Steve Lukather recalled the weirdest moment he experienced while working with Michael Jackson on the Thriller album.
The Toto guitarist also admitted he dismissed the idea that “Beat It” would become a major hit single.
In a recent Guitar Player interview, Lukather said he’d been encouraged to apply his creativity during the 1982 sessions and added that neither Jackson nor producer Quincy Jones had ever told him what to play.
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“I initially cranked the riff out on a bunch of quadrupled Marshalls,” Lukather remembered. “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.”
He continued: “And then when I heard Michael sing, ‘Your butt is mine,’ I was just a smartass twenty-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.” (The lyric is actually from the 1987 Jackson song “Bad,” not “Beat It.”)
The guitarist – who also contributed to the Thriller tracks “The Girl Is Mine” and “Human Nature” – said that he didn’t experience any of Jackson’s often-debated strange behavior in the studio. “There was nothing weird at all,” he noted.
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“He was my age, he laughed at my s—, and he thought I was amusing. He was a real pro. Though what did make me laugh was [that] his monkey, Bubbles, ripped apart the vocal booth! That was the weirdest thing I saw. It made me laugh on the floor, of course.”
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He added of Jackson: “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 came up with that part on the spot, and that’s what ended up on the radio.”
Lukather reflected: “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.”
