I want to ask about other topics, but let's start with the Widex.
Yeah, man. It saved my fucking ass. Brad Whitford, from Aerosmith, came to a show in Boston or somewhere. We're friends. We started talking, and my ears – I've got tinnitus. I haven't heard silence since 1986. It's like a prizefighter who gets punched one time too many. All of a sudden it goes from, "Hey, man; how's it going?" to [groaning in pain]. What I've done in my research is to find out the actual tone that's ringing in my head is not generated by something that's inside of me, but by my brain. The exact frequencies that I damaged are 4 to 8 kHz. My hearing is good on the bottom, and the top is good. It's those upper mids, which most people my age would experience anyway. I've been playing in bands since I was 19 years old, and it used to be "louder is better." I was in a band with kids. "Let's hook all the amps together and see how loud we can get!" But all the years in the studio, before there were individual mixes, you had headphones on your ears.
You turn it all up to hear yourself.
Which is the worst thing for your ears. Any ear doctor will tell you that. You're shoving something right against your eardrum, and it's really loud. I've been wearing earplugs for my hearing – to save what I have – for 20 years. I was talking about it with Brad backstage. I kept saying, "What?" I was doing it to everybody on the phone, and I'd have the TV on full blast, but I didn't notice it. "What do you mean it's loud?" I was talking about that, and Brad said, "I gotta turn you on to this. I got these Widex Moments and they saved me. This will change your life." I actually went home and did something about it. This was starting to affect my home life. I've got little kids as well as grown kids. A teenager and a ten year old son. Everything was just, "What?" and it wasn't getting any better. I went down to a hearing place and I got a pair. They tested my hearing and then showed me on the graph. She said, "Well, your deficit is 4 to 8 kHz. We're going to bring that back up, and then you should be able to hear what you haven't heard in a long time."
Had you tried any other hearing aids? I know these ones are very specially designed.
No. I was saying, "I can't use a hearing aid! I've got to mix records and play." I got these and they changed my life. You can't even see it. Even if I didn't have any hair, you wouldn't notice it. Aesthetically, that's cool. I have nothing to be ashamed of, being that I've been a musician since I was a little kid. I put myself in harm's way. When we first started in the studios, they'd have the big speakers and I'd be doing a solo. It'd be 120 dB in the room. I was getting off on that as a dumb shit teenager kid. I didn't realize the damage. My mother was always like, "You're going to lose your hearing." I was like, "Eh, old people." Well, guess what? I'm an old person now! Wearing the Widex, the tinnitus comes down remarkably. But when I take them out at night, go to sleep, and charge them back up, the ringing is much louder again. I remember Jeff Beck telling me that's what it did for him. "It puts the frequency back in, and helps to cancel out and level back off frequencies." I didn't really understand what he meant, because it was 20-some odd years ago. I got it myself and went, "Wow!" It's like the difference between putting your fingers in your ears and then taking them out. It has three different settings of EQs. One's for normal, one's for music, and one's for another one called "pure." If I put it on the music one and go outside at night, I can hear all the little creatures. I don't have to turn the TV on full blast. And my cell phone goes directly [via Bluetooth] into my ears. I can't imagine my life without them. It would be bad. I've got nothing but incredible things to say. There are a lot of units out there, but the Widex, you pay for what you get.
Well, a lot of hearing aids are midrange-y and voice-oriented.
They can be honky, like a plasticky fake sound. I was thinking, "I can't do that." I had these on my new solo record [I Found the Sun Again] and was wearing them.
Was that helping in the studio?
I was making my notes and saying to my engineer, "I think we need a little more 1 kHz on this. Am I right?" Because my ears were my whole life, and I know how to speak the language. I go, "I'm wearing these hearing aids, and I need you to tell me if what I'm hearing and what you're hearing are two different things. Are we close at all?" But my readings were correct. Now when I play live and use in-ear monitors, I take these out and I have them EQ my in-ear monitors and raise the same frequencies so I don't crank them up too loud and cause my tinnitus to make it worse. I don't get that post-gig ear hangover, where my brain's going, "It was loud." If you sing too hard, you're gonna go sharp.
Totally.
And if it's loud, your ears start lying to you. With guitar I know what the notes are, but your voice doesn't have frets. I had to incorporate how this is going to fit into my entire life. It's changed my life. People are afraid to get them, or they tend to think there's some kind of stigma attached. Man, I'm just trying to live my life. My hearing is my life. It's what I do. It's who I am. You don't realize how important something is until you lose some of it.
When did you start using in-ear monitors on stage?
They had to talk me into it five or six years ago. At first it was hard for me. I liked hearing the room and all. There's an isolating factor, but you get used to it. It's also good that you can hear everything great, so the band's super tight. When we didn't have that, I didn't realize somebody was playing a fill at the same time as me. We'd listen to a live show and realize we're stepping all over each other. I'd get a little too loose on the road and could hear myself. You think that everybody hears what you hear, and that's not the case!
I've been on stage looking at the drummer, barely able to hear the kick in certain rooms.
Right. If everybody starts going, "Turn me up!" the whole stage gets louder, and then the front-of-house gets loud. And if you have a big crowd, that's 100-plus dB. Louder than the band, often. Wonderful crowds, but, in terms of sound pressure, it's constantly in your face.
Speaking of live, I was able to catch your Toto livestream that's coming out as With A Little Help From My Friends [DVD, Blu-ray, CD]. My wife told me to tell you that it was her favorite livestream of last year.
Really? Because for us, we were playing in a little club with the house lights, globe ceiling, and I put the new band together in ten days from scratch. We did the one gig, and now we're ready to go when it's time to go, and that's 2022, starting in the spring. Then I've got gigs with Ringo and Toto in Europe. It's going well. Our first show in Amsterdam went up, and it was one of the biggest shows of the whole tour, a 17,000-seater for us alone. We sold 13,000 tickets the first week, and it's 14 months away. For us, that's a big deal. It shows that people did see the livestream and they're coming back, not running away. There are only two of us left who can, and want to, tour. The rest of the cats are side-men, died, can't medically do it, or retired from the road and don't want to do it anymore. Joe [Williams, vocalist] and I did solo records [Steve's I Found the Sun Again and Joe's Denizen Tenant, both in 2021] and we were going to go out anyway. David Paich [songwriter/keyboards] who started the band with Jeff Porcaro [drums], got involved and he worked on both of our albums. The promoters were like, "Use the [Toto] name and go. It's a legacy band." People passed away; people understand. As long as the band's great and we're interpreting the music and have got the singer and guitar player – I'm the only guy who's been in all 15 versions – then it's real. I'm trying to keep our music alive. It makes it great for Joe and I, because we can play the hits, we can play deep cuts, and then we can play some solo tracks with new cats who are kicking our asses. We've got these younger guys who are amazing and are making it fun to play the old tunes again. There's a new energy to it.
Absolutely. I can feel that on the livestream.
Yeah. These guys knew the shit better than me! When you hire the pros, you get the pros. A lot of people watched the livestream. People requested, saying, "We want to see it again." So we got an offer to put it out on DVD. It was expensive to put the band together.
I was figuring that.
You gotta pay everybody. You've got a crew, the rehearsal room, and all the gear. By the time you're done, it's six figures before you leave the room. You roll the dice and we came up okay. Plus, I want everybody to get used to the fact that there's a new band. There's also a companion DVD with interviews with David Paich, myself, Joseph, and all the new guys explaining why we're doing this. I put my whole life into this. I'm not going to start all over again in a van and do clubs and small theaters. As long as people are showing up, I can say, "This is what it is." The music is Toto rather than just one person. Get great musicians to play the music, to pay homage to the guys who originally played the parts, and then it becomes real. I still love doing this. If nobody showed up, I wouldn't be able to do it. I'd be out doing something else. But there's still a lot of life left. We've got almost three billion streams, and most of it in the past few years. We've got a younger audience now, multi-generational. I'm going to take this ride! The work of my life's finally starting to pay off. A second wind.
You've mentioned before the way you felt that Toto was taken critically.
I did it every day of my life for 45 years. I can't even get a compliment without it being a sucker punch or a backhanded one. There are people who love us. We're polarizing. You either love us or you hate us.
I think there's an equalization of music, where people are looking at the past and going, "Hey, these were hits, but they're classy and well-done, and there's reason they were hits." Younger audiences don't see a stigma and aren't reading Rolling Stone in order to decide.
That's the good news! They aren't nearly 80-year-old men, angry and sitting in a boardroom somewhere with Ramones t-shirts on thinking they're the tastemakers of the youth when they're the fucking grandparents of the youth. They figured, "Oh, I know about music because I can write about it." Really? I could write about brain surgery; it doesn't mean I can do it!
We've seen more reassessments of your work lately though.
Yes, exactly. The internet. You can talk to your audience now. I'm not worried about what the Los Angeles Times or New York Times critics think about me, which can make or break you, supposedly. Obviously, it made it harder for us, but it didn't break us. We were taking every fucking punch there is to take. I'll get beat up in a Ringo article. It's like the guys can't stop. I still think, "You weren't even alive when we did our first record! Fuck you." But then there are people who love the music, and they far outweigh the handful of assholes. We turned down the cover of Rolling Stone. We're the only band ever. How's that for a punk rock move? Even the punk rockers sold out to those assholes. We're the only guys who said, "We don't need you." Not a great career move, overall. We'll never be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for all that shit, but what is that at this point anyway?
Aren't you guys on the inductees list?
No, never. We're not allowed to be. I'm not saying everybody has to like my music, but after 45 years – considering what all the guys who have been in this band have done outside of the band – including the 5,000 records we've played on collectively outside of Toto, it's kind of astounding not to receive more recognition. And we still take sucker punches from old, angry rock journalists. Give me a break! We can go play in Australia and 20,000 18-year-old kids lose their minds.
I know you've all mentioned that being seen as session players was also a detriment to this "credibility."
People don't even know what we did. They think we sat in chair and read the notes that were on the paper. If I had a dollar for every time I saw [simply] B-minor, A, and G on a chart, I could retire. We created our own parts and wrote our own parts on the spot. The solos were one or two takes. We did this every day for 25 years. People see that as, "Oh, you guys are just studio musicians." We're not the third viola player. We're creating our parts, and that's why we got hired.
I think that's been reassessed. Like when you look at The Wrecking Crew documentary [Tape Op #107].
Those were our heroes. Also the guys who came after them, including Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, Lee Ritenour, Jay Graydon, and Ray Parker Jr.. Those are the guys who I look up to and am still dear friends with. We sat next to each other and created music together every day. It was like this little fraternity we were a part of. It was the best years of my life, man. I was in a band that was selling platinum records and playing on every record in L.A. My dream came true a thousand times. If Miles Davis or Elton John calls me on the phone and asks if I can be in the band and I can't do it, that means more to me than any journalist. I studied this. I still practice and give a shit. I'm very grateful and very respectful for what I've gotten to do.
