Fahrenheit

Performer: Toto
Engineer: Murray Dvorkin; John Jessel; Doug Linnell; Dan Garcia; Duane Seykora; Jack Puig; Julie Last; Mike Ross; Shep Lonsdale; Tom Knox
Producer: Toto
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Personnel: Steve Lukather (vocals, guitar); David Paich (vocals, keyboards); Joseph Williams (vocals); Steve Porcaro (keyboards, electronics); Jeff Porcaro (drums, percussion). Audio Mixer: Greg Ladanyi. Arranger: Toto. After the ballad-deprived Isolation failed to meet the marketplace like its predecessor, Toto IV, Toto returned to making lush, mid-tempo tunes of romantic despair on Fahrenheit, enlisting their third lead singer, Joseph Williams, and calling in chips all over L.A. to score cameos from the likes of Michael McDonald, Don Henley, David Sanborn, and even Miles Davis, who had the closing track, "Don't Stop Me Now," pretty much to himself. Williams was a slightly grittier and more identifiable vocalist than Bobby Kimball or Fergie Frederiksen. But while the return to power ballads had the intended effect on the pop and adult contemporary charts (both "I'll Be over You" and "Without Your Love" scored), the album had a relatively low chart peak and failed to go gold. That kind of disconnection always indicates that the radio audience is failing to identify the songs with the group that made them, and it always means a career in trouble. ~ William Ruhlmann

The original members of Toto were L.A.-based session men who had played with everyone from George Benson to Boz Scaggs and wanted to create something they could call their own. They scored a hit straight out of the gate with the AOR smash "Hold the Line" from their 1978 debut. Their biggest success, however, would come in the early '80s with "Rosanna" and "Africa" from TOTO IV. The band endured some major personnel shake-ups over the years, and in 1992 founding drummer Jeff Porcaro died unexpectedly, but Toto continued working, even as the individual members kept their lucrative session careers going.

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