Toto’s Joseph Williams on the band’s continual rediscovery, secret soundtrack staples

(L-R) Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams of Toto. //Photo by Kristian Heat Reuter

Rock band Toto has been making music for nearly five decades. You probably know them from “Africa,” the massive hit from 1982’s Toto IV, which continues to find new fans every year thanks to its inclusion in myriad movies and television shows—to say nothing of Weezer’s viral 2018 cover.

That said, “Hold the Line” and “Rosanna” are also absolute bangers, and the band’s guitarist, Steve Lukather, is a legend in his own right, as is keyboardist and principal songwriter David Paich, but lead vocalist Joseph Williams is likely Toto’s secret weapon. Not only has he been with the band longer than original vocalist Bobby Kimball, but his work in film and TV likely soundtracked some of your formative childhood memories.

We hopped on Zoom with Joseph Williams ahead of Toto’s stop at Morton Amphitheater on Monday, August 24, with Christopher Cross and the Romantics. [Details on that show here.]

The Pitch: When you joined Toto, they had already been very successful for the better part of a decade. What are the challenges of joining a band that already has such a distinct sound at that point in their career?

Joseph Williams: It was interesting, it was fun, it was scary, and it was hard for all of those reasons. As you said, they definitely had a sound established at that point. They had been going along for about nine years. The first band member to be replaced was the original bass player, David Hungate. He played on the first four albums and left for the tour for the fourth album, during which Mike Porcaro joined as the new bass player.

That was the first personnel change back in those days. And then, of course, very soon after that, original singer Bobby Kimball left, and they brought in a guy named Fergie Frederiksen for the fifth album, and that didn’t work out for whatever reasons. But they let him go, and then they hired me in ’86.

Mostly I felt, yeah, okay, I’m faced with being in Kimball’s spot, the original singer. There was also Fergie, who came after him, who had a very different voice than Bobby and a very different voice from me. In the beginning, yeah, it was a little bit of a challenge, especially live, trying to pull it off.

The job I had prior to that was working for Jeffrey Osborne. I was a background singer for him for a couple of years. But before that, I was in a show in Las Vegas in the early ’80s imitating other singers, so I kinda had a little bit of a mimicking ability. When I first went in to see the guys and talk about joining and all of that, I kinda tried to put on my best imitation of at least Bobby Kimball, because those were the big hits. They got a kick out of it, and I think there were some other reasons involved why they decided to go with me.

It was exciting. It was fun. It was all of those things. It was great to work with my friends, ’cause I knew most of them before there was even a Toto, so they were bringing in somebody that they knew. That was the other thing. But it was also hard having to pull off some of the original things, and then also doing press and stuff and getting asked questions pretty much like this.

You’ve been with them for the better part of 25 years now, and I have to imagine that allows you to feel a sense of ownership at this point.

Yeah. Listen, at this point, I actually have been with the group longer than any of the other singers. One of the things about being friends with these guys is that even though I left after a couple of years in my first go-around with the group, there’s a saying that we have, which is, “Once in, never out.”

And I came back every once in a while to do this or that. I came back and did a tour with them in 1998 with both Bobby and me before they hired him back for that eight-year period. I did a lead vocal on the last album they did with Bobby in 2005, and then I did concerts with them in 2007 and 2008 just coming in and being as kind of relief for Bobby, who was struggling a little bit. And then, of course, in 2010 we got the whole thing back together, and I’ve been doing it for the last 16 years steadily.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that I was friends with these guys before, so even though my time in the band earlier in the ’80s didn’t necessarily end on the greatest terms, I still remained close and good friends with all of the guys and they always knew that they could rely on me if they ever needed somebody to jump in. So yeah, it’s been a nice chunk of my life.

I grew up on Toto. The music that was playing on the radio when I was a kid was those hits. It’s just always been part of my life. But it has been so fascinating to discover younger generations who are my kids’ age, discovering this music in a whole new way. Notably, the Weezer cover of “Africa” certainly raised its profile. You’ve watched that happen and seen people take these songs that you’ve been singing for so long and just blow them up once again. What’s that like?

Yeah, listen it’s great fun and I think everybody–[Steve Lukather] especially–are very grateful for a thing like the song “Africa.” It’s been an amazing thing. There are people I’ve run into who aren’t even sure what the band’s name is, but they know what “Africa” is.

I was in an elevator once. We were doing a casino gig and earlier in the day, I came down the elevator to get something to eat, and there were two couples in the elevator. One woman said to the other one, “What are you guys gonna do tonight?” and the other one said, “We’re gonna go see the band, Africa.”

It’s been the gift that keeps on giving. Weezer, of course, did give it a huge boost in profile ’cause they had a hit with it. But it’s also shown up in so many other things. It was on the first season of Stranger Things, which brought attention to some very younger folks who were into that show.

Nowadays you can go online, and you can see all kinds of redos and remakes and different artists and choirs and percussionists and everything like that doing versions of it and stuff. It just is one of those iconic pieces that’s aged really well. Getting to do that every day is still an absolute charge for me. It’s an incredible thing to do every night because the audience is really on fire. They’re jumping up and singing with us and doing the whole thing.

And listen, the way I feel about it for sure is that if that’s what’s bringing them into the venues to see the concert, great. We’ve got a whole bunch of other stuff that we’ll entertain you with, but you can count on “Africa.”

I don’t know many artists who work as composers doing soundtracks and things like that who are also regularly touring. How have you balanced that over the years? Because I know one is a very social aspect and one is a very solitary pursuit.

That is very much true. And to be perfectly honest with you, my interests when I was young, and I also think that maybe my forte, as one would say, is live performance. That’s something I always wanted to do. I grew up in a house with a father [John Williams] who was the solitary composer in the other room, working for hours and hours on end with just a pencil, a piece of paper, and a piano next to him and a mother who was a singer and a stage performer, who did Broadway and musicals and acted in films and all of that kind of stuff.

I always loved what my father did, especially his piano playing, ’cause he was an incredible pianist and actually still is at 94 years old, but I gravitated towards what my mother did, being on stage. We used to go watch her do these play performances and musicals and stuff, and that really appealed to me.

My earlier life was a lot mostly that. I was in a show in Vegas when I was 21 years old. Made a solo album, and then was a background singer for Jeffrey Osborne for years. I had some studio chops because I did a bunch of jingles and things like that, and then, of course, joined Toto.

When I left in ’89 or whatever year it was, I think it was, I was trying to figure out what I could do with myself, ’cause I wasn’t sure whether or not I was gonna have an opportunity to be a performer like that ever again, so I just decided to dip my toe into the waters of composing and did it for 15, 16 years, which was nice because I was home for my children when they were babies and growing up.

That was a huge stroke of good luck. I also wrote music that I wasn’t sure I was able to do, but did. I had a wonderful counselor in my father, asking him all kinds of questions about what to do and what not to do and how to do this, and it was great, but it was difficult for me because the solitary aspect of working as a composer is a very different thing.

After a while, I got a little bit burned out on that part, especially when my kids were starting to get older and everything like that, so it was a stroke of absolute luck and a blessing, or however you wanna put it, to be able to come back and basically primarily be performing.

I only had a little bit of a crossover period of time in the ’90s with that, and it was very short-lived. I was either doing one or the other, in other words. I can’t imagine the kind of schedule that we have now and have had for the last 15 years, and then coming home and trying to get work done in terms of TV stuff.

We toured in the 2010s with Steve Porcaro, who was an original musician in the band, and at that time, he had a TV series that he was doing for six years called Justified. He was doing both. He was coming out with us, and I know it was exhausting for him. I never actually did that much work as a composer while we were touring. It’s possible, obviously. You do what you have to do. But I’m happier as a performer.

What jingles did you do that I might know?

I did years and years of Toyota commercials. Mostly regional, so in Southern California and California, that kind of thing. I did some national McDonald’s spots back in the early days. There was a thing called Granola Clusters in the early ’80s, and I sang on that. I sang a bunch for Disney. I created a theme for one of their cartoons, The Gummi Bears.

I was going to ask about that because I never thought when I was a six or seven-year-old running around, jumping, bouncing on the playground singing that theme song, that I would eventually be talking to the person who sang it. It’s iconic for a specific subset of us of a certain age. It just seems like you’ve gotten to have a lot of fun.

I have, and listen, at the time it was just a gig. I was just looking and hoping and trying to get studio gigs, commercials, whatever. I was very lucky to hook up with Disney on The Gummi Bears, because what came from that was The Lion King, and I also worked a lot on the movie Aladdin. They didn’t use very much of what I did, but of course, The Lion King had a pretty nice step out in that movie. The connection to those guys was a huge thing for me, which I think started with The Gummi Bears. I love that.

This tour that is coming to Kansas City this summer is with Christopher Cross and The Romantics, and I know that Toto is pretty tight with Christopher Cross. You’ve toured together several times. How is it going out on a package tour that is this subset of the ’80s, but your audience keeps getting younger?

That’s true. In our case, we have “Africa” to thank for that. We just do. It’s one of those iconic songs that has not only stood the test of time, but brought other artists who are interested in it in to do their version of it. It’s shown up on TV shows. It’s shown up all over the internet, on YouTube, with different acts, artists, choirs, all kinds of people doing their version of it, so it’s very much stayed in the public consciousness for all of these years, even though it’s 40-some years old or whatever, but some things are just timeless and stand the test of time.

There’s a little bit of a resurgence of, or an interest in, music from the 1980s again, too, so people are buying tickets to the concerts for some of these, what they call legacy bands now these days. And listen, all are welcome. We don’t have a preference. It was great to see younger people out there enjoying it and stuff, especially young musicians, because they’re always in for a good time watching some incredible players in our live show.

It’s been great. As I said, all are welcome. All, every age, every size, every, everything.

Toto plays Morton Amphitheater on Monday, August 24, with Christopher Cross and the Romantics. Details on that show here.