During their music career, Toto’s popularity rose and faded many times. The band not only disbanded, but they lost a few of their members due to tragic reasons. With the breaking up of the band, fans have asked for not only a reunion tour but a total reunion for new songs and albums.
The frontman Steve Lukather wanted to keep the band alive but admitted that it didn’t feel like Toto anymore, ending up with him calling it quits in 2008. However, the band was back together after a two-year gap due to Mike Porcaro’s ALS illness.
David Paich contacted Lukather about doing a short reunion tour to raise funds for Porcaro’s medical treatments. Lukather said that he would agree only if Joseph Williams and Porcaro rejoined, soon to become a complete reunion.
A year after their reunion, Lukather revealed that he couldn’t stand touring with Toto since it felt like they were faking it all. In a 2011 interview with Something Else!, the frontman revealed why he quit the band in the first place:
“I quit because I couldn’t keep going out there by myself with my high school band. It was like we were faking it. All my buddies were gone. I wasn’t getting along with the other members. Look, I expect to get called out on my sh*t, too: I boozed. I couldn’t stand what I was doing, so I left before it killed me.”
With the band reunited, the original members, except Jeff Porcaro, came back together. Porcaro had passed away before the band broke up, which Lukather described as ‘losing the heart and soul of the band.’ Lukather continued by explaining how the band came back together:
“We brought Joe [Williams] back, who is singing better than ever. But when we lost Jeff [Porcaro], that was devastating. I can’t tell you what that meant. It was like losing the heart and soul of the band. It took some time. I had to come back from the ashes. Everybody came back, sober, very together, and the response we got to that and how much help we were able to give Mike [Porcaro] financially, it was fun again.”
Although the tours had been fun for the rocker, he said the band would never do another record again. He concluded:
“We played the records the way they were meant to be played again. We had been fooling around with the arrangements just out of boredom. Ticket sales were overwhelming. I said, OK, I could do this every once in a while. Look, we’re never going to make another record again. But we can still do something fun for the fans every once in a while.”
Just like he cleared it up in the 2011 interview that Toto wouldn’t make another record again, Lukather once again made it clear in recent interviews that he still stands by his opinion and that Toto is not doing another album. The frontman released his solo work ‘Someone’ a few months earlier, calling it the music as close as he would get to a new Toto record.
Despite releasing no new music, the band has been actively touring since their reunion.
