Toto guitarist Steve Lukather is renowned as one of the all time great session musicians, having played on a huge array of hit records – including the biggest selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. And as Lukather reveals in a new interview, a highlight of his career was working with Joni Mitchell in the ’80s.
Speaking to Guitar Player, Lukather discusses various aspects of his musical life outside of Toto. He recalls how he helped create Michael Jackson’s mega hit Beat It with producer Quincy Jones. He also talks about playing with Ringo Starr & His All Star Band and his longstanding friendship with Eddie Van Halen.
Lukather has fond memories of working with Joni Mitchell on two albums, Wild Things Run Fast (1982) and Dog Eat Dog (1985). But he admits that those albums – the first one especially – did not connect with Mitchell’s fanbase.
He tells Guitar Player that he was first introduced to Mitchell’s music by a girlfriend in high school who was “obsessed” by the singer-songwriter’s classic 1971 album Blue. He developed a deeper interest in Mitchell’s work when he heard her 1974 album Court And Spark, on which star session guitarist Larry Carlton featured prominently.
By 1982, Lukather was himself well established as a session player. He had also made four albums with Toto, the last of which – Toto IV – would win multiple Grammys and yield the huge hits Rosanna and Africa.
Nevertheless, when he was approached to work with Mitchell on Wild Things Run Fast he wasn’t sure he was the right fit.
“When I got to work with Joni, I was really excited to get the call,” he says. “But I was like, ‘Wow… what am I going to bring to this, man?’”
He recalls his first impression of Mitchell: “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.”
He continues: “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.”
Mitchell assembled a stellar cast of musicians for Wild Things Run Fast, with Larry Carlton on guitar along with Lukather and Michael Landau, plus bassist Larry Klein, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummers John Guerin and Vinnie Colaiuta.
James Taylor provided backing vocals on the track Man To Man, and Lionel Richie sang co-lead on You Dream Flat Tires.
Lukather played on the album’s title track and three others – Chinese Café/Unchained Melody, Love and Man To Man.
As Mitchell’s first album of that decade and her first for a new label, Geffen Records, Wild Things Run Fast also marked a shift away from the jazz-influenced direction of her late-’70s period towards a more mainstream sound inspired by The Police and Talking Heads.
As Lukather recalls: “Believe it or not, she wanted to rock and roll it up a little bit. 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. But that was a fun record to do. She was so nice and fabulous.”
