and make do with what I have, and these

tools allow you to do that. I love mash ups. I love the new genres, the mashing up genres and all the kind of experimentation. I think because I I just grew up in the and the Beatles era Sergeant Pepper, where they tried everything imaginable on tape and and uh, all kinds of things between sound effects, playing shipped backwards and doing everything they open the floodgates as far as I was concerned. And do you keep up on modern music or you're just kind of aware? I'm kind of aware.

I don't keep up as much as I should. I have. I have a daughter, a thirty three year old daughter that keeps me in the know. Uh, real cool, you know what I mean. And but as far as me knowing, I listened to the radio a lot when I'm driving. Serious radio a lot of its Beatle channel, but I'll occasionally listen to some other channels, and uh again, I like people out there. I like Uh, I like Adele, I like Pink, I like Harry Styles is pretty good.

I like Sam Smith, you know, but they're mostly they're mostly singers, you know, and you know, once the business hit turmoil, certainly in thousand, Napster budgets went down, sessions dried up. Are there any sessions and anymore? Anybody ever call you all need to do overdubs? You know. I got called from Mike McDonald to do do do some overdubs on his album. Don Felder called me, Uh, the only movie sessions that are really being done now are

movie sessions or for video games. My daughter is a video game producer and she's doing sessions all the time, but they're with orchestras, and uh uh, Like I said, a few sessions are being done here and there, but not really live sessions that I know about, except in Nashville. I think they still do them in Nashville quite a bit. Uh That, which is kind of becoming the new recording capital that l A was as the recording capital, you know, right,

So what's next for you personally? Next? Rest I'm trying to improve my songwriting. I'm trying to improve my lyric writing. Uh. I've just wrote a song with Shania Twain, who I've been a big fan of for a long time. I might be getting ready to write with Richard Marks uh co write something for his album with him. And so I'm just trying to better myself as a piano player and as a songwriter and be the best version of

myself that I can. And when we see another solo album from you, possibly, possibly, I'd like to do one, but not in the near future. Okay, David, this has been fanta stick, you know, from someone who was there, a real inside view. I want to thank you for taking the time. But Bob, I have so much more to tell you. Is that a joker? You really know? It's really okay? Well, just just just a preview. We're not gonna go into it now. But if we did talk more, what would we talk about? Weston? Grab that

picture off the wall. I'll just show you a little bit more about my past. Here. I've got a picture I want to show you. This is when I was in London in nineteen seven, the Summer of Love. I was at Olympic Studios, where watching Procol Harem record their first album. But my dad was recording Sammy Davis Jr. And here's the proof of it right here. If you can see that. Can you see wow? Just being next to Sammy? Okay, I was thirteen. That was two year

and happy before I met Jeff. Unbelievable. That's at Olympic Studios, just to show you the the amazing stuff I saw in my life was was before Toto ever started, was with my dad, you know, and everything right now. Another thing I'm doing that I'm really interested in is I'm archiving my father's arrangements with the Eastman School of Music, who has started a jazz program teaching Marty Paige the style of writing that he did, which is famous for

West Coast writing. And so they're they're making they're making prints of it, and they're making recordings of it and keeping the jazz alive, which is our real art art form that we've contributed up in the United States to the world is jazz is the art of jazz. Keeping that alive, you know. So I'm involved in that too, okay. And how did you decide to wear the top hat? A top hat? It's kind of right of passage. You know, Leon had that with mad Dogs and Englishmen. Although I

do my one of my biggest heroes is WC. Fields, who always had a time pad on. I have to tell you that I did get it from Leon Russell, and then I know L. John had it one for a little bit there. But Leon Russell, the master's space and time, who I knew uh pretty well, and one of one of my major major influences. The other one besides Elton was Leon Russell. Um and uh I even did a song uh on through the looking Glass. Uh. It takes a lot to cry, It takes it. It

takes a lot to laugh. It takes a train to cry. The Bob Dylan song I dedicated to Leon Russell, you know. So that's where I got the top hat. But anybody who wears the top pat knows they're relatively heavy and they're not that comfortable. Well you know that's true. I have light ones and there I have a big head, so uh it swells occasionally, so I have to have different sizes black ass. There you have it. We could go on forever, David, but we gotta cut it off today.

Promise me we'll do it again. We definitely will because you know the stories that you tell are different from a lot of perspectives because you've seen both sides of the fence. In an addition, you had that peak from a very young age because of your father. Until next time. This is Bob Left Sex