Steve Porcaro and David Paich of Toto recently appeared on Sunset Sound Recorders, where they discussed their band’s career, albums, sales, and more. During the interview, Porcaro shared a memory of how the band had received an ultimatum on their album ‘Toto IV.’
When asked about the band’s mindset and whether they had something to prove while recording the album Toto IV, Porcaro replied with the following:
“We did, because the albums following our first album [‘Toto’ in 1978], which went double platinum, well ‘Hydra’ ended up selling 90,000 copies, and I think it went gold actually, but it took a lot of time for that. But the album after that… We were gearing up for live shows, and we were interested in making music that would reflect live heavy-duty rock and roll performances. So that’s when ‘Turn Back’ came about.”
Later, the keyboardist mentioned the ultimatum given by the record company, which nearly caused the band’s downfall. He said:
“When the ‘Toto IV’ thing happened, the record company came to us and said, ‘Listen, you guys, you got a couple of hits on your first album, but we haven’t gotten anything from you since then, and we’re going to give you one more chance to do one more album, and we’ll see where that goes.'”
Porcaro was asked whether it was a ‘make it or break it,’ to which he replied with:
“Yeah, it was make it or break it. So, I went home, started writing the song ‘Rosanna’ cause I wanted to put every piece of information I knew from Quincy Jones, George Martin, anybody I’d worked with I wanted to get it into one song.”
Although it appeared to be Toto’s final opportunity to offer something to the record company, Toto IV was a success. The album reached first place on the Australian Music Report Albums Chart, Dutch Mega Albums Chart, and Canadian Albums Chart. Additionally, it secured the fourth position on both the US Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart.
See the interview below.
