Steve Lukather: The Right Guy for the Part

Who is Steve Lukather? The guitarist, vocalist, and one of the songwriters of Toto. A session player with ridiculous credits, like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Lionel Richie, Boz Scaggs, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Olivia Newton-John. A songwriter for the likes of Chicago, The Tubes, Richard Marx, and George Benson. A member of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. I’d been listening to Toto quite a bit during the pandemic, and when a chance to interview Steve about his new – and life-changing – high fidelity hearing aid (Widex Moment) came about I was curious to see what he had to say about Toto, the session years, and more.

I want to ask about other topics, but let’s start with the Widex.

Yeah, man. It saved my fucking ass. Brad Whitford, from Aerosmith, came to a show in Boston or somewhere. We’re friends. We started talking, and my ears – I’ve got tinnitus. I haven’t heard silence since 1986. It’s like a prizefighter who gets punched one time too many. All of a sudden it goes from, “Hey, man; how’s it going?” to [ groaning in pain ]. What I’ve done in my research is to find out the actual tone that’s ringing in my head is not generated by something that’s inside of me, but by my brain. The exact frequencies that I damaged are 4 to 8 kHz. My hearing is good on the bottom, and the top is good. It’s those upper mids, which most people my age would experience anyway. I’ve been playing in bands since I was 19 years old, and it used to be “louder is better.” I was in a band with kids. “Let’s hook all the amps together and see how loud we can get!” But all the years in the studio, before there were individual mixes, you had headphones on your ears.

You turn it all up to hear yourself.

Which is the worst thing for your ears. Any ear doctor will tell you that. You’re shoving something right against your eardrum, and it’s really loud. I’ve been wearing earplugs for my hearing – to save what I have – for 20 years. I was talking about it with Brad backstage. I kept saying, “What?” I was doing it to everybody on the phone, and I’d have the TV on full blast, but I didn’t notice it. “What do you mean it’s loud?” I was talking about that, and Brad said, “I gotta turn you on to this. I got these Widex Moments and they saved me. This will change your life.” I actually went home and did something about it. This was starting to affect my home life. I’ve got little kids as well as grown kids. A teenager and a ten year old son. Everything was just, “What?” and it wasn’t getting any better. I went down to a hearing place and I got a pair. They tested my hearing and then showed me on the graph. She said, “Well, your deficit is 4 to 8 kHz. We’re going to bring that back up, and then you should be able to hear what you haven’t heard in a long time.”

Had you tried any other hearing aids? I know these ones are very specially designed.

No. I was saying, “I can’t use a hearing aid! I’ve got to mix records and play.” I got these and they changed my life. You can’t even see it. Even if I didn’t have any hair, you wouldn’t notice it. Aesthetically, that’s cool. I have nothing to be ashamed of, being that I’ve been a musician since I was a little kid. I put myself in harm’s way. When we first started in the studios, they’d have the big speakers and I’d be doing a solo. It’d be 120 dB in the room. I was getting off on that as a dumb shit teenager kid. I didn’t realize the damage. My mother was always like, “You’re going to lose your hearing.” I was like, “Eh, old people.” Well, guess what? I’m an old person now! Wearing the Widex, the tinnitus comes down remarkably. But when I take them out at night, go to sleep, and charge them back up, the ringing is much louder again. I remember Jeff Beck telling me that’s what it did for him. “It puts the frequency back in, and helps to cancel out and level back off frequencies.” I didn’t really understand what he meant, because it was 20-some odd years ago. I got it myself and went, “Wow!” It’s like the difference between putting your fingers in your ears and then taking them out. It has three different settings of EQs. One’s for normal, one’s for music, and one’s for another one called “pure.” If I put it on the music one and go outside at night, I can hear all the little creatures. I don’t have to turn the TV on full blast. And my cell phone goes directly [via Bluetooth] into my ears. I can’t imagine my life without them. It would be bad. I’ve got nothing but incredible things to say. There are a lot of units out there, but the Widex, you pay for what you get.

Well, a lot of hearing aids are midrange-y and voice-oriented.

They can be honky, like a plasticky fake sound. I was thinking, “I can’t do that.” I had these on my new solo record [ I Found the Sun Again ] and was wearing them.

Was that helping in the studio?

I was making my notes and saying to my engineer, “I think we need a little more 1 kHz on this. Am I right?” Because my ears were my whole life, and I know how to speak the language. I go, “I’m wearing these hearing aids, and I need you to tell me if what I’m hearing and what you’re hearing are two different things. Are we close at all?” But my readings were correct. Now when I play live and use in-ear monitors, I take these out and I have them EQ my in-ear monitors and raise the same frequencies so I don’t crank them up too loud and cause my tinnitus to make it worse. I don’t get that post-gig ear hangover, where my brain’s going, “It was loud.” If you sing too hard, you’re gonna go sharp.

Totally.

And if it’s loud, your ears start lying to you. With guitar I know what the notes are, but your voice doesn’t have frets. I had to incorporate how this is going to fit into my entire life. It’s changed my life. People are afraid to get them, or they tend to think there’s some kind of stigma attached. Man, I’m just trying to live my life. My hearing is my life. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. You don’t realize how important something is until you lose some of it.

When did you start using in-ear monitors on stage?

They had to talk me into it five or six years ago. At first it was hard for me. I liked hearing the room and all. There’s an isolating factor, but you get used to it. It’s also good that you can hear everything great, so the band’s super tight. When we didn’t have that, I didn’t realize somebody was playing a fill at the same time as me. We’d listen to a live show and realize we’re stepping all over each other. I’d get a little too loose on the road and could hear myself. You think that everybody hears what you hear, and that’s not the case!

I’ve been on stage looking at the drummer, barely able to hear the kick in certain rooms.

Right. If everybody starts going, “Turn me up!” the whole stage gets louder, and then the front-of-house gets loud. And if you have a big crowd, that’s 100-plus dB. Louder than the band, often. Wonderful crowds, but, in terms of sound pressure, it’s constantly in your face.

Speaking of live, I was able to catch your Toto livestream that’s coming out as With A Little Help From My Friends [DVD, Blu-ray, CD]. My wife told me to tell you that it was her favorite livestream of last year.

Really? Because for us, we were playing in a little club with the house lights, globe ceiling, and I put the new band together in ten days from scratch. We did the one gig, and now we’re ready to go when it’s time to go, and that’s 2022, starting in the spring. Then I’ve got gigs with Ringo and Toto in Europe. It’s going well. Our first show in Amsterdam went up, and it was one of the biggest shows of the whole tour, a 17,000-seater for us alone. We sold 13,000 tickets the first week, and it’s 14 months away. For us, that’s a big deal. It shows that people did see the livestream and they’re coming back, not running away. There are only two of us left who can, and want to, tour. The rest of the cats are side-men, died, can’t medically do it, or retired from the road and don’t want to do it anymore. Joe [Williams, vocalist] and I did solo records [Steve’s I Found the Sun Again and Joe’s Denizen Tenant , both in 2021] and we were going to go out anyway. David Paich [songwriter/keyboards] who started the band with Jeff Porcaro [drums], got involved and he worked on both of our albums. The promoters were like, “Use the [Toto] name and go. It’s a legacy band.” People passed away; people understand. As long as the band’s great and we’re interpreting the music and have got the singer and guitar player – I’m the only guy who’s been in all 15 versions – then it’s real. I’m trying to keep our music alive. It makes it great for Joe and I, because we can play the hits, we can play deep cuts, and then we can play some solo tracks with new cats who are kicking our asses. We’ve got these younger guys who are amazing and are making it fun to play the old tunes again. There’s a new energy to it.

Absolutely. I can feel that on the livestream.

Yeah. These guys knew the shit better than me! When you hire the pros, you get the pros. A lot of people watched the livestream. People requested, saying, “We want to see it again.” So we got an offer to put it out on DVD. It was expensive to put the band together.

I was figuring that.

You gotta pay everybody. You’ve got a crew, the rehearsal room, and all the gear. By the time you’re done, it’s six figures before you leave the room. You roll the dice and we came up okay. Plus, I want everybody to get used to the fact that there’s a new band. There’s also a companion DVD with interviews with David Paich, myself, Joseph, and all the new guys explaining why we’re doing this. I put my whole life into this. I’m not going to start all over again in a van and do clubs and small theaters. As long as people are showing up, I can say, “This is what it is.” The music is Toto rather than just one person. Get great musicians to play the music, to pay homage to the guys who originally played the parts, and then it becomes real. I still love doing this. If nobody showed up, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d be out doing something else. But there’s still a lot of life left. We’ve got almost three billion streams, and most of it in the past few years. We’ve got a younger audience now, multi-generational. I’m going to take this ride! The work of my life’s finally starting to pay off. A second wind.

You’ve mentioned before the way you felt that Toto was taken critically.

I did it every day of my life for 45 years. I can’t even get a compliment without it being a sucker punch or a backhanded one. There are people who love us. We’re polarizing. You either love us or you hate us.

I think there’s an equalization of music, where people are looking at the past and going, “Hey, these were hits, but they’re classy and well-done, and there’s reason they were hits.” Younger audiences don’t see a stigma and aren’t reading Rolling Stone in order to decide.

That’s the good news! They aren’t nearly 80-year-old men, angry and sitting in a boardroom somewhere with Ramones t-shirts on thinking they’re the tastemakers of the youth when they’re the fucking grandparents of the youth. They figured, “Oh, I know about music because I can write about it.” Really? I could write about brain surgery; it doesn’t mean I can do it!

We’ve seen more reassessments of your work lately though.

Yes, exactly. The internet. You can talk to your audience now. I’m not worried about what the Los Angeles Times or New York Times critics think about me, which can make or break you, supposedly. Obviously, it made it harder for us, but it didn’t break us. We were taking every fucking punch there is to take. I’ll get beat up in a Ringo article. It’s like the guys can’t stop. I still think, “You weren’t even alive when we did our first record! Fuck you.” But then there are people who love the music, and they far outweigh the handful of assholes. We turned down the cover of Rolling Stone . We’re the only band ever. How’s that for a punk rock move? Even the punk rockers sold out to those assholes. We’re the only guys who said, “We don’t need you.” Not a great career move, overall. We’ll never be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for all that shit, but what is that at this point anyway?

Aren’t you guys on the inductees list?

No, never. We’re not allowed to be. I’m not saying everybody has to like my music, but after 45 years – considering what all the guys who have been in this band have done outside of the band – including the 5,000 records we’ve played on collectively outside of Toto, it’s kind of astounding not to receive more recognition. And we still take sucker punches from old, angry rock journalists. Give me a break! We can go play in Australia and 20,000 18-year-old kids lose their minds.

I know you’ve all mentioned that being seen as session players was also a detriment to this “credibility.”

People don’t even know what we did. They think we sat in chair and read the notes that were on the paper. If I had a dollar for every time I saw [simply] B-minor, A, and G on a chart, I could retire. We created our own parts and wrote our own parts on the spot. The solos were one or two takes. We did this every day for 25 years. People see that as, “Oh, you guys are just studio musicians.” We’re not the third viola player. We’re creating our parts, and that’s why we got hired.

I think that’s been reassessed. Like when you look at The Wrecking Crew documentary [Tape Op #107 ].

Those were our heroes. Also the guys who came after them, including Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, Lee Ritenour, Jay Graydon, and Ray Parker Jr.. Those are the guys who I look up to and am still dear friends with. We sat next to each other and created music together every day. It was like this little fraternity we were a part of. It was the best years of my life, man. I was in a band that was selling platinum records and playing on every record in L.A. My dream came true a thousand times. If Miles Davis or Elton John calls me on the phone and asks if I can be in the band and I can’t do it, that means more to me than any journalist. I studied this. I still practice and give a shit. I’m very grateful and very respectful for what I’ve gotten to do.

Listening to your recent solo record, I Found The Sun Again , I loved that!

Oh, thanks. I do my records for me. I want to do it old school. Live solos and everything. No clicks, no rehearsals. Here’s the chart. We’ll run it down one time, fix it, rehearse any bit that we need to, and let’s cut.

Where did you track that at?

At Steakhouse, my old studio in North Hollywood. Old custom Neve desk from London built for EMI Records. Killer.

Oh, man.

Ken Freeman, the engineer, co-produced it with me. He’s brilliant. He’s our live guy too. I wanted to do a record that sounded like it was made in 1971 but has 2020 sounds. At the end of eight days I had this record ready to mix. One song a day; vocals and everything. I’m not going to kill myself anymore, like we used to do on the Toto records. It used to be six months and a magnifying glass on everything.

You’ve probably been through the wringer of over-analysis in the producing department.

I have! Guilty as charged. Listen, I love big, produced records; but I also wanted a chance to do something that was more real and raw, warts and all. There are no bad warts. If Miles Davis squeaked his horn once, you didn’t go, “Oh, he sucks!” You say, “It’s Miles Davis!” Nobody’s perfect, but we live in an era where everybody cuts and pastes. Is it on the grid? Let’s [Celemony] Melodyne [tune] everything until all of a sudden it’s this shiny piece of nothing. How many songs on the radio now are going to be played in four years?

I find as I get older, my taste gets wider and wider. I dig into music in a way now that I hadn’t heard before.

Life is not a self-promotion. I go back and listen to records. I went and put Sgt. Pepper’s... on, lying here with my head between the speakers. I listened to it and how brilliant it was. Knowing now what I know – knowing the guys, especially Ringo is one of my closest buddies – and I adore this band. What these guys did was wild. Two 4-track machines? You hear these compositions, and the music, and the playing. There are no click tracks. These guys played and sang. That’s why they’re the greatest band in the world. I saw some new footage from the Peter Jackson movie, The Beatles: Get Back .

I wanna see that!

You see the happy Beatles ending, not what we remember as the darker side of the Let It Be movie that we all know so well. I was sitting in the room with Ringo sitting behind me. They look happy, and everybody’s getting along. Yoko [Ono] and Linda [Eastman] are all happy. You saw a different side in all this extra footage. There are alternate takes on the roof. The Beatles, those four guys, they fucking make that noise. The brilliance of George Martin and Geoff Emerick [ Tape Op #57 ], the whole team that gave us the roadmap of how to write records and make songs for the rest of our lives.

They raised the bar.

They created the bar, and it still has not been surpassed. When you think they did all that in eight years, from Please Please Me to Abbey Road ? Come on, man.

Ringo’s on your new record as well.

Yes, he is.

That’s a beautiful track [“Run to Me”].

Thank you. It was written specifically for his 80th birthday, as we couldn’t have a party for him because of this COVID shit. So, David Paich, Joseph Williams, and I said, “Let’s write a Beatles kind of song for Ringo.” He heard it, liked it, and we got him to play on it. We filmed it at his house, and then I filmed the rest of the shit in my backyard for a dollar with Joseph Williams on one iPhone. I put it together and it was a gift to him. It came out so good and I said, “Can I put it out?” He said, “Yeah, sure.” Joe and I have written songs for his new album. I started playing the guitar because of The Beatles. I wanted to be in Ringo’s All-Starr band. Gregg Bissonette brought Dave Hart, the producer and agent; he’s the guy who searches out talent for his [Ringo’s] bands. They were in Paris and had a night off, and we were playing at the arena there, the Zenith. He brought Dave Hart to see me, because he was like, “You’ve gotta get Luke in the band!” Thank you for changing my life, Gregg Bissonette! He’s been a constant friend in my world. He played on the new record, and he’s one of my favorite human beings as far as being one of the greatest drummers. Getting into that whole group of people [has been amazing]. Joe Walsh is a friend. He’s Ringo’s brother-in-law. I cut one of his songs as an homage on my new record, “Welcome to the Club.” Joe Walsh is one of my all-time heroes, since 1969.

I enjoy the guitar tone you’ve had over the years. You played with a higher gain than a lot of people coming before you, especially if you look at the session playing.

Yeah, I was one of those guys who started out showing up with a Marshall and a ‘59 Les Paul, or I had a modded [Fender] Deluxe Reverb. It was hot-dogged by Paul Rivera back in the day; a real special amp. This is before everybody knew how to quadruple their parts and make it sound tuned down and heavy. I was the guy who could get the authentic burned sound without a jazz guy using a fuzz tone, bending flat and shit. I was a teenager jumping off my ass and being a rabble-rouser, playing with all these giant heroes of mine who I’d read about on the back of album covers and worshiped. All of a sudden, I’m in the room with them and going, “Pinch me now.” I had that with Joni Mitchell. She goes, “Oh, here’s my new song,” and she sings it. Jaw-dropping. Or Miles Davis laughing at my jokes. I was on stage at the Tokyo Jazz Festival with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. I’ve had a chance to produce Jeff Beck. It was magical to find myself in the room with all my heroes. Hearing Beatles’ stories from Paul [McCartney], George [Harrison], and Ringo. Not third-person; first person. It doesn’t get old to me. I’m not jaded, like, “Oh, it’s not a big deal.” It’s a big deal!

Do you have a personal studio anymore? You had The Steakhouse Studio.

I used to be a part-owner in it 20 years ago, and I ended up not doing as much. I thought I was going to produce more records when that was still a viable thing. It’s hard, as you well know. It became a money pit. I was throwing money at something I wasn’t using, so I was like, “Guys, I’ve gotta get out. I’m going to be on the road.” I was able to maneuver out, and they were able to upgrade the studio even more and turn it into a real business. It’s become one of the nice rooms in Los Angeles now. A medium-sized, great room.

Do you have anything set up for demoing, working on songs, and playing on tracks at home?

Never. I have a guitar and a piano. I get the ideas and then I’ll go flesh it out with Joseph. I speak engineer, but I’m not an engineer. I understand the frequencies and know how to do this and mix a record, but after studying with the greatest of the greats, and watching how Al Schmitt, George Massenburg [ Tape Op #54 , 63 ], and Greg Ladanyi… we’ve always had the best engineers. We went through a lot trying to find our thing. Toto got lucky on the first album [ Toto ], because we made a band from nothing. We’d never played live, and all of a sudden we got discovered. They asked me to join the band; it was my dream come true. Then my credibility went sky-high because of my involvement with them. I started getting recommended. Jeff recommended me, Jay Graydon took me under his wing, and Lee Ritenour and all these guys took a shine to me and turned me on to gigs and nurtured me. They’re still soul brothers to me.

Do you remember getting the gist of how to play less and controlled in the studio?

Yeah. Well, with a lot of these guys now, god bless them, super chops! They learn that first. Playing a simple rhythm part with eighth notes and making it swing a little bit? They just never bothered with it. They went from A to Z and skipped over all the middle parts. It’s like eating all the frosting off a cake but not eating the cake. You missed the point! Simplicity’s what you need, in order to make things work.

Right, especially in the studio.

I’ve met guys who can play with 20 fingers and shit. That’s impressive to me. I know all the great guys who originated this shit. But now, the third or fourth generation of it, they can imitate. But they don’t have the meat and potatoes, or the experience and knowledge. If everybody knows how to do the magic trick, it’s not magic anymore. What you were saying about simplicity in the studio, you can’t be in a studio and go in there playing like that. You’re fired, immediately! Even if it’s relevant to the sessions. They need someone who can play and make it not feel stiff and weird. You need to be able to find the pocket between the bass player and that middle ground where it becomes “groove time.” That’s how I work.

Well, you mentioned swing. The slightest little indication of swing can make everything so beautiful.

That’s the part you can’t be taught. It’s a natural feel thing. That’s what can put you in the position to be a studio player, or to just be a band guy. In the studio, the microscope’s on, and you’ve got to get this in one or two takes. Unless it’s like back in the ‘70s; they used to make us do 100 takes, just to do it when, in fact, it was done on the third take. After killing it, we’d go back and listen to the first couple of takes and Jeff [Porcaro] would go, “What have we been doing?” The drum part, the meat and potatoes of the track, had the magic interplay that happens when you play. That’s not on the paper. Most of the time, it’s just chord sheets with a few rhythmic notations. Rarely did you get a whole bunch of written music.

Right.

You had to be ready for it though! It was my first year doing real sessions, and Lee Ritenour saved me once when I was 19 years old. I was late to a full orchestra session. Strings, horns, vocalists; everything live to 2-track. Gene Page was the arranger, who was known to write shit out. I took the date and I was like, “I hope he doesn’t write me complete fly shit.” I got to the date, and I was late because I got a flat tire on my VW. I didn’t even have a nice car yet! I showed up at the date and I had just worked with Lee, who took a little shine to me. He said, “Ah Luke, what’s up?” I go, “Dude, I’m late. Fuck.” They’d already done one or two takes. Next cue, and there are a hundred fucking things. These weren’t songs. Sometimes it was 16 bar cues, sometimes it was 2 bars. Sometimes there was a whole song, sometimes it was a bumper for a commercial. So, I get there, I’m late, and there’s “guitar one,” which would obviously be Ritenour, and “guitar 2,” which would be me. Guitar 2 gets shit on. You get the hard part. I get there and look at my part; it’s the piano part in D-flat, with no chord symbols. D-flat! There are clusters across my whole page. I looked at Rit, and he saw the look on my face. Gene Page was counting off the chart, “One, two,” and Rit grabbed my part and he gave me his. To this day, 45 years or whatever it is later, we’re still close friends. I still tell the story in front of him. I go, “Rit, man, you could’ve let me die, and that would have been the end of my career. People would’ve said, ‘Oh, that kid can’t read or do anything.’” It would have been the end, before it even started. Lee Ritenour saved my fucking ass. I was able to compose myself, and the rest of the day was okay. I could read it and cut it. But that first one. I could have bullshitted my way, and it could have been okay . But I was so terrified by what I saw. I’d never seen anything that hard put in front of me. It’s fine if it’s some single line shit. But when it’s four or five part harmony chords, and they’re piano chords that sometimes don’t lay right on the guitar? I didn’t even have to say anything to Rit. I must have looked like I saw a ghost, and he knew it. I owe him everything.

That’s amazing.

When I was a kid, I asked [drummer] Jim Keltner, “How can I thank you for recommending me for the gig?” He was like, “Do it for somebody else, man. It’s all about paying it forward.” If you live life like that and are grateful, it’s a better quality of life. I’m appreciative and grateful for the gift I’ve been given. I don’t take it for granted. There are millions of guys who are better, but I was the right guy for the part at the time.

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