Hold The Line

Alright Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got "Hold The Line" spinning right now off that first Toto record, and man does this one still hit like a freight train every single time. That piano riff just locks in and the whole thing feels like pure late seventies rock energy cooked up by a bunch of studio cats who already knew how to make a record sound expensive. David Paich wrote the thing, and the stories around how it came together are pure gold. He had just moved into his first apartment, picked up a little Yamaha upright, and started hammering that intro over and over for days on end. Neighbors were banging on the door in the middle of the night telling him to shut it down, and he even caught an eviction notice because he simply could not stop playing the riff. Once the phrase "Hold the line, love isn't always on time" popped into his head the rest of the song pretty much wrote itself in a couple of hours. The title itself came from his high school days when his folks got one of the first rotary phones on the block with the multi-line buttons. He was juggling a few girlfriends at once and suddenly all the lights were flashing while he sat at the dinner table, so he had to put one on hold to talk to the next. That real-life scramble turned into the lyric and the title.

The groove underneath is pure Jeff Porcaro magic. He told Modern Drummer years later that he was channeling Sly and the Family Stone's drummer Greg Errico from "Hot Fun in the Summertime," running triplets on the hi-hat while keeping a heavy four-on-the-floor rock feel. It is that perfect mash-up of funk pocket and hard rock crunch that still makes the song feel alive. Then there is the guitar solo from a nineteen-year-old Steve Lukather who was absolutely terrified in the studio. He has said in interviews that all the heavy hitters were staring at him through the glass and he thought if he blew the take he was done. He cut most of it in one pass, then Paich wanted that big Queen and Boston style harmony guitar ending. Luke flubbed the last lick a little, they built the harmony part around that mistake, and it became one of the most iconic solos of the era. When the single finally hit the air he got the call, flipped on KLOS, and started running around his house in his underwear screaming that he was on the radio. Bobby Kimball had a similar moment when his alarm clock radio woke him up with the song already playing. The track climbed to number five on the Billboard Hot 100, sold a million copies, and put the whole band on the map.

That debut album simply titled Toto dropped in October of 1978 and "Hold The Line" was the track that introduced the world to these guys. The band itself came together in Los Angeles a year earlier when a crew of already legendary session players decided they were tired of making other people rich and wanted their own shot. David Paich and Jeff Porcaro had known each other since high school at Grant High in Van Nuys where they played in a band called Rural Still Life. Paich's dad was the famous arranger Marty Paich, and Jeff's dad Joe Porcaro was a top session percussionist, so these kids grew up around the music business. By the mid seventies they were already cutting tracks with the biggest names in town. Paich co-wrote a bunch of the hits on Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees album including "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle," and the same circle of players were all over Steely Dan, Seals and Crofts, and plenty of other records. Jeff, Paich, and bassist David Hungate had been working together so much that forming a real band felt like the natural next step. They pulled in Jeff's younger brother Steve Porcaro on keyboards, guitarist Steve Lukather who was also part of the Scaggs touring band, and singer Bobby Kimball from down in Louisiana. Columbia Records came to them once word got out they were forming a group. No audition needed. The labels already knew what these guys could do in the studio. They signed, cut the first album, and "Hold The Line" became the calling card that proved the session cats could write and front their own hits. The name Toto itself came from Jeff scribbling it on demo tapes after watching The Wizard of Oz, and it stuck because it was short, memorable, and in Latin basically meant all-encompassing, which fit a band that could play everything from hard rock to soul to progressive stuff.

Decades later the song is still one of the staples that keeps the band going, and Lukather has talked about how it gave him a career even if he does not sit around the house playing it by himself. The whole group has sold more than fifty million records, racked up Grammys, and kept evolving through lineup changes while the core spirit of those original session players stayed intact. You can check out everything they are up to on the official Toto website, catch the latest posts on their Facebook page, follow the photos and stories on Instagram, and see what is happening over on X. Fans keep the conversation going in places like the big TOTO Fan Club group on Facebook where thousands of people still trade stories and celebrate the catalog. Right here on THE ZOO we are just happy to keep spinning the deep cuts and the hits the way radio used to feel, commercial free and full of the real rock and roll history that connects all of us Zoo Freaks. That piano riff is still ringing out and the line is still being held, just like it was when a bunch of young studio rats from Los Angeles decided to make their own noise and the world answered back.