42 years sgo this hit #1
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...doesn't quite do justice to what a catastrophe that was, and how great a drummer the late Jeff Porcaro really was. He probably saved all those session hours from the dumpster. Even these days, an event like that is a major disaster--for those who still work with analog tape, anyway. What we would do when faced with such a situation would be to use Porcaro's manual timekeeping track to make a "tempo map"; the computer "listens" to the track and then generates new timecode from that. Everything would depend on getting those critical steps right. Just the thought of that...not to mention the pressure...it gives me chest pains just thinking about it! (I'm getting old!).
The other slight inaccuracy: Steve Lukather claims in a recent interview that he laid down not just the de rigueur double-tracked Marshall rhythm guitars, but eight tracks of Marshalls (quadrupled on each side)! Man, would I love to hear what that sounded like! 
It is amazing how far recording tech has come.
First, a DAW like ProTools Ultimate allows for 2,048 tracks recorded & 256 tracks recorded at a time. So ,synching two recorders would be unnecessary.
Then even if a sync code got lost, it would take 3 mouse moves & a click to line everything back up.
The 8 Marshall tracks must have been what Quincy thought was "too metal".
I'm still just using a 16 track, direct to hard drive recorder. I never thought a dedicated computer & the software was justified for the little recording I do.
It's still way better than my old Tascam 4 track cassette recorder! 
