Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left This podcast. My guest today is keyboard is Steve Woor Karl, Steve, you started off as a drummer.
Right, well, yeah, I'm not in a very serious sense. We all started off at drums just because that was always Drums were laying around, sticks were laying around, pads were laying around. So yeah, I spent some times at the drum at some time at the drums, but I would never there was never a time where I called myself a drummer.
Okay, let's go back. Your father was a professional drummer. Tell me about that.
Absolutely. Yeah. My old man was a was a bebop drummer. Was where his heart was for us, you know, especially for me. Before the Beatles, it was all Miles Davis quintets, you know, and you know, a few big bands, some Coltrane. It was mostly jazz in our household. And my dad played at the with Hartford Symphony every weekend, so I was exposed to some classical music, you know, but it was mostly he was he was a jazzer.
You know, and he was earning a living as a player when you lived in Connecticut.
You know, he where he went to work every day was this drum shop where he taught every day. That was kind of his day. Gig was teaching at this drum shop where his teacher, that his teacher owned, and they you know, and his teacher helped him get gigs right away, you know, society stuff what they called casuals, you know, weddings whatever. But yeah, he always he only did music for a living his entire life.
And did your mother work outside the home.
No, not at all. She was a stay at home mom.
Well, you know, usually the life of a drummer, the income is challenging. What was it like growing up?
You know, it was one of those things in those days. Yes, it was very challenging. I was brought up in the I was born in the projects in Hartford, and but it wasn't you know, we were never hungry or anything like that. There's no you know, sob story there. I seem to have everything I needed and wanted. We had Christmases and you know, life was good.
You know, how old were you when the family moved to California.
I was just turning nine. We moved, we landed in Burbank in nineteen sixty six, and I in August of sixty six, and I turned nine in September, the beginning of the year.
So did you want to come to California or do you not want to leave your friends behind?
You know? It was we were very excited about it. Actually, my dad had come like a few months earlier. My dad had come to kind of check it out. He was wanting something different. He was kind of doing everything he could do in Hartford, and he was doing okay, you know, as far as a professional musician goes, he was doing all right. But he came out to California to see one of his childhood friends, Amo Richards, who was doing very well here in the studios, especially in
the film studios. Some record stuff. But what did amol do? Amo was a percussionist in the studios, okay, doing records and mostly movies, mostly film stuff. And Amo was doing very well. He was working every day in the film studios and like I said, some records. And my dad followed him for a week. He just went to every gig he that Amo had, and Amo worked every day.
My dad followed him around and saw what was expected that you you know, like say, you know, in the symphony he could play mallet parts, but he got to You could take those home and practice them. But in the studios you had maybe one pass through and then you had to nail those Tom and Jerry's xylophone parts. Sometimes they could be very difficult in the film studio and you had to nail it. You were there with an eightpiece orchestra. It was very different than like my
studio career. You know, there are a lot of other people playing at the same time and you had to nail that stuff. It was very high pressure. But he felt he could do it, and he moved the family, the wife and four kids. We moved across the country to become you know, for him to become a a freelance studio musician. And he did really well, really right away he did well. So yeah, things took off for him pretty quick.
Okay, let's talk about his upbringing. Where was he born.
Hertford, Connecticut?
And were his parents born in America or born in the so called Old Country?
No, they were definitely Old Country. His father was Calabrese and his mother was from Napoli, Neapolitan, you know, they were both southern Italians. And his mother never learned English. I never heard her speak English, but his father was mostly a carpenter and also a drummer and a trumpet player. Would play a lot in these Italian marching bands, which were a big deal back in the day. And that's what my dad first did, was play play snare drum in these Italian marching bands in Hertford.
And when you moved to California, were they still alive?
Yes, very much so. They were alive for quite a while. Yeah.
And did they follow you out here or did they stay in.
Not at all. Not. They're all as a matter of fact, all my cousins, everyone is still there in Connecticut. I'm going to see them in a couple months. I'm going to go visit. You know, they're all there. My mom's family was from Maine, and my dad's they're all in the general Hartford area and still are. Do you know how your parents met, Yes, I do know how my parents met. My dad. My mom was even though she was born in Maine, she was taking she was a floutist.
She was taking flute at this music college in Hartford. And my dad, even though he didn't have a college education himself, he did some teaching at this Heart School, Heart School of Music in Hartford and he saw her in a practice room. He saw through the window, he saw in a practice room, and he called his best friend over and said, that's the woman I'm gonna marry before they even met.
And okay, so you're nine years old. You moved to California to where in Los Angeles.
Burbank, Burbank, California.
And what was Burbank like then compared to now?
You know, it's was pretty much the same. I got to tell you. You know, Burbank maybe you know it gets a bad rap and it's the valley and all that stuff, But for us, it was the Promised Land. It was this bedroom community for people who worked on film. And you know, this is nineteen sixty six. The Monkeys were filming their TV show down the street and they
would go tooling around town and the Monkey Mobile. You know, I was nine, So there was this nine year you know, what we come to know now is this nine year awakening that kids go through where you your eyes are finally really wide open to life. And it was hitting me, hitting us all like a ton of bricks. We loved it. We loved it. It was very exciting. And like I said, my dad, right away was working, so he right away was you know, doing things like doing you know, Jerry Fielding.
This composer was someone he worked for, and he was doing the main title to a sitcom like Hogan's Hero something we watched, so we would we'd hear, you know, we would hear my dad on TV. He worked with Lila Schiffrin, with someone he hooked up with very early, who loved the way my dad played. So my dad was on all these shows like Mission Impossible and Manics and stuff. When these these guys were still doing TV work. It was very very exciting, you know.
Okay, so there if we love kids in your family, two well known brothers. Who's the fourth.
Kid, m my young my kid's sister, Jolene, And what's she up to. She's a designer. She decorates, Uh, she does interior design in houses. She she was very musical too. She just kind of us three boys kind of got all the got all the stole, all the stole, all the thunder you know what I mean, got all the attention.
She was I was three years younger than Jeff. She was three years younger than me, and uh, you know, we got a lot of the attention but Joline has always done She's always worked in uh, in the studios, in the film, film, film, and TV world, and now she mostly does design work in homes.
Okay, when you moved to California, you're nine, your brothers are older. Is everybody already playing instruments?
Yes, Jeff was already quite the drummer immediately, Mike was still. Mike was also a drummer. They had both as soon as the Beatles came out, they both they both took guitar lessons for a little while and Jeff let it go after a month and Mike stuck with it a little bit longer with guitar. And then right then Mike took up the bass in school. And that's when Mike started playing bass. Was right when we got there. Uh, he took up the bass, but he took it up. He was very quick with it. Mike was a Mike
was a great drummer too. Mike had an incredible time, He had an incredible groove. But you know, Jeff was just Jeff stood out from a very young age just being something very special on drums. Everyone everyone knew that Jeff was least something special. Uh. Yeah, and I was already playing piano. By that point, I'd been playing piano. I'd been taking lessons since since I was four. But I was always a horrible student, you know. I was
always just a terrible student. But luckily my dad would always my dad be it was a very good teacher of drums. You know. You always taught friends, and especially in the studio, Guys knew that my dad taught and was really good at teaching, and they would often ask him to teach their sons that were interested in taking drums, and if it was a keyboard player, he'd barter with them. He'd say, sure, I'll teach your kid if you'll teach my kid piano, and you know, and I just would
always say yes. I never gave up. I got to work with an incredible some incredible piano teachers over the years.
You know, Okay, your two older brothers, did they take lessons.
Absolutely, Jeff took some lessons, but I would say from what I saw that I would say that ninety percent of Jeff's lessons were him playing along with records. There was always a drum set set up, and there was always a turntable and headphones right next to the drum. Set and Jeff would spend hours upon hours playing along to records.
And did your brothers take piano at a young age two?
No, not at all. I was the only one. I was the only one who took And.
Do you know what the motivation was.
For me?
Well, you're four years old?
Yeah, you know. I went with my dad. My dad took me. He again, he was teaching at this college. He was teaching drums at some college, and he would One time he took me and it was he was teaching a drum lesson as some guy, and it was this organ room at this college he was teaching at. It was this room that had, like, you know, they had to have at least ten different organs in there. And towards the end of the lesson, I saw my dad jump on an organ. I don't even know what
it was, but it was a Hammond. It was something like the size of a B three or something, and he played. He wanted his student to play along with him, and he played this very simple see blues. He played this blues on the Hammond for his student to play along with him, to play, to play a jazz swing beat along with him. And I had never seen my father play a keyboard before then, but I heard him play this, and I was like, we had just gotten a piano. I had just started taking lessons with a
friend of his. But I said to him, show me that blues. Show me I want to learn that. And he taught to me and I played it to death.
You know, Okay, you continue to take lessons, but you said you didn't practice.
You know, I would practice. I would start off practicing, but as soon as it got really difficult, as soon as the teacher would say things like Okay, that's great, now learn it in all twelve keys, see you later, you know, or something like that, it just would be
drudgery to me. You know, certain music that I unless it was something I really wanted to play, it was drudgery to me and my as bad as I wanted to be a good keyboard player, my you know, I think I had some undiagnosed attention deficit stuff going on. It was very hard for me to focus as a kid. And it wasn't until I started fifth grade and I
am in Studio City and there was another kid. I thought I was pretty good at fifth grade, you know, in fifth grade, but there was this other kid in fifth grade who was a true child prodigy, was amazing on piano, and we became fast friends. And he was playing classical pieces and that was the first time I, like was driven. I wanted to play those those pieces, so you know, I would get to the music. And it was the first time I felt driven. Even though
it was hard, I wanted to. I had that in my head watching this other kid do it, and I wanted to know what it felt like to be able to rip off, you know, to whip off some of these pieces and stuff like that. And I was really driven to practice. Things went up and.
Notch and you learned how to do that stuff absolutely.
Absolutely.
Now there was this other kid in school, but if I was going to school with you, I'd say, oh, Steve, he's the guy who plays a piano. Or was really just something you're doing at home?
Oh? Yeah, No, I was very involved. You know, most of the public schools I know in California anyway, they're all through even elementary, junior high. In high school, there was never a piano chair in the orchestra. It was always we played percussion. I would play percussion in the orchestras, timpany xylophone, you know i'd be able to learn the parts, and I would that's what you played. There was no piano chair per se, you know, but I was always taking lessons and always plowing away and trying.
You know, Okay, you have two older brothers. I don't have older brothers or any brothers at all. To what degree was your career following in the steps of your brothers or was it independent and then you merged down the road?
You know, it was a lot of both. Jeff, especially because at such an early age. I mean, of course he was playing in his bands in high school and I went to every gig, but he got a professional gig at seventeen. He didn't finish high school like myself, I didn't finish high school either. Because he got a job touring with Sonny and Chare. You know, he'd been doing a couple little sessions, local stuff, small time stuff
around the valley. And David Hungate, who was playing with Sonny and Share at the time, and this is kind of right before they were really peaking in the mid seventies early seventies there, David Hungate was did a session with Jeff and heard him play and recommended him to Sonny and Share, and Jeff left high school a semester earlier to tour with them, and then right from that it was just his His career trajectory was was astonishing how fast he started doing sessions, really good sessions all
of a sudden. You know, our favorite band Steely Dan, Jeff's doing like a whole album with him. So Jeff was always this shining, shining example to us that it could happen. We could. It was possible, you know, it was right there, It was possible if we worked hard enough.
You know, Okay, that was Jeff. Jeff is older than you, He's basically okay, so when you were now in high school, are you playing in bands?
Absolutely? Absolutely? And then Rape Mike was just two years younger than Jeff, and Mike was also playing in bands and in Jeff's bands in high school, and he right away, as soon as he graduated, he started touring with bands Michael Franks, and then Mike was with Seals and Crofts for a lot of years right out of high school and doing sessions and playing the Baked Potato. His career took off immediately.
Also, you know, okay, you're younger than Jeff by three years, what kind of band are you playing in in high school?
Well, you know, the very first stuff that Jeff did, like in junior high was absolutely like soul, these kind of funk bands, playing Sam and Dave covers, playing covers like that in high school him and when he met David Page, his partner in Toto, they right away there. They loved Joe Cocker had a band, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. There was a record, there was a movie. They had double drums, Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, and these guys happened to be Jeff's hero. Well, their high school band
pretty much did that whole Joe Cockers set. They had horns, they had all these background singers. You know, Leon Russell was a big hero of ours as far as being a studio musician, And they kind of copied that band through through high school. And then when I got into high school, I took those same charts and I did
that same set. At first, I was kind of copying that, but then I later in high school, I got rid of the horns and I wanted to do more of a rock and roll thing, and that's when I hooked up with my So when I met Steve Lucather and Mike Landau and Carlos Vega and John Pierce and these guys that all went on to have great careers. We had a band in high school and did lots of proms and all started taking our new very seriously. All of a sudden, you.
Know, Okay, so you are the connection to Lucerther, not your brothers. Yes, okay, so you meet Lucather, you meet Landau, you're playing this is all great. Your brother both brothers are Ultimately they've made this a career. Is that in the back of your mind to say this is what I want to do or you say this is what I'm doing now.
It's absolutely what we wanted to do, and it's what we saw was so possible because it was right there and it kind of inspired all of us. It inspired all of us in our band that it was you know, it wasn't just some pipe dream. Jeff and Mike were doing it, you know, you know, and it certainly helped me. I went through a very difficult period where I you know, as I'm in eleventh grade and twelfth grade in school, I'm looking I see that my brother's careers took off
freight away. But as far as being the piano player on a session, being a keyboard player on a session. I saw the competition. It was Michael o'mardian and David Page and David Foster and these guys that were I was nowhere near their ability as far as just basic keyboards, which is part of the reason. I mean, I was always interested in any way, but I early on I
dove way into synthesizers. I saw especially this is before MIDI, and I just saw this chasm where the guys who knew a lot about synthesizers were these nerds, you know, with pocket protectors on, and the real the great players didn't want to have anything to do with interfacing, you know, a synthesizer, what it took to play a mogue from an art and vice versa, and the little black boxes and that took and I dove way into that stuff, and at a very early age start getting hired to
be a synthesizer programmer.
Wait a little bit slower. There's the full mug, then there's the mini mug. There's the R twenty five hundred than the twenty six hundred, which is more for a consumer everyday thing. Where do you get in on this. It really sort of happened to the change of the decades sixties to the seventies. And also this stuff was not cheap. So nope, how did you literally get vaulved Sure? I had this friend in high school. His name was Jay Chernick, and he owned We were all way into
Prague Rock. We were all into Emerson, Lincoln Palmer and Yes, and these these these.
Guys were our heroes. Not so much my brothers, but I mean they hit me to that stuff. Jeff hit me to King Crimson and emersoniank and paulm Or. But he didn't stay in that camp very long. But I had this friend who owned a Mini Mogue. He owned an Oberheim Sequencer and an Oberheim Expander module. And I would hang out with this guy every day, and he was teaching me. He was showing me stuff on this Mini Mogue, and he had this stuff interfaced. He had
these little black boxes. He had hired someone so that this Mogue could talk to this Oberheim, which wasn't easy to do in those days. Anyway, I'm still in high school. All I wanted to do was be on the road
and following my brother's footsteps. And I auditioned it started becoming At that point, it was like a new thing where groups on the road were hiring a second keyboard player to cover the string arrangements, to play in art a string ensemble, to cover you know what I mean, to cover overdubs live, and all of a sudden kind of became this new chair with touring bands. And I remember I auditioned for Mac Davis and didn't get it. He just said, you're too young. I'm still in high school.
I auditioned for Tim Buckley and he was looking for a guy who was more of a jazz pianist. He was looking for a jazzer. I didn't get that. And then David Foster, whoy had just started programming for, had just finished working with Gary Wright and recording the dream Weaver album, and Gary had asked him. Gary was putting together an all keyboard band, and did David noah of any young keyboard players who would tour for cheap who
knew how to play synthesizer. And he gave Gary my number and I played mo base for Gary Wright for I got the gig, and I left high school a semester early because I got the gig playing with Gary Wright. You know and I rate then I didn't even own a synthesizer then. As a matter of fact, on my audition, I had borrowed my friend's mini Mogue and he had marked for me with grease pencil, like cool base settings. You know, that's how little I knew about it. He
marked some cool base settings. I got the gig and my brother Mike loaned me the money. I Jay Tchernick, my friend had decided he wanted to sell all his synthesizer equipment and buy a grand piano. He wanted to start taking his his piano lessons seriously, and I bought that very rig My brother Mike loaned me the money, and that was the mog base I had that I took on tour with me with Gary Wright.
How much money did you need?
It was two thousand dollars for the whole thing, which was a good minimugs listed They listed for fifteen hundred dollars then, and then the other stuff was well over another thousand dollars. And it was a It was a beautiful minimug which I have to this day. I still have it. It it it crashed into a million pieces. One time we were opening for Jethro Tull, and when they took our equipment off the stage, it came crashing
down to the floor in a million pieces. But I had the guts put in another, put in another enclosure, and so funny because I just had some work on it and I just got it back, so I had to show it to you. This was the very first minimo guy ever owned. You know that, My brother Mike helped me, helped me pay for for Gary Wright.
Okay, if you were on the road with jeth Rode Tall and the Mini moge broke, what'd you do with the next show?
Gary had this? We were opening for Jethro Toll. Gary was opening for Jethro Toll. We did a full month with him, and I loved it. I didn't miss one Jethro Tol show. I was, I was. I didn't miss one show. Gary had this amazing tech, this kid named Alan who is amazing, and Gary already had a mini Mogue had a keyboard. This this tech had put his keyboard in a separate enclosure, so it wasn't a key tar.
There was no quitar neck on it, but it just he had this this minimog around his neck and he would come out in front and Gary would play you know, minimog solos and Mini Mogue parts. So Alan did the same thing for me. He just built this. Uh he put it in a in a you know, right away, put it in a box and had these connectors where my keyboard was separate, and I started wearing the keyboard around my neck with Gary also, you know, playing the bass parts.
Okay, let's go back before you own the Mini Mode. You're working with Foster, You're programming. What exactly are you doing? You know, programming today is a whole thing programming drugs. But in drum excuse me, in the seventies, programming SyncE like for what were you actually doing?
You know, it was it was simply often like say with a Mini Mogue, it was like they typically would want a cool bass sound, a cool Mogue bass sound, and some of these guys like Foster or David Page in particular David Page was able to get up great sounds sometimes on a Mini Mog, but especially when you were working Foster was his career was taking off, and he's working with Alice Cooper and he's every day it was someone else, and one day it was Michael Jackson
and Quincy Jones. And when you were in the studio with those guys, you didn't I want to be guessing. You know. Sometimes these guys would get lucky with since UH, but they didn't want to be guessing, so they would bring me along to make sure that when it was time to get a mog bass sound, I could really dial it in and UH. And I also had a twenty six hundred by that point. Yeah, and I got a CSAD very early on UH and mastered it. You know what I mean. I really had it down, and
you know, and I was very Uh. I was very musical. I wasn't just a synth NERD. I was very musical, and and I wasn't trying to I worked really well in the studio with these guys. I wasn't trying to show them up in front of the producer or the artist. I loved when these guys would do the playing and I just would tweet the sound while they were playing. They loved that I would dial it in. And you know, I was a great team player and I made I just made myself real handy to be around in the studio.
You're seventeen years old, You're on the road with Gary Wright.
What is that like? You know, it was incredible, especially being with Gary Wright where I mean, I had no idea. He had this big time manager, de Anthony. He had these incredible agents. So right away, not only was I on the road, but we're doing these great gigs. We're opening for Peter Frampton all the time, We're opening for Jethro Tull, where we're doing stadium gigs. You know, We're on these amazing gigs. I mean, I was getting two
hundred bucks a week, you know. But what they didn't know is that I would have paid them two hundred bucks a week for I was living my Beatles wet dream. To be honest with you, you know what I'm saying. I was playing in front of big crowds, which was all I wanted to do at that point in my life.
You know, how about drinking, drugging and women.
You know, I didn't as far as women goes, I didn't have. I was seventeen. I didn't have much game. To be quite honest with you, I'm sixty seven. I still don't have much game. But you know, the drugs part was just then. We were just celebrating life. We were smoking a bunch of weed. And you know, these were the days in nineteen seventy five. You know, you
know cocaine was not addictive. That was the good news about it was it wasn't you know, you didn't get addicted to it, you know what I mean, no one, No one had that much money then to you know, you were just doing these little, tiny amounts and it was a party. Now, you know, part of my story in my life is that. Believe me. I I I definitely much later on than we're talking about. My fun button got stuck and I stayed at the party way too long. I think, looking back now, I think that,
you know, because I was never much into alcohol. If I drank, I couldn't do I couldn't you know, I couldn't work. And for me, the drugs were very connected with work, with learning synthesizers. I think it was kind of acting as my riddling, to be honest with you, More than I was never a big partier, if you know what I mean. I uh, you know, I used it because I was having so much fun. I once I got a bunch of synthesizers and I was always
thinking putting two and two together. I had taken you know, I had taken arranging lessons, so I had knew how to block harmonize for saxophones, like for a big band. And then I get this sequencer that's an eight channel sequencer. And the only guys were using that we're doing you know, we're doing you know what? They wound up calling krout rock and stuff. It was this very electronic YadA YadA
YadA stuff. And I was thinking, you know, I could take you know what I mean, I could have five flutes playing in block harmony, doing sixteenth notes through chord changes. I know how to do that. I don't see anyone else doing stuff like that. I was so excited about marrying the technology with with what I knew musically, it was hard for me to go to sleep at night. I was so excited about it.
You know, some people go out on the road to supporting musicians. They don't even talk to the liner person they're working for once they're off stage. What was your relationship like with Gary Wright?
Gary was a total sweetheart. Gary was the best Gary was you know, look, he was just an opening act then, but even when he when things took off, Gary was great. He took me under his wing. He took us out to dinner all the time. He was fantastic, He was funny, he was he was an absolute sweetheart. We just lost him somewhat recently, you know, a year or two ago, and I've I've always, I've always been so grateful that I had that Gary gave me the opportunities he gave me.
He didn't he just like I said, after those first two auditions, I I went into audition and the drummer Art would was setting up and we were just jamming, you know, we were jamming on an E on E doing just kind of doing a funk groove. And after ten minutes, he goes, you got the gig, and you know what I mean? And I had a ball, you know what I mean.
Okay, going back, if some young musician came to you today and said I have an opportunity to go on the road and I have to drop out of high school to do it, what would you say.
Oh boy, you know, it's a really it's a really good question. You know, you know the only way I can answer it is by telling you believe me with my situation. Let's just say, and I would tell them this at the time when we're talking about nineteen seventy five. Now, my father did film scores every day. And the composers, the Lilo Schiffrin's, the John Williams, the you know, the everyone you can mention, the Bernard Herrmann's, the film scorers.
These guys were these maestros. They were these guys that were on such a pedestal. I never thought I could ever be considered to do that kind of gig. Okay, flash to many years later, and guys like Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, these guys, All of a sudden, it's like, it's completely possible. I had no idea of some of the opportunities I would have later in life. You know, Yeah, I wanted to be a rock star and I wanted to experience that being in front of people right then.
But I might, I might say, you might want to think about the future and what you want to what tools you want to be able to have, and do you want to work in film, and do you want to go to a four year college and have learn about orchestration and composition and counterpoint and theory and all this stuff. Now, at the same time, what I did was was I realized early on that I wasn't going to compete with these usual keyboard players. That I had to make this. I had to find this niche, niche,
this unique. I had to separate myself from everyone else in some way. And that's been my motto my whole life is to be different, is to find my own thing, my own style, which now happens. Part of it was the fact that I went on the road early, that I got into synthesizers, when I got into them, that I've had all these different piano teachers. I didn't just have one. I had ten different piano teachers. And if I told you who some of them were, You'd think
I'd play like Lenny Tristano or something. You think I'd be some great keyboard player. It's like I never with my short attention span, I never stuck with it. But you know what that has contributed to making me who I am, which is unique and different, you know from all the other guys that do what I do. So what would I tell them to answer your question? I just would would want them to think about that. Maybe
there's some things down the line, you know. You know, because I saw sure at seventeen, I right away I was in front of these crowds. I'm getting adulation, I'm getting gold records, I'm getting this success. But I saw how some of my friends who you know what, they just kind of kept their nose to the grindstone. And then maybe they went to school. But later they when they started their careers, they had a lot more depth
than I did. They were able to do film scores and stuff on a level that I was never able to. You know, yes, I did some films scoring, but you know what, to be real honest with you, I wasn't that good at it. I was okay, I was able to get through it, but I wasn't I didn't have the musical chops, to be honest with you, that my friends like James Howard and other people you know, or just the innate talent. You know, a guy like Danny Elfman, he writes, when he writes music, he's writing it all
in trouble cleft and using octave signs. But you know what, how can you argue with his results? You know, Hans Zimmer when he walks into an orchestral session, he doesn't know. You know, James Howard could sit there and look at a tenor cleft part and he could whistle the part to the bassoon player. Okay, James has that kind of talent and perfect pitch, and he can look at a score and do that. Hans wouldn't know an alto kleff from a tenor cleft, and he doesn't care. He's got
his orchestras that do that. Hans is being Hans, and he knows what he wants and he knows what he wants to hear. And I think his work is amazing. You know, I think his work is amazing. You know, people can judge it all they want. People made fun of Danny Elfman at one point when he was starting off, you know, people look down their nose at him. But you know what, Danny has written some incredibly beautiful stuff. I think.
You know, let's go to your film TV career. Sure you said you weren't that good at it, but like you were a composer for Justified.
Yes, that was my last TV show I did. And and you know when I did a show like that, it owned me. It owned me. I it would take me working day and night and weekends when I did film stuff. Some of my friends, you know, would get these TV shows where they they'd have two minutes of music a week, and it would be a little piano tinkling with some string pads behind him, and that was it every week. And they did shows like that for
fourteen years. They'd get this great paycheck and they could work on their songs in the evening and they could work on another project over here. Every gig I ever got was like there would be multiple chase scenes that would last three to five minutes, and it was like it was hard work, you know, And the way I did it, it was hard, hard work. And to be honest with you, I really wasn't. I really didn't have those chops. It would take me. Those kind of shows
would own me my. You know. What I appreciated about it was that it taught me to grow up. It taught me about finishing. It taught me about, you know, having a deadline. You know. I was in a band where if I showed up, if it was time for us for Toto to start making a record, and I didn't have any songs, no, but I didn't get in trouble. There was four other, five other writers with lots of songs to play. You know, nobody was like saying, hey,
come on man, where's your stuff? You know. And by the way, they were great in that they would anything I did, play, anything I did come up with. They were very happy to cut it for me, you know, and we would cut it. We'd be at Sunset Sound and we went to London to do our strings, and you know, I had these great opportunities, but I was so my gig. My job in the band was being the synth guy. David was the keyboard player, so to speak,
and my job was doing the synth stuff. And I wanted the synth stuff to be the best synth stuff. There was a planet Earth, you know, if that was going to be my job. So I was. My nose was in a man annual, a whole lot I was. You know, I wasn't an electronics guy. I didn't take electronics and high school for an elective. I took print shop for some reason. I wanted to make rubber stamps, you know, that sounded fun to me. I knew nothing
about electronics. I just would make friends with Roger Lynz and Ralph Dyke's and the guys who really knew their stuff. These guys became my friends because we were It was mutually beneficial. We would help each other out. You know, I was always never had a shortage of ideas.
Was there any issue of imposter syndrome?
Absolutely sure, absolutely, But you know what I don't have you know what I mean that slowly started going away. I would, you know, quite honestly, even when my career was pea, when Toto was doing their best work with Toto four, and I had a song on the Thriller album, and I had all the work I would ever want, I would still every single weekend I would go to the Baked Potato. I'd hear either one of my brothers
or Luke or one of my friends or Landauers. I'd hear one of these guys play with a band there, and I'd walk out of there feeling like a piece of shit because of what I didn't have together. Because I wanted to be able to play jazz. I wanted to be able to blow through changes, and I couldn't, and I was totally afraid of being found out. You know.
You know, here I had this great career, I'm making money, I have all the success, and yet even at like such a basic level for me, I you know, I couldn't I couldn't improvise on a blues without playing the same three licks over and over again or something. You know. So there was definitely imposter syndrome.
When Dream Weaver becomes very successful in the summer seventy five, it's the heyday of music on television in Concert Midnight Special, there's some video of Gary Wright and his band on YouTube. Are you in those videos?
Absolutely? Absolutely? And I'm kicking ass in those videos. You know, when it comes to playing a bass part, I'm Dreamwaiver. I'm your guy. You know I could even play. There's video of me playing a clavinet part with my left hand while I'm playing the bass part with my right hand. You know that kind of stuff. No problem.
Okay. So Gary has this great run dream Weaver Love is Alive. That is actually the peak of his solo career. How long are you on the road with him? And what happens? Does he say we're going to go back out or we did a tour and that's it, or you say I did a tour, I want to do something else. What goes on there?
Just Gary? Did you know when he started off? This was before this is just as the album was being released. Like I said, we're playing all these great gigs. I'm living the dream. Dream Weaver becomes a big hit record, and just as we kind of finished, like a year of touring, dream Weaver comes out, it hits big, and they want us right back on the road again, you know,
before Gary makes another record. They wanted us on the road to keep promoting it, to keep plugging it away, plugging away at it, at promoting it Warner he was on Warner Brothers, and so we were right back on the road. At a certain point, I was asking for a raise. Gary didn't, you know, as great as things were, you know, he didn't want to give me the rays I wanted. And I was okay with it. It's not like I was angry or going to quit. But you know, the day I asked for a raise and was told no,
I went back out. We're in Florida somewhere at a hotel and I went back out on the beach and I wasn't even mad. I just was it was like whatever. It wasn't like I was going to quit the gig. And I get paged to the front desk at the hotel and I had no you know, I was worried maybe something happened to a family member or something, and
it happens to be Boss Skags. You know. While I was on the road with Gary, David Page, my brother, Jeff, David Hungy, these guys happened to be working in the studio with Boss making this album called Silk Degrees, you know, and they were gearing up for the road and we're looking for a synth guy to cover the string parts and cover the some of the synth parts, and would I be interesting sitting going on the road. And their first offer was much more than I was making with Gary.
So I did the Silk Degrease tour with Boss.
Well, a little bit slower. You get paiged, how do you tell Gary and what do you and how much time do you give him?
Oh, I got off the phone with Boss. He offers me much more money than I'm making with Gary. I had just asked Gary to give me a raise and he said no, you know, And there really wasn't hard feelings. I remember at the time. I really there really weren't hard feelings. But I got offered. I got a much better offer. I hung up. I asked the guy at the front desk, I'd like to leave a message for Gary Wright and room whatever, and I said, this is my two weeks.
Notice, you know, then how did Gary handle that?
You know, he handled it fine. And you know what he went on. He had hired a he woud to hiring another couple of guys. And just so that you know, the way you know there was no hard feelings is that I did this whole big tour with Boz and then you know what, Gary had a big tour coming up of just stadiums. He had a ten city stadium tour.
General Giant was the opening act, and then Gary Wright and then Peter Frampton and then yes, you know, and we were doing these stadium He had ten stadium gigs lined up and he called me and asked me to come back and do them with them, and I said, absolutely, you know, and they were some of the funnest gigs I ever did in my life. Some of those are on there are available on YouTube too. You know, some
of these stadium gigs we did. I mean, you could see we were playing during the day, but you could see, yes, as they still had like the Roger Dean stage from Tales of Topographic Oceans in those days and stuff, you know, the the yes, the stage set was all, you know, you could see it in the background. But we had a ball and I loved it and I loved it.
Okay, So what was the experience being on the road with bos gags?
Fantastic BOZ was I really lucked out? I really lucked out? Again. These gigs were so easy for me because I wasn't in the piano player chair that's the hot seat, you know, the guy who had to play those meat and potatoes parts. I was playing synth parts. I was programming mini mogues and playing string ensemble stuff. It was a cinch and it was fun and and Boss took amazing care of his musicians. He paid everybody really well. We stayed in great hotels. It was just my brother Jeff was in
the band David Page, that's when we started working. At first it was David Page. Nine later another great keyboard player, Jay Winding, wound up doing the piano chair. Lucather came in later on. Lucather did one of the later tours with Boss. So yeah, I mean that's kind of this was kind of the beginning of Toto, you know. You know, my brother Mike wound up playing I think Hungy did some gigs at first, but you know, Columbia Toto's record company pretty much saw it. Was like David Page co
wrote all the songs on Silk Degrees. You know, we're playing live. Boss's that Silk Degrees album was a huge success. So all the record company people are all hanging out backstage and at the big gigs and stuff, and here's this band. Here's Jeff Pacaro on drums. Here's you know, David Page on piano, the guy who wrote co wrote all those songs on Silk Degrees. Here I am on synse. There's Lucather on guitar. It pretty much was they a
saw Toto. You know, they saw this backing band. And I think it's part of the reason why Toto never had to do like a showcase or or anything like that. Our record deal was pretty much handed to us on a platter, you know, Columbia Records.
Okay, you're on the road with bass. That tour finishes, then what then?
Much to my surprise, I was I was afraid that David and Jeff. I had always wished for them to start a band, but at that point I David was so busy, was getting hired to produce and write and sessions and Jeff's. Jeff's career was in full you know, full bloom. Lucather and I were just starting out then. This is seventy six, seventy seven. Our careers are just kind of starting out. We're doing pretty good. I'm doing all kinds of stuff with Foster by then, and he's
hiring me whenever he's doing synthesizers. He's got me there with him. But I'm thinking, you know what, it's these guys are never gonna want to do a band. Why would they turn down all this work to stop and rehearse and and build up a band thing? But sure enough, that's exactly what they did. They decided. You know, I think Silk Degrees was a huge encouragement to them that
they could maybe do it themselves, be the artist. There just was this lead singer thing was the one thing that wasn't part of our inner circle, you know.
Luca thir tells me that some of the old cats said, hey, you're really happening now, but it ends for everybody. You got to find your own thing. Did that ever play to you or did you just basically get a call one day, Hey, we're going to form a band.
Yeah, it was basically that. I mean, we all were thrilled to get that call. I was in there very early on. David knew he wanted you know, they saw me with how I was with Gary Wright, how I handled since with Gary Wright. They saw me. David and I worked together with Boz. David saw that I was very handy to be around, not only in the studio, but that live I could you know what I mean, synthesizers were becoming very popular, and that I could cover a lot of overdubs. So I was kind of in
there real early on. Luke, they kind of yanked his chain. There was a lot of guitar players. David had grown up with some. There were a lot of friends that
were great guitar players. You know. Luka Thurb didn't know for a while, but because David was doing these demo, He was doing these demos just with just with my brother Jeff, the two of them in the studio and Patriot played mog bass and he would sing, was singing everything, and the two of them kind of were building up this batch of songs that were amazing, you know, that were amazing. But when it got time to put it all together, you know, he made the choice to use
hung Gate because they were really such this. You know, my brother Mike was in the bands in high school and Mike had played with bass, and Mike was was would have been an obvious choice. But hung Gate, my brother Jeff and Page were this core rhythm section thing that had been doing a lot of sessions together, a lot of stuff, stills and Crofts, all the boss Gag,
silk degree stuff. Hung Gate was an incredibly musical bass player and I was in there right away and it was like yes, and you know, to your question, we all still were doing sessions. We all still when there was time, we would do sessions. You know, we'd get home from the road. And we were very lucky that way, because a lot of guys once they commit to a band, and a lot of times when you leave town and the producer has to hire someone else, a lot of
times those guys get your gig. You know, they'll hire a replacement for you, and that guy will will get your job. But we all were pretty lucky that way and would still get called back, you know, when we were home and when we were available.
Before it's a band, do you have enough studio work to make it work? For you or you thinking I want another road gig or I need more studio work. What's going on for you?
No, my career was just kind of doing this with studio work. I was getting quite a lot of things. I was getting better and better. It was just growing, you know. Yeah, I mean I'm living. I was a single guy living in a small apartment. I got married soon after that, very young, at twenty years old. But but yeah, no, my session career was just kind of getting better and better. More guys were discovering me. Quincy Jones would start hiring me without David with or without
David Foster. You know, David would hire me for everything he was doing that used keyboards, that used since he wanted me there all the time. And his career was taking off big time with Chicago, and you know, it was one thing after another with him. It just kept
getting better and better. In the tubes and Alice Cooper and Hall and Oates we did two albums, and you know, and Bill Shnae started hiring me, and you know, guys started seeing that I was real handy to be around in the studio, you know, either by myself or with other keyboard players. I was very much a team player. I played well with others and we got a lot done.
Tell me about getting married at twenty.
What would you like to know?
Okay, you meet a woman, how long after you meet her do you get married? And what's the incentive to get married? You know, you're in this unique world where you're working, you know, morning, noon, and night in the studio, we're off on the road. Is it security or is it just this? Is you think you're in love? That's very young by most people's standards.
Yeah, and I had a child then too. I didn't think I was in love. I was in love.
So you got married because a child was on the way, I was in love. How long did that marriage last?
That marriage lasted three years or so, three and a half years.
So why did it end?
You know? I why did it end? Because my career became all consuming to me. It became all consuming to me, and I saw these opportunities that I had to take advantage of, you know, and it was tough. It was tough to be working twenty four to seven like that and be it still be a human being and be a partner in a marriage.
You know, So how many times you've been married twice, And are you married now? No? So, how old were you when you got married the second time?
Much older I was. I would say I was something like thirty eight or something the next time I got married.
So once bitten twice, shy. How hard is it to convince yourself to do it a second time again?
I was in love? You know? What can I say?
And why did that relationship end?
Uh?
It's kind of complicated. You know. I don't want to pull anyone else's covers.
Okay, but it wasn't.
It wasn't a word note, No, it wasn't.
Okay. Let's go back to Tote so Page and your brother working up this material and they pull you in. How do you ultimately decide that you need a singer and get a singer?
Well, they knew right away. I mean David, David wanted to be you know, David, I think wanted to I think in some ways he wanted to be Elton John and you know, and writing all the songs to have a thing, and he did great, and he sang all the demos and these were amazing songs. And David did a great job. But he knew he wanted a real
tenor in the band. He wanted someone with a high voice in the band, you know, especially in a rock and roll band, you wanted somebody that could cut, somebody that was a real singer, singer, and they had done some. They were good friends with a guy named Joe Shermy who was the bass player in Three Dog Knight, and he had a band called ss Fools after Three Dog Night, and there was a singer in SS Fools named Bobby Kimball.
And that's how David and Jeff met Bobby, who wound up being Toto's lead singer.
Okay, Bobby is in the band, then he isn't in the band. Ultimately what went on that he was no longer in the band?
You know, it was the usual stuff in the early eighties, to be honest with you, you know, quite honestly. I mean, we were all we were all at the party, so to speak. But when you're the lead singer of the band, there's a time when you can pull that off those late nights and heavy drinking and whatever and still do your gig. But after a while it takes its toll.
And you know what I mean, I can say that Bobby wasn't wasn't doing anything the rest of us weren't doing, but he was the lead singer, and it just would become a parent when he couldn't perform, when he couldn't you know what I mean? We were all very good at doing what we did. Regardless of how much partying was going on or not. We could still deliver in a very big way. We still were highly functioning. You know,
we were all highly functioning. But you know, when you've got a stage and everyone on stage has strep throat, it's going to be You're going to notice the singer has strep throat. You're not going to notice the second keyboard player also strep throat, or the drummer has strep throat, or the bass player has stripped you know what I mean.
Okay, at this late day, looking back, there are a number of bands that changed lead singers and survived Van Halen Genesis. Okay, but usually then and still now, it's a kiss of death. So how much did you wring your hands and how much warning did you give Bobby to say, hey, this is going in the wrong direction.
You know, look at look what you just mentioned. I can't think of I almost can't think of one band. Who do you want to talk about Journey Foreigner. Who else is there? I mean, we could go van Halet, we could go on and on, and every one of them had lead singer nightmares, every one of them. Now to empathize with the lead singers, by the way, you
know when you're doing a rock and roll band. When you're doing rock and roll, there was always this thing, right, it's a producer's job to find where is the where do they sound the best? What's the best key to do this song in? This is what you learn from a David Foster and a Quincy Jones. You want that
lead singer when it hits the chorus. You want that vocal and a range where your singer sounds the best, where there's the best wood, where there's the right amount of straining as opposed to how comfortable they're able to sing it. Right, you're making a record. You're not worried about anything else but making the best record you can make, and you want that in the perfect key for your singer. Now ten years later, okay, is that still the and a singer's got to go out on the road and
sing those songs one after another. Sometimes it's like like I said, it's easy for the drummer to play in that same key, It's easy for the keyboard player to play in that same key. Who's it the hardest on the lead singer? Okay? And sometimes those guys can't hit those notes anymore. You know, they weren't hitting them comfortably. This wasn't Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. These are This was rock and roll. You know, I really empathized with
these singers, you know, Steve Perry, Lou Graham. Look at all these guys struggled with being able to deliver at the level that you know their bandmates insisted on them delivering.
Okay, how much warning do you give Kimball and what does he say when the acts comes down?
You know, it was very simple. You know, Toto had this huge success with Total four. It was heartbreaking. We had found our chemistry, We had found we had found what clicks, what works for us. The mixer had nothing to do with the rest of the album. He was hearing everything fresh with fresh ears. He had none of the band politics in his head when he was mixing the album. They had let me do my synthesizers by
myself in a studio. I'd learned to record. During the course of the third album, I had learned to record, to learn just basic gain structure and how to record my stuff so that the band didn't need to be sitting there for hours while I was experimenting, and I could record after experimenting for a couple of days, when I got some magical thing up, which again in those days, a lot of these things didn't have presets. I was
using modular synthesizers. You talk about the difference between a twenty five hundred and a mog modular as opposed to a mini mogue. To recreate these things was very difficult. Once it all got up and working, I learned how to record and it got to be used on the record. We had figured it out. But then we had been working so hard up to that point. You have to understand, we'd been just constantly in the studio or on the
road up to that point. By the time we did Total four and it was hugely successful and we toured behind it, everybody was exhausted and kind of needed a break, and you know what, it was the wrong time to take a break, you know, the old strike while the iron is hot. You know, couldn't have been more apropos, and we wound up doing a film score so that we could stay home. My brother Jeff got married and
started a family. He wanted to be home. And then when we finally got around to making a follow up to Total four, you know, a lot of the bad habits, let's say, that had been developing, had gotten to a point where people just couldn't perform at the level they wanted to that we needed them to, and we wound up having to switch lead singers, which was we hated doing. We hated doing that, you know, it was really it
was really traumatic for the band. And in that time period when I say, strike while the iron is hot, all of a sudden, soon after the nineteen eighty two, eighty three Grammys whenever, it was all of a sudden, that style of music that polished kind of what our detractors called corporate rock, you know, suddenly became very unpopular. You know, bands like Nirvana were kind of all of
a sudden, you know, real popular. The whole Seattle thing was starting to happen, that whole style of music, you know, with these synthesizer extravaganzas, you know what I mean, We're becoming very unpopular, you know, and the record company kind of let us know. They weren't. They weren't as thrilled as they were. I mean, if we had delivered another enough other hits, they'd be okay. But you know what, it just the music world was changing and we were changing.
And that's the best way I can think of of putting it.
Let's go back to the first album. Sure, first album. You know, you guys had a lot of experience. But did you go in there and knock it right out? Or was the type of thing where you had so much experience and you had enough money to meticulously get it how you want? What was the experience recording the first album?
We knocked it right out. You know, we had all these great demos, We had all these songs ready to go. The record company loved the demos that we had, and we went in there like the pros we were and knocked it out and had a ball doing it. And the record company would come and listen and they were loving it. And the first single out of the gate pulled the line hit record, you know, boom.
So once should think it's one thing to play on somebody else's hit records. It's quite another to have your own hit record.
It sure is, and we've seen plenty. There had been plenty of studio musician bands and I'm not gonna name any names, but there were several bands where a lot of very very successful studio musicians put bands together, and like you said, you know, it was very different to just to do that and to actually have it be successful and have it clicked, and have the stars align, and have the record company back you up and have great management at the time that knew how to work
the record company and have the right representation, and you know, the stars aligned, you know for us.
Okay, now it comes times to make a second record. A lot of acts, you know, have the second record blues a million reasons because of success on the first one, or they took years to write all the material that's on the first album. What was the experience with Toto on the second album?
You know, there was a little bit of that there. Believe me, I've always been well aware of that. Everyone has to read. You know. Again, you kind of hinted at it. But the truth is, every band's first album is the best stuff they've done their entire life. Okay, maybe something was written two weeks ago. But I guarantee you there's some song on there that was written when they were in high school or something. You know, this is the culmination of the best stuff this band has
done their entire life. This is for every single band out there. Okay. Then you go on the road, maybe you get divorced, you know whatever. You know, you go on the road and within a year you got a record company going. You got two months, you got you know, maybe three months do it again. You know, it really separates the men from the boys. You know, it really separates the men from the boys. Every single band you can name, their first album was the best shit they
did their entire life. Okay. And then in those days, it was every year we had to do a new album. It was every year. Okay. And this is after you've toured. Have you spent any time with your family at all. They don't care. Give us another We need another one, you know, we want another one. Now. We did real good. That first album was you did great, Give us another one, So sophomore jinks. It's like, to me, it's so obvious. Uh. And and that was we still had we had a
lot of power. You know. It's not like we were running out of songs. David Page was still, you know, reaching his peak as a songwriter. We all were. There were a lot of writers in the band. You know, did we get a little cocky after that first album did did so good out of the gate? You know what I mean? Sure? Sure, Hydro was we were kinda there was some aspect about it that, believe me, we were going for it. We were. We did get a little cocky for sure and kind of thought, wow, we
can do this. They're they're they're buying it. We looked at each other and was like, you know, uh uh, there was some definitely self indulgent there. I can speak for my song that was on Hydra, the song called Secret Love was the weirdest two and a half minutes you know what I mean, you'll hear on a major label release. I had called in this at Sunset Sound. I woke up one morning. I called this place called Kasimov Blutener in Larchmont in California, and I rented a harpsichord,
a clavichord, a Mozart piano. I rented all these these vintage keyboards, acoustic keyboards, and had this idea for this very strange song and the guys let me do it. They let me do it. It's on the album. It's called Secret Love. You know, Bobby Kimball did a vocal on it. I couldn't believe what he came up with. It's a very weird song. We were going for it. We were going for it, and we were a little cocky for sure.
Okay, Hold the line was ubiquitous on the radio, to the point where there was even some backlash. The first Toto album I bought was the second one, because I heard ninety nine on an airplane radio when that used to be a thing. I thought that Hydra was really pretty good. Yeah, it was nowhere near as successful commercially as the first. So when it's all played out, what
do you guys think? Do you think, Well, maybe we didn't do the best work, or the audience didn't get it, or what was the review from the inside?
We love, we loved, we loved Hydra. We loved it. Did we get did we get a little cocky? Sure? Now, I don't think being cocky is necessarily a bad thing unless you get way, way, way too cocky. And you know, were there any hole of the lines on it? No? But there sure was a song called ninety nine and stuff.
There's still was stuff that people could relate to and was still great songwriting and great production, and you know, it's still there was still a lot of very strong stuff on there, you know what I mean.
Okay, on that album, the first album credit for producer is the band second one you get Tom Knox, Reggie Fisher. Is that just slicing up the credit for money or why were other people involved in What did they do well?
I I you know, Tom Knox was our longtime engineer. Tom Knox did the did the demos when the guys did the demos. He engineered and mixed all of the first album. Reggie Fisher, the only thing Reggie Fisher did was he did my synthesizer stuff. You know. That's the only thing Reggie Fisher did on Hydro was my synthesizer stuff, which by then I had gotten this modular synthesizer and
I it lived at Reggie's house. Reggie had a home studio and that's where I was living at the time, and you know what I mean, just tweaking it and working on this song secret Love. Yeah, I kind of saw where they got. I don't know if they got production credit. I don't think they ever officially got production credit, regardless of what it might say on the record. We
were the producers. Again, Toto was always the producer, except on the third album it was I believe it was co produced by Jeff Workman, who was our engineer and mixer on the third album.
Okay, so why did you bring in Workmen?
You know, lou especially Luke, wanted us. We were kind of whereas Toto did a lot of If you listen to everything on the first album and on Hydra, there was plenty of rock and roll. We thought we were very kind of all over the map, doing all kinds of different stuff. The things that were getting attention were the things like ninety nine, like the R and B
stuff like Georgie Porgy. Some of the softer stuff was getting a little bit too much attention, especially for Luke, who was a raal rock and roller, and we wanted to bring in a more rock and roll guy, a guy who would turn the guitars up louder, a guy with some rock and roll experience. You know.
Okay, that album is a stiff, So what do you think about that?
It was a stiff? There's still some stuff on there that that I'm proud of. Jeff Workman and I did not get along at all during the making of the record. You know, we didn't get along at all. He was used to working with, you know, rock and roll bands, Like who did he work with was guns and not Guns n' Roses, but worked with Queen.
He worked with a million bands.
Yeah, he worked with a million bands. And you know what, I think he was used to being the if there was a second keyboard player, if there was a guy who did a little bit of sense stuff, he he did that. He was the guy who did that on a lot of the stuff he did. I, you know, that was my job, and him and I bumped head's
big time during the making of that record. Now, the only reason I even mentioned that is because after that record, I while we were making that record, while the guys were in the studio with Workmen, I was working away at David Page's house with all my synthesizers, with all
this modular gear, and I had an eight track. I had an eight track tape machine, and I transferred the rough rhythm tracks to two of the tracks of the eight track, and I was going to experiment I was going to figure out what I would do when it was time to record the synthesizers for that album. You know, because when I would record, you know, i'd have the whole band would be there. You know, those guys were so good, they were so fat, they were so good
at what they did. And whereas I could do things fast, I got hired because I could. You know, Quincy Jones, David Foster would hire me because I could do the synth over dubs on three songs and in three hours. I could be that guy. But I wanted what I did in Toto to be special. This was my band. Whereas what when Luke played a guitar solo, whether regardless of whether it was for his own album, a Toto album, a Quincy Jones album, a Michael Jackson, he played the same, great,
amazing guitar solo. You know, My brother Jeff played the you know, I mean Jeff, I have to say stretched with Africa and with some other things because it was Toto, he would indulge a little bit. But anyway, the point being that these guys were real fast, and I was always thinking like an arranger, and I wanted the respect that an arranger got I wanted to take home. I wanted to write out my parts. I wanted to try different voices. I didn't want to just improvise a string
arrangement like I was called upon to do a whole bunch. Yeah. I could do that, but you know what, arrangers got to try different voicings. They try it, they check it out, they try a different voicing. Ooh, this is better. They got to work on things by themselves. I wanted to look at my synthesizers like that. Anyway, back to the story. On this eight track, I was going to experiment, and then once I knew what I was going to do, that's what I would do when I got time to overdub.
But the reality was on this eight track, I was, you know, I was capturing magic. I was doing stuff with a modular synthesizer that I'd never be able to recreate, you know, and I was bouncing things down. I was. Anyway, I wound up when I got time to do the synthesizers. Nobody even heard that stuff, and it was so some of the best work I'd ever done, and no one
to this day has even heard that stuff. I wound up just doing synth stuff very I was very frustrated, but just wound up doing what I always did in the studio with all the guys there with their arms folded behind me, going hurry up, and doing what I typically did on a Toto album. Now, the good part of the story is that for the next album, the guys told me they were gonna make me a tape. You know. The only reason that stuff, by the way, couldn't be used was because it was on eight track.
It wasn't on the right format. By then, we had Sympty and you could sync up another piece of tape. You could add tracks, you know. But the only reason why that couldn't be used was because I'd recorded it myself and it was on this eight track. It was on this half inch tape. So for the next album, Total four, the guy said they would make me, I know, this is an acceptable language anymore, but they'd make me a slave tape. They'd make me a tape where I could work out my ideas. But they said, but we
can't keep anything you do. You're not an engineer, you know. We always hired the best engineers, and engineers are definitely put on a pedestal with us. So the thing about Jeff Workman, the guy who I bumped heads with so much on that third album, he started hanging out. He started hanging out at David's house a lot. Him and David became close friends, and he lived very close by. And I started asking him all these real stupid questions. I said, Jeff, if I was to record myself, why
couldn't they use what I recorded? And he went on to teach me all about gain structure. How do I know I'm getting the right level into a harmonizer? Where do I turn up? Do I turn it up there? When do I turn things up? He taught me all this basic gain structure, basic, all about zero vu. He was the most generous, sweetest guy all of a sudden, who taught me how to record, and they wound up using I did ninety five percent of the synthesizers on Total four I recorded, and they used every bit of it.
You know, they used all of it because of what Jeff Workman taught me.
Okay, just to be clear, from statistically and from the outside, the third album was going in the wrong direction. Did you feel that in the band? Did you feel pressure or did you not?
We definitely felt pressure. We definitely felt pressure from the record company. They were not happy. There was no obvious singles. It was tougher, it had more of a rock and roll thing to it. I you know, there's personal I have some personal feelings about the way the priorities, the band's priorities, which were typical in those days where you know, where bands would spend three days on a bass drum sound,
but then they'd have to mix it. They'd have to mix this song like you know what I mean, and in less than a day with a mixer that had been up for three days or something like that. Just the priorities always seemed off to me, But it was just the way it was. Bottom line is, if the songs were right, it wouldn't have mattered, right, you know what I mean, If the songs were where the shit, you know what I mean, it would have cut through all those details. Yeah, it just again you got to
remember we're doing this. This is every year, We're going to Europe and Japan and the United States and trying to keep our home lives together, and and you know, having to do this being pointed at, going do it again, you know what I mean, get in there again. It
was a hard life. You know, it's not easy where we weren't a band that was just kind of a roots thing where someone wrote a song and had their journal and had great lyrics and we would bang it out on our instruments, and you know, that was it we were. We loved we loved being in the studio. We loved production. I loved tweaking synthesizers and they're being arrangement and string arrangements and you know what I mean. We loved we loved that stuff. You know.
Okay, so you're making the fourth record. To what degree do you feel you're on the right track when you're making it.
Right out of the gate. We knew we were under pressure. We knew the record company was kind of going, come on, guys. You know, we were so good out of the gate, you know, and then the hydra comes and yeah, there's ninety nine, but it's now we're near the level that the first album is on. And then the third album is even worse, where all of a sudden feeling big pressure from the record company and David Page, god bless him, the first thing he writes for the new album is
this song Rosanna. The first thing he writes is him trying his best to write the best possible song that exploits the talents of the band while still being commercial, while still being a hit record. And that's the first thing he writes. That's the first thing we record, you know, and we all believed in it and thought it was hip. And you know what I mean, there's this amazing drum
beat that starts it off. It was totally Toto. The horn arrangement, two lead vocals, it changes keys, but yet it's got a payoff, It's got a really strong chorus. It was it was, you know what I mean. I got to spend you know what I mean, you would have You wouldn't believe how long I spent on that synthesizer solo on Rosanna, you know. So to me, that's something I'm so proud of because I got I was
very indulgent. That was a perfect case of something I could have never done in the studio with the clock ticking and five producers waiting for me to blow a solo. I wasn't that guy. But I arranged this thing. I did these experiments, I did all kinds of stuff and delivered this solo on two tracks as all the mixer had since solo left and since solo right, you know. And he didn't ask who recorded it or how it was recorded. All z he knew was that he loved
it and cranked it up, you know. And and it ends with paid doing this New Orleans third line stuff. It was very, very Toto and it was our first single and it did great right out of the gate.
Okay, just to be clear, Rosanna was the first song written, first song recorded. But when you went in the studio, did you have all the songs.
They were? You know, there was a batch, definitely. Page always had a batch of songs ready to go. You know, a lot of it came together. A lot of the writing would come together right there in the studio. David wasn't afraid to have a verse and a chorus and an idea for a bridge, and he would sit there with my brother Jeff. You know, he would sit there across from Jeff and they would kind of arrange it
together what they were going to cut that day. And believe me, a lot of the finishing touches of the song would come together right then, of the track would come together right then, and then it'd be like, all right, are we ready, let's cut this, you.
Know, Okay, revisiting an overhashed subject. How did you know Roseanne? Our kid?
I knew Rosanna. I met her at you know, a very close friend of the band, James Newton Howard. It was at the reception to he had gotten married and we're at the reception that was at his house, and I met Rosanna that night. I met Rosanna at the reception and we had become an item. And she started coming to the studio and everybody was. You know, Rosanna has been amused for a lot of people. You know, she's always been a lover of music. She's always been
incredibly supportive. And you know, David didn't have a title for a song yet, and I brought her over to David's house while he was working, while he was putting together Rosanna, and I think he and I think he might have been a little bit smitten with her himself, which I wouldn't blame him. She was, she was, she was, she wasn't is really something And you know, what can I.
Say, Okay, when the record comes out, are you still an item? Whether you are or not, how does it affect your relationship with her? And how does she handle it? Because the news right away. Whatever, the real story is news right away, and all the media is that it's based on Roseanna Arcat.
Sure. No. And she was on the road. She went on the road with us. She did a world tour with us. And this is when her career was you know, she was getting we lived together at this point, and she was getting scripts from huge movies every day. I can't believe. And I'm not the only one she did this with. And she just she wanted to come on the road with us. She loved music. She did a whole world tour with us. You know, we were still very much an item. Yeah, it was, and people were
assuming that it was written by me. It was not. It was all that was all David Page. I believe me. I worked my ass off on that song, you know, on that SyncE solo and all those keyboard parts and stuff like that. We were all very proud of that song and thought it was a great representation of who we were as a band and what we were about. And and I think she loved it for she even she even they did some some of the promotion for
the single she was involved with. Now after that, you know, years after that, right, it becomes this thing where like every talk show she does, right, you know, with the the questions they ask, right, of course, they bring that up. And I think she I wouldn't blame and I didn't blame her a bit for getting very very tired of getting that question, you know what I mean. I mean, from Letterman, from you know, you name it. They would bring that up while she was out promoting a movie
or promoting this or that. Right, these these people, you know, would would I think it was kind of lazy on a lot of their parts. You know, I understand some of it, right, they want to have something else to talk about, but they would bring that up for like the next ten years, this poor girl. Every time she did a talk show, they'd bring up Rosanna, you know
what I mean. And at some point, you know, Rosanna was always into Prague stuff, and she wound up being with Peter Gabriel, and you know, she started disparaging the song. You know, even I think just to I thought it was to discourage people from bringing it up. You know, I didn't take it as I didn't take it very personal. You know, I kind of understood she just got kind of tired of being asked that that lame question.
You know, Okay, Total four is a monster with varying hit tracks. What's the experience on the inside it.
We were feeling very good. We delivered. We delivered. You know, we were under pressure. We were under pressure, and we delivered. We went to some known things. Al Schmidt, a guy who worked with our fathers, you know, a great engineer, cut the basic tracks. There was nothing fancy. We weren't using the flavor of the month in any way. Even though Greg Ladani was this hot young man mixer, his
career was really on the uprise. And and Greg mixed the whole album, and like I said, I loved it because before the mixer, whoever recorded our album would be there the whole time. And of course there's there's pecking orders in bands, understandably, you know, David Page and Jeff, my brother Jeff, had a lot more clout than I did as far as you know what I mean, band's
pecking orders. I'm sure John Lennon and Paul McCartney had a more clout than what Ringo's opinion was in certain situations as far as the producers and engineers went that were around him. It's understandable, but and so certain band. You know, prejudices and habits and people's opinions get in these guys' heads. And what I loved was, like I said before, Greg Ladani was just this fresh, you know, he had fresh ears. He didn't he didn't know any
of the banded politics. You know. I actually remember David after we heard we heard a mix of Rosanna, and we're all we were all kind of blown away with how it had come out. You know, no one had heard the whole since solo put together in the song itself next to Luke's guitar solo, and it all came together and I'll never forget. After we heard it mixed, we walked out of the room and David Pate said
to me, He goes, I'll never forget this. He says, you know, Ladanie didn't know that you're not supposed to turn up the sense that loud was. This was the first thing he said to me, and we were just where we were cracking up. You know, Like I said, he didn't have those banded politics in his ears. He just did it the way he heard it, mixed it the way he heard it. That's the way he did the whole album and it was very successful. So you asked, what was it like in the band. We were feeling
pretty good about ourselves. We delivered. We delivered in a big way. We were up against the wall, and you know what, we rose to the occasion.
Okay, Toto is a band that has gotten a lot of shit, a lot of backlash from day one, day one at studio musicians, I certainly know Lukethur has a thin skin on this topic. Or whoever, everybody's got a different identity. To what degree were you bothered or bothered by that?
I understood it from day one, and I never could understand why the other guys couldn't understand it. Okay, the people that are writing about us are journalists, which means they're probably they were English majors in school. Okay, words are very very important to them. Okay, all right, they
care about words. We were all musos. Okay. We were all about the pocket and the drum and the feel and this and look at that, those great chord changes and that melody, What a great melody, and all these things that these writers that's way down on the list. What's the first thing they're looking at? The words? It's rolling stone magazine. Bob Dylan is at the peak. He's the best. Okay, listen to his words. He's the poet
of the generation. All right, words are all important. And you know what, where Toto, I can't completely throw us under the bus. There were times where guys would make an effort. There was no one in the band. We didn't grow up with that guy who was the lead singer, who kept a journal, who kept who was the poet of the band. That wasn't part of the equation with Toto. We were all musicians. It was all about the playing all those things I told you, and quite frankly, often lyrics,
not on every song, but a lot of times. Yeah, we'd spend three days on the drum sound, but you know what, the lyrics would get written the night before the vocal. The lead vocal had to get done. Okay. I wish I could tell you, you know, we spent two weeks on those lyrics. Hell no, okay. And when you're talking about this is when that distinction between records and songs comes in. Okay, Because on records, which is
kind of more what we were about. I think if you had to make that distinction, we were guys who made records. Okay, lyrics sometimes, okay, Louie Louis whatever. There's all these records you can name that. You know what. The words weren't that important. It was about the production, It was about the feeling, it was about the dance ability, it was about this cool sound, it was about the
horn arrangement. Words weren't number one, you know, the way they were when you're talking about Bob Dylan, you know when you're talking about Van Morrison. You know, now, we loved great lyrics. We loved Joni Mitchell, we loved Steely Dan or the Eagles. We loved great lyrics.
It just.
It wasn't our priority, quite frankly. And how can you be surprised when these writers, these English majors, they would know a deep pocket if it hit him in the back of the head. Maybe, but you know what, they're going to read your lyrics and if you're rhyming Moon with June, they're going to say this sucks. This is I would get a D on this if I handed
this poem in in English class at my college. You know, it was bad poetry to them, and the guys would be It would be funny because I would see they'd be so shocked and hurt, and believe me bad when you work so hard on something and you spend all this time away from your family and you put your heart and soul in something, to hear somebody just completely say it's shit. It hurts, absolutely, absolutely it hurts. But you know Elton John got to start off with those
incredible Bernie top and lyrics. He'd start off with that. The song wouldn't even start being written without those that amazing poetry in front of them. You know, leave on, burn down the mission name any Elton tune and the lyrics are amazing, you know what I mean? You know the Eagles, it would be maybe be after the fact, but believe me, they held such high importance, more so than than their priorities were very different than a band Toto.
You know, they would never let moon in June or saying uh right there from the start, you know, rhyme it with the word heart like we did I think three times in our lyrics or something. They would there'd be someone in that band going no way. They would work harder. They'd bring in a J. D. Souther to help them elevate the lyrics. You know, we were being the best version of ourselves that we could be. And I think all of us wish the lyrics were better sometimes.
And I know, guys, you know, Lucather brought in Randy Goodrum to do one of his second big ballad on the first album. Luke wrote the lyrics himself to his big ballad that you know, but on the on uh or I mean on the fourth album. But then later on Luke had another big song and brought in Randy Goodrum, who wrote incredible lyrics. We would you know, we we cared David on the song Africa. That was David really trying to really put some effort into his lyric writing.
You know, we gave him a rational shit at the time. We were like, what is this about the Serengetti the but what are you writing about? You know, we gave him tons of crap about it, you know, while we were working on the tape loops and this and you know, all this me tweaking the Columbus sounds. You know, that's what we spent time doing, you know what I mean. But to me, it was obvious why the critics didn't like us, and I could never understand why why Luke
in particular, would get so upset. You know, yeah, it hurts, But he's an English major. His priorities are very different. They don't care about the tone on your guitar that you spent hours and hours on, you know what I mean, that you spent all this time. They don't care about that. They would have rather you spent a few more hours on the lyrics and making better you know what I mean.
Okay, So the band has this incredible success both on records and live. Certainly at this late date people know the money is mostly in publishing and at least long term money. You had some songs on some records. First question is, ay, were you ripped off? Sometimes the band is so busy working they have no idea where the money is going. Second, did you get the money and how did you use it? In third, are you still getting money from Toto?
Yes? Look at that's what happens with a lot of bands. With every band, guys aren't thinking about that at the time, right, They're just going in. They're in a band. They're thrilled to be in a band. But the human nature aspect kicks in when all of a sudden it hits you that the guy who's written all the songs. He's shown up in a rolls Royce and he's three hours late to the session that you're all paying for. And you know,
has this happened with every band? Sure? I've seen bands that you know what, to fight that the guys who write all the songs. They'll say, you know what, let's make them all band written songs. This band is so important to us, and the chemistry we have is so special, Let's make them all band written songs. I've seen guys do that, and then later on resenting it kicks in and it comes out in some weird, ugly way. You know. I won't mention any names, but it's did we get
ripped off? Absolutely? Walter Yetnikoff, the guy who was the record company president at the time. He says in his book Howling at the Moon. He says, at the end he was a record company president that Bruce Springsteen would fly in to play him his new single, and he couldn't tell you one Bruce Springsteen song from the other. He came up through the lawyer ranks, and all he knows is that he screwed every band he signed. He got the better. He outlawyered every band that he signed
of which we were one of. So did we get screwed? Absolutely? And then when you try to just look at the record business, the whole history of the record business is so is so ugly. And then you you try to audit these companies, you know they'll have your money sitting in some especially in foreign territories. You know you've made all this money, it's sitting in some bank accounts somewhere. And then you have to audit your record company, and then another lawyer gets a third of what you get
from the audit. It's it's it's horrible, but but you know what, we made a living. We made a good living. Do I still get money? Yes? Yes. Just being a member of Toto has been very very good to me has been very very good to me.
Assuming you didn't have any savings, Could you live off the income from Toto?
Not that alone? Now it depends when you say live. I'm used to I'm used to living here in California, you know what I mean. I'm used to going out to dinner, to nice restaurants. I'm not a car guy, but some people are. I don't know. Some people have lived on a lot less. I'll tell you that you know what I mean, They sure wouldn't live here, they wouldn't have these gas prices. They'd go somewhere else where they could, you know what I mean, where they could
get better bang for their buck than southern California. Certainly, how do you.
End up leaving Toto?
How did I end up? You know? It was after you know, I love this question because even though, especially with my brother Jeff and the band, you know, totod believe me, there was some headbutting. You know, for the most part, we all got along great, you know what I mean, We really for the most part, it was like a hell of a lot better than a lot of stuff you hear about. You know, we really got along great. For the most part. We were mostly always
on the same page. I I after the sixth album again, ever since Total four, like I told you, the whole thing of music had been changing, you know, this corporate rock things, these very heavily overarranged pop things with the band and synthesizers were becoming less and less popular and less and less common. The whole consensus with people were getting a lot more stripped down. It became a lot more about the lyrics and about rock and roll. I saw that in England. I loved bands like Yes and
Emersonich and Palmer. But I totally got it in seventy five seventy six, where the you know, people were going to a rock concert and all of a sudden you're made to feel like you had to go to a music conservatory to play rock and roll, and how they said, fuck that, pick up a guitar, learn three records and if you have something to say, you know what I mean, screw that. You know, the whole backlash to all of that.
After we did our sixth album, we toured I remember this very well, and the guys were talking about our next album. Joseph Williams was the lead singer in the band now and they were just talking about how we needed to do even less. We needed to really thin out the arrangements. We really needed to do less as
far as arrangement went, as far as since went. They were kind of describing what it was I did in the band, you know, for me, what my purpose in the band was, you know, I mean, they'd always love having me around to recreate the songs live, to do the Rosanna solo, and to do Africa, and to do you know whatever else, but you know, I was just kind of feeling you know what, And so I on the way home were we had finished our last gig of the last tour in Japan, and we were on
the way home, and I told the guys there was no big, ugly fight. I'm so happy to say this. There was no ugly scene and fuck you fest or something like that. I you know what I mean. I just we'd been talking about the next album that we were going to go into the studio soon, and they were talking about conceptually how they wanted to simplify and get much more basic. And I told the guys, I said, you know what, I'm not gonna I think I'm going to back out of the band at this point. I'm
not going to bail on you guys. I will still because David was When I said that, David Page was like, you know what I mean, he was so used to me being around and assisting him in the studio and being that guy with the synthesizers and putting those sounds under. I says, I'll still come into the studio when you guys go, but I'll be like it used to be. I'll program for David whatever he needs me to do, I'll do. But I won't feel like I have to leave my mark, you know, you know, I won't feel
like I have to leave my mark. I'll just help David. And I wound up doing another two world tours after that because I didn't want to leave them in the lurch. I wanted to help them still be able to do Rosanna and these other songs and pull them off live. So I did another two world tours with them. After I had quit, I just was no longer a band member. I didn't have to do the interviews, you know, after soundcheck,
I could go relax in my hotel room. And you know, I thought, you know, I thought, I saw I had such success just writing this song on my own, called Human Nature, you know what I mean, just doing wasn't writing it for anybody, but it got the atmosphere of it, caught Quincy's attention and stuff, and I thought, you know, I'm gonna start focusing more on on doing that stuff, you know, maybe maybe paying a little bit more attention to my writing.
Okay, how did Q ultimately get Human Nature?
You know, I'd already been in the studio working on doing synthesizer overdubs on the Thriller album. On various songs, Q had asked David Page, you know, they were looking for an up tempo rock and roll song for the album. I remember very clearly he wanted something very simple. He wanted a simple rock and roll song like My Sharona, like the next My Sharona. He wanted something very very simple for Michael. That's what he was putting out to all his professional writers, of which I was not one of.
I wasn't considered, you know. I was a synth guy in Toto, and I programmed for David Foster and David Page, but you didn't look at me as a writer at all. And so David Page was furiously working away writing these trying to trying to write stuff for Quincy for Michael's album. And I lived with David at the time, and I was kind of the I was the default studio engineer, you know. I was always helping David out, you know, for him letting me have the run of the place.
I would do whatever he needed me to do in the studio. And I had been working on this song while on the road with Toto. I'd been finishing I'd had a rough version of the song i'd been working on called Human Nature, where just I was singing it. The lyrics weren't done. It was very rough, but the whole song was basically there, and I had recorded it. I threw it on cassette, and David called down to me.
And the night before he had been trying I had helped him record a couple of grooves that were stuff he was gonna was to target Michael and to give Quincy what he was asking for. And he called down to me and said that Quincy's assistant was on the way. Would I throw those two things on cassette for him? Lo and Behold, we were fresh out of cassettes. I had just used the last cassette. We had these custom
cassettes made that could maybe hold three songs. They were kind of short, they just were like fifteen minutes long, and we were fresh out of cassettes. So what I did was I just I flipped the tape over, I rewound it, I relabeled it, and I recorded David songs on the on the A side of the cassette. And then Quincy's story is that he was in his office he listened to what David had done he listened to the cassette and what happened was auto reverse kicked in.
Now you remember auto reverse, don't you, Bob? Of course, okay, auto reverse kicked in. He calls David Page to the next day and David said it took him twenty minutes. David didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He's describing this song. He's all excited about this song David had sent him. And David finally said, you know, I think you're talking about one of Steve's songs, you know, which is what it was. Yeah, the lyrics weren't done. I had the chorus, The chorus lyrics were intact. He
loved my title. He loved the atmosphere is what he loved. And it was a complete total fluke.
I know people who've written hit songs and they live off that one song their whole life. Needless to say, you wrote a song that was a hit. It was on one of the most successful albums of all time by a legendary artist. A did you own it all? And B is it still a cash register? Cash machine?
I owned? A? Quincy asked. At one point we were on the road. He esked. He told me that I needed to finish the lyrics. They were definitely doing the song, we had cut it. I sent him my verse lyrics, which he was underwhelmed with. Loved my chorus and everything, but was very underwhelmed with my verse lyrics completely understandably asked me would I mind if he brought in a lyricist, and I, to my credit, I was like absolutely. You know, I had zero ego as far as as far as
being a lyricist went. You know, sometimes I got lucky, but you know, I said absolutely. He brought in John Bettis, who just nailed it, wrote this, wrote these three amazing verses that gave the song a narrative and made this song really solid. But I hung on to two thirds of it and I had my own publishing and it's done very well to me over the years.
Okay, tell me about working on Henley's Boys of Summer.
Sure that one was easy. The real interesting one is is is dirty Laundry? Wait?
Wait? Start with? Dirty Laundry was on the first album.
Sure, you know, I got to make sure I mentioned Danny Cooch, who was a co producer and wrote the song with Don Hanley. I forgot to mention Cooch once and much to my chagrin, I got a call at one o'clock in the morning. Once I'm at David Page's house working like I I typically was at that hour, I got to call at one o'clock in the morning for my brother Jeff. He had been at the studio all day, Record One, which was right down the street,
which was five minutes away from David Page's house. They'd been working all day on this trying to get this track, and they were having trouble. Would I come down and see if I could help out? And I really had no idea what they were doing. I said, if they're willing to experiment. I didn't know who's this for. He goes, it's the drummer from the Eagles, and I remember thinking, you know, I mean, I love the Eagle, knew the Eagles, loved the Eagles. I didn't know who was who. I
didn't know who's saying what? You know what I mean? I remember thinking, Wow, the Eagles are that big that even the drummer has a solo album. You know. I hadn't heard. I didn't know that Don Henley was that voice that I just loved from the Eagles. I had no idea so I went down there and I just brought a small piece of modular Again. I've actually got
the thing I brought down right over here. Anyway, it was why I one of the reasons I loved it so much is because my brother was there, My brother Jeff, who had my brother Jeff was there, and Jeff had seen me. Jeff would get very frustrated with me with how much I had gotten into the technology and was, you know, had my nose in these manuals all the time, and how deep into synthesizers I was getting because in Toto he pretty much they pretty much hated that stuff.
They never played to click tracks. They didn't like you know what I mean. They were all such great players, they didn't want to know about sequences and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, I walk in there, I assessed the situation that they wanted to use this real far Fista organ that Danny Cooch had there, and they but they wanted it perfect, and luckily they had recorded it
with a drum machine. Luckily, Greg Ladani the engineer, had recorded a sink tone, and I was able to in this very in a very fast way, sync up the drum machine again and have it trigger a gate that just triggered this this far Fisa organ part so that it was perfect, that it played along with the track and was perfect, and everything just clicked. So I loved it.
I love the fact that my brother Jeff saw how handy this knowledge that was very hard earned, how it came into you know what I mean, how useful it could be in the studio. You know. Anyway, it went great. They loved me. They thought I was brilliant that I this thing just came together like that, and they started
using me all the time. This is now jump to the second the next album they had recorded, already recorded this song boys this summer, and it was done, and Don had decided, to the point I had before about singers, about singing, Don Henley decided that you know what, he
wanted it up one half step. Song was completely done, completely recorded, but Don decided that the chorus of the song, if he sang it up one half step, it made a difference to what his voice sounded like, and that his voice sounded better when it was up a half step. Now they called me with the intention of thinking that
I had some magic box that could transpose the whole track. Okay, I didn't you know there was You know, later on, we now have things that can do miracles like that pretty darn good these days, but back then there was no. So what I did while most of the guys were out of the room is The co writer on the song was Mike Campbell, the guitar player from Tom Petty's band. They had done it with a drum machine. They still had the drum machine there and up, and we just
re recorded the basic track. I re recorded it, I played it on synth, I played the figure on synth. Mike Campbell was there, replayed his guitar part in the new key. It was with the drum machine, and they did all the rest of the track in the new key, and it wound up being a very big record.
Wow, uh, switching gears. Tell me about the passing of your brothers.
The passing of my brothers was always an absolute heartbreak. Jeff was this sudden shocking thing. I was sure when I got the phone call and I was on my way to the hospital that it was just going to be his warning, his red flag to stop smoking cigarettes. And he was only thirty eight years old. Jeff was in relatively good shape. He'd always had trouble with his arms after shows. There was a circulation thing with his arms.
You know, Jeff was the one who Jeff took better care of himself than anyone in the band as far as far as habits went and staying at the party. Jeff was married and had just had his third kid, and his kids and his wife were very, very important to him. Jeff always went. You know, Jeff at this point was always going home at a decent hour and taking care of himself. And it was completely shocking, you know, it was completely shocking and heartbreaking. And I still think
about every day. I still all his friends people. It's been thirty two years. It's been thirty two years, and I still think about it all the time, and you know, I can't help but think about all the stuff we could have done by this point too. Like I said, you know, when Jeff and I lived together at home, we were at each other's throats. My brother Mike was the typical middle brother that kept peace with both of us,
but Jeff and I were at each other's throats. The second he moved out of the house at seventeen, he became suddenly he was the coolest older brother ever, and I was always invited to his apartment. I could always bring friends over when he was on the road, I could use his apartment. He was the coolest, most supportive older brother anyone could wish for. Then we're in a band together and we're back in those tight quarters and especially me being this synth guy and him being Jeff Piccaro,
mister gru mister pocket, which I totally appreciated it. But the technology, you know what I mean, I was way into it, and it was never it was never ever to replace anybody, you know, drum machines to us. I was there when Roger was developing it. Roger had worked for Leon Russell. It was all about just aiding in songwriting.
It was never no one ever discussed replacing drummers. You know, Leon used Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and it was all about you know, that was it was just like an improvement on a Roland rhythm ace, you know what I mean, which uh you know, ironically enough, a t R eight to OHO eight basedrum wound up replacing a hell of a lot more drummers than any Lynn drum machine or Oberheim drum machine or any other drum machine that had samples in it, right, you know what I mean?
All of a sudden, this thing, you know, uh was much more popular than any of those drum machines. But you know, there was always all this discussion and debate, and of course people started using it on records, you know what I mean, and it was very upsetting to some drummers and stuff, and they felt like they were getting replaced. I always I never saw it that way. I saw it as who better to know what to do with a drum machine than a drummer? Who better to know what to do if they had a third
arm than a drummer. You know, that was always my thing with it. It was never I had. Jeff Pacaro was my brother, and so whereas in Toto we bumped heads. As soon as I left Toto, and so that was like a good five years or so before he died. Jeff would come over any time I asked him to to play on my demos, and no matter what, whether it was to play drums or to play on some pads, or to play to program a drum machine, Jeff was willing to do anything for me. And I love that.
Those last five years we were back to being he was back to being the coolest older brother anyone could ever wish for. My brother Mike was a whole nother situation that was really heartbreaking, being that it was the polar opposite of Jeff. Jeff was this single shocking event. Mike was this seven year long nightmare that his family had had to witness and deal with all of us. And you know, als could happen anywhere. First it happened to one of the It's such a cruel disease, and
especially for Mike. One of the cruelest things was that it started in his hands. It could have started anywhere. Some people it starts in their feet. He could have done several tours if it had started in his legs or whatever, if his hands and arms were okay. But it started in his hands, in his arms, and he right away wasn't able to play. He had to stop working, and it was completely heartbreaking. I was lucky in that
I lived very close to Mike. I lived lived literally two minutes away, and I was able to spend a lot of time with him, But completely heartbreaking, especially for his three children and his wife and of course my parents.
What was ultimately what killed Jeff.
You know, it was probably a combination of things. He had been you know, he had been using some pesticides outside, but he had been a life long smoker. You know, he'd been a life long smoker Marlborough Reds. You know, he had never stopped, you know, And yes, there was history of drug use, like all of us, but it still was this completely freak thing for a guy at thirty eight years old. Jeff used less drugs than any of us did than any of us did.
Did he have a hard d fact or something or not?
There was some Yeah, there was some damage there. There was some muscular damage. There was you know, the autopsy reports were very was very complicated.
And you know, okay, so what's keep you busy?
Now? What keeps being busy? Now? I am the most blessed old dude, you know, as far as you know, I've been very, very lucky my whole life. I haven't had to do anything but make music for a living, and I've been blessed with many different gigs in the music world. And after I left Toto, you know, songwriter, I wanted to be a professional songwriter. But you know what, without a deadline, I found I was useless. You know what I mean. I mean, without deadline's Total was useless.
We would have never We'd still be working on the fourth album if there wasn't a deadline there. If someone didn't come and say, you know what, they're showing up in an hour to take the tapes. You know what I mean, you better put this down, we would have kept going. You know. We loved being in the studio. I loved my job so much so I uh, after I left the band for a while, my old friend James Howard, who I mentioned before, James Newton Howard, he had gotten into film scoring and he had a very
successful career. His career took off. That was James's thing. He had arranged for us. He did a lot of arrangements for us on Total four in the following album. But got into film scoring and was doing very very well. And we lived very close to each other, and I would help him. I would do some synthesizer stuff for him on occasion, and at one point he asked me, he said, do you want to try doing this? He'd been helping some of his other friends who were into
film scoring. He had helped them by getting them jobs where he would write the theme to a TV show like Er, and then in one of his high school friend Marty Davitsch would scored all the episodes for fourteen years. You know, James was helping his friends out like that. He was doing very very well, and he helped me out that way. He did that a few times. He helped get me some gigs. He got me in there, I mean right away right away. But the reality was again I whereas I could do it, and there were
certain aspects of it that I did well at. I wasn't great at it. I didn't It wasn't really my lane. At the end of the day, I was making a living. I would occasionally get a show, but a lot of times, you know, you'd run that gauntlet of getting a TV show and auditioning and submitting, and sometimes you'd get the TV show and then it would last for two episodes and it'd be gone and you'd have to start over.
James helped me start scoring, and it was very up and down for me, and then total came back into my life. Luke asked me if I wanted to, if I wanted to go on the road with them and do one summer to benefit my brother Mike and That turned into nine years of touring with the band again, which I had a blast with. But when I got home, I knew I was done touring. I knew I wanted to stay home, and I, you know, I figured I was going to have to try to get another film
gig or something, and it turns out I didn't. I'm able to. I've been able to live off of my royalties. And then I just made a deal with Primary Wave and the Jack Sexton State and now all I do every day, all day is work on my songs, and I'm in heaven and I'm film scoring. Taught me I developed this finishing muscle. I kind of grew up. And I'm sitting on like two solo albums worth of stuff now and all I do all day is write songs and finish them. And I'm in my lane, you know.
And when I go to the Baked Potato Now and hear my friends play, I don't feel like a piece of crap when I leave, I'm very proud of them. And I know that now from here on out, I get to do what I do best, which is to write the kind of songs I write, and I get to finish them and I'm going to be able to do this for the rest of my life.
Just to be clear before we go, you sold all your songwriting royalties to Primaryry Wave in the Jacksons eight percent, And what was the decision involved in that.
It was a huge decision. It was to just kind of to be able to just do what I love to do, to not have to tour ever again, to not do TV shows which own me, to just be able to do what I love doing. And this affords me that.
Okay, Steve's been great talking to you. Tell quite a story. You're quite alive. You know, usually we hear from the lead singer, the lead guitars. We don't know the person I've seen you on stage, but I've never known what you were like. You're a great guy. I want to thank you for taking this time to talk to my audience.
Great great, great meeting you, great talking to you.
Okay, you bet till next time. This is Bob left six
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