Hollywood actor Rob Lowe has revealed that he once recorded a demo with Californian AOR giants Toto. Sadly, this no-doubt-wondrous slice of '80s cultural history has yet to make it into the public domain.
Lowe's revelation came during an interview with journalist Bill Simmons, the CEO of sports and culture website The Ringer, on the actor's SiriusXM podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe.
The pair go deep on a discussion of Yacht Rock, as Simmons has an executive producer credit on Music Box: Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary, a recently-released HBO documentary focussing upon chronicling "the rise, fall, and rise again of the soft rock epitomized by artists such as Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto in the late 1970s and early 1980s."
During the conversation, Lowe reveals that he first heard the term 'Yacht Rock' from actress Rashida Jones (daughter of the late Quincy Jones) who suggested that Lowe was “a Yacht Rock guy”. He and Simmons then dive into an analysis of artists labelled Yacht Rock, with Simmons pointing out how many of the most popular acts were looked down upon by 'serious' music fans and critics at the time.
“I got one for ya,” Lowe chips in. “There was a minute in the 80s where I was definitely doing too much Bolivian marching powder and just being a fucking lunatic and [it 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. And you can kind of feel it.
“I love music so much, as evidenced by this talk and all of that, that I got it into my head that maybe I should think more about music and I cut a demo with Toto.”
Sadly, Simmons declines to grill Lowe on this unexpected revelation, and the conversation moves on, without any more details of this somewhat unlikely collaboration being revealed.
We demand to know more!
Watch the interview below.
