Why Label Execs Told Toto ‘You Guys Don’t Have a Sound’

Earlier than Toto loved a massively profitable run into the ‘80s, some file label executives believed they had been too eclectic to win over followers.

Keyboardist and principal songwriter David Paich remembered fixed complaints. “A whole lot of the feedback had been, ‘There’s no thread [to the music]. You guys don’t have a sound,” Paich stated on the Damaged Document podcast. “‘What’s the sound? We will’t inform if you happen to’re an R&B group or a rock n’ roll group or an grownup modern group. What are you?’”

Whereas the label was anxious to categorise Toto’s style, the band was decided to not be pigeonholed. “We simply stated, ‘That is it. That is what we’re. We do all these things,’” Paich famous. “That’s why we wished to be totally different. We wished to simply do good music of any variety, any style.”

READ MORE: Toto Lineup Adjustments: A Full Information

Regardless of some naysayers at their label, Toto struck it massive with their debut single, “Maintain the Line,” launched in October 1978.

Watch Toto’s ‘Maintain the Line’ Video

David Paich Recollects Toto’s Preliminary Radio Airplay

Paich distinctly remembered listening to his band on the radio for the primary time.

“I used to be at my sister’s residence and I heard this faint piano,” Paich recalled, alluding to the well-known intro from “Maintain the Line.” “And I stated, ‘That sounds actually acquainted. That truly feels like me enjoying. Oh, fuck! That’s our file! It’s on the radio!’ And everybody, we had been all calling the radio stations requesting it like youngsters.”

Paich stated they “had been like screaming youngsters. We tried calling one another and all the strains had been busy as a result of we had been all calling one another.”

“Maintain the Line” finally turned a High 5 hit for Toto, serving to propel the band’s self-titled debut album to greater than 2 million copies bought.

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