I have just finished reading “The Gospel According to Luke”, Steve Lukather’s autobiography. I won’t be disappointed if you don’t know who Steve Lukather is, but I will tell you that you’ve listened to pop music made between 1975 and 1995, you’ve heard him play.
Lukather’s been a bit of a hero of mine for a long time. I deeply admire the fact that he’s a true virtuoso – blessed with that immediate “music just makes sense to me” instinct, but with the drive to always seek and learn. I like to think that if I was blessed with the same drive and ambition I might have ascended to greater heights as a musician, because for me it was just kind of easy from the start, things just sort of made sense. Sadly I’ve never worked as hard as I should have. Now I steal time to try and improve my playing, but life with my wife and kids is honestly more interesting to me than perfecting my hand synchronization or memorizing/internalizing the fretboard or learning to sight-read music.
But back to Luke (that’s what people call him, generally). His notable works as one of the most prolific session guitarists in the history of recorded music swing from movie soundtracks to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” to Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin'” to Spinal Tap’s “Break Like The Wind”. He was one of THE GUYS of the Yacht Rock era and had his fingers on every bit of pop music in the 80s, from hard rock to R&B. He was one of Quincy Jones’ go-to guys, appearing on most of what Q produced through the 80s and early 90s. His ability to come up with exactly the right part for something is virtually unparallelled. His improvisations on solos, a weird-but-always-melodic mix of his biggest influences from the Beatles to British Blues to Funk to Bebop, still “raise the fur” for me to this day. He just kills it. All the time. And he’s a goddamn character, too.
His book is so specifically written in his voice, if you’ve ever heard him talk you will hear him narrate the stories to you in your head. With his “Valley dude meets jazz cat” speech mannerisms and liberal use of profanity, it honestly feels like you’re hanging out with him while he’s telling you stories.
So why did I title this Luke and The Dude? Well, Lukather tells some stories about his interactions with various people in the music industry, and particularly about how his “friend” David Foster (look him up – you’ve heard his stuff, too) responded to Luke and his gang in their band Toto cleaned up at the Grammys in 1983 behind their legendary album Toto IV – they won album and record of the year (for the song Rosanna – my son’s favorite tune and one I’ve yet to tire of after almost 40 years), but the one that really pissed off Foster was Producer of The Year, because he was up for Chicago 16, and Toto beat him. He reacted by kind of shutting Luke out. They were friends, they’d do sessions, hang out, eat meals, everything, and one little award that Luke won that Foster wanted tanked it all. Because David Foster’s a little bitch. I find that true from other stories I’ve read, because he’s one of those producers who makes everything sound the way he wants, not the way the artist necessarily wants it. That is not a philosophy or method of production that I particularly appreciate, even if sometimes it’s amazing (I’m looking at you, Jeff Lynne and Mutt Lange).
Now, on the flip side, another nominee for that Producer of The Year award was the legend Quincy Jones, who was up for tons of awards for his album “The Dude”. When the Toto boys won Producer of The Year, he wasn’t crappy to them at all. He was excited for them and congratulated them.
Heading into reading this book I was pretty sure I was going to enjoy myself. After the last two music books I’d read (“Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life In Music” and “Van Halen Rising”), I was kind of starved to read something with the artist’s voice. Those other two books were great, but to be honest, since they were very facts-oriented and they were biographies written by someone else (Greg Renoff – who did a great job telling the stories but has a specific, very facts-oriented documentary/historian-style voice as a writer), they were a little less personal than I’d hoped. Luke’s book was the opposite. It was as I remember Nile Rodgers wonderful book or John Taylor’s. Or even Butch Walker’s book – the writing truly sounded like them. You can’t not read those books and come away from them knowing those guys as people a little more.
So I’m thankful that Luke decided to put it out there, because I’ve connected with him even more deeply than I did just as a fan of his playing.
I sincerely hope I get to meet him someday so we can swap stories about our boys on the spectrum. Maybe I can get him to show me that crazy descending bop-inspired run he does at the end of Rosanna.
If you dig Toto at all, or are interested in some good stories and a fun hang with a goddamn legend, check out The Gospel According To Luke. It’s fun.
Speaking of fun hangs, I had one last night via Google with Patrick from Chandler and The Bings. We talked about all sorts of stuff, and we talked about how thankful we were that the four of us have each other. It’s such a healthy dynamic. It is such a bummer that we aren’t playing shows, but – luxury problem – we REALLY shouldn’t play shows because our shows are usually fairly packed. We’re not putting anyone we love that comes to see us in that position, masks or not.
Instead, we’ve cooked up an excellent take on a Boy Band classic, and we should be releasing it very soon. We’re almost done with the mix, and then once it’s mastered and we clear the rights to release it (which shouldn’t be that bad – shout out to DistroKid for making that part super easy for artists), it will be available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon and stuff like that, and it will be available to stream on Spotify, iHeartRadio, etc. It’s heavy but still has the sassiness of the original, and features tight rhythm section work and some pretty cool parts. Pat and I share lead vocals and we all sing harmonies. It’s gonna be great.
Wear a mask. Physically distance. Black Lives Matter.
And peace be the journey.
TMS
