If he didn't keep rolling with the Brat Pack, Rob Lowe was ready to sail headlong into yacht rock infamy with Toto — and an untold amount of cocaine — at his side.
Lowe revealed his near artistic detour in conversation with Bill Simmons on his podcast Literally! with Rob Lowe. Simmons, founder of the sports and pop culture website The Ringer, recently produced new HBO feature Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, so it was only natural their conversation turned to the smooth sounds dominating the airwaves during Lowe's early career.
Reminiscing on those days, Lowe recalled how he enlisted the "Africa" and "Rosanna" hitmakers as he pondered a career change:
I got one for ya. There was a minute in the '80s where I was definitely doing too much Bolivian marching powder and just being a fucking lunatic. And also coming at the time in a young actor's career where they're too old to play the roles they've been playing but they're too young to play the roles that will last you for the rest of your life, which are really the great ones, and you can kind of feel it. And I love music so much, as evidenced by this talk and all of that. I got it into my head that maybe I should think more about music, and I cut a demo with Toto.
Unfortunately Lowe didn't offer more detail than that, but he did make it clear to Simmons how he did a little more than "Hold the Line" back then: "I took having fun very seriously."
Lowe's musical debut came later in the '80s, where he sang a reworked duet of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" alongside actress Eileen Bowman (dressed as Snow White) in a nightmarish sequence to open the 61st Academy Awards.
Last year saw Lowe appear in Brat Pack documentary Brats.