Watch: After Weezer’s cover of Toto’s ‘Africa’ became a smash hit, Toto returns the favour
What started as a request from a 14-year-old girl has now turned into a mutual appreciation fest between both bands.
Several months ago, a 14-year-old girl from Cleveland set up a twitter profile called “@weezerafrica”, requesting the group Weezer to cover the 1981 Toto hit song Africa. She pursued the band for months, with the intention of making a meme, until finally in May 2018, the band relented.
For the first time in a decade, Weezer made a hit record, ironically, when they covered Africa (video above). The song (original below) had regained popularity after it was used in the Netflix series Stranger Things. Weezer even performed the track on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with a member of Toto, and released it as a vinyl single, along with another Toto cover Roseanne.
Now, two months after Weezer’s cover brought both bands out of obscurity and into the limelight, Toto returned the favour by covering one of Weezer’s popular hits, Hash Pipe, at a show in Vancouver (video below).
“We figured since we were smoking hash since before they were born, that’s the one we should do,” said Steve Lukather, Toto’s lead guitarist, while introducing the performance. “This is our tribute to Weezer, god bless ’em.”
Steve Porcaro, the band’s keyboardist, told Vulture that they were originally going to go with another song, instead of the 2001 track. “But you know what? We wanted to make it different, but we wanted to do something rock ’n’ roll. I wanted to show everyone what a good rock ’n’ roll band we can be,” he said. “We wanted to do it justice. We wanted to do our thing to it, but still pay respect to it. And we added a couple of our kitschy little things to it, which I hope that they laugh [at].”
Naturally, fans are now eagerly waiting for an imminent collaboration between the two bands.