In a recent appearance on journalist Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon, TOTO guitarist Steve Lukather talked about 2008-2010 hiatus, describing the period as a personal rough patch.
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Back then, Steve issued the following statement:
“The fact is yes I have left Toto. There is no more Toto. I just can’t do it anymore and at 50 years old I wanted to start over and give it one last try on my own. …
“When Dave [Paich, keyboards] retired that was REAL hard for me ’cause we started the band together. Hell, it’s 35 years if you count High School where the core all met.
“When Mike [Porcaro, bass] fell ill and had to leave that was it for me. If there isn’t Paich or at least one Porcaro how can we even call it Toto? …
“Honestly, I have just had enough. This is NOT a break. It is over. I really can’t go out and play ‘Hold the Line’ with a straight face anymore.”
You can check out a part of the new conversation below (transcribed by UG).
June 5th, 2008, you put out a press release and you said: ‘Toto is done, I can’t go out and play ‘Hold the Line’ with a straight face anymore. I was 19 when we cut it, I’m 50 now.’ Obviously, that sentiment has come and gone because you’re back in Toto…
“First off, at the time, I was beating myself up real bad, you know. I was going through a tough time. My marriage was failing, my mother died, I was drinking way too much because I was miserable…
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“It was a tough time in our career. I was seeing it falling apart, and I was falling apart. I needed to get away from it, I was getting sucked into just being negative, sarcastic and bitter. I needed to pull out and get myself together, and kind of figure out what to do.
“I was living very unhealthy, my playing sucked, I was a negative person; maybe sometimes I thought I was funny because I was drunk, but I wasn’t funny at all, I was an asshole. I feel terrible about that. It was either do that [pull out from it] or lose everything.
“So I decided, ‘Well, that’s it.’ I stopped drinking, smoking, cleared my brain out, I went out to a shrink for a while, and I started to do stuff on my own – working on my own projects, touring with other people, touring with solo stuff.
“Mike Porcaro [late Toto bassist who died in 2015] called in, he needed money, [Toto keyboardist] David Paich was also on the phone, and I said ‘I’ll do it if [singer] Joseph Williams comes back and if Porcaro comes back.’
“That was 2010, and it was so much fun. I looked around and said, ‘Well, there’s my high-school buddies.’ We were doing it for the right reason. It was a lot of fun, it was a new band.”
