Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Arena Open Air / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: 22.08.2012
Attendance: 5,000
Ticket price: €45.00
Even though we’d already tasted the sweetness of Toto perfection on 31.07.2012 in the Italian town of Majano near Udine (Rockline report by Urban Bolta HERE), the devil wouldn’t leave us alone, because one more extremely convenient stop on this esteemed band’s summer tour was still on the table: Vienna’s Arena in Austria, or more precisely its open-air stage called “Arena Open Air”. The date was set three weeks after that Toto show in Majano.
Once you’ve truly grasped the greatness and sheer musical brilliance of this band, especially a stage execution that’s pretty much all superlatives, only a handful of concerts by other acts can top that experience. Simply put, you realize you can’t ever, ever get tired of Toto shows.
Booking the Graz pop rockers from the eighties Opus turned out to be an extremely smart move by the organizer. In 1985 the band swept the world’s biggest acts off the top of the charts and smashed sales records with their hit Live Is Life (a song everyone knows all too well, also from the cover by Slovenian alter industrial usurpers Laibach). They hit the stage exactly as ordered! At 7:00 PM sharp. In a little under an hour they rattled off their most beloved songs and spoiled the home crowd rotten! Positive energy everywhere. The audience really woke up for the hit Flyin’ High!, an acoustic number that Opus singer Herwig Rüdisser introduced as a song they used to play together with the late Falco. Also on the list were hits like Eleven, Yellow Fellows and Time Of My Life. At the end of the main set Arena of course exploded when Opus kicked in the famous rhythm. Just bare drumming opens the song. The intro to the hit Live Is Life. A lineup that’s been around since 1973 is seasoned down to the last detail! They delivered a summery set with excellent sound, and Herwig’s vocals were generously backed and harmonized by a female duo. Herwig surprised with an exceptionally good vocal performance; in fact, he’s kept his vocal range completely untouched over the years. For the encore the band let rip with a song that must have been written in the seventies. Stylistically, definitely, since it made no secret of some parallels with symphonic progressive rock. Sadly I don’t know the title of this song, or rather proper mini suite, but it was driven by chunky Hammond organ chords that revealed Opus grew up listening to bands like ELP, Focus and Deep Purple. A great experience that completely won us over!
Toto is a band that began to take shape in the second half of the seventies. It’s a group made up of top-tier studio musicians for whom playing live is an extra challenge. Over the years the band has had plenty of highs and even more painful lows. In 1992 they were hit by the death of one of the founding members, a man regarded as one of the most respected drummers in the history of popular music, Jeff Porcaro. On top of that, since 1984 they’d been dealing with constant lead singer changes, and they never again enjoyed the kind of success they’d reaped with the 1982 album Toto IV. Still, under Steve Lukather’s baton the guys persevered all the way until 2008. That was the turning point, when guitarist Lukather decided he would no longer take part in the band and declared that Toto were no more. Luckily for all of us who love their music, in 2010 Lukather and the family decided to revive the original lineup and fire it up each year for a few concert dates in the summer months. After many years keyboardists David Paich and Steve Porcaro rejoined the lineup on stage. Lead vocal duties were picked up again after more than 20 years by Joseph Williams, who contributed his vocal talents to the Toto legacy on the albums Farenheit and The Seventh One. Also present is the indispensable drummer Simon Phillips, who has been drumming with Toto ever since Jeff Porcaro’s death. Rounding out the lineup is one of the most respected bassists in the music world, Nathan East. He’s filling in for the ailing bassist Mike Porcaro, which is one of the main reasons Toto still play concerts at all. The tours are in fact put together every year partly to raise funds to help Mike and his family.
The Vienna show was one of the last on this year’s European tour. As a result, you could notice more energy, looseness and tightness among the band members. The venue was packed and sold out to the last nook and cranny. For comparison, I can mention that in 2006 Toto only managed to fill the venue halfway. Here’s another fact that proves Toto are getting better and more in demand on European stages with each passing year, despite not having released a studio album since 2006.
The two-hour-and-15-minute concert feast kicked off with a piece from the album “The Seventh One”, called Only The Children. The vocals, as on the original, were provided by Joseph Williams. Lukather’s guitar riff is the backbone of this composition and it instantly lifted the atmosphere. Lukather communicates with the crowd throughout the entire show and spreads good vibes among everyone there. A man who can play absolutely anything on his instrument and hops from genre to genre with feather-light ease has changed his approach to playing with Toto quite a bit in recent years. He no longer jumps to the front, doesn’t show off, and keeps up the kind of guitar playing that suits the moment best. But of course he doesn’t skimp on the “shock-and-awe entertainment” when his moment comes and it’s time for a solo. His solos build and escalate from moment to moment, gaining speed and variety and giving you the feeling that everything is played with incredible ease.
Next came the songs Hydra and St. George and the Dragon from the second studio album “Hydra” from 1979. Hydra is one of the more demanding compositions Toto have created in their history, and at concerts, with loads of improvisation, it can run up to ten minutes. The vocals, as on the original, are handled fairly solidly by David Paich. To look at, he gives the impression of a strange fellow behind the keyboards. It’s not Paich’s fault that he’s stocky and short, and that extra pounds latch onto him pretty easily. That’s just how mother nature made him. He only bears some of the blame for the extra weight the “little beaver” has put on over the years. And yet Paich isn’t ashamed of it, quite the opposite. On his feet he wears untied sneakers, “worn-out” Bermuda shorts, and over it all a tailcoat slung on that hangs nearly to the floor. He’s topped off, of course, with a top hat and dark glasses. As this kind of “giant midget,” Paich would fit right in on the cover of any album by the legendary British prog rock heavyweights Gentle Giant.
But with all due respect to David, the man is a genius! He’s the author or co-author of all of Toto’s biggest hits and was the driving force behind Toto’s creations on the first eight studio albums. Today his playing gives that recognizable Toto sound that we missed during his absence between 2003 and 2010, when his gap was filled by yet another top studio master, Greg Phillinganes.
The crowd went wild for the first time when the opening bars of the well-known hit Rosanna rang out. Lead vocals are shared by Lukather and Williams, who filled the gap well in the absence of original singer Bobby Kimball. At 65, Kimball was no longer up to the demanding task of handling the vocal lines, which are at times insanely difficult and high with Toto, so Williams’ return was a welcome refresh.
Two songs from the album “Farenheit” followed. Lea, which gets its special charm from Lukather’s acoustic guitar accompaniment and outstanding vocal backing. This is where backing vocalists Jenny Douglas McRae and Mabvuto Carpenter first shine, while Steve Porcaro, who wrote this song for his daughter, is especially emotionally invested during its performance and just melts through and through.
I Won’t Hold You Back was the next Toto hit from 1982, sung by Steve Lukather. His voice here is far from the original and is much raspier and deeper than on the studio version. Even so, this ballad sounds incredibly warm live and once again takes us to the kind of perfection only Toto can conjure up in ballads. Vocal harmonies, masterful sounds from under Steve Porcaro’s fingers and Lukather’s soulful, melodic guitar solo can’t leave you cold.
Next up was We Can Make It Tonight from the album Fahrenheit. Toto haven’t offered it on tour since 1987. Overall the set list has been thoroughly shaken up. They’re playing a large number of songs they haven’t played live in at least 20 years. Another interesting thing about this tour is that there’s not a single song in the set list recorded after 1992.
Then came Pamela from the album The Seventh One. Joseph Williams handles the vocals well. Toward the end of Pamela, David Paish and Steve Lukather in particular delivered a generous improvisational chunk. This is where Toto are at their best. They can stretch the original out good and proper and, through improvisation, offer something new, never heard before at every show. Joseph Williams takes over vocals again, because next comes Human Nature, which Michael Jackson sang on the original. The author of Human Nature is Steve Porcaro. On the original studio version he played it with the help of his Toto bandmates. That’s why Toto play it at all of this year’s concerts as a tribute to Jackson and to the ailing bassist Mike Porcaro.
Manuela Run, How Many Times and Carmen are three more sweeties that Toto haven’t played live in ages. Carmen especially, where Paich and Williams trade vocals, sounds fantastic and carries a special energy and charisma. On the original of Carmen from the album “Isolation”, released in 1984, Fergie Frederiksen sang alongside Paich. Williams again nailed the original, even though he reworked some of the high lines, and the exceptional Jenny Douglas McRae helped him out a little.
We heard two more hits from the Toto legacy before the end. Stop Loving You, where drummer Simon Phiilips got his five minutes at the end and, backed by Lukather and East, showed off some exceptional tricks from his rich repertoire. Then the opening piano chord rang out….Hold the line. Their first single from the first album, called Toto. One of the three most recognizable Toto creations. Jenny Douglas McRae stepped to the front and together with Willams conjured up a different but still tasty version of this song. Where the song ends on the original, they stretch it out, and what followed was Lukather’s schooling, which amounted to nothing less and nothing more than a complete revelation of six-string theory. He served up an outstanding solo that, to the delight of everyone there, just wouldn’t end. It built up slowly to a peak, with Luke gliding from delicate, softly wailing, carefully woven notes into a full-blown storm of a crushing eruption of arpeggios cut at the speed of light. But Luke’s lesson didn’t close out the song, since it continued with a vocal exhibition from Jenny Douglas McRae, which made this beefed-up Hold The Line one of the magical highlights of the current tour’s Toto concerts.
After they left the stage and the crowd roared its approval, Toto came back. Africa was up. Here too they took some liberties and spiced things up for themselves and everyone there. Africa went past ten minutes and offered plenty of fun. Nathan East played a superior solo spot and then horsed around with the audience, who repeated his melodies back to him. The response was more than excellent and Africa hit some new dimension that hadn’t yet been heard at the shows. On this tour Toto closed the concert with the classic Home Of The Brave from the album The Seventh One. Another epic composition from the Toto legacy that sent the sold-out Open Air Arena into a closing delirium. Steve Lukather’s striking guitar phrase stepped to the front, backed by Porcaro’s curtain of synthesizers, the kind of thing an average AOR band would kill to have come up with. With it Toto turned the closing mood of the concert into a theatrical crescendo!
After an experience like this with the perfectionists of Toto, you’re filled with new energy. After the show we spotted satisfaction and approval on the faces of everyone there. Toto are announcing a more extensive tour for next year to mark their 35th anniversary. Here’s hoping it really happens, because those of us who were there will be reliving the memory of that perfect show in Vienna for a long time.
Toto text by: Matej Čerič (and Aleš Podbrežnik)
Intro text and Opus text by: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Only the Children
2. Hydra
3. St. George and the Dragon
4. Rosanna
5. Lea
6. Could This Be Love
7. I Won’t Hold You Back
8. We Can Make It Tonight
9. Pamela
10. Human Nature
11. Manuela Run
12. How Many Times
13. Carmen
14. Stop Loving You
15. Hold the Line
—encore—
16. Africa
17. Home Of The Brave
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