Guitarist Steve Lukather is best known for his nearly five-decade stint in Toto. But years before “Africa” and “Rosanna” hit the airwaves, he was a session guitarist that backed everyone from Boz Scaggs and Diana Ross to Alice Cooper, Jimmy Cliff, Jackson Browne, and Peter Criss. He kept up a double life as a studio musician throughout the the entire history of the band, backing other artists whenever Toto had even a tiny moment of downtime. (The full list of records on Lukather’s official website is so long it stretches across 18 pages.)
Lukather’s career outside Toto reached a peak in 1982 when Quincy Jones asked him to play guitar on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He wound up cutting parts on “Beat It,” “The Girl Is Mine” and “Human Nature,” which was written by his Toto bandmate Steve Porcaro. Lukather became one of Jones’ main studio guitarists over the next decade, and they kept in touch long into the 2000s. When news of Jones’ death hit, we reached out to Lukather to hear his memories of their work together.
I was born in 1957, in North Hollywood, and never had to pay the kind of hard dues that Quincy had to pay. But I made about 10 records with him between 1983 and 1990, and we spent a lot of time talking because the machines would often break and they’d take a while to repair. I got to sit there and hear him talk about his life.
He’d talk about the trials and tribulations of what it was like to grow up [years before the Civil Rights Movement]. He told me things that I wasn’t even able to fathom as a kid from North Hollywood who grew up during two decades of peace and love in the 1960s and 1970s, when the music was great and we were all peaceful with each other.
I first heard of Quincy in the early Seventies when I was studying music really hard and dreaming about being a session musician. We crammed a 10-year education into three years so if we were ever called into a situation and had to work with people at the highest level, we’d be ready.
I learned that Quincy was originally a trumpet player, but he had to stop after he had an aneurysm [in 1974]. But even before that, he was a great producer and arranger. The first record he ever produced was “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore. That’s the whitest record ever made, but it just showed that he liked all kinds of music, and could do anything.
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He became the arranger for all those great songs by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. And after his aneurysm, all of his energy went into arranging and producing. He was just so talented. He was like a great casting director. That was his greatest talent, knowing who to hire, who should be on this date, who should play this part. He just had this ear. He could go, “That’s a hit song” or “That’s not a hit song.” He knew.
David Foster first recommended me to him when he was looking for musicians to play on [his 1981 solo LP] The Dude. He recommended me because Quincy was always looking for new, young guys to come in and play with the older guys to spice it up a little bit. He took a shine to me for some particular reason. I think he thought I was silly, I played good, and could get it done and bring something else to the music. The guys before us were all jazz guys playing rock, and we were rock guys that could play whatever was necessary.
When I first met him, I was struck by how warm he was. He was one of the warmest guys in the room. This was way before the Internet where there are millions of picture of everyone. You just knew people from album covers, and then those album covers came to life when you got to finally meet them. He was so welcoming. He welcomed me right in. And when you make people feel great, they give you their best. That’s a talent.
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Unlike some producers, he knew how to speak to musicians because he was one. The non-musician producers have a different way of approaching the whole thing because they’re not approaching it from a nuts and bolts perspective. Producers like Quincy can be like, “Give me that guitar…Let me show you this part on the keyboard.” Some of these other producers got lucky and they turned that luck into a career. That wasn’t the case with Quincy.
He had a certain way of putting musicians together to create a different kind of sound. He’d be like, “Let’s throw Lukather in there.” The next thing I knew, I’m in a room with Stevie Wonder and all these guys. It was like a childhood wet dream come true. And then this magic would happen. He created that magic. Everyone played their best around Quincy. He commanded the room. Everyone was their extra best for every take.
I remember hearing his work on Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall right when that record came out. I thought “Rock With You” was the greatest R&B record I’d heard in a long, long time. It just had that Quincy sound. He took Michael Jackson and put that Quincy fairy dust on there. And it was Rod Temperton’s song. The marriage of Rod Temperton with Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson was a magical triumvirate.
Thriller was the follow-up. By that point, I had already worked with Quincy on “Baby, Come to Me” by James Ingram and Patti Austin, along with a few other things. His office called me and [Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro] and said, “Look, Michael is doing another record. Quincy would like you on it.” I was like, “Yes, what time should I be there?” I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, man. I’m fucking A-list!” It was great.
A few months went by, and I kind of spaced out and forgot about it. But then Michael Jackson himself called me. I didn’t believe it was him, and I kept hanging up. But then I got a call a few hours later telling me it really was Michael Jackson. I called him back, and he just laughed. He thought it was funny.
The first song we did was “The Girl Is Mine” with Paul McCartney. It’s kind of a silly little tune looking back, but I got to meet my first Beatle. We were just honored to be there. When Paul and Linda walked in, there were cameras everywhere. It was just mad.
I wasn’t in the room when Michael and Quincy really worked out the songs together, but I know that Michael was really hard on himself. He wanted the very, very best and would spend the time to get it right, and it was very meticulously done. Many of those lead vocals were quintupled, I mean he’d record them five times and they’d be mixed very, very meticulously by Bruce Swedien to make it sound like it was one voice.
I’ve told the story a lot about how “Beat It” came together. The short version is that there were two versions of the song. The first version was done and Eddie [Van Halen] was going to do the solo. Michael had meticulously laid down his parts to make it perfect.
Ed didn’t like where they wanted to play the solo, so somebody up there in the studio cut the 2-inch tape, which had a safety code. At the time on actual tape, you needed that safety code to sync up the two machines. If you cut it, it’s spoiled. And even if you try to edit it back together, it doesn’t work. And that’s what happened. I played the solo on that master, and then cut it and put it back together again, but they couldn’t use it because it wouldn’t sync up to all the rest of the first generation rhythm track shit.
So they sent it to me and Jeff Porcaro and had us go to Sunset Sound with Humberto Gatica, the engineer, to try and put it back together again. But there was no click track. So Jeff had to make one, and then we overdubbed to that. It became this whole other thing. And so I played all the riffs and played the bass along with what Jeff laid down. We sent it to Quincy, and he said we put too many heavy guitars on it. He said it was too much to get on R&B radio or pop radio, I should use the small amp with less distortion and all that. So I did that. Then I went back and worked on the other parts with Michael and Quincy, and that was all she wrote.
“Human Nature” was written by Steve Porcaro, our keyboard player. That whole song is very much Toto and Michael. There wasn’t a guitar part when Steve wrote it. Quincy looked at me and said to write one. He went, “I need this to be a little funky.” And so I came up with that little part right on the spot.
We had no idea how big the album would be. When you’re making it, you go, “Oh, this is really good. This is going to do well.” But you never know it’s going to be as big as it was.
After Thriller, I worked with Quincy on a Herbie Hancock record, and his 1989 solo album Back on the Block. I had a lot to do with “The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite).” And when I think back to all those sessions with him, I remember just how much he laughed. He would talk about silly shit. Any musician that’s been successful most of his life basically has a 15-year-old sense of humor. And it was just good fun. I always walked away with a big smile on my face.
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Working with Quincy was always an incredibly positive experience. And we made a lot of cool music together. We experimented too. He wasn’t afraid to let you try something new. He was always like, “Come on man, what you got?” If it didn’t work out, he’d say, “That was a good try. Try something else.” And I always wanted to try something new and cool to impress the boss.
On his 80th birthday in 2011, we were asked to play with him at a special show at the Hollywood Bowl. They had me sitting right next to him. And he was still all the way there [mentally]. At the end, though…listen, everyone gets older. Ninety-one is a great run. And I’m just so happy he wanted me to work with him. Me and my boys are just so deeply honored to be a small part of something as huge as Thriller.
