There was a whole thing back in the simpler time of 2018, when a social media campaign on the platform then known as Twitter had one sole purpose: convincing Weezer to cover Toto's "Africa." (For us Canadians, it should be noted that, as far as I'm aware, there was no such encouragement for Karl Wolf to do his version in 2007; that was entirely of his own volition.)
Writer Dan Ozzi claims responsibility for getting the @weezerafrica account — created by Mary, a teenager from Ohio — on the band's radar, and its mission was successful: after originally yielding a teasing rendition of Toto's (ahem, superior) hit "Rosanna," Weezer finally obliged Mary — and got "Weird Al" Yankovic to star in the music video.
Toto later returned the favour by covering Weezer's "Hash Pipe," but guitarist Steve Lukather has now revealed that the goodwill between the two bands kind of ended there. As Ultimate-Guitar pointed out, he appeared on the KLOS radio show New & Approved with Matt Pinfield last week, and admitted that "things got weird" with Rivers Cuomo after Weezer blessed the rains.
Pinfield cited Cuomo's love for "Africa," and Lukather countered that it wouldn't actually take that much to drag the Weezer frontman away. "I don't know about him loving the song, man," Lukather said. "I don't think that's the case at all. I think he did it to take the piss out of it and it blew up in his face and how he's got to play it every night."
"I tried to reach out to this guy and be friendly and then it just got weird," the guitarist continued. "I don't want to get into it, but — peace and love. It was good for them, it was good for us."
Lukather discusses the cursed Weezer-Toto crossover episode in the interview below, starting at around the 7:30 timestamp.