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It's the summer of 1981. Toto was rushed to Sunset Sound, their favorite recording studio in their native Hollywood, to record their fourth album. Their third album, Turn Back , had been released just six months earlier and hadn't achieved much success—at best, it peaked at number 41 on the US charts and didn't produce a single hit single. After their 1978 self-titled debut album sold two million copies, the band found themselves under increasing pressure from Columbia Records to release another multi-platinum hit, or else…
«"Columbia made it clear to our management that they considered us a one-hit wonder," says David Paich, Toto's main songwriter and keyboardist. "Their thinking was, 'We'll see how the next album does and then decide whether to renew our contract for more records.'".
Paich's first reaction was to deliberately create a hit—a song, as he put it, with "great musicianship, touching lyrics, courage, a catchy chorus, and a good arrangement." The result was «Rosanna» , a 5-minute, 31-second masterpiece that showcases all the best qualities of Toto (see everything Paich just said).
After completing the recording, the band—consisting of keyboardist Steve Porcaro, guitarist Steve Lukather, vocalist Bobby Kimball, bassist David Hungate, and drummer Jeff Porcaro—performed the track for Al Teller, their manager at Columbia Records. Teller was impressed and approved a budget that allowed them to continue pursuing their increasingly ambitious plans.
Recording continued for the next six months and yielded eight more songs. They were good songs, by the way—elegant, melodic, skillfully executed—but without a trump card. It was precisely these unexpected songs that Paich composed in his free time at home. He began experimenting with his recently acquired Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer. Specifically, with a riff he came up with using the distinctive sound of a wind flute, which he discovered by chance on the instrument.
«"As soon as I played that melody, within two minutes I had this riff: 'Boom, boom, boom, bom-bom-bom,'" Paich says.
Paich then jotted down the verses and chorus for the nascent song. He waited until the album's recording sessions were finished to bring his creation to the band's Sunset Sound studio. He played the sketch for them on the piano, performing scat vocals. He told them it was a song about Africa .
«"Naturally, we found that last fact very amusing," says Steve Lukather. "It doesn't matter that we weren't there; I don't even know if Peich ever flew over Africa.".
«"The band wanted to expand the composition," Paich continues. "Add a few more instruments and see what would happen.".
Jeff Porcaro had a special idea for the song's opening. Porcaro asked the band's engineer, Al Schmitt, if he could create a drum loop on the fly. Schmitt, a veteran of sessions with such demanding perfectionists as Steely Dan and Quincy Jones, immediately set to work, with the support of Porcaro and the band's friend Roger Lynne, inventor of the electronic drum machine of the same name.
«"We were lucky to have Al," says Paich. "He took two-inch tape and wrapped it around microphone stands all over the room. It was thirty inches of sound per second, and by the time he was done, the tape was probably twelve feet long. We recorded Jeff and Roger Lynne's performance, and that's the intro.".
Building on this foundation, Schmitt and the band decided to add more tracks. Jeff Porcaro invited his father, Joe Porcaro, a respected jazz drummer, and his godfather, Emil Richards, an experienced percussionist who had worked with artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra and Frank Zappa, to the studio. Together with Toto's longtime percussionist, Lenny Castro, they filled two more 24-track tapes with drums and percussion.
«"Emil was known for his collection of African tribal instruments," Lukather says. "Joe had marimbas, Lenny had shakers, congas, and cowbells. They brought all of this stuff with them. Al and Jeff picked four bars they liked from all of this, and Al sampled them. It was fascinating to watch the whole process. There was no such thing as world music back then. We were creating this stuff out of dust.".
«"We then kept that loop and used another tape machine to record new band overdubs," says Paich, "recording one instrument at a time over the tape loop. I recorded a test track with my keyboards, then Hungate added bass, Lukather played brilliant guitar, and then we moved on to backing vocals.".
As for the lead vocals, Paich sang the verses himself, while Bobby Kimball was assigned the main melody line for the choruses. "That line was so high that we only managed to get it out of Bobby once, and he never got it back," Lukather says. After finishing the song, "Africa," was planned to be the final track on the album, which was to be called IV .
On their last day at Sunset Sound Studios, Toto gathered to listen to their new album from start to finish. Don Henley of the Eagles, working on his first solo album in the next room, dropped in and plopped down on the studio couch, positioning himself equidistantly between the studio's two massive speakers.
«"We dimmed the lights and pressed play," Lukather recalls. "When the last echoes African music "The room went quiet, and no one said anything except Don. He jumped up from his seat, smiled at us, and said, 'Wow, guys, this is a really good record.' Henley was a very tough critic, so it was especially nice to hear him say that.".
«Rosanna» was announced as the album's first single. After its release, IV started selling well, but the turning point was the release «Africa» . The next single reached number three in the UK and number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US. Voted Album of the Year at the 1983 Grammy Awards, IV sold over four million copies in the United States, marking Toto's commercial peak. «Africa» , meanwhile, has become a bona fide, inescapable pop culture phenomenon, with two and a half billion streams on Spotify and counting.
«"At last count, there are 138 different variations of this song," says Paich. "I look at all these covers posted on TikTok and YouTube and I'm baffled. That's impossible. This is music written from the heart.".
«"It's the stupidest, weirdest song in our entire catalog, but it really struck a chord," Lukather concludes. "Every time you forget about it, someone else samples it and it becomes popular again. And to think, I told Paich, 'If 'Africa' becomes a hit, I'll run naked down Hollywood Boulevard.'".
Paul Rees' book, Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – The AOR Glory Years 1976-1986, is out now.