In 1982 the members of Toto discovered an angel in their midst. Her name was Rosanna Arquette.
She was a 20-something actress whose career was still three years away from pay dirt in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan, and whose fledgling relationship with Toto keyboard player Steve Porcaro meant she occasionally dropped off beers as the band recorded what would become Toto IV.
“We got on quite well with her,” former Toto singer Bobby Kimball told Classic Rock in 2008. “She was going out with Steve and we were always respectful to each other’s partners. I mean, how hard is it to have a beautiful woman around?”
Arquette was not the only thing of beauty in LA’s Studio 55 during that time. One track recorded for Toto IV stood out above all others. In contrast to some of the album’s harder tracks, this was a lilting power ballad, sketched out by band lynchpin David Paich, hopelessly romantic in its sentiment (‘All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes’) and titled simply Rosanna.
“David was constantly writing songs at that point,” recalled Kimball, “and he came to us with Rosanna half-finished. The first time we ever heard it was when we walked into his living room in Encino. He had this grand piano, and he told us: ‘I want you to check this idea out’. He was pleased with it, and we were too. I knew it was a hit.”
Each member of Toto played a part in bringing Rosanna to fruition. Kimball and guitarist Steve Lukather transposed the musical key so the verse and chorus could be traded between them as a duet. Porcaro and Paich ironed out the keyboard solo at five o’clock in the morning. Late drummer Jeff Porcaro laid down a masterful shuffle inspired by John Bonham.
“Jeff was really into Led Zeppelin,” Lukather told Classic Rock, “and for Rosanna he morphed Fool In The Rain [from Zep’s 1979 album In Through The Out Door] with a Bernard Purdie drum groove [a renowned session drummer, Purdie invented the Purdie Shuffle]. And we took it from there.”
As former session musicians to a man, it was little surprise that Toto bottled Rosanna fast in the studio. “In one afternoon we did the basic rhythm track,” Lukather said. “And that first guitar solo was made up on the spot the first time we played it. You just get lucky with stuff like that sometimes.
“I remember that I had my two-year-old daughter listening to my vocal as I recorded it. And when the band recorded their parts, I knew it was something special.”
Less expected was Rosanna’s impact upon its release in the summer of 1982, with US No.2 and UK No.12 chart placings suddenly making this most faceless of muso bands a household name. “We loved it,” recalled Kimball in 2008, of his overnight ubiquity. “Any time you can get a leg up in the music business you have to go for it. The fact that Rosanna was such a hit made all the difference in the world. It’s like winning a Grammy or something – people take notice.”
And yet, even as it was a hit around the world there was a major bone of contention surrounding Rosanna. On the television networks of America, Rosanna Arquette was informing audiences that the song had been written in tribute to her.
“It was just an opportune moment for her to grab the brass ring and run with it,” said Kimball. “She was just starting her career, and the song was so big that she went on several talk shows and said it was about her. But I can tell you that it wasn’t. David’s line was always that he just used the name because it fitted into the song. Then she came into the picture and claimed it.”
That sentiment that has always been supported by Paich. “Rosanna is about three girls I knew, all rolled into one,” he explained in 2008. “After I met Rosanna Arquette I just stole her name and stuck it on there.”
As the years went by, the war of words between Arquette and Toto over the spiritual ownership of Rosanna went back and forth, ranging in tone from playful to hostile. In one 2006 interview Lukather openly expressed the opinion that “that bitch has ridden our coat-tails long enough”. Arquette, meanwhile, claimed that she doesn’t even like the song. “That’s because it’s no longer useful to her,” Kimball told Classic Rock.
Rosanna has never been left off a Toto setlist since it was written. Kimball, who spent much of the second half of the 80s and most of the ’90s out of Toto, returned to the band in 1998 for another 10-year-long stint. Even then, he observed that it was still the moment in the show that received the most feverish reception.
“It’s the one song the crowd are waiting for,” he said back in 2008. “And I can’t tell you the number of people who have come up over the years and told me that they fell in love or made babies over that one song!”
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 115 (January 2008). Updated in July 2026.
