Steve Lukather Reveals Family Tragedy That Inspired Album

Former Toto hitmaker and current Ringo Starr touring axeman Steve Lukather has divulged some of the personal pain that is behind the creation of his latest album Transition and his own personal transformation.

“My mother was an alcoholic,” he explains. “Me and my eldest son found her on Father's Day, dead on the couch with the most horrific, scared, terrified, look... frozen, orange from jaundice with a vodka and a cigarette at noon. It fucked me up. I thought, I don't want my kids to ever find me like that. I love you mum (looks to the sky), all is forgiven. It maybe saved everybody's life. It was the point where I went, that's it... stubbed out the cigarette, put the beer away and never went back.”

As well as cutting out the sauce, Lukather gives some juicy details on the similarly clean rig he uses to conjure his legendary tone:

“I just plugged the cable into the amp with a volume pedal... I was a slave to all that other [digital] shit for so long. It broke one time too many. I ended up on G3 last year with nothin' but a Boss delay and a Tube Screamer and that was it. I swore off all that other stuff almost like the booze.”

Read the full interview here.