Steve Lukather’s Spinal Tap Moment Wasn’t Funny
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather’s Spinal Tap moment isn’t as funny as everyone else’s. In fact, it was downright serious, he recently explained.
He played on the Spinal Tap album Break Like the Wind, which came out in 1992, following the cult success of the 1984 movie This Is Spinal Tap. That meant working in the studio with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean -- Tap's Nigel Tufnell, Derek Smalls and David St. Hubbins, respectively -- and the experience, he said, offered him a different perspective on the comedy group.
“I produced four tracks on Break Like the Wind, and I just played on the new Derek Smalls solo album,” Lukather told MusicRadar. “I love those guys. Christopher, Harry and Michael are really great musicians. It was hard to get them to be funny, as they were so good. They were awesome in the studio, and I could tell how much they love playing music.”
Lukather and his Toto bandmates took a break from recording their Isolation album to see the movie soon after its release. “There were not many people at the 2PM showing,” he recalled. “We got stoned and laughed so hard, and no one else was laughing, and that was funny to us. We have lived almost all the silliness in it. That’s why it’s been on every tour bus worldwide for the last 35 years.”
Lukather is saving his best anecdotes for his autobiography, which he hopes to publish at the end of this year or early in 2018. “It’s not a salacious ‘I'm gonna get even’ book,” he said. “But it is pretty funny. There is a lot in that.”
One story he did share is the online rumors that his hair isn’t his own. “They say I wear a wig – I offer a million bucks to anyone that can get this off my head,” he said. “Who would buy a wig like my hair? But expect a punch in the face afterwards when it doesn’t come off!”
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