Former Toto bassist Shem von Schroeck recently shared details about his time with the band, including the toxic environment that made his final year with the group difficult.
In an interview with Blaze News Tonight, Schroeck revealed that he received a threat from guitarist Steve Lukather amid rising internal tensions. “This is the first time I’ve ever talked about this publicly and the only thing that the only people that know what I know how I know it is, immediate family, close friends. So this is this is huge for me. First of all, the last year of my time with him the infighting in the band just got toxic,” he revealed.
“I stayed I kind of la la la la about all that because that’s not for me to say there were some legal issues with Jeff’s widow, Susan, and head-to-head with Lukather. It wasn’t my department. I certainly wasn’t hired in the band to have an opinion about anything, I was there to play bass and sing and show up on time with a smile on my face. but there was just like hate and animosity going on. this guy won’t ride in a van if that guy’s in it, this guy won’t share a dressing room with this. I started to go, ‘It was the best of times and now it’s the worst of times.'”
Even with the chaos, Schroeck tried to reach out to Lukather in an attempt to resolve the situation. In March 2019, Schroeck sent Lukather a professional letter, expressing his frustration and asking for a band meeting to address the ongoing conflicts. “I wrote him a letter, a very nice professional letter that I delivered in two forms — one text and one audio. I guess things can get lost in translation and the written word just wanted to be clear. It was basically a cry for help like, ‘Hey, we’ve got 3 months until the next run starts. I’m not sure I can continue with all this hate and stuff going on amid the band, it’s hard for me. I’m appealing to the top to try to see if there’s we maybe should have a band meeting or something.'”
However, Schroeck’s plea did not go as hoped. “The response I got which I won’t disclose because that’s private, So I won’t say what it said. It did not say, ‘Yeah we need to fix this, we need to. Let’s see what we can do, maybe we should see if we can work it out. Let me handle it,’ nothing like that. It was, I’m paraphrasing, it was basically a threat that says, ‘If you don’t finish out the calendar year and if you quit your professional reputation will suffer.’ So I had a decision to make — quit or put your big boy pants on, finish out the year, hoping that maybe things would get better. It got worse.”
Although Schroeck was with Toto for only two years, from 2017 to 2019, he contributed to the band’s album ’40 Trips Around the Sun.’ His time with the band ended in 2019 amid growing tensions.
The band has been dealing with additional drama, including a lawsuit filed in 2018 by Susan Porcaro-Goings, the widow of late drummer Jeff Porcaro. Susan claimed that Toto, owned by Lukather and co-founder David Paich, refused to account for Jeff’s interest in the band’s name after his death in 1992. Lukather explained that the lawsuit cost the band $1 million and contributed to the recent changes in the band’s lineup, leaving him as the only original member.
Lukather detailed the situation, saying, “There was a mix-up with the name that goes back to our original management,” Lukather told Rolling Stone in an interview. “I was victimized by that bullshit, too. And then she went public, without any corroboration, to say that David and I were stealing from her family. Like I would do that! As if I suddenly turned into an arch-criminal when I was 60!”
Steve Porcaro, Jeff’s brother and a member of Toto, confirmed that he gave up his rights to the band’s name when he left in 1987. However, he suggested that his brother Jeff never did, and he questioned the advice the band had received about their business dealings. “To be honest with you, I think Lukather and the guys were ill-advised. I don’t blame them. I blame their representation for not telling them how the world works. They were ill-advised by shysters who didn’t know what the f*ck they were talking about.”
Lukather also reflected on the struggles leading up to the band’s final shows. He described the last concerts as ‘miserable and hard’ but emphasized that the band tried its best to give fans a good performance, saying he felt isolated and blamed for things he didn’t do.
