As a songwriter, Toto’s Steve Lukather is known as a balladeer par excellence.
You want poignant goodbyes with a soaring chorus? “I Won’t Hold You Back,” the Top 10 hit from 1982’s Toto IV, has you covered. Heartbroken wistful longing in the guise of a pop classic? “I’ll Be Over You” from 1986’s Fahrenheit is your ticket. How about evocative pleas to love with a lush orchestral/rock backing? “Anna” from 1988’s The Seventh One is what you seek. There’s also the uplifting “Only You” – a song that could have been the smash-hit ballad from Top Gun but instead is gently nestled away in 1992’s hard rock-era Kingdom of Desire.
Lukather clearly wears his heart on his sleeve. In the liner notes to the Toto compilation Best Ballads, David Paich wryly calls him out on it: “A typical Steve Lukather song and it’s about the same thing he’s always fighting – the pain of love. That’s Steve all over; in pain and in love.”
With this history, it’s inevitable that 2006’s Falling in Between should feature a Steve Lukather ballad. Even his bandmates were anticipating this: “One of the things I always look forward to on a Toto album – a gorgeous ballad from Steve Lukather,” the late Mike Porcaro said in the album liner notes. “These kind of songs flow out of him like a pure spring. Awesome!”
In contrast to a lot of the other tracks on Falling In Between, “Simple Life” is written solely by Steve Lukather and comes in as the shortest song by a considerable margin.
“Originally, it was gonna be a longer piece of music Dave and I and Joe [Williams] were considering,” Lukather told me in an exclusive interview. “I had this piece and we recorded it. It was to be edited together with music from everyone in the band and it never got written. But this first part, which was very inspired by Phil Collins and Genesis, was done and everyone liked it. I was rather proud of the way it turned out, so we used it. There were two-minute songs on my old Beatles records, so I wanted people to hear it and many people have asked this question here is the real honest answer.”
Opening with a sparse piano and a tasteful percussion loop, “Simple Life” starts like most ballads – and the Phil Collins inspiration immediately apparent. The structure is simple: a short verse, another verse, and a simple refrain sung by Luke and echoed on guitar.
But then it hits you: The chorus. The cymbals swell before a bracing wall of “aaahs” and forceful drumming blast you out of your idyllic state. Atop these rich harmonies, Steve Lukather sings:
All I want is a simple life
All I really want is you
All I want, all I need
Is a simple life…
The arrangement is superb: There’s a driving rock beat, with clever mixes of 7/4 and 3/4 bars, some swooping power chords from Lukather and a glorious wandering bass line from Mike Porcaro.
“Big production that I loved at the time,” Lukather adds, “We went for it on that record.”
That plaintive guitar refrain returns … and it’s over. Paich: “That’s pure, unadulterated Lukather.”
Greg Phillinganes: “Probably my favorite song of the whole album. I fell in love with it the first time Luke played it for me. As a songwriter, it’s one of those gems that makes you say: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?'”
Reflecting on the origins of “Simple Life,” Lukather says: “It was a love song and a wish for a simpler time – less stress and enjoying life, etc. Rather timely and now sadly a memory of what once was.”
When I first heard it, “Simple Life” meant the world to me. I was living in a foreign country, grappling with language and cultural challenges, but this became my touchstone. I took it almost literally: Focus on what matters, distill to the essence.
As I get older, and reflect on the world we’re leaving our children, that meaning has shifted for me. “Yeah, it means more than it did 17 years ago or whatever it was – long time,” Lukather agrees. “Thing is, I am 1,000 percent different person than I was then.”
We all are. That’s the beauty of music: It’s the soundtrack to our lives and the meaning belongs to the listener.
For me, “Simple Life” is an inspiring song and a link to an exciting time of my life – but it also reminds me to focus on what matters. In our current climate, I suspect that the aesthete in all of us longs for a simple life.
- Toto, “Spanish Sea” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - June 15, 2021
- Toto, “Devil’s Tower” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - May 11, 2021
- Toto, “Alone” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - April 27, 2021
