David Hungate had been a session musician for Boz Scaggs and Alice Cooper. Bobby Kimball had formed a band with three other members of the broken-up Three Dog Night called S.S. Fools and had been part of another band in Louisiana that would end up becoming LeRoux. Steve Porcaro had played as a session musician on Gary Weaver's 1976 album "Dream Weaver." Steve Lukather also worked as a session musician on Boz Scaggs' "Silk Degrees" album in 1976.
And David Paich and Jeff Porcaro worked with numerous musicians as -- you guessed it! -- studio players, playing alongside the likes of Scaggs, Cher, Glen Campbell, Jon Anderson of Yes, George Benson, Andy Williams and Chicago. And Paich's father, Marty, was a well-known arranger and who also worked on the music for television series, winning an Emmy Award for his work for his arrangement on the show Ironside.
So when Hungate, Kimball, Steve Porcaro and Lukather teamed up with David Paich and Jeff Porcaro to work together as Toto in 1977, it wasn't as if they didn't have the demeanor of what to do in the music studio. They were tired, actually, of working for others. They wanted to make it as a group.
Soon as they formed, Paich began work on writing the songs that would make up the band's self-titled debut, slated for late 1978. While the band was in the studio putting tracks down, there were other bands at the same studio they were recording at in Los Angeles at the time. So to distinguish the demo reels from other acts, Paich scratched on the word "toto" so no one else would pick up the reels. The first person who noticed that was Hungate, who played bass guitar in the group.
The band worked from May until early September 1978 putting the songs together for what would be that debut album. And when it was completed with each member of the group working on the production, Paich wondered aloud what to name the group. Hungate, remembering what Paich scribbled down on those demo tapes, said, "Why not Toto?" Paich apparently looked at Hungate like he had three heads. But then Hungate explained further.
"Toto, in Latin, means 'all-encompassing,'" Hungate said. The band had played so many genres of music with so many different artists that it made sense. The name Toto stuck.
The album "Toto" was released on October 17, 1978 to mixed reviews with Rolling Stone blistering the band and album, saying, "None of the four lead singers in the group (Kimball, Lukather, Paich and Steve Porcaro) are better than passable."
Columbia Records thought one track in particular was good enough for an immediate release. That was Paich's solo composition, "Hold The Line," a song that features various members strongly throughout the record -- from Paich's piano work from the start to the searing lead guitar work of Lukather to Jeff Porcaro's drumwork to the soaring lead vocals by Kimball, who carries that song from start to finish with fiery passion kicking it into overdrive at points.
Everybody pretty much agreed at Columbia it was a sure-fire winner. "Hold The Line" hit the Hot 100 before the album was released, debuting on October 7, 1978, at No. 84. The single made two modest eight-point leaps to No. 76 then No. 68 before going up seven more places to No. 61 on October 28. Another modest move took place up to No. 53 on November 4.
Then it happened -- the leap it needed to be noticed. On the week of November 11, 1978, "Hold The Line" blasted up 16 notches to land the band their first Top 40 hit at No. 37. Two weeks later on November 25, it zoomed up 10 places from No. 33 to No. 23. Two more weeks later, it had gotten to No. 15. Two weeks after that, "Hold The Line" arrived in the Top 10, up from No. 13 to No. 10 on December 23, 1978.
After the holiday break and week off, "Hold The Line" resumed climbing, up to No. 8 on January 6, 1979. Then it took a swift move into the Top 5 on January 13, 1979 as it moved up from No. 8 to No. 5. Some people believed the smash hit had the power to propel itself to the top position.
It didn't happen that way, though. It held at No. 5 the next week and lost its bullet, ultimately dropping back to No. 8 by January 27, 1979 and eventually off the countdown.
Still, it gave the band the boost it needed for success. The album "Toto" would peak at No. 9 on the chart and finish as the No. 19 album of 1979.
There would be two more releases from the album. However, "I'll Supply The Love" peaked at No. 45 in March and "Georgy Porgy" got as high as No. 48 in June. The band would have to wait until early 1980 to once again hit the chart with "99," which would peak at No. 27 and come from their next album "Hydra."
When talking about the debut hit, the man who wrote it, Paich, said, "It started out with the piano riff that is in the intro. I started playing this riff and I just couldn't stop playing it. I played it for days, and I started singing, 'Hold the line, love isn't always on time.' It was a phrase that just came into my head ... it was a blessing. (The words) came to me in the night, and then I went to the verse. I wrote it in two hours. Sometimes songs come quickly like that, and sometimes I spend two years trying to finish a song."
Better late than never, you guess. But when the song hit the radio, Lukather said, "My mom called me up and said, 'Turn on (radio station) KLOS.' I started running around the house in my underwear, screaming, 'I'm on the radio!' My wife was cracking up. It was just a thrill."
Kimball had a different experience of hearing himself sing the famous first single.
"I was asleep," he said. "I had my alarm clock set for noon because we were gonna do something in the studio, some promo and when the alarm came on there was the radio and 'Hold The Line' was playing. And my room was totally black and I was looking for the telephone and I called Paich and I heard him scream, he was living over there with his girlfriend and he was screaming around and falling over trying to get to the radio."
Jeff Porcaro said he was trying to play the song like an idol of his, Sly & The Family Stone drummer Greg Errico.
"When we did the tune, I said, 'Gee, this is going to be a heavy four-on-the-floor rocker, but we want a Sly groove,'" Porcaro said. "The triplet groove of the tune was David's writing. It was taking the Sly groove and meshing it with a harder rock caveman approach."
"Hold The Line" was hard to classify. It was a pop song that didn't sound "pop" enough. It was a rocker, but it was coming from a band making it in the "pop music" world. It had heavy metal tendencies on it thanks to Lukather's wailing guitar solo, but the band was from being heavy metal.
And that is why Toto succeeded with their first hit song -- it had no classification and sounded like it came from a band that came from many different musical backgrounds, some wanting to rock, some wanting to lay it down a little more gently. In the end, "Hold The Line" may be the hardest rocking song the band ever did. Over the years, their sound evolved and became more worldly ... more pop-oriented.
Still, "Hold The Line" is one of those moments in time you don't forget. It may rank as one of the greatest debut singles ever.
And for a bunch of session musicians who wanted to do their own thing away from the superstars they played for, that was pretty freakin' good.
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