Toto Records Version Of Weezer's 'Hash Pipe'

For all of the ugliness, sometimes social media can do good. Or at least, accomplish something that wouldn't have happened any other way. A 14-year-old used social media to try and convince the band Weezer to record a cover of the Toto classic soft pop hit "Africa." Her campaign caught fire online and not only did the band eventually to agree to record the song (along with a cover of Toto's "Roseanna"), but the song has become one of Weezer's most commercially successful singles.

Now Toto is returning the favor and is set to release a cover of the Weezer song "Hash Pipe" on Friday, August 10th:

Toto’s guitarist Steve Lukather shares, "We were blown away at the response Weezer got doing our old songs.  They did a good job too, but we never saw hit records coming from it.  It was all started by a sweet 15-year-old girl named Mary. Then the ball started rolling it.  They did two of ours and ‘Africa’ took OFF.  It seemed only right that WE – Toto did a version of one of their songs so we started digging around, listening to a bunch of their music, which I have grown to like a lot. My 30 something kids were flipped over Weezer recording two of our songs as they are fans and we picked ‘Hash Pipe’. The irony that we were smoking hash before these guys were alive was not lost on us, and the other is it has a killer melody and a great groove.  We wanted to do something that rocked. We give you our version — with a little of our thing on it like they did their ‘thing’ to ours. It is an unlikely collaboration, but some of the best ones are unexpected. Thanks to Weezer, their manager Jonathan, and their fans as they have been really nice to us…and they didn’t have to be. Now I guess we have to do some crazy mash up live someday. In the meantime, continued success.  Thanks to all and hope to meet someday.  Gratitude to the fans for embracing this fun little accident. Ours drops Aug 10th, and I hear KROQ is getting thousands of requests from the teaser we recorded the other day – who knew? Kudos to Steve Porcaro for running with this as the Producer."

Keyboardist Steve Porcaro offers, "Covering Hash Pipe was an absolute blast. When I asked my neighbor, a huge Weezer fan which record we should cover, he rattled off about five of their biggest hits, but then he smiled and said ‘but there’s nothing like driving down the freeway at 80 miles an hour with ‘Hash Pipe’ cranked’.  That stuck with me when it came time to decide."

Singer Joseph Williams cannot be reached at this time as he is too high on hashish, but previously when asked about "Hash Pipe" shared simply, "Yeah."

Now if I could just convince Kelly Clarkson to cover the fabulous Gladys Knight hit "If I Were Your Woman."