Concert Review - Toto - Auckland - 23rd April 2025

Presented By Live Nation

TOTO Live in Auckland - Photo Credit Megan Moss

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL TOTO GALLERY BY MEGAN MOSS

Review By: Faith Hamblyn

Artist/Band: TOTO Supported by Christopher Cross

Venue/City: Spark Arena, Auckland, New Zealand

Date of Event: Wednesday, 23rd April 2025

We took our seats at Spark Arena, among wine-toting ‘80s soft-rock lovers. An American man behind me asked his partner, ‘Have you ever heard the term yacht rock?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered him in my mind; ‘I certainly have.’ And Christopher Cross has got to be the beating heart of that bit of rhyming magic – after all, he literally wrote a song about sailing called Sailing.

That song was the highlight of his set simply because it’s so evocative. It’s sad, searching; a wistful dream of finding peace on the ocean. The crowd, halfway through the opening act, smelled of weed and bourbon. I would have thought pina colada would be a better match, but maybe that’s more of a summer drink. I once recorded it as our flat’s outgoing voicemail message, and a lady left a breathless instruction for a man to drop his cock and don his socks, presumably for her. She never called back, but it was a brilliant result to my musical choice.

One of my many guilty Christopher Cross pleasures is Arthur’s Theme, which I know so well, despite never having seen Arthur. It sounds like holiday mornings at my grandparents’ place, the home of so much that Burt Bacharach worked on. I can’t really pinpoint being caught between the moon and New York City, but, again, it sounds contemplative and winsome. You never know what adventures the night can bring if you’ve got a tuxedo and it’s the ‘80s.

But Christopher Cross isn’t endlessly crooning at the sunset; sometimes he rocks, and that is true of his closer, Ride Like The Wind. It’s a smooth classic tale of a young man free in America, like Jackson Browne, like Jack Kerouac, like Bob Seger, but not so icky. He didn’t have Michael McDonald from the Doobie Brothers along with him to do backing vocals, but he wasn’t the only one – neither did Toto.

I could tell they were the real deal live as they had two drummers and two keyboardists - how fat was this sound gonna be? Super fat, it turns out, and so tight, Rosanna Arquette somehow ended up going out with the keyboard player – that’s a talented musician, as they weren’t exactly hair-metal-quality lookers. Rosanna was third song in, and it’s amazing – it’s like Steely Dan found their mojo and started dating Hollywood actresses.

By this time, the crowd smelled like Baileys, which I assume is due to the music getting moody and shuffly and pitched with woo. I Won’t Hold You Back is so good that Roger Sanchez charted with it sampled in his track in the early 2000s. The set was full of hits from various eras, and the crowd were waving their phones and dancing to the offbeat. Which is understandable given how jazzy Toto are – I wish I could see the set again and catch when they dropped Gershwin, but it was so layered I might have drifted up to the lights in a jazz trance.

What’s the track that got absolutely everybody up? Hold The Line. That, along with Georgy Porgy’s legacy with Janet Jackson sampling it, makes Toto’s debut album just brattishly good, and I would never have thought I’d be able to see it live!

So what did everyone want, given the calibre of the night, with a headline act so sophisticated, they seemed to just have a drum tech living behind the drum kit? Your favourite SingStar wailer and mine – Africa. I assumed all the tricks were done to studio wizardry, but turns out Toto can out-vamp anyone and really cook. Nerd rock for the win.

Five pastel-pink yacht-rock stars!

SETLIST

Childs Anthem

Carmen

Rosanna

99

Mindfields

I Will Remember

Pamela

I Wont’t Hold Back

Angels Dont Cry

Georgy

White Sister

I’ll Be Over You

Stop Loving You

Don’t Chain My Heart

I’ll Supply The Love

Hold The Line

Africa

TOTO & Christopher Cross Play at Wellington TSB Arena Tonight & Christchurch Wolfbrook Arena this Saturday - Dont miss out FIND OUT MORE HERE

TOTO NZ Tour 2025

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