Rob Lowe reveals he once cut a demo with Toto after a cocaine binge
Actor Rob Lowe has revealed that he previously attempted to forge a career in music, and shared that he once recorded a demo with pop group Toto during the 1980s.
The St. Elmo’s Fire and The Outsiders star spoke on the most recent episode of his SiriusXM podcast about the experience during a conversation with journalist Bill Simmons on the topic of yacht rock, with Simmons having recently taken on the role of executive producer on the film, Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary.
Speaking how the genre had unexpectedly burst into the mainstream during the 1970s and ‘80s, Simmons attested that some of the music that came out of the movement were “the biggest songs of the year; songs that won Grammys,” making nods to the likes of the Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross and Toto as recipients of the prestigious awards.
This brought Lowe onto the surprising anecdote that he had once rehearsed and recorded with Toto, a scenario he believes he found himself in due to his excessive drug use at the time. “There was a minute in the ‘80s where I was definitely doing too much Bolivian marching powder,” he revealed to Simmons, before saying that he was also “coming at the time in a young actor’s career where they’re too old to play the roles they’ve been playing, but they’re too young to play the roles that will last you the rest of your life, which are really the great ones.”
“I love music so much,” Lowe continued, “that I got it into my head that maybe I should think more about music and I cut a demo with Toto.” While there is no publicly available evidence of the track that Lowe laid down with the band or information on what he contributed to it, he did suggest that it came during the mid ‘80s, when both he and the band were at the peak of their fame.
Simmons was shocked by the revelation, responding: “Wow, this is one of the reasons you’re the world’s most interesting man.”
Lowe has recently announced that a sequel to St. Elmo’s Fire is in the early stages of production. He most recently appeared in the 2024 documentary film, Brats, which centred on the ‘Brat Pack’ group of young actors in the 1980s such as Lowe who appeared in several coming-of-age dramas.
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