Author: Jernej Vene
Artist: Lukather, Steve
Label: Mascot Records
Released: 2010
Runtime: 47:20
Rating: 4.3/5
California guitarist Steve Lukather is a guy who’s not just an instrumentalist on his musical path but also a singer and producer. In a career spanning almost thirty-five years, he’s played and recorded with everyone from Miles Davis to Michael Jackson and hundreds of others who can be ranked somewhere between those two giants. In fact, together with three members of his home band Toto, he was the musical backbone of Jackson’s mega-hit Thriller. Toto announced they were calling it quits two years ago, but in summer 2010 they played a few European shows to help their bassist Mike Porcaro, who is suffering from ALS. They’ll keep playing shows to ease his difficult situation.
All’s Well That Ends Well is a fitting name for the place Lukather finds himself in in 2010. “All’s well that ends well” is the motto he’s trying to live by, both existentially and musically. On most of his albums he’s jumped out of his Toto skin quite a few times, but we shouldn’t hold that against him. On the contrary, a musician of his caliber has to escape the usual forms from time to time and let loose. Although he’s been in Toto since his dewy teenage years and the band pretty much defines him, he’s always liked to go wherever his musical and creative curiosity drove him. As a guitarist who understands all the laws and secrets of music and his instrument, he can achieve downright magical results with just a touch of imagination. He easily assembles ideas into musical pictures that are highly accessible not only to electric guitar lovers but also to fans of honest rock bangers or romantic ballads, with the emphasis on adding a hook to every musical idea that makes it interesting and has us impatiently waiting for new stuff from his fingers.
It’s been a long time since he stopped worrying about chart positions, though he’s happy to admit that a check from covers of his tunes comes in very handy. In 2001, DJ Roger Sanchez’s hit Another Chance, which used the ballad I Won’t Hold You Back, hugely fattened Lukather’s bank account.
The driving force on All’s Well That Ends Well, besides Steve Lukather, is keyboardist CJ Vanston, who handled most of the arrangements. Longtime studio and touring old hands sometimes lose their compass, so it’s good to pick competent collaborators with their ears in the right place when it comes to instrumentation, i.e. setting compositional ideas to music. In 2010 Lukather went through two painful life experiences: the death of his mother Kathy and the split from the mother of his daughter, who is a few years old. He’s been through divorces before, but both events left deep, hard marks on him; he even wrote that he goes to therapy twice a week. In cases like this they say it’s smart to bury yourself in work and slowly heal spiritually. Lukather surely will, since music comes first for him.
Great musical flexibility and mastery of the instrument, the playful addition of melodic ideas and a cunning dosing of those ideas are Lukather’s main strengths. Every note is in the right place, every solo built and given meaning down to the last detail. Speed is there where he needs it; elsewhere the guitar would rather keep quiet. Dazzling curtains of sound reveal the dark, sad fate of a man, a musician and a guy whose world has collapsed once again. He wrote all the lyrics himself, so there’s no talk of fantasies or other people’s experiences. Even gréat musicians are only human. Music is exactly what will get him out of the dark cave he’s in, which I hope is only for now. On All’s Well That Ends Well, Steve Lukather ventures into rock, blues, jazz and fusion, and with his guitar tones he can conjure up laughter or tears. Sonically the record is very polished, which we’re used to from him, but there’s not a hint of workmanlike soullessness. Plenty of keyboards, of course, paint a string palette or an almost symphonic sound, which comes off as pompous but stays in service of the artist’s vision. His approach to the song as the basic musical form is also important; across the whole record he favors it over showboating with instrumental acrobatics. The songs swing from clear and loud to elegiac and darkly sorrowful.
The album opens with the dark, reflective, slow-building Darkness In My World; further in you’ll find the rocking Can’t Look Back, the Hendrix-style Flash In The Pan, and a tribute to old friends Fagen and Becker of Steely Dan titled On My Way Home.
Still, toward the end of the record Lukather sees a way out of the crisis and lets loose in Brodies, where he lashes out at modern society, and he treats himself to an escape into fusion jazz in the closing instrumental Tumescent. Steve Lukather has made a deep, personal, lived-in and very good record.
Lineup
Steve Lukather – guitars, vocals
CJ Vanston – keyboards
Steve Weingart – keyboards
Carlitos Del Puerto – bass guitar
Eric Valentine – drums
Lenny Castro – percussion
Joseph Williams, Phil Collen, CJ Vanston – backing vocals
Trevor Lukather – guitar
Tina Lukather – backing vocals
Fee Waybill – backing vocals
Jory Steinberg – backing vocals
Bernard Fowler – backing vocals
Phil Collen – backing vocals
CJ Vanston – backing vocals
Glenn Berger – saxophone
Production
Steve Lukather, CJ Vanston, Steve MacMillan
Tracklist
1. Darkness In My World 6:59
2. On My Way Home 5:22
3. Can’t Look Back 4:43
4. Don’t Say It’s Over 5:39
5. Flash In The Pan 4:54
6. Watching The World 4:51
7. You’ll Remember 5:15
8. Brodies 5:36
9. Tumescent 4:02
