Hold the Line

"Hold the Line"
Single by Toto
from the album Toto
B-side	"Takin' It Back"
Released	October 2, 1978
Format	7"
Genre	Hard rock
Length	3:56
Label	Columbia
Writer(s)	David Paich
Toto singles chronology
"Hold the Line" (1978) "I'll Supply the Love (1978)
Alternative Cover German version

Hold the Line is a song written by David Paich and recorded by the American rock group Toto. The song was the band's first single, and was featured on their debut eponymous album. It reached #5 in the US Billboard Charts during the winter of 1978–79.

Content

Jeff Porcaro, the band's drummer, gave a definition for the song:

"'Hold the Line' was a perfect example of what people will describe as your heavy metal chord guitar licks, your great triplet A-notes on the piano, your 'Sly'-hot-fun-in-the-summertime groove, all mishmashed together with a boy from New Orleans singing... and it really crossed over a lot of lines.".

Background and writing

David Paich about writing the song:

"It started out with the piano riff that is in the intro. I started playing this riff and I just couldn't stop playing it. I played it for days, and I started singing, "Hold the line, love isn't always on time." It was a phrase that just came into my head. . . . it was a blessing. (The words) came to me in the night, and then I went to the verse. I wrote it in 2 hours. Sometimes songs come quickly like that, and sometimes I spend 2 years trying to finish a song."

Jeff Porcaro on "Hold the Line", in a 1988 interview with Modern Drummer:

"That was me trying to play like Sly Stone's original drummer, Greg Errico, who played drums on "Hot Fun In The Summertime." The hi-hat is doing triplets, the snare drum is playing 2 and 4 backbeats, and the bass drum is on 1 and the & of 2. That 8th note on the second beat is an 8th-note triplet feel, pushed. When we did the tune, I said, "Gee, this is going to be a heavy four-on-the-floor rocker, but we want a Sly groove." The triplet groove of the tune was David's writing. It was taking the Sly groove and meshing it with a harder rock caveman approach."

Several of the band members recall hearing "Hold the Line" for the first time on the radio:

"I flipped the first time I heard myself on the radio. My mom called me up and said, "Turn on KLOS." It was the song "Hold the Line," and I started running around the house in my underwear, screaming, "I'm on the radio!" My wife was cracking up. It was just a thrill." (Steve Lukather, Guitar Player magazine, April 1984)

Bobby Kimball had a similar experience when he heard Toto for the very first time on the radio:

"I was asleep, I had my alarm clock set for noon because we were gonna do something in the studio, some promo and when the alarm came on there was the radio and "Hold The Line" was playing. And my room was totally black and I was looking for the telephone and I called Paich and I heard him scream, he was living over there with his girlfriend and he was screaming around and falling over trying to get to the radio." Toto99.com

Charts

Charts (1978-1979)	Peak position
Australian Kent Music Report	8
Belgian VRT Top 30	22
Canadian RPM Top Singles	5
Dutch Top 40	25
Euro Hit 50	21
French Singles Chart	84
German Singles Chart	23
Irish Singles Chart	24
Italian Singles Chart	19
New Zealand Singles Chart	11
South African Singles Chart	1
Swedish Singles Chart	3
U.K. Singles Chart	14
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	5

Year-End Chart

Chart (1979)	Peak position
South African Singles Chart	7
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	44
Canadian RPM Top Singles	62
Australian Kent Music Report	66
Italian Singles Chart	91

In Pop Culture

The song was featured on the 2004 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the fictional classic rock radio station K-DST, and was included in the 2006 Adam Sandler comedy Click.

In the 6th season of the hit television show The 70's Show in the 3rd episode titled Magic Bus, Fez, one of the main characters, sings the song to Eric in regards to him trying to get over his girlfriend Donna going away to college.

In the Cartoon Network show Regular Show, the intro of the song is played by the band "Fist Pump", but stripped of the piano riff.

Several main characters in Questionable Content discuss which Toto song is their favourite. (However, the only songs they discuss are the top hits: Hold the Line, Rosanna, and Africa.)