ZAPPA, FRANK
Toto is featured on the Frank Zappa album Joe's Garage (act 1). You cannot actually hear them playing on the album, but two songs are about them.
"Joe's Garage" is a concept album about a young rock group that tries to make it big in a great big ugly world of music bizz tycoons, unfriendly neighbours,
catholic priests and other junk of society. At one point Joe's girlfriend (Mary) gets seduced by the roadies of a world famous american rock group called Toad-O.
And another Toto bit on the album is the song "Toad-O Line", which starts out as a typical Zappa instrumental, but gradually changes into a jazzy reworking
of "I'll supply the love".
Steve Lukather auditioned at the early age of 17 for Frank Zappa. In the March '01 issue
of the Japanese magazine "Young Guitar", Lukather talks about this. Lukather said that his favorite Zappa albums are "Filmore East" and "Beat the Boots!"
and that he actually attended one
of Zappa's auditions, where dozens of guitarists arrived and got frightened by the tight groove of the Bozzio-O'Hearn-Jobson trio.
After a while Frank Zappa appeared and designated Lukather as the
first person to audition. The first task was sight-reading, but he
couldn't handle the score that contained complicated time signatures.
Lukather said "I can read it, but I have to take it home and learn", but
this put Frank Zappa into a bad mood. Then he was asked to replay what Frank played on the spot, and struggled to do that. In the end, Frank Zappa told
him "I guess you lack the skill of musical comprehension. You should learn some more."
Lukather later was one of the guitarists who played on Dweezil Zappa's (Frank's son) heavy metal cover-version of the BeeGees 'Stayin'Alive'. The song features a long guitar solo in the middle, where 5 guitarists rip the song totally apart. ("Confessions", 1991)