Watch Toto Cover Weezer’s “Hash Pipe”
In recent months, Weezer have gotten a whole lot of mileage out of covering early-’80s cheese-rock kings Toto. They started out by covering Toto’s “Rosanna,” and then, after a months-long viral fan campaign, they took on the big one, releasing their version of “Africa.” The resulting cover turned out to be Weezer’s biggest hit in years. And now Toto have returned the favor.
Earlier this week, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather announced that Toto, after considering a bunch of Weezer songs, had settled on the 2001 single “Hash Pipe,” the first thing that Weezer released after their post-Pinkerton hiatus. In explaining why Toto picked that song, Lukather said, “I wanted to show everyone what a good rock ‘n’ roll band we can be.” He also added, “I love the message, you know what I mean?”
Last night, as Pitchfork points out, Toto played Vancouver’s BlueShore Financial Centre For The Performing Arts, and they took the opportunity to debut their “Hash Pipe cover. Before playing the song, Lukather said, “We figured since we were smoking hash since before they were born, that’s the one we should do.” The Toto version is a fairly faithful cover, though they do show off a bit on the bridge. Check out a fan-shot video below.
The funny thing about this, of course, is that Toto could probably learn the entire Weezer songbook in a weekend if they wanted to.