Steve Lukather: "I Got Back On The Horse" (Part II)

                     "The Beatles are the on-switch to my life...."

We closed out part I of our interview discussing Steve Lukather's fear embracing tours with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci last summer - who wouldn't be a little intimidated standing between the alien with the chrome guitar, and a guy who looks like a praying mantis with a monkey grip? Of course, I'm joking a bit - Joe and Steve are both damned handsome fellows, but the fact remains that as a guitarist, you'd better have some major cajones if you are going to go toe to toe with the pair in front of a crowd of shred fans.

Obviously, Lukather is no shrinking violet - he's played with every Beatle but John, he created the riffs that made Beat It a thriller, and he's had to man up and carry the flag for his own band, Toto, through some very harrowing times. I started this segment by asking how a guy goes from G-3 to being the front guy for everybody's favorite Beatle:

Lukather: "Ringo....Yeah, there's not a lot of guys that go from G-3 to Ringo, huh? To me, The Beatles are the on-switch to my life. I've had the chance to work with Paul and George over the years - but to actually get the call from Ringo, and to be in his band.... Now we're, we're like, we're really good friends! I get texts from Ringo, or to hear, 'Hey, it's Ringo, what's up?' You're playing and you turn around, and it's Ringo Starr smiling at you and playing the drums.  

"If you would have told me when I was 8, or 9 years old, in my first band, praying that someday I'd play with The Beatles, well, you might have just as well told me I'd be landing on Mars, too! A surreal, and unrealistic dream, and here I am living it! 

"It's an incredible band - Todd Rundgren, Gregg Rolie, Richard Page, Gregg Bissonette, Mark Riviera, just fantastic musicians, all world class. We have a blast, we all hit it off so well. The band is so strong, and we work so hard - it was a completely different mindset than I'm used to, but in a way it's what I have been doing my whole life. Just going, 'What are we doing today?'"

That might even be an understatement - this seemed like a good time to ask about Steve's career as a session guitarist. Until his book is finished, saying just how many sessions Luke has played, how many hits he has recorded is incalculable. Suffice to say, Steve Lukather is amongst the most recorded guitarist in history, and he was on the A-team that segued the hit making Wrecking Crew into the album rock all-stars that dominated the Los Angeles rock world from the late '70s until the new millennium announced great changes in the recording industry:

Lukather: "I'd morph into whatever you'd want me to be. I've always enjoyed the challenge of that. Knowing what not to play! I always knew what to play for the gig, depending on what was going on. 99.9% of the sessions I played, I had no idea what I would be asked to play. 

"You had to bring whatever gear for what was going on that day. And it wasn't like you got demos and charts before the gig! That never happened! It's laughable to even say, or think that. Every guy that did that, and they were all my friends, there was certain things - you had to know what was up, and you really had to know what you were doing, and to be confident enough to change if they didn't like what you were doing. And still do it in one, or two takes, have a great sound, play in time, and be a cool hang."

One of Lukather's most heralded studio gigs was Michael Jackson's mega-hit, Beat It. You'd think that being hand chosen by the world's biggest pop star to supply the rock for producer Quincy Jones might make your heart beat a little fast, but not so for Cool-Hand Luke - he was at the top of his profession and taking the calls as they came. I asked if he was at all unnerved:

Lukather: "Not really! I had been working with Quincy a whole bunch, I had just done the whole, The Dude record of Quincy's that won all sorts of Grammys. Yeah, I did a bunch of stuff for Quincy, so being around that wasn't that weird for me.  

"Michael called me on the phone, and I hung up on him - I didn't believe it was him! He was like (falsetto), "Hi, this is Michael Jackson." And I was like, "Fuck off!" It was eight o'clock in the morning, and I thought someone was just taking the piss out of me. Then Quincy's office called, and said, "No, that was really him, you should probably call him back." Oops, sorry. 

"Working with Michael was great, he was my age. I didn't really feel intimidated. I mean, I loved The Jackson 5 growing up, but I really didn't. 

"The only time, was like being around The Beatles - when I met McCartney on those sessions (Give My Regards To Broad Street), it was like, 'Wow - that's Paul McCartney.' But he was so nice - he ended up taking me and Jeff (Porcaro) to London to work on another project. So, when you're working at that level, you come in as a pro - you're not coming in starstruck. They don't want to have to deal with that."

Moving back to the present, We spoke about Lukather's incredibly busy schedule for 2013 - in addition to releasing Transition, he is also looking at more touring with Ringo's All Star Band, and a very special tour with Toto, celebrating the band's 35th anniversary. I asked if there was a possibility for any solo shows to support the new record:

Lukather: "Oh yeah! It's all schedule, schedule, schedule. I'm a work-a-holic, what else do I do? I get up at 5:30, I practice for a couple of hours, I work out, I do my computer shit, and then I start my day by 9 o'clock. I've got all this energy to do things, and sitting around the house isn't one of them.  

"I'm on the back nine, and I want to make the most of it. I think I appreciate my life and career more than I ever have, and I have my health - I have a lot of friends who are not healthy, not well. Look at Mike Porcaro with ALS, I mean, that is a brutal disease - he's not doing well, there's no happy ending to this. 

"I'm going to see the rest of the Toto guys today. We'll go out on the road and we'll help Mike out. But, as always in this fucking business, we can't just do this - we have to get sued by two different people. Everybody wants a piece of your ass. It can get a little frustrating. 

"After I left Toto in 2007, when I was probably at my worst, I had to get away from it, and some of the people that were involved. Then Paich called me a few years later - no, David and I, Steve and Joe, we've been friends for forty years, since we were fifteen. So I was friends with those guys - there were a couple of peripheral people that I was not really friends with, I never was, even if they were in the original band, and I just didn't want to be around people who couldn't do their gig, faking it, or whatnot. 

"So, David called, and said we should put it together again. I said, well, I'll do it, of course, but Steve Porcaro has to come back, you've got to come back, and Joseph has to sing - Simon Phillips came back, God bless him, a monster drummer, and Nathan East - monster bass player, and we went out and did it in the summer of 2010 and it was so successful, and so much fun to be back with my high school buddies. 

"We were going to do some recording, but somebody said, 'We own you...' and blah, blah, blah. It gets ridiculous. I guess you're not really successful until you've got a few lawsuits against you!"

Transitions is Lukather's eighth solo record, and it is a great look at where he is today - the album is full of melodic pop, tons of great guitar, some fusion-esque interludes, but more than anything it's his singing that sells the songs - he's written some lyrics that are straight from the heart, and the record is, as he stated earlier, 'Very organic.':

Lukather: "My partner, C.J. Vanston is another monster musician. You meet someone and you click on a certain level - we were friends for twenty-five years from project to project, but we never really wrote together, or sat down in the studio together. We started on the last record (All's Well That Ends Well), and that was a very successful collaboration, so I said, 'Why don't we just start this thing together - we finished the last one,' and that's what we did. 

"He got a lot of great performances out of me and knew just what to say, because he's a great musician and I respect his opinion. The best producers to me are all great musicians, because they understand how to get a great performance, and to keep you from ruining or leaving something out that was really good that you (the artist) were too critical of, which is what I always do - I'm always beating the shit out of myself. 

"I'd say, 'Fuck that, that sucks,' and C. J. would go, 'No, no, no, no - you have to live with this for a minute man.' And he was right most of the time. I work best in collaborative situations because not only do I get things done, but I'm also saved from myself! The level of critique that I put on myself is more pressure than anybody on the Planet Earth, believe me."

No interview with Steve Lukather would be complete without talking guitars and gear, so I asked about the guitar tones on the album - they jump out of the mix and sound extremely in-your-face. A more organic tone than we've become accustomed to from the king of refrigerator racks:

Lukather: "I used the Music Man L3, which is the new version of my signature model guitar, and we went with passive pickups - Larry DiMarzio and Steve Blucher made me these great pickups (DiMarzio Transition DP254 and DP255). I wanted to go more organic for lack of a better term. I plugged straight into a Bogner Ecstasy and I manipulated the guitar with an Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. Any effects we added were plug-ins. I wanted to take all the bullshit out of the signal path. 

"I tried to play more melodically and to use more interesting phrasing rather than just pentatonic blazing bullshit. You know, that's what I was originally known for, and that's what my strongest suit is. Certainly, there are guys so fucking good you just laugh, but as far as technique goes, I'm going back to who I really am - that's what separated me, stylistically, from other people. My goal was, 'No, no, hold back a little here."

You can hear it all over Transition, Luke is playing fantastically, and every note fits - there's never a moment of too little, or too much, he nailed it by simply playing himself. In fact that's what this all seems like to me - it is as if everything he has done up to now has been a dress rehearsal, and now it's completely Steve Lukather that we're hearing:

Lukather: "Well, thank you, man - that is the nicest thing you could say. I am working really hard at my craft, and perhaps righting a few wrongs along the way. Trying to find, well, I found my inspiration again. I've been practicing and refining - not practicing chops, per se, but I'm practicing refining what I'm doing to become a better, more soulful artist. 

"You know, I've been through a lot of shit, so I mean, I can play the blues and mean it! The blues is not necessarily if I have $5 in my pocket, or not - the emotional shit is much more harsh than that. Work In Progress - that might be the next album project. 

"I'm very blessed, very honored that I have so many opportunities at a time, especially when work is a little more scarce than it used to be. If I was sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring as a session musician, it would be really hard times right now."

Transition is being released January 21 on the Mascot label.

Thanks to Steve Lukather, Steve Karas, Peter Noble at Noble PR, and Mascot.

Steve Lukather: "I Got Back On The Horse" (Part I)

            "I just wanted to take all the bullshit out of the signal path."

Steve Lukather is speaking of the manner in which he recorded the guitars for his outstanding new record, Transition, but he could just as easily be discussing the changes he's made in his life over the last few years.

Lukather transitioned from being arguably the most successful studio guitarist in history, and one of the hardest partying rockers to ever see the sun rise into being an amazingly in demand live act (last summer he not only joined Steve Vai and Joe Satriani on their European G-3 excursion, he also joined up with a Beatle in Ringo's All Starr Band), and he is, in his own words, "Probably in a better head space than I've ever been in my life - and that says a lot because I've been through a lot in this life."

Once upon a time Lukather found himself hanging up on Michael Jackson when the megastar called him at 8 a.m., so I'm lucky to be speaking with the most recorded six stringer in history at dawn in Los Angeles - turns out he's been up for hours, got in his practice for the day, the gym, and 'the computer shit,' before I've downed my first coffee, but I'm catching up.

Before we get to the fun stuff (the music), I thought I'd ask about the changes in lifestyle and his jam packed schedule for 2013:

Lukather, "I'm feeling very blessed to have so much going on, it's a trip for me - I look at it, and I go, 'Shouldn't I be slowing down?' But actually, I'm speeding up, which is great because I have the energy to do it now, you know? I'm of clear mind, body, and soul and have been for years now, and I'm a completely different person than I used to be. It's all for the better, at least I think it is! I went through a lot of pain too get here, but hey - at the same time, no pain, no gain, isn't that the cliche? 

"I woke up with one hangover too many - I looked like shit, played like shit, hated my self, and I hated a lot of people and things that were around me. I had to really clean house in every possible area. It was really hard. And then I lost my mom in the middle of it all. It was a brutal death, and it was just really hard to deal with it all at the same time.  

"It kinda gets away from you - 36 years on the road, man, 36 years on the road. Someone should try that sometime and see how that feels - I busted up my teeth, and compound fractures, and you know, some of it's on the internet for all to gawk at, it's hard to deal with, it's hard to take a look at yourself publicly, and go, OK. Not like some of my peers and my other friends that lost their way in the midst of this rock and roll nonsense, I still have my stuff, so I can only live here today and look forward. I look at the past and some of it was great, and some of it was, 'What the fuck?' So what can I say? I've had a very extraordinary life and career, I can tell you that."

Listening to Transition, you can almost hear what Lukather has been saying here. He seems to have been freed from the excesses that found him overplaying, angry, and at times even sloppily in the past. The melodies are taut, his playing has never been better, and I mostly hear it in his singing - he's very present, it's almost as if he's singing in my living room. I would suggest that he has finally found himself, and he's damned comfortable with who he is:

Lukather: "Well, yeah - I kind of lost my way in the shred fests and the whole....when you're really beat down and you're hurting inside, and there's a lot of personal issues I'd rather not get into concerning what was going on around me that were deep and intense. You find a way to numb it - you know? 

"You don't really see it in the midst of it, and you play how you feel. If I was angry, I would play too much, and still be frustrated - I would sound like what was going on inside of me. I look back on some of it with great shame. How did I let it get that bad? But there it is.  

"I could see it in my face, I could hear it in my playing, I lost my view, I lost what it was that made me different from everybody else, but I think that I have finally found my voice and my heart again, and I'm playing the way I should be playing instead of wanking off, you know?"

I know - only too well. I myself have been that lost, that far gone, and I'm only too familiar with the ring of his own incredulity at his downward spiral and revival. While we're on an uphill climb, I mention that Transition is perhaps the most complete musical statement he has made. The guy has recorded thousands of records, written platinum albums, huge hits, and played before millions of fans, but this is likely the closest we have got to seeing the fifteen year old kid in the mirror:

Lukather: "Hey, thank you, man! I really tried hard on this one - it's the most honest me I can be, the most organic I can be sonically and emotionally. 

"When I did the last album, I was at my lowest. I was going through all of it - I was sober, but I was feeling every punch. Man, you know how it is, I didn't AA, I didn't rehab, I just stopped - I even quit smoking cigarettes the same day. I said, 'No more toxic me.' And I never looked back and it's not hard for me. What was hard for me was to have to take a hard look at the things I had done, the things I had said, and the things I had played, where I say, 'What the fuck was that?' 

"The thing is what is going on around you - you suddenly see and feel. All the emotions you stuffed away for many years, in my case decades. I had a pretty good shrink to get me through it - then my shrink died! What can I say? 

"I would go on and on until this guy would go, 'What? You're kidding me, really?' And like I said, I've publicly apologized for losing my way, but the thing about it is, I got back on the horse. 

"And now I feel good - Transition. The title of that and what it means is from the darkness to the light. I've had an amazing life, I've had a few falls, that's all. It happens to human beings. Especially in this walk of life, I mean, many of my friends and peers my age, they all kind of quit at the same time, but we haven't had a secret meeting! Everybody's like, 'You can't do that shit when you're fifty.' I started out as a teenager, it was all very innocent - 'Woohoo, let's rock 'n' roll and party all night.' 

"I can't run as fast as I did when I was 18, either. I'm in pretty good fuckin' shape, I'm in better physical shape than I've been in 25 years."

Transition sounds incredibly organic - Lukather collaborated with co-writer/producer C. J. Vanston and much of the record was made with the pair sitting next to one another in the control room. I asked Steve how they approached the recording:

"Well, I really avoided many of the pitfalls of today's productions, which is all over-compressing stereo busses, using big power chords - I went to great lengths to open up with more harmony in the chords, rather than, well, there's more to chords than just fifths and thirds, you know? I went to great lengths not to just do fifths quadrupled - that sound is just so tired for me. 

"C. J. Vanston, my co-writer, producer, and partner, and I, we really strive to make it rock and to not get too fusion-y, or to go over anyone's head. It was a challenge everyday to find that fine line, which I think we did. The reactions so far have been really great - I'm realy happy after working on it so hard. 

"I'm not phoning it in, bro, I mean, a lot of guys my age, they make a record, they go out on tour and play their old shit to make money, or write songs that are just vehicles for guitar solos - and that's just not really what I do. Mind you, there are guys who play instrumental guitar that are just a million times better than me, but I think I play now to my stronger suit which is more nuanced."

Everything he says can be confirmed by a listen to Transition - there's no shortage of stunning guitar histrionics, but it fits contextually - there's no bravado, however, there is also no question that you're listening to one of the world's great axeslingers. I mention that in terms of having the right balance between songwriting, singing, guitar playing, and production, I am reminded of another recent album by a renowned guitarist, Scarlett - The Director's Cut, by Dave Kilmister of Roger Waters's band, who I am talking to the next day:

"Oh man! Tell him I said he's fucking great! I just saw that show (The Wall) - Tell him that I was at the mixing desk screaming when he played - what a great guitar player! 

"You know - you get caught up in the race of it all, and it can become this thing. Internally, and even sub-consciously you've gotta keep up with the fastest gun in the west, and that's like trying to suck your own dick - what's the point? Even if you could, you could never tell anybody, and you'd never leave the house!"

So I ask about what it was like to be on the G-3 tour with the two greatest gunslingers in rock history, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai:

"I gotta say, I was very apprehensive. I didn't know if I was the guy that should do that tour. They're all friends of mine, I love them to death, and they are a couple of the finest guitar players I've ever heard in my life - it was truly humbling to stand onstage next to them.  

"But they encouraged me - they were like, 'C'mon, you need to do this with us,' and I went out and did my 45 minute set, I opened every show, thankfully, and I got to do my thing. I sang, and played some of the more, you know - softer stuff, like Song For Jeff. I showed them a different side than shred. I didn't try to go out there and show them what I can do, because if it was a race, I woulda lost! I didn't want to be that guy. I'm totally the opposite really. I went out there full of respect and humility. They welcomed me, and the crowds - maybe they thought I was going to come out and sing Africa, or some shit, so I won a lot of people over. It was nice to get that from the audiences, because they can be tough, man.  

"I was also able to do it again in Mexico with Joe, and John Petrucci, who's also a stunning guitar player. Those guys are so bad assed that it's funny. They're so good it just makes me laugh. It's like, 'Wow - fuck it all.' But in the end, we all came out and play and we're like a bunch of fifteen year old kids playing classic rock songs, and having a laugh. It was a lot of fun, an incredibly positive experience, and I thank Joe for inviting me along to do that."

End of Part I - tomorrow, Luke joins Ringo Starr's All Star Band, we talk more Transition and we finally get to Toto.