Steve Lukather Unfiltered: Outrageous Stories, Riffs & Surprises

hey everybody from the title you can see that my guest today is Mr Steve Luca now I've had Luke on the channel before and I got to see him when I was out at the George Benson gathering in Phoenix a couple weeks ago now we got together in this weird room so it looks kind of bad but if you'll just ignore that he tells some hilarious stories as only Luke can so here's my interview would have been hilar wait okay you were telling a story before though equipment failing Roger oh Roger Waters okay like this

is at the coliseum in La like you know 80,000 people 20 years ago all whenever he went out and did the wall the big his Extravaganza of the wall okay and some of my crew guys were on the gig yeah and I sitting behind the thing with the ultimate spot mhm with you know with the front of house trip the front house mixer and some of the some of the lighting guys I knew some of the you know and and the monitor guy was our was our guy God bless him he passed away and a

lovely guy and he got me great you know he set me up and so I'm the third tune second or third tune man his mic went out his lead vocal mic now you're talking about a production that had to be100 million production like so how many people are on stage well I don't know how many they're all hidden all over the place you know snow we was playing guitar he played great um uh it was just an extravagan okay when his mic goes out what 57 which is like an $880 mic anyway the 57 goes

out there's nothing he stops the show now you know because of the intense production it is you know prot tooled and clocked with all it has to be with lighting hes and all this other stuff MH so he stops in the middle of the song and it's and like the sun is just coming down so the whole wow factor all of a sudden goes everybody goes like oh it was building to this fever so 10 five minutes goes by there's cats you see cats on stage cables flying and everything like that and there's 880,000 people

in the audience God and Roger just disappears off stage everybody's kind of standing there and finally test one two it comes back on he walks back on the stage and they say okay we're going to start this one from the top and they did the show and it was Flawless and amazing it was one of the most it was an incredible show visually to see and everything like that you know I asked my friend I said what took that multi- gazillion dollar show down right he goes when I tell you you're going to lose your

a $20 XLR somebody rolled a case over it oh my God yeah like somebody would start to load out too early or something like that sometimes these guys you know my God my job's unbelievable and it took the whole show I said how pissed was Roger he go he was pretty cool because he realized what a fluke it was it's not like somebody did him in yeah that's the thing when stuff goes wrong live and it happens to everybody certainly happened to me a million times Nobody Does it on purpose right so if you throw

a wobbler and start screaming at everybody which sometimes In the Heat of the battle you get like you know you don't you're just freaked out I had one where my whole pedal board went out Johnny was trying to fix and I'm trying to I can't sing because I can't hear anything it's like and I'm I'm just going like this it gets on the internet and people like oh Luther such an yelling at his guy go no just was like Panic right you're standing there in front of 10,000 people you can't sing and nothing works and

okay now aren't these the things that you remember the most though when when things go wrong well when something disastrous happens you know yeah I mean you do you laugh about it you what else are you going to do I mean so many things now it's like when you go see the show and it sounds just like the record it's because it is the record it is the record right I not doing that do you care though that people do that or no it depends on the artist yeah you know well I don't want to

start naming nam I get in trouble that way but there are people that I've gone to see that I know that's what's happening but I don't think about it because it's such an incredible I understand that the timing with the visuals and all this stuff you can't be when you're picking up Union guys at every Arena who or you're using the truck drivers or whatever they're not necessarily musicians with timing right and when you have a show that's that Hightech or any show that's high-tech you know um there there is good cost for it but

I'm I'm a old purist guy I mean nobody's coming to see my ass in the jeans you know what I mean it's like you better play something you know what I mean and everybody has seen the typical rock production with the true with the bomb goes off and then you have you know the the slow motion horses on the beach or whatever and then all of a sudden I gigantic face like one of somebody on stage's face is like the wizard of O and the BAM looks like it's about that big right so everybody's going

like this at the show they're not even looking at the band yeah so I'm coming from a 70s point of view we have great sound and lights and you go play and then if it's a big place you can put up some screens so people can see what's but great sound of lights and um more focus on the music then because of that because people lean into the music when they're going but if it's an extravaganza they're going what the what is this that I'm seeing when but it's become the same show you've seen yeah

the tricks they've been used we need new tricks or we need new production New Concept or old school go out and play it's probably a lot cheap if you can it was probably a lot cheaper to tour back then cuz you're not carrying all the stuff with you right um we well back in the day we I dropped my pck it's no big deal um oh thanks we used to carry sound and lights in a 9ft grand piano was very expensive and Freight was ridiculous and trucks and we used to do that stuff you guys

have Case Case sometimes when we were in Europe we would do that we' have like three Tri big crew big Crews and stuff we try you know you want to try to make a little bit of money on the road as you get a little older cuz the costs have gone up 30% at least people you know they think okay Madonna a billion dollar tour Taylor Smith do you think she took home a billion dollars that's a that's that so that's interesting because no no no people always talk about yeah yeah talk about that well

I don't I can't talk personally about her particular tour but I know there's hundreds of people on it and there's two stages flip-flopping so you have twice the amount of crew and twice but she was on a bazillion dollar tour so she can afford to do that when they say these numbers they don't take into account any of that stuff the cost if you they think she's putting that in her pocket well if you on a say you got a couple of private jets and then you got like 12 buses and 20 trucks maybe more

do you realize how expensive that is with it salaries pums hotels Insurance catering right for 200 people every night yeah and you know and all the drama that goes with that the more people you have out on tour the more dramatic it become yeah I'd like to take a second to talk to you about this channel of the people that regularly watch my channel 58% are actually not subscribed so I encourage you to hit the Subscribe button now this will help me to get even more of my dream guests and continue to grow my channel

thank you okay so um I asked you something when you sat down I was like Luke my brother tells me that you he saw you play some chicken pick and stu oh no no don't make me do that I'm not going to do that and I was like what are you talking about okay well like when do you have time to even learn stuff like that when you were a kid or what well when I was doing these I used to do these fun little tours with Sterling ball who was Ernie Ball son and was

play anything just we no no I'm saying ER Ernie Ball guitar this is yeah yeah and um we he had this thing called Biff baby's All Stars oh yeah yeah and and we would just show up places and the guitar players were it was me Steve Morris Albert Lee and Eddie Van Halen and occasionally somebody else might come sit in too and that was a great band as well Jim Cox on keyboards Sterling on Bas John Ferraro on drums and uh his old his brother uh who passed away sadly Sherwood was a great singer and

we just go out and call out Tunes Rody crra would come sit in with us sometimes it was where would this be we'd play at the Palamino under some weird name we just show up so nobody would know nobody would know and then by halfway through the set the place was jam-packed and we just mess around call out goofy Tunes like we would in junior high school but occasionally they would because of Albert and Steve they'd ended with country boy right which was all major chords you know you know I would practice for a little

bit to get that it's all major chords you can't just play the blues you think oh that's kind of dumb but you try to play through that you have to make changes you have to define the thirds that's right and get your way try to find a way around here and there but I I'll leave that to the big boys okay Under Pressure like you know back then a couple of beers in me but I would go for it I'd be I'd do all right okay so we're out at the at George Benson's uh Extravaganza

here yeah and uh did you practice last week knowing you're coming out here or what a little bit I picked it up a couple times but to be honest with you so I was I'm not doing anything you know it's just Jam kind of music you know don't know rehearsal really when I was uh talking to Greg filling gains yesterday interviewing him we talked about about all the session guys kind of new Jazz studied it studied it Wasing you or anything guys I was hanging out we didn't sit around and transcribe Charlie Parker all like

that you know and learn every cliche 251 turnaround but but we studied har you know Harmon Theory and all studied privately studied Jazz improvisation site reading site singing uh orchestration and arrangement with Dr Alvin Harris I studied private guitar with Jimmy wble and was playing every top 40 band that there was and we had our high school band still alive with me and Mike landow and John Pierce Carlos Vegas Deo and um that's where I met Jeff and Jeff mcaro and David page was in high school through all those guys and we had a band

but there's always a little bit of jazz in the background we realized we me you know we were all ear players When We Were Young and then my old man was like are you really going to do this cuz was working at Paramount uh he was behind the camera assistant director he was doing the happy days or something at the time I was like 14 i' been play I'm going to do this my dad if you're going to do this you learn how to do it I talked to Carl fortino who was the head of

Music at Paramount he says you need to study this he needs to learn how to read he needs to do blah blah blah blah blah and my old man was like well if you're really going to do this then you're going to learn it right you're going to study you're going to get this you're learn smart though was very smart and then when I realized when we got into high school and we met Steve Baro and then realized Jeff was the drummer and Steely Dan and we met David P and the whole studio musician he

like wow you could do that so we all got cocky like oh we're all going to do that so we started studying we were in the very first class of Dick Grove which was the first oh yeah uh Jazz improvisational school so to speak you know where you could go and have all these courses and take all the stuff that was not classical strict cuz it was either unless you studied privately you got to study with Joe Pass or somebody like that you know I mean Jazz studies they weren't really teaching it anywhere did you

take a lesson with Joe or not Joe Pass no landow did though did he yeah and he took landow Strat and he picks up the strings he goes you can't play a guitar with strings this life that's what Mike told me Mike if I'm telling the story wrong and he laugh and stuff like that but we were all just little teenage kids at that point trying yeah we're going to do this we're gonna learn how to do but it was really hard after playing since I was a kid watching The Beatles on the TV show

and I could play the chords and I was in band since I was nine by the time I got to 14 I mean I could learn stuff off of records and could play but then the whole have to learn how to read music again you it's the only way you learn though right yeah and it was so tedious and hard okay so who's the best reader of of of all those guys the all the session guys that you came up with oh or the older guys okay Dean Dean gr really written now forget about it

he's one of the best everybody could read a little bit I was like not a great reader I could read but I mean like you know they hired me to come up in my own Parts but I could I understood you know I could get through it I could read the notes if I had to okay that's not why they hired the record gu okay I got to ask you this what is the part that you came up with legitimately if you willing to say here that that no that you should have gotten writing credit

on oh well see no that's a gray area and the reason why it's a gray area or that's say okay we'll put it to now what would you nowadays what parts would you get writing credit for probably most of them yes because they were very hooky Parts yes stuff like you know I keep forgetting Human Nature standback by uh uh Stevie Nicks you know that skank part and it was like very Billy Je yeah well they hired David Williams to do it at first cuz they wanted that and then he they didn't like what he

played then they hired Dean and they hired W I think had to go at it but that's not his thing he doesn't play funk like that you know and I and I after working with Quincy and stuff like that I he says look we're looking for this Billy Jean thing it was Jimmy Ivan and and shell Stevie wasn't even there the whole track was done I didn't even know it was all Prince I just heard the track they said we need that thing you know I said W give me a plug me in di put

a little compression on it and uh I think I got I I I think I got it and I and what's on the record is a first take okay so I wasn't in the room he just said that sounds great what do you want to eat I said I want a production K like that okay so in 2025 any of these parts from any of these songs that you played on you would have gotten writing credit probably but I mean you know there was a couple towards the end where they just put a sheet of

E chord in front of you and I came up with a bunch of Rifts and I said you're going to have to make this right man this is just come on man look at this chart and look what's coming out of this so charts though what would typ typical chart be just just bar changes you know a couple Ric notations you know was a specific voicing it would be there but most of the time it was like play what you want man they just be cord charts with the road map you know what I mean

okay now i' I've asked you this before so you do a take you're on someone else's session you do a take you you guys go in the control room and listen listen to headphones on the great sessions when it was with a great artist with something like that when it was early on in the career and you were doing records for say television stars that couldn't sing really well and it was the Disco era and they just wanted to get a product out there to Parlay financial gain right we wouldn't no most of the time

we would go in okay cuz we cared about it and would you talk about your parts or would you talk about other people most of the time we would we would run it down like somebody would play a song and then you we if it wasn't already a chart given to you with at least the basic chords and Rob Map and any notations that might have needed um we would take the chart and we'd play it down once and everybody you take the chart in the yeah we go like we scuffle through it make sure

there's any bad uh mistakes on the chart cords or anything like that and people were starting to find parts yeah and we go like you know and then we maybe do another one and they take and they go come on in let's listen to this stuff anyone the drums what have you tried this or something like that or yeah no everybody would have on different Jeff mararo used to have the great guitar stuff he used to came up with great ideas from me like what would he say he would just pointed pictures of jimmi Hendricks

or he pointed stuff and he'd say things to me that would okay I get it I know what he's saying he wouldn't sing specific parts per se we just inspire me would you guys ever say I don't like my guitar sound or my Bas sound is not good but you know that was the thing all day on the drums and 2 seconds on everything else it was always the way it was bathe everything that okay that works next okay but it was kind of unless it sounded bad you mean they hired us to have good

equipment and like you to come in it was supposed to sound pretty good at least that was starting point yeah but it depended on what you were doing sometimes I'd be playing clean and sometimes I'd be Crank It Up it really depend on what was going on and I did a lot of overdub sessions too and when you did overdubs were you be in were you in the control room I love the control room and would you be playing through combos or would you have heads and I early on I just had I I I

played through a lot through the blackface Delux that River modded back in 1978 now if you're playing through that are you running a cable out to the other room I'm sitting like right here you know and you have it in the control room oh in the control room no they just put it out in the room and then run a TI line to the thing you sitting there and get your sound play it Loud longest that you would ever sit and and work on a part for work on a part yeah or do a part

four I didn't like to work that hard if it if the part was really difficult and wasn't working it wasn't the right part there you go stuff's supposed to be easy if you're trying to you know cram a square peg in a round hole it becomes obvious pretty quickly usually stuff works or it doesn't you're not like sitting around going I know let's talk about it for an hour what's your what was your favorite Studio soundwise to play in uh Sunset Sound Capital um what room in Sunset sound two two was my favorite but I

liked them all we worked in all of them um Capital One was incredible but the three the mix room there three was used to be good I don't know it's there anymore capital is gone what was the best what had the best drum sound that would Engineers have a lot to do Elliot Shiner and Al Schmidt and Greg uh Greg leadon George Mass ber those are the guys that the best of the best and they all had different styles I watched them like George massenberg like he invented the parametric equalizer when he was a teenager

you know on a weed Bust or something like that he's in jail he comes up with parametric equ 14 years old that's what he told me anyway and what he would do is his EQ technique they ibody had different ones okay Al was a minimalist Al Smith you look at an API desk that he used to like to work on or NE and he'd see one click at 10K and then he'd come out stand listen to the par and he would go like move the mic a half an inch it would change the sound I

go it's great he goes yeah like that's what he he would come out and listen to The Sound Source a lot of Engineers just start going like this right away maybe does it sound good in the room you start there and then work with how to get that onto the tape or whatever recording was you okay so how how different was a Toto session you're making your own record well Jeff had the best sounding drum set ever so I mean you like it didn't take long to get his stuff right so it's pretty much the

same then right or no yeah no we took about the same amount of time yeah I mean we get in I mean if it was your own record you could take a little when I was doing overdubs and trying things and I was able to have free ran to the studio for the night with all my gear and all my stuff set up and the engineer and whoever wanted to hang out and watch me it was usually Jeff and Paige um and you know we do stuff try things and it was great cuz we had

the D and the time to do it they gave us real budgets and real Studios great engineers and great equipment and time when you were making those records back then did you ever imagine that there was going to be no essentially no music industry 40 years in the future there's no way you could have predicted in we used to joke about it the say I'm going to phone my part in man I'm going to phone my this is so easy I'm going to phone my part in now you can do that um but something about

showing up at work with all the guys and he didn't know was it was exciting it was and and that energy got on the tape if it was good music and everybody was inspired it was magical in there and we get it fast and then we'd go let me do the overdub now let me do this I'll do this all on now and within 2 hours it sounds like a record with the exception of vocals and what horns and strings if you wanted to put stuff on when when you're coming in when you're doing a

session you never knew who was going to be on it right generally not unless I was talking to Jeff I go what do you got this week this one on this one and how much moving around from Studio to Studio did you do during a week a lot and what would it be would you have to pick up and you'd have an hour to get somewhere else usually 11: to 6 or 10 to 5 or something something like that and then you have a seven or an eight so you work until 5:36 grab something to

eat and head off to the next Studio an 8 till when when it was done mid didn't like to go too bass midnight cuz then had to pay you triple time okay but most of the time we were cool we wouldn't do that today if we were if we were if we were close to something and it was like 10 minutes to midnight and and they're panicking go you guys don't worry about it we're here for the duration you know we're not going to screw you you so who is in charge of although there were

guys that did that and they don't work anymore who is in charge of turning in the the the keeping track of your for our session oh we didn't do that we didn't even we should have we should have like put our you know changed each guy to be the leader of a session put it in for your Health and Welfare and of course if I told you how bad my pension check is every month from the Musicians Union after being in it for 53 years and doing all those legitimate Union where they took money out

and they bungled it all away okay so people that that took their pensions 30 years ago or well it was different then they had money then right here here's the way it works okay a union there's the union then there's you know the people in the union work and when they done they have paid into their pension to have their pension and young people want the same job so they've studied and all of a sudden they're there they're paying the dues to pay the dues but the people that are retired yeah if nobody joins here

this ends and that's what's happening with the musicians you can do go watch and I join the musicians doesn't do anything for me nobody cares everybody has records at home how they going to keep up with that there's no money and anything so everybody makes a separate deal for every session I got x amount of dollars do you want to do it when did that start happening soon as um everybody had studios in their home the record companies found out that you could make a record for 10 grand instead of 100 or 200 and there

just more money for them so basically when tape when people stopped recording on tape and they didn't want to pay anybody anymore they started going to half rate who negotiated half rate you know that's what union did that okay so so Union gigs in the 60s would be single scale well you get double I guess I was there but I mean I would imagine the guys that were really great just like the same way it went down with us you know you start out charging single and then you go to two doubles and then you

know you get the double scale what was what was single scale back then like 3 250 bucks for 3 hours for three hours okay and then and then it became 500 if it were double scale and some people would pay more if they thought liked you so if somebody want really wanted you and they said and you're like I'll give you X I'm like what time should I be there you know what I mean I would never you know Jeff and Carlton they never ask for more than double scale ever if they want to give

it to you great why why do you say that if you're doing records if you're on the road you can get whatever you can get yeah but because because there's a lot of guys and it's it's when you start you might be able to get that because you're hot at the time when you're not whatever you know as everything goes up it goes down man and when it goes down people move out of the way watch you splat cuz it's just it's like you didn't need to it was out of respect and they kept kep

you getting called back okay I'm that's the thing got to think long term okay so I'm going to ask you some some some offthe well questions here um how good of a rhythm guitarist was John Lennon wow well I never played with them but I sure love the records they all had great time all had great time you know what I mean and none of those records were to a click I mean Ringo would be like I am the click like he is what about George Harrison's slide playing oh love this play Flawless what a

unique style what what is how did he get that sound do you know I don't know I got to know George a little bit he was my first guitar hero one of the most lovely human beings ever but um it was just something he just Why did you know why did Jeff Beck play the way he did why does anybody play who has such a unique wow style you know how did it get there right time effort experimentation trial and error I don't know The Beatles were so good in play at playing in the studio

I mean those first records were like live they were live they double tracked a vocal or something maybe overdub a tambourine or you know some percussion instrument and do a ooze or something you know but they had to ping pong all the track yeah what about what about that what about the ping ponging that they did people don't even appreciate the difficulty that I got a chance when we worked with McCartney after the Thriller record Jeff M and I got went over to Emi L stre to do a movie with him for a couple weeks

and Jeff Emerick the engineer for Beatles was there and George Martin was there and Paul and Linda and Jeff p and I we'd have lunch every day and you know initially he was like don't talk too much about the Beatles and all this like how can you not no I mean it was like you know he was the first Beetle I ever met and it was like it's a reason for living you know what I mean and then here I with Quincy and Michael and we all out there and like it was really very surreal

but very cool and I got to ask him all these goofy questions about how they did this how'd you get the sign on Revolution CU I never heard of fuzz it's not a fuzz it's we it was a tube console where they pluged direct into it cranked it through a limiter and then put it through in the second Channel and did it again and they had to do it before the lab code guys came in and told them they were ruining the console so that's why you never heard that sound again you can't get that

sound again a lot of the stuff they did they were like let missuse using the gear and just trying to do something that no one else has done and they did that consistently aming with Incredible music and you know no bells and whistles those are real vocals those are real parts that everybody played you know when I listen to you know some of the the layering on Paperback Writer because or any of these things the the pitch the harmony Parts they're so accurate those guys sang great when there was no monitors right remember that well

that's all they heard yeah how did they do that it was not fun for him apparently according to Ringo and according to the guys you know when whenever I asked if the Beatles Ted more would they obviously would have made less records right I can't answer for them I have no idea so I think no I asked Ringo about this I go if the gear was better yeah he goes well if we had all this gear we could hear ourselves and everything and we could bring out some additional musicians to make these right we probably

could have done something the question was did they want to do that everything they did was 8 years yeah 62 to 70 think about the growth musically recording on God everything the state of the world in that 8-year period from 62 to 70 was pretty intense so I I'll never get to interview those guys probably but the one of the questions I would have asked Paul is like okay you and Johnna writing all these songs obviously George wrote his songs but on his own um how did you write so many songs so quickly for rec

like would you just go home at night and it's like I got another you know I got three more songs here and they're I I think it was a healthy competition if I was going to guess yeah all right so give me let's let's like U give me a good luk lick that I can add to my my repertoire here you play that and like some of people watching this are like I have no idea what that is uh that's a wizard one I know I know what it is but you know I was doing

a video the other day and I and I said uh I was listening to something and I was like oh it sounds like something Emerson Lake and Palmer would did would do and there was like I know no none of you know who that is but oh I love those records I got to work with all those guys really well not on an ELP record I did a couple of Greg Le records I did an Asia thing and I did and I worked with um um Keith Emerson on on some live stuff uh but of

course you you and I know who those guys are but I was joking that well there was a whole contingency in school are you into yes or ELP you know what I mean seriously oh yeah okay and I go why can't you like both I like them both but as a guitar player I love Steve how you know there was no guitar I mean Greg Lake played guitar you like to say things like um that there's you know year olds that can can play stuff I see it on the YouTube every day just like YouTube

you must get barraged with this stuff everybody to send you the new Wonder Kids people send me stuff like that and then but they always send they send it to me on Instagram and it's like why do you send me these things I have a theory about this you know putting the Wonder kids at 8 years old on the you know here you are here's the new they're burnt by the time they're 15 well historically these They Don't Really bust out with the exception of somebody like the great Jo bamas my buddy man was just

he did start out but earned his way every one of the best guitar players in the world so I read a book on child prodigies historically in child prodigies and most child prodigies uh end up by the time they're teenagers people catch up to them and then they have some type of a Well everybody's Little Johnny's a genius you know what I mean all all my kids and and that's the problem that we're having with the recording industry was everybody can anybody can put out stuff every day so it mucks up really good stuff floating

to the top there's no Gatekeepers there's no anr gu say you know what there's something there but you're not ready yet buite some more and come back to me next so there were good things about anr people yeah the good ones yeah you know they go I'm hearing that as a single we didn't always agree but a lot of times they were right I mean I I know I thought Africa I thought are you kidding me with the song There's no way no way so I sent you this video I was in this restaurant eating

with my son Dylan and this piano piano player and uh everybody wants to send me the I didn't know the guy or anything he was a great player and he just happened to play Africa and I just started cracking up and I filmed 10 seconds of it I texted it to you and you right back I'm sorry what else can I say man I mean I laugh walking from my kids through the mall you know it's like everything playing on the radio I hav play on that one and that was but that was like the

last that was kind of an afterthought on the record wasn't it it was the last thing recorded it was just Dave got this new gs1 keyboard from Yamaha that had all these wild sounds colimbus and rimbas and all this and he started playing a riff and then that all sorted came he finished the music and brought it in and we thought wow and then Jeff bar goes let's do a real production piece this and I use all my uncle Amel Richard's percussion African percussion get Joe bicar get the whole family down there to make loops

and we were doing real Loops like on microphone stands with the tape going like L Schmidt who used to do it in the old days knew how to do all this stuff right so we had mic stands like this with just the whole thing yeah and we would be in the room holding pencils and stuff I mean it was really no computerized all our hands are on the desk and all the mixes and all that stuff we all mix those right there were performances those mixes sometimes there was three to four 24 track machines in

sink which would take about 35 seconds to sink up so if the performance got screwed up it was really by the end of it you were sweating right like doing the Fade Out yeah I did a lot of the Fade Out don't do it too fast no you have to do it and then what ladani would do we were doing like to four we' get you be really quiet right and at the very end you crank the thing up on 10 like 150 DB so you can make sure that the very fade is very smooth

well you had the even even tank it up to hear it to make sure that the some records if you listen to the old day you'll hear and it just goes away because it was a quick what's one development with the electric guitar since you've been playing that you think is something that what what was a really important thing in development of electric guitar getting the noise out of it okay through what noise Gates through pickup no pickup better quality windings of pickups different you know different better equipment and you know everybody got H to

oh you got to Shield this you got to do this you'll get ground loops and and how much of uh would people do things to get rid of noise when oh I saw some amazing science projects and since people trying to get a buzz out of some strange instrument or something it wasn't usually like a regular electric guitar and amp or something like that some a lot of and you have all the guys come in from the maintenance room that's when it was fun for them they'd come in and go oh we can fix anything

but then we'd be sitting around all all the you get up to a point where like okay think we're right on it we're right on it we're going to get this we're going to get this and all sudden something messes up okay all right so what about uh in foot pedals things like that what's what's something that that you're like well before we got into the whole rack man this you know it was all you had a bag full of stuff you know generally like Jay Gren was the first guy to turn me on to

the the B osor stereo thing where you have two deluxes with the thing and that was a big deal if you could get two tracks on a tracking date cuz back then 24 track tape you just get one right you know the first thing to go would be your stereo amp and they wanted to do a bounce or do another we need another track it's like oh there goes that so consequently some of the chorusing sound sounds a little not really the way it was meant because you're only getting half a side right and then

they put it in the middle so that wouldn't be you know so it's actually not cor the gear has gotten a lot better over the years yeah back then we just have I used to use a an orange squeezer yeah on the 335 to give it just a little compression not a lot Gren used to use that a lot that was his whole thing with Peg and all that people play through these and have that all the way up was there no with the with the orange squeezer was there no compressor pedal or something or

is that it's just an on and off switch and it plugged it sat right guar scratch the top and everything I used to have a whole bunch of all that got stolen out of a lockers that I've had I have so much gear sto now you played that intro weird double bend that he plays on Peg uhhuh that's an old Amos Garrett lick from a midnight through waes hear you ever hear that Soul yeah yeah that's a legendary Soul that's where Jay got it he goes but it's that's actually really hard lick to play in

tune when he does it yeah you need to work a little bit it's not like that [Music] one I haven't done that one in a while I'll leave that to Jay now he's he's done his tutorials on how to play Peg and all that stuff he uh I did a video with him great Dean and and uh and Dean this is a thing I put out like I don't know last year or so it's we're just hanging out with Tim Pierce I went over JS house and didn't have the right camera gear or anything I

just happened to have a camera with me and he had a camera we put him put him up and they told some hilarious stories and then I lost the footage for about two years and I found it oh wow and I kind of cobbled it together and put it out but there's one point where Jay is telling Dean because Dean had played it with Steely Dan live and Dean's playing soul and Jay's no you're playing it wrong no it goes like this and Dean's kind of trying to remember he hadn't played it and everything so

then Dean hands me the guitar you had it cuz you learned it I learned it it was a climbing lick was was uh is the thing that was kind that's stuff yeah that's classic J okay so who were the other six guitar players that played before him Ford was one I Larry did one um no one ever talks about that who the other people were they just I might have been a couple of New York guys Elliott may have tried it um I wonder what was wrong with their solos they they different Tes they all

got erased over though right I think there's there was one um YouTube with Donald and Walters sitting there putting up faders and I think they had a robin Ford one there that was it was cool but it's like nah that wouldn't have been right I could see why they didn't you know and then Gren was just weird enough that it just worked I think that by the time they got the Jay what Jay told he was like no matter what he plays for keeping it because I think they just had enough and they were like

okay that's it enough if you're going to put together your ultimate Studio band but with no Studio musicians people from actual bands oh wow who would it be give me and you're not playing guitar on this and I'm not on it you're not producing the producer okay so who are who are people you could take John bonam you could take whoever you want like who's ultimate what kind of music am I playing that's like I don't know rock let's say it's a rock session well I love all the guys I play with now but taking

away taking away them cuz that's kind of unfair gez I don't know Dead or Alive is that dead or alive yeah alive oh man that's a hard question cuz I have so many favorites you know and have to have five guitar players I don't know I if I start naming names I'm going to piss somebody off by like not mentioning them or something like who are guys that are banned guys that that were that are players that could be could have come up with parts on records Dr I don't know it' be fun to play

with John bonam and you know that would be fun what what Steely Dan could John bonam have played on a Steely Dan song and if it yes probably not you know because their music is a little more subtle okay however if they wrote something with him in mind which I think sometimes they often did you know oh these guys will be great on this maybe it didn't always work out that way I mean I'm I don't know for sure but they tried a lot of Rhythm sections I know they did that that's why those records

were took so long and were so expensive because they didn't care about spend they wanted it's an art it was Art to them that's what I'm getting out of it how did they know when they after you hear so many different people how did they know when they had the right thing you know again I you'd have to ask them that I know for me I know it I go that's right that's that's the part that's the groove that's the take that's not quite it I could do better or you know what that little imperfection

is real where people now they want to buff out every possible wart and and I don't know if you H to this guy Phil at Pegasus you know the guy who goes in there and busts everybody you know lip sinking live and all that stuff yeah a tough room this cat you know if you're bullshitting and he's in there going like you know people are paying money to see this and like I'm sure he's not making any friends with the people he's Boston but um you know I find it interesting that the people don't know

that and they don't care they don't care that's the best part that's the thing and that's why what's interesting for us is we're getting this new audience of 15 to 35 year old people that are used to ones and zeros and what's that sound like it's all ones and zeros going into their head so that's somebody explained it as like it's just background music for multitasking at this point when we used to listen to records it was an event you know like we take our bikes down to the to the record store you know whoever

had the bread got the record and we went to the best guy who had the best system sound system and then we'd sit in a row like this in the stereo position and pass around the album to read the credits and not say anything until side one was done or unless we went a oh and something great happened you know what I mean which we did often then we'd have our guitars line around our instruments and we started messing around with how to play this stuff and the inspiration went from there and there was only

like one or two records released you know maybe three or four records released a month that were wor that we were hip to that we wanted to get and get into and artist that we followed and were fans of and inspired by okay I'm going ask as opposed to 10 million records a day on YouTube which you can't even get through it that okay one last thing when you're testing out a sound system or historically what do you put on you know a lot of the stuff that they listen to like you know for us

I'd walk into the building at the arena then he'd be playing a billy ish record which had super low end super transients yeah and they would test the subs and the different a lot of stuff a lot of people call me there was a record we did called I will remember the Elliot Shiner MH engineered and in the beginning of it the first eight 16 bars whatever it is U is a drum Simon's drum set all of his Toms which had an incredible sound and they us that to T in a lot of big concert

Pas which I heard which I thought was very flattered by that Brian May calls go yeah I heard you on using your stuff to T I go really I'm thinking back and I I uh every time I hear one of your songs or one of your parts I saw some guy playing riding a bike I don't know if I sent you the video maybe it was in Italy or something he was playing one of your songs and film it really yeah like you know it's kind of interesting I mean it's a great honor it's I

don't even know what to say to realize it's something you could write in North Hollywood in your house goes around the world and stays there for decades it's it's a tremendous wow I mean whatever anybody says about it like it or not it's the fact that you made that and you can still go and and getting three generations to come out and see is it ain't because of of this I know some of you might think so but no it's not really what it is well Luke listen this is uh you know once again I

love you dearly you've been so good to me Rick appreciate it