Total articles: 312
The essential studio guitarist offers an insight into the studio guitar world. This book is not for the beginner guitarist. It has been compiled for the intermediate/advanced player who is ready to take a leap into the music profession. It is also for the player who has been in the profession for some time and is thinking seriously about the next step.
Steve Lukather and Eddie Van Halen are best friends. They bring out the goofy, little kid in each other and remind one another how to keep celebrity at bay. But from a musical outlook they are about as different as it gets.
A few months after the death of Toto and session drummer Jeff Porcaro, Modern Drummer released a special tribute. Besides an editor's overview, several readers' memories and an tribute introduction by Robyn Flans, there's a huge list of friends who participated in this tribute: David Paich, David Hungate, Lenny Castro, Boz Scaggs, Jim Keltner, Gary Katz, Paul Jamieson, Mike Baird, Vinnie Colaiuta and of course Steve Lukather.
The cream always rises to the top. It'a a crass saying, no mistake and when applied to the music business it makes one wonder. About the charts for instance, where it's not so much the cream that rises as the de-hydrated milk powder. However, in some instances there's a ring of truth to the saying. Take the ultra-competitive L.A. session scene. To make the initial break into the studio network in Tinseltown takes a combination of ability, attitude, state of the art gear, versatillity and liberal helping of luck.
For Steve Lukather to use the words 'taste' and 'feel' to describe another player (bearing in mind that 'Luke' himself is seen by many of the world's best as the paragon of those virtues) is one big compliment. Toto's guitarist - whatever your opinions of the band - has a playing style that could be used as the role model for modern rock playing. He's fast, he's smooth, he has recognisable touch and tone and is as capable of pinning down a track with a simple riff.
Again, there's no substitute for experience. "With any amount of success you have," Lukather cautions, "there's always the disappointment factor. If you haven't gone through that yet, you will, and that's where you learn. You learn humility, you learn what it's really all about, and you earn longevity, I just want to be around for a long time. I don't want to be a 'Whatever happened to...,' you know?"
Steve Lukather, rock sharpshooter. He's best known as the guitarist, singer, and co-composer for Toto. But in Los Angeles, a town known for its scores of guitarists, he holds the reputation of being one of the first (perhaps the first) guitarists to call when a screaming solo or crunchy rhythm part is needed. The list of artists he's worked with reads like a who's who of the top of the charts.
His group is Toto. If you don't know it's guitarist's name, you know they swept the Grammys this year [1983]. Here's how you can do it. Finally, the secret of guitarplaying success can be revealed. It's a heretofore obscure method known as the Lukather Success System and it operates something like this:
