‘Africa’ still reigns as Toto rides yacht rock wave

Toto had a handful of hits in the 1970s and 1980s but was never considered among the top echelon of arena rock acts of that era along the lines of Journey, Styx and Foreigner.

Yet two factors have brought the band into the 2020s with greater prominence and bigger tours than ever: the growth of the soft-rock genre known as yacht rock and a new generation discovering “Africa,” their only No. 1 song from 1983.

The band is co-headlining Ameris Bank Amphitheatre on Tuesday with Men at Work and Christopher Cross, who has also seen his star rise courtesy of the yacht rock phenomenon. (Tickets are available starting at $44.50 at Ticketmaster.com.)

The triple act combo was the idea of Steve Lukather, lead guitarist and original member of Toto going back to 1977. He knows Men at Work lead singer Colin Hay because both are touring members of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. And Lukather worked on multiple tracks with Cross in the early 1980s.

“We’re all old friends,” said Lukather in an exuberant interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from his home in Los Angeles. “Let’s go have some fun!”

Credit: Ryan Fleisher

Credit: Ryan Fleisher

Unlike Donald Fagen of Steely Dan and Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates, Lukather is not dismissive of the rise of yacht rock and Toto’s place in the pantheon of a made-up subgenre invented decades after the music first became popular.

“Call it whatever you want as long as people dig the music,” Lukather said. “People have called it soft rock. I’ve heard ‘west coast,’ which I like but nobody uses.”

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Nicholas Niespodziani, lead singer of Atlanta’s popular Yacht Rock Revue for 17 years, marvels at the resurrection of Toto.

“I don’t know any artist that has been more reassessed than Toto,” Niespodziani said. “People look at them completely differently than they did 15, 20 years ago. They got panned by critics when they came out. They still sold millions of albums and won Grammys, but for a long time, they were a punchline everyone made fun of.”

Toto now draws 27.8 million unique listeners a month on Spotify alone. That is higher than rock band peers Journey (26.2 million), Foreigner (18.7 million), Def Leppard (9.2 million) and Styx (5 million).

“The naysayers said it couldn’t be done, but we turned it around,” Lukather said. “We just hung in there long enough. We are the last of a dying breed of guys from an era of musicians who worked hard and played our instruments for real.”

Lukather, who was also a session musician on hundreds of albums, including Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” said he took over management of Toto in 2016, unhappy with how prior managers were handling the band.

“After getting burned and lied to, I was able to clean things up,” he said.

For instance, he said he signed a licensing contract with Sony that compensates the band well for streaming. “I got in relatively early, so we got a good deal paying really good bread,” he said, declining to be more specific.

Credit: Robb D. Cohen, www.robbsphotos.com

There are a handful of songs Toto will 100% play on Tuesday: “Hold the Line,” “Pamela,” “Rosanna” and “Africa,” their most popular song on Spotify. It’s an evocatively catchy tune written by Toto original member and keyboardist David Paich, who had never been to Africa but namechecks Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti in the song.

The song never quite disappeared from the pop culture zeitgeist, remaining a mainstay of any radio station playing ’80s music over the years. Younger generations found the song on social media with the band Weezer fanning the flames with its cover of “Africa” in 2018, which landed at No. 1 on the Billboard alternative rock chart.

ExploreFrom 2018: Weezer's popular 'Africa' cover: ironic or not?

“I always thought it was our most oddball song, but we are happy to play it,” Lukather said.

Niespodziani of Yacht Rock Revue, which is performing at Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park, said the song is a staple on the band’s setlist.

“I think there’s almost no concert that we’ve given we didn’t play ‘Africa,’” he said. “In fact, it’s one of the songs you have to play.”

Lukather is thrilled to see multiple generations in the audience now, not just gray-haired Gen Xers and Boomers.

“They don’t just know the hits but are going into the catalog,” he said. “We can see it in streaming and hard records.”

But at age 67, he has ceded to time and has stopped dying his hair, which he did for more than 30 years.

“I asked my oldest son a couple of years ago that if I started looking like that old guy with jet black hair, tell me to stop,” he said. “He told me to stop. It’s now white, but at least I still have a full head of hair!”