How did you feel about the Toto parodies on “Family Guy” and “South Park”? We’ve come full circle. We can laugh our asses off at ourselves now.

Why are there so many Toto haters? Everyone has haters. At some point we were the band to hate. I think it was because we came out at exactly the same time as the Sex Pistols, and we were the antithesis of that. ... We took a lot of (crap) for being a slick band. But nowadays there’s not a rough edge on anything on the radio. We’re the Rolling Stones compared to what’s on the radio today.

Do you think the band will ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Not as long as Jann Wenner is still breathing. We’re the only band in history to turn down the cover of Rolling Stone. We knew they were going to do a hatchet job on us. They don’t even acknowledge we exist, but if you look at our stats we should be inducted. But they’d rather trot out some one-hit wonder from 1955 that no one has ever heard of.

What do you think Toto’s legacy will be? I think history will be a lot kinder to us when they look at stats. People don’t realize how much we had to do with the "Thriller" album.