Toto Is Returning The Favour And Covering Weezer’s ‘Hash Pipe’

Toto members Steve Lukather and Steve Poraco announced on KROQ radio that they were covering Weezer’s Hash Pipe and that it would be released in August.

Porcaro explained on the show that they had been planning a cover for a while now, ever since Weezer released covers of two Toto songs.

“We had just gotten back from the road,” Porcaro said on the show. “But I was here, home, in my studio, where I’m happiest, and I saw all this action going on with ‘Africa’ — they had released ‘Rosanna,’ they did ‘Africa.’ I sent Luke an e-mail one the road — he was in Europe — I said, ‘Come on. We gotta return the favour. Let’s pick out a tune and send it right back to ’em.’”

Thanks David!
Aug 10th out everywhere. https://t.co/uoJtjlxh9p

— Steve Lukather (@stevelukather) July 28, 2018

After it was agreed that they would do a cover, the next challenge was finding out which song to do. It was lead singer Joseph Williams who eventually picked out the track.

“You know, we listened to ‘Beverly Hills,’” Porcaro said. “I wanted to maybe even do a real ‘Africa’-type version of that, I was thinking about for a minute. But you know what? We wanted to make it different, but we wanted to do something rock n’ roll. Joseph and I were listening to different ones trying to figure out which ones he’d like to sing and we settled on ‘Hash Pipe.’”

A unity between the two bands formed after a teen began a social media campaign, asking Weezer to cover ‘Africa.’ The band finally did one night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier in June. Toto was also appearing as a guest on the show that night.

The ‘Africa’ cover recently reached number 89 on Billboard, making it their highest-charting song in nearly ten years.