Eddie Van Halen loved Toto more than anyone, and called them “the real shit” and “lightyears beyond”
When you think of Van Halen, the likelihood is that you’re going to automatically leap to the conclusion that, as a heavy metal band, their main interests would have revolved around the scene they were an important figure within.
However, there were moments where their certain brand of heavy metal careered towards pop extravagance, and given how singles like 1983’s ‘Jump’ incorporated elements of glam and new wave, it’s clear that they would have had at least one eye on the world of popular music, choosing to match their complex hard rock guitar solos and bombastic drumming with sophisticated synth lines.
Transforming from being a band in one area to attempting a completely different style is not an unusual thing by any means, but for Van Halen to do this at their height of their career may have been perplexing for people who were expecting them to carry on bearing the torch for heavy metal bands.
Given how this was the song that propelled them further into the mainstream and earned them their first number one single in the US, they were clearly interested in how to dominate in this realm, and this is clearly down to them paying attention to what other chart-topping acts were doing. However, this was only true to a certain degree, and conversely, guitarist Eddie Van Halen had plenty of disparaging things to say about the state of the US charts.
Van Halen had something of a distaste for what was being played on the radio during the 1980s and made no bones about hiding this point of view. That is, with the exception of one band, who he considered to be geniuses at crafting crossover hits that straddled both the boundaries of rock and pop, and to him, felt just as urgent as anything else he was used to listening to.
It was in 1978 that Van Halen first encountered Steve Lukather and his band, Toto, while they were playing at a festival together, and they would cross paths several more times in subsequent years, both touring and recording music together. From these encounters, Van Halen noticed something special about Lukather’s abilities as a musician and songwriter, and heaped praise upon the artist for how he was offering something completely unique to the market.
Speaking to one another in Guitar FTPM Magazine in 1993, shortly after the release of Toto’s Kingdom of Desire album, Van Halen spoke about how radio stations played a big part in Toto’s ascension, and the fact that people flock towards the opinions of those they hear broadcasting on their favourite stations. “It’s a brilliant record,” Van Halen proclaimed. “I think if they play it, people will like it. For five years, you haven’t had a record out here. The music you’re making, to me, is light-years beyond the shit you hear on the radio. If people only knew you guys were the real shit. Everyone else is faking it.”
His love of what Toto offered isn’t exactly unusual considering how he himself had already successfully found a way to meld together elements of pop, new wave and glam metal, but it is weird that he’d be so dismissive of other pop music from the era while hailing one particular group as the masters of their domain. Plenty of other similar acts existed at the same time and would have been equally deserving of praise, but rather than dish out the admiration evenly, he decided to push it all in the direction of his closest friend in the scene.
