Interview with Steve Lukather, Guitarist

What was your very first experience with making music?

I started with the Beatles and it got harder as it went. There was a bunch of kids down the street from my parents' house that had a band. They were like 15 and I was just a little kid, and I was just fumbling around, struggling to make a noise on the thing. And there was this one guy who was a guitar player. Brought down this Rickenbacker electric. You got a Beatles guitar, man. And he taught me how to play a Standells song called Dirty Water. That was one of the first things I learned. One finger. Dumb, right? But at the time, if you could play something off the radio, people were impressed.

My mom won a spinet piano on Hollywood Squares when I was like 10, 11 years old. It arrived at my house, just a little teeny piano. Nobody could play it, so it ended up in my room, and I just taught myself how to pick out the notes. And then I started playing with real keyboard players and they taught me stuff, and then I studied piano.

When did you start playing music?

I couldn't play, and one day I could. It was very weird. I was sitting there struggling through it and, nobody's ever going to believe this, all of a sudden I went like that. When my mother was pregnant, a psychic told her that I was probably going to be a musician, and at a certain age, eight years old, all of a sudden it would make sense to me. I saw the Beatles and started playing when I was around eight. It was very strange.

I kind of learned how to play the dumb play-along-with-everybody-else stuff, rhythm guitar, before I learned my first blues scale, about 11 years old or something. We had this guy Mark Hollingsworth. He had a great Jaguar guitar and he had the first fuzz and wah that I ever played through. He would come in and show us songs, and he took a shine to me for some particular reason. He goes, "You have a vibrato." And I go, "What's that?" It just seemed natural for me. I wasn't aware of it. And from there, I learned everything exponentially. As it got harder, I was able to do it.

What drew you to a career as a musician?

When I first got interested in becoming a studio musician, it was obviously after I met the Porcaro family. We spent a lot of time at their house rehearsing and stuff, and Jeff would always pop over because we were still in high school. Jeff was the drummer in Steely Dan when we were in high school. So they were making Katy Lied while we were in high school.

Our high school band was me and Michael Landau on guitar, John Pierce on bass, Carlos Vega on drums, Steve Porcaro on keyboards, plus we had three singers. Jeff and David Paich would come down and sit in with us, and then we were playing stuff off of Katy Lied before the record came out. We were all inspired. This is what we want to do. So we followed all the players that were on these records.

Where I live in Los Angeles, I could go see Larry Carlton and Robben Ford play at this little jazz club called Dante's right down the street. And because I knew Jeff was playing with him, I was able to meet these guys.

What do you enjoy most about making music?

Back then there was no demos. You showed up and the artist would sit behind the piano or an acoustic guitar and maybe somebody had written out a chord sheet. I can't tell you how many records I did on a legal pad, just writing down the changes. We'd have a chord chart and then we'd go out there and start [bleep] around with grooves and stuff, and then you see the artist get excited and the producer get it, because they hired us. They give us a sketch and we had to make the painting.

You can tell when something's happening. You really can. You look in the control room, everybody's jumping up and down dancing and Michael's smiling. You go, I think we're on to something. When things are moving, you get excited and you want to stay with it until you get the take.

There's something I can't even articulate verbally. It's kind of an X factor. You get four or five guys in a room with four different kinds of time feel, where this thing becomes group time. One guy might be a little ahead, one guy plays a little back, but somehow it falls into this thing, and you can't write it out and you can't rehearse it.

What was a great moment for you as a musician?

Dave sat down day one at Sunset Sound. He brings in Rosanna. He sits down at the piano and starts playing it, and we're going, "This is great, man." Because the record company said, "You have a hit record next time or you're toast." There's motivation. It was a Bo Diddley groove originally. And Jeff goes, "No, no, no, that ain't the groove, man." He sat down behind the drums and started playing what is now the legendary groove that he came up with. And this is all happening 10 minutes before we're going to cut the track.

It was supposed to end, and this used to happen a lot when we were young. We were just young and wanted to play, jam. It was take two. At the end Jeff just started playing that second line, and Paich went right into his Professor Longhair impression, and then I came in with the solo. That was on the spot.

Al Schmitt, legendary engineer, God bless his soul. I learned so much from him about engineering. I remember we all leaned over when it finally ended. I said, "Did you get all that?" Al goes, "Absolutely." And then I double tracked the power parts and stuff, and then I did the middle solo right there.

How did your career as a musician unfold?

When I decided that I wanted to do this professionally, my father, who was in the television and movie business at Paramount, knew Carl Fortina, who was the contractor for Paramount. He goes, "Hey, my kid plays guitar. He needs to learn how to read music." My dad was really adamant: well, if you're going to do this, then you got to learn. And I sort of went kicking and screaming at first. I had this great teacher, Jimmy Wyble, God bless. I had to audition for him. He goes, "Oh, you play good, but you can't read. So we're gonna start over." At 14, I started studying everything.

Through Jeff Porcaro and David Paich I met Jay Graydon, and I met David Foster, who was a huge influence and help in my early career. Jay taught me so much about getting my sound, recommended me for dates and hired me on his stuff.

I was doing 20-some-odd dates a week, man, legit, for what, 25-some-odd years. I stopped doing it almost 25 years ago. It wasn't because I was a great reader. I wrote 98% of all my own parts. That was why I got hired.

What advice do you have for new musicians?

First off, relaxing the wrist. If you're stiff like this, not only is it harder to execute, but it's also going to give you tendonitis one of these days. Advice number two: when it starts to hurt from practicing, please stop. Get up, stretch it out, walk around. Otherwise, you're going to practice yourself into hell. Then you won't be able to play at all. I got a couple friends of mine that have done that.

A lot of these guys didn't spend a lot of time doing the dumb [bleep], which is learning how to just play simple with a drummer and groove. It's harder than it looks. If you're a natural musician, time is something that should feel pretty normal to you. But playing along to records and figuring out why that feels good.

You got to be able to listen to somebody's simple music and hear parts around the melody. Here's the changes and here's the lead melody with the lyrics. What goes on around there is usually what makes a song different from being a record. The guys that were really successful all have the same arranger's ear.

I didn't get into recording studios until I'd been playing for 14 years. I wasn't ready when I was 15.

Think about a demanding producer, bandleader or collaborator. What made them difficult, and how did you work with them successfully?

I play something really good, and they go, "I think you got a better one in you." And I go, "You know what, man?" Because when that's gone, it's gone forever. Magnetic heaven or hell, depending on how you want to look at it. A couple of times, man, they'd erase it. And I go, "Okay, I'll go for it. I'll try to incorporate some of the ideas," but it's never quite the same. And then they keep making you do it and do it. And they go, "Can you remember what you played the first time?" Sometimes you got to live with it.

And there was other times I really wanted to punch something in. I did this song that I co-wrote for the Tubes called Talk to You Later, and that was one of those things where we got one channel. I ripped that in one, but the very last bend was a little under. I go, "Come on, man. Let me just punch in the last note." "No, I'm not touching it, because if we lose it..." So there's flaws on every record I've ever done. Sometimes I leave them in on purpose, because all my favorite records have little mistakes on them.

Who is your favorite musician, and why?

The Beatles are my number one. Steely Dan's in there too, man, just because of what it did to me harmonically and how much I love their music. That music is soul music to me and I learned so much dissecting it. It's feel good, intelligent, great lyrics, great harmonic grooves.

When the Royal Scam album came out, man, that was a life-changing guitar event. Larry Carlton playing the way he plays and using the notes the way he plays with a rock sound, with a distorted guitar sound. That was like, whoa. That was one of those moments in my life, just like hearing Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Clapton and Page playing at the top of their powers, besides the Beatles, which is the first hit. I had been going, I want to do something different than everybody else. So I basically got sucked into that album hard. What he did on the two solos on Don't Take Me Alive and Kid Charlemagne was so different. That caught my ear and I said, I want to do that.

Describe your style.

I would never call myself a jazz musician. I'm calling myself a rock musician that studied music, loves jazz, loves R&B, loves all the fusion, loves all of it. But I never transcribed a Coltrane solo in my life, and I didn't sit with the fake book.

All I ever did when I was young was copy the solos of my favorite artists. If you do it long enough and you're not just Xeroxing it, you incorporate some of those ideas in your own playing. That's how you develop your own style. There's only 12 notes. We all steal from who we steal from and get inspired from what we get inspired from. But at the end of the day, when you put it in the milkshake blender, it comes out as you.

I don't know what my style is. My style is like hanging on for dear life. And I make mistakes all the time, man. You just don't hear them.

It's all in the fingers. It's personal touch. Your vibrato is your thumbprint. No two alike. I play Jeff Beck's guitar, I don't sound like Jeff Beck. Eddie played my guitar and he sounded just like Eddie.

Tell me about a record or a part that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?

Lee Ritenour saved me when I was 19 years old. This Gene Page date was full orchestra, full strings, horns, live vocals, and I was guitar two. I showed up late because I got a flat tire on the way to the gig. So I barely snuck in, and I'm sitting at guitar two, and I'm panicking. I'm this little zit-faced punk, and I get plugged in and they're ready to take it. It's going direct to two-track. There's no "Can I punch my part in?" And as they start to count it off, I look at my part and it's the piano part in D flat. No chord symbols.

I had no time to look at it. Nothing. And I look over at Rit and he's got tacet, which means lay out, and a couple chords on his. And by the count of two, Rit did this. He bailed me. It was a hard part and he sight read it perfectly, of course. I got 16 bars to kind of collect myself. He could have let me die, and he could have ruined my career, because everybody in that room would have gone, "I saw that guy. He can't read." He saved my ass. And I would always do that for somebody if the tables were turned.

Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.

On Beat It, Michael sang me the lick, and I played bass on it too. Eddie had already played the solo. They sent the tape up to Ed, and the tape got cut, so it wouldn't sync up. So you had Eddie's first generation and Michael's first generation vocals, and the only thing else on the track was Michael hitting a trap case on two and four, and leakage from Michael's headphones where you could hear what the old track was.

So Quincy called me, Jeff Porcaro and an engineer named Humberto Gatica to go to Sunset Sound and fix the track. He goes, "You gotta make the track backwards to what you can hear on the tape, because I don't want to do Michael's vocals again." Jeff, the magician that he was, went out there with two drumsticks and a mic and made his own click. He goes out and plays the drums, no more than the second take. He goes, "You're up."

I did the really cranked-up thing with Marshalls, because Eddie's on it, and I played the bass part. We sent it back to Q and he goes, "It's too metal. I got to get this on pop and R&B radio. Get that little Fender out." So I double tracked it with my '59 burst into a modded old blackface Deluxe.

In which area would you like to improve as a musician?

I remember when I first heard Allan Holdsworth. When I heard Believe It, the Tony Williams album, in 1975, before Eddie was even thought of, we didn't understand what that was and how it was happening, but we listened to it over and over. He became a good friend, man. I'm not good enough to curl up his cables, but we were buddies.

The worst part about it, he'd play the most astounding stuff and then he'd come off the gig going, "That's the worst I've ever played." He was so humble, to a fault. Nobody else on planet Earth can play chords like that unless they have eight fingers down here.

And that legato thing. I could do a little bit of it, but that's something that I really wish I could. I just think, I got what I got. I got to be happy. I got more than I deserve.