The Toto Archive: 1985

Left to right: Mike Porcaro, Steve Porcaro, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, Fergie Frederiksen.

Too late to change his mind, no one, could save him down...

As the year 1982 was ending, Toto was on the top of the world, they just won 6 grammys and got a number 1 hit, the future was bright and no one could stop them.... right?

In 1983 the band start to work on a new album under the working title "TOTO V" but things weren't going well, Bobby was previously know for abusing drugs, he got arrested in 1981 for drug possetion and he sounded very rough in the first half of the Toto IV tour, but things started to get worse around when the fifth album was being made, he wasan't showing up to the sessions and was getting drug relate charges and health problems, in 1984 the band got enough of it and Jeff spoke in the name of the band and kick Bobby, 3 days later he move out to Germany.

Multiple members of the band had stated that Bobby only sang 4 songs before getting kick out, we currently only have 2 songs confirmed "Lion" and "Right Part Of Me" the other two are unknow (probably "Isolation" & "Endless).

Since Bobby was gone the band was in trouble, they were at their all time peak and they just lost their lead singer, while they were without a lead singer they decided in the mean time to work in a movie sountrack, they had two choises, Footlose or Dune, they pick Dune and for those who don't know a lot of movies Dune was a complete flop and Footlose a massive sucess, but they did a nice job with the soundtracks since it is the only thing the movie get remember for.

So back to working on the album, some singers were consider for the roll but I'm to lazy to list them (one of them was Richard Page tough) but Jeff decided that Fergie Frederiksen was the right guy, however more problem beggan with Fergie on board, it was very hard to work with him as Steve Lukather once stated:

"We were mixing the tracks while he was still trying to gag out a vocal. It was painful, punching one word in at a time. I wish we had Pro Tools back then bro."

Anyway somehow, Fergie manage to sing trough the album and it was release in 1984, it sold around 1 Million copies and got a minor single "Stranger In Town".

Later in 1985 they got in to a small tour that started in Japan and ended in USA, not much is know about it other than it started in late February, not many shows were recorded since it was very short and no soundboard shows sadly (I think).

I only have five shows, none of them sound excellent, a couple sound bad and the rest ok, I'm missing one that is not that hard to find and like 4 that are missing in the sands of time but that I know about their existence due to a collector with super mega hyper ultra rare concerts which, to this day, still owes me about 10 of those treasures :(