“I’ve had an extraordinary life,” Steve Lukather says. “I’m one lucky guy.”
Indeed he is. Lukather spent the summer touring with Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band before hitting the road with Toto for their massive North American summer tour with Christopher Cross. On September 24, he’ll be back on the road with Ringo on the Fall 2026 Tour running through October 7.
But of course Luke is equally well known for his studio session work. He’s one of history’s most prolific session guitarists, contributing to over 1,500 albums across multiple genres. A definitive studio legend, he played the iconic riff on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It“, the solo on Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” and tracked hits for icons like Lionel Richie, Chicago and Aretha Franklin.
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“I used to go to work every day not knowing what I was gonna do,” Lukather says. “There were no rehearsals, and no demos. All we could say was, ‘What are we doing today? Who’s on the session? Who’s the artist?’
“One day it could be Alice Cooper, and the next it was writing with Bernie Taupin,” Lukather says. “I found myself in these amazing situations at a very, very young age. I just parlayed it, man. Ironically, it was an era to have cool guitar solos in pop songs. I got to play a lot of them… even the dumb ones!”
With that prolific studio career in mind, Steve Lukather kicked back with Guitar Player to look back on his working relationships — and sometimes friendships — with Ringo Starr, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, George Benson and Eddie Van Halen.
Ringo Starr
“He’s an inspiration. I love that man so much. He’s become such a dear friend. Who would have known? If you’d told me when I was a kid, ‘Oh, yeah, when you’re, like, 69 years old, man, Ringo’s gonna be one of your best friends,’ I would have lost my shit.
“I had the great honor of working with Paul [McCartney] several times, and I became great friends with my first guitar hero, George Harrison, where we hung out and played together. So when I heard that Greg Bissonette recommended me to Ringo, saying I’d be perfect for his band, I was excited.
“He recommended me not only because I can play everybody else’s stuff, but because I’m a team player. I’ll play lead, rhythm, and I’ll even jump on bass. But it’s so much fun, and Ringo treats us so well. He just loves to be one of the guys, and man, it never gets old to turn around and look at Ringo Starr playing drums. It’s like, ‘Just pinch me now, man! Please don’t fucking let this dream end.’
“But the band is like a little family. We really do love and respect each other, and Ringo is the ultimate boss. He’s got wisdom, humor, and he’s as fast and funny as he was in A Hard Day’s Night. Plus, he still plays great! I mean, all those Beatles records had no click tracks, and all those creative, inventive parts were all Ringo, man. He’s so important to the percussion within the family of rock and roll. But he’s just fun to be around, is brilliant, and is just infectious. He still does this for fun because he loves music.”
Joni Mitchell
“I’ve always been a fan of Joni Mitchell ever since I had a girlfriend in high school who was obsessed with her music during the Blue period. And then, when Court and Spark came out, I was starting to get really interested in studio players, like Larry Carlton, because of the creativity.
“So when I got to work with Joni [on 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast and 1985’s Dog Eat Dog], I was really excited to get the call. But I was like, ‘Wow… what am I going to bring to this, man?’
“I walked into the studio, and she was sitting at the piano, playing the song that we were going to cut that day. She was going through it on her own, and singing, and man… it’s hard when you’re in a room with greatness like that. It’s hard not to be affected by it in a visceral way.
“It was so naturally wonderful and beautiful, and I could immediately hear a part in my head because that’s the job. You have to have a ranger’s ears and be able to listen to somebody play a song and hear the parts that you can add to make it something. But you don’t want to get in the way, you want to enhance the hooky part on the arpeggio or add to what she’s already got going on.
“So we started working on the tune, and it was beautiful. I had a nice little lick I came up with that she really liked, and that set the tone for it. And believe it or not, she wanted to rock and roll it up a little bit. [laughs] It was the early ‘80s, and all that shit was happening. I kind of laughed at first, but it took her out of her normal place, which some of her hardcore fans didn’t dig. And of course, I take all the shit for it. [laughs] But that was a fun record to do. She was so nice and fabulous.”
Michael Jackson/Quincy Jones
“I got the call from Quincy for ‘Beat It,’ and when I got to my parts, I initially cranked the riff out on a bunch of quadrupled Marshalls. But then Quincy called and said, ‘It’s great… but it’s too much. I gotta get this on R&B radio. Use a little Fender amp and turn down the distortion.’ That’s what you hear when the riff comes in.
“And then when I heard Michael sing, ‘Your butt is mine,’ I was just a smartass 20-something-year-old kid, and I laughed. But Quincy goes, ‘Stop it, bro. This is gonna be a big record. I’m telling you.’ I went, ‘Yeah, right!’ But it was—and still is—massive.
“But with Michael, there was nothing weird at all. He was my age, he laughed at my shit, and he thought I was amusing. He was a real pro, though what did make me laugh was his monkey, Bubbles, ripped apart the vocal booth. [laughs] That was the weirdest thing I saw. It made me laugh on the floor, of course.
“Michael was funny, man. His body language told you if he liked a part or not. He’d start dancing, and it would just be me, Quincy, and Michael, and I’d start playing something, and Michael would say, ‘What about this? You should change it to this because you don’t want that going over and over.’
“He was very collaborative. He wanted my input. And Quincy welcomed that, but he didn’t write my parts. With songs like ‘Human Nature,’ Quincy would go, ‘Make it funky for me, man. I gotta get this on R&B radio.’ I came up with that part on the spot, and that’s what ended up on the radio.
“So Michael was a pro. And Quincy was a great casting director, who had a great ear for songs and got the right guys on the right songs.”
George Benson
“I love George Benson. I was into the CTI-era records, which I grew up listening to when I was like 12 years old. [CTI was a legendary jazz record label founded by Creed Taylor in 1967.] I used to listen to all that shit when I was in junior high and early high school because I was getting into jazz, started studying music, and really learning how to learn and read music, and about harmony theory.
“I got deep into it, and I was into George. And then, when I heard him sing, I lost my shit. I go, ‘This guy sings like fucking Stevie Wonder! Are you kidding me? Where’s he been hiding that?’
“So, later on, Jay Graydon, one of my best friends and a big mentor to me, was producing George. He goes, ‘Lukey, come on over. I’m working on George’s greatest-hits album and I need a single. What do you got for me?’
“I had the opening piano riff for ‘Turn Your Love Around,’ and I brought that over to Jay’s house. And then, over a copious amount of alcohol and whatever… we wrote the song in about 20 minutes. And then, George heard it, loved it, and by the grace of God, it was a big, huge hit record. We won a Grammy for it, and that was my first. And then, I wrote three or four other songs for George.”
Eddie Van Halen
“Eddie was good to me, man. We were very encouraging to each other. But here’s the funny thing: our music hangs were not many, but our friends’ hangs were deep. We talked about our families, and everything, you know? But early on, I remember I was doing the solo to [Toto’s] ‘Girl Goodbye,’ and someone walked in with the Van Halen album.
“I was sitting there doing a few takes and shit, and then someone said, ‘Stop everything. I want you to hear something.’ He dropped the needle on ‘Eruption,’ and I’d never heard anything like that. I was like, ‘What the fuck was that?’ It was jaw-dropping, obviously. The first time I heard that, I was 19 years old, while working on that record, and I fell off my chair.
“I said, ‘Well, there’s really no point in continuing on anymore…’ [laughs] I was like, ‘What was that? How do you do that? Who makes that noise? I must be friends with him now.’ That’s really what I thought… and that’s kind of what happened. I met Eddie at the California World Music Festival in ’78, we got to know each other and started hanging out a lot around 1980.
“And then, we became really, really close friends. We lived near each other and had a lot in common in terms of our views on life, music, and family. And even though we didn’t play anything like each other, Ed and I were always so supportive of what each other was doing. Ed was always supportive of what I was doing and what my band was doing.
“He’d always show up at the gigs, and Ed and I would play each other’s stuff whenever we had new stuff. I remember hearing the demo for ‘Jump’ in 1983. I said to Ed, ‘There’s your number one record, Ed. Jeez.’ And when he started with Music Man, I was the tiebreaker for which pickup he liked best. He went with mine, so that was cool.”
