Month: September 2002

I hadn’t seen Wayne Kramer, lead guitar for Detroit’s legendary MC5, in 25 years, yet there we were shaking hands and hugging each other, trying to get in as much reminiscences of the old days in the Motor City before he went onstage. His band was the headliner at a massive labor march in Detroit sponsored by the national AFL/CIO to support the city’s striking newspaper workers. Kramer answered the call for entertainers.

I was the MC for the music that followed a couple dozen barnburning speeches by national and local union leaders. When I saw Wayne before the show, he was fashionably dressed in black. Later, as he jumped confidently onstage, announcing he was ready to play, he was sporting a shocking pink tuxedo.

“You’re stylin’,” I whispered to him.

“I ain’t into no grunge,” came the reply.

The MC5, originally formed as the Motor City Five in 1964, became Detroit’s major act by 1967 in a scene crammed with talent including Iggy and the Stooges, Ted Nugent, and Bob Seger. Heralded as both a seminal ’60s rock band and some of rock and roll’s original bad boys, the lineup was Rob Tyner (vocals), Wayne Kramer (lead guitar), Fred “Sonic” Smith (rhythm), Michael Davis (bass), and Dennis Thompson (drums).

The band’s signature song, “Kick Out the Jams” using the then-forbidden word “mother@!#*er,” combined with its wild stage performances and connection with charismatic manager John Sinclair’s White Panther Party, honed its badass image but insured the boys were in constant trouble with cops, club and record store owners, and even their own record label. The band entered rock history for being the only act willing to brave the Chicago cops and the National Guard by playing for protesters at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention.

Its discography includes Kick Out The Jams (Elecktra, 1969), recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, Back in the USA (Atlantic 1970), and the avant-garde High Time (Atlantic 1971).

After the band’s dissolution in ’72, Kramer turned to drugs and alcohol, habits that culminated in a cocaine trafficing bust for which he served 26 months in federal prison. Today, 20 years after he went to prison, his career is back in high gear with four recent CDs for Epitaph – The Hard Stuff (1995), Dangerous Madness (1996), Citizen Wayne (1997), and LLMF (1998).

Kramer feels great and is playing better than ever. VG had a talk with him following his set at the labor rally.

Vintage Guitar: I’m sure you’ve heard it said many times that the MC5 was one of the bands that defined a genre. Do you feel you were?
Wayne Kramer: Yeah; you can connect the dots from the MC5 and the Stooges to the New York Dolls to the Ramones to the Sex Pistols to the Clash to Black Flag to Offspring. But the truth is, the legend business actually doesn’t pay that well. Outside of Detroit, the MC5 was never accepted by the music world. In California, the ’60s hippies really weren’t interested in this band from Detroit, this industrial city – “they make cars in Detroit, don’t they” – you couldn’t do anything cool there. That made us fight back even harder.

Also, we came out with spangly clothes and big Marshall amplifiers and talking about “kicking out the jams.” The hippies didn’t want to know about that; they were just learning how to market three days of peace, love, and music.

They were too busy listening to Jesse Colin Young. Still, your influence went well beyond your roots. I’ve heard Mick Jagger say the MC5’s stage performance influenced him.
The musicians have always been cool about it. Part of my job is to tell the story of the MC5. It’s the last great untold story of the ’60s; the missing link in the history of our culture. There was a unique, vibrant, alive scene here in Detroit that really didn’t happen any place else. It was real specific to Detroit with the confluence of a lot of different pressures and events. The auto industry was booming; the city was a place where Southerners came, along with people of color, and we all lived together, and everybody had jobs.

You were a bunch of white guys from Lincoln Park, a working-class suburb, one of the “…grease pits of FoMoCo city,” as you used to say. Where did you come up with the style of music and stage presence you were noted for?
It came up out of the streets of Detroit. The music we were exposed to growing up in the shadow of Motown Records, and hearing what those musicians were playing, like the great Motown recording band of James Jamerson and Bennie Benjamin. Also, on Detroit radio we were exposed to a lot of black music, including gospel. There was this thread I gravitated to in certain kinds of music that had a commitment and a passion about it we came to call “high energy” music. It was visceral. It wasn’t an intellectual music, it wasn’t sensitive; it was raw and it was emotional. I searched out that kind of music and found it in James Brown and the guitar work of Chuck Berry.

Later, when we met John Sinclair, he exposed us to the free-form jazz of Sun Ra, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. And the connection from Chuck Berry to John Coltrane made perfect sense to me. It all had this high-energy idea which is a very Detroit concept.

What was your first guitar?
It was a Kay, sold by Sears; a low-end, cheapo version of what Gibson was making; a steel-stringed, acoustic, f-hole guitar. It was very, very rough to play for a 9-year-old, to hold the strings down to make the chords.

When we moved to Lincoln Park, my mother could afford my first electric, a solidbody Sears Silvertone, two pickup, black with white trim, either a Jet or Rocket, some ’50s-era name. It was actually a quality guitar for a $125.

What did you use once you became guitarist for the MC5?
Equipment was always a big problem. Our people were all working-class folk; you could squeeze a guitar out of them, but getting amplifiers was something else.

We met a guy who wanted to manage the band and we convinced him we needed equipment, so he took out a bank loan for us. The first wave of the British invasion had just hit and we discovered these Vox amps the Beatles played. Before that, Fender was the state-of-the-art. When we purchased these Voxes, it was like the MC5 took a quantum leap from being this ragtag gang from Lincoln Park to being a professional band.

Fred Smith and I got 100-watt Vox Super Beatle amplifiers. Before the Beatles they were just called AC-100s. They were really great; nothing in America had 100 watts. The biggest amps were Fender Dual Showmans at 65 watts with two 15″ speakers. The Super Beatles were 100 watts with four 12″ speakers and two high-frequency horns mounted in a tubed frame cabinet you could tilt back. It was a huge piece of machinery and very intimidating because it was black. We had two of them; a T60, the transistor bass amplifier with a 15″ and 12″ speaker and two Vox columns for our PA system with six or eight 10″ speakers mounted on chrome stands that went on each side of the stage. In those days, that was the state-of-the-art PA system; there was no such thing as monitors or side-fills.

What was the importance of the Vox amps?
They made us the loudest band in Detroit; a title we wore with great pride. Nobody could approach the volume at which we could perform. And we discovered we could push the sound beyond what had previously been accomplished with electric instruments. Because of the incredible volume we could push it into the level of feedback and distortion on a brand new scale.

The amps were designed for use in Europe, which has different power ratings. We found if you set the switch down the scale from the American settings, you could get more distortion at lower volume. The more we experimented with them, the more we found we could get into some brand new areas. We sat the guitars down once to take a break to go make some peanut butter sandwiches and the guitars began feeding back by themselves. We were pretty sure we had discovered the power to change the universe.
The Voxes were really a part of the MC5 legend being established.

What guitars were you playing during the height of the band?
I had traded the Silvertone for a Fender Esquire, which is the same as a Telecaster except it had one pickup. Finally, we got the manager to spring for another bank loan and I got a Gibson ES-335, and Fred Smith got a Gretsch Tennessean, and the bassist, a Fender Precision.

Of course, the guy who took out the loan expected us to make the payments, but we were completely-crazed teenaged lunatics and didn’t even consider the possibility of making payments. One night, at Detroit’s Ford Auditorium, the MC5 was opening for Jefferson Airplane – our biggest gig to date – and the guy shows up with two Detroit cops and a court order to repo our equipment. The promoter paid off $200 so we could use them for the night. But then they took it all, including the Voxes and the guitars.

What did you do for new stuff?
By then we were involved with John Sinclair and the White Panthers, and we started to see Marshall amps coming over from England. Cream played them; we knew Jimi Hendrix used them because we had opened for him. So we bought a load of the original 100-watt Super Lead heads. We got six of them and two 200-watt bass heads. They were terrific-sounding amplifiers, but incredibly inconsistent; we blew them up regularly. You might get two or three shows out of them and then they’d go up in smoke. We’d have two sets of Marshalls with us on the road and one set in the shop all the time.

What guitars did you feed through them?
I saw Jeff Beck playing an old Les Paul, so when I met a kid whose father had one, I traded my 335 for the Les Paul, one of the originals. Unfortunately, it was stolen after a gig, and in fact, almost every guitar I’ve ever owned has been stolen. Then I started playing a Firebird, then a Stratocaster, and I stuck with those for a long time. I had the Strat hotrodded with a Gibson humbucking pickup to stay competitive with the sound level of Fred’s Gibson. I used a Big Muff distortion pedal and used that during the “Kick Out the Jams” era, since the wah-wah pedal hadn’t been perfected yet. I also played a Telecaster and one lucite Dan Armstrong that sounded pretty good.

You’ve recently gotten back together with Dennis Thompson, the MC5’s drummer, in Dodge Main [the name of a long-shuttered Detroit auto plant] who told me, “This is the year of the MC5,” referring to a documentary about the band. How do you nurture the past, but live in the present?
I honor the past. But it’s a dilemma for me as a musician, living in today’s kiddie culture, to do rock and roll and find some meaning in it. We live in a society and a time that doesn’t honor age, that has no concept of the history of culture; 25-year-olds are making multimillion-dollar decisions.

When you were 25 or when Mick Jagger or John Lennon were, didn’t the industry have the same qualities, admittedly involving a lot less money? Also, at the last Rolling Stone concert I attended, it seemed three-quarters of the people there were under 30.
This is the good news. Our cultural idols – the icons – don’t have to be just James Dean or Kurt Cobain; they’re also Picasso and Howlin’ Wolf. I have to be able to do this work as an adult and still have passion about it, still be vital and still rock and make records that have some meaning. This is still my idiom and I am determined to say something of value in it.

Do you have any bitterness the MC5 didn’t receive the recognition it deserved?
None. I think the MC5 gets its props. I get it all the time, all over the world. I was in Paris at a press conference and the interpreter pulled me aside after and said, “Wayne, I just wanted you to know how much my MC5 records mean to me. They’re part of our history, too.” It’s not a story that’s well-known to your average 17-year-old poo-butt, jean-wearing skateboard suburban kid. He doesn’t know the story of the MC5; it’s a story told by oral history, tribe by tribe. One group of guys learns about it and they tell their friends, “Did you ever hear about the MC5? They were crazed; they were from Detroit; they had guns and they were a rock band.”

The story leaks out here and there. Books like Legs McNeil and Jillian McKane’s, Please Kill Me, tells some of the story, and Fred Goodman’s book, Mansion on the Hill, tells more, and our documentary will tell some, too.

Do you play guitar better than you did in the MC5 days?
I play better. I write better songs, I’m a better singer. I didn’t burn out. I’m 49 and I wake up every day thrilled to do the stuff I do. It’s is more stretched out than it ever was. Traditionally, when you reach your middle-adult stage, that’s when you come into your power, that’s when you really get a handle on it.

You’ve attained much of your fame based on your stint with the MC5, but your latest CDs don’t sound like you’re relying on 25-year-old licks.
I’m a musician with big ears. I hear everything and listen to everybody. Music has the ability to reinvent itself and recontextualize itself. There’s things I hear, other musicians that influence my work; I’m a man in touch with my times. I’m trying to pay attention to what’s going on out there.

What do you think when bands like the Presidents of the United States cover MC5 tunes?
I like it a lot. The Presidents wrote me a letter asking me if they could change the lyrics to “Kick Out the Jams,” and in the beginning I said no, even though usually I never say no to anybody. I thought, “It’s a sacred song; you can’t mess with it.” But the more I thought about it I realized, I’m starting to sound like a parent or something. So I told them it was okay.

What did they want to change?
They had written some new verses. I didn’t get it. I was just reading their text and thought it was irreverent and making fun, but that’s the idea of the Presidents of the United States; they’re an irreverent group. They’re kind of a fun, lightweight, disposable band, but I was thrilled they decided to do the song.

That song, with its famous opening shout by the late Rob Tyner, “Kick out the jams, mother@!#*er,” got you guys in a lot of trouble when you played it at Detroit-area clubs. Arrested, beaten up by the cops, and the plug pulled on your shows.
It was the call to action, the battle cry; “Man the barricades!” A lot of times the club owners would tell us, “If you sing that song with the swear word in it, we won’t pay you.” Then, Rob would get so excited in the heat of the moment, he’d say it anyway and we’d walk away broke for the night. We had constant problems with the police. They’d search our van, stop our shows, tell us what we could and couldn’t play. One time our show was surrounded by Oakland County sheriff’s deputies who threatened to bust us if we sang it, so Rob yelled, “Kick out the jams. . .” and the crowd finished the sentence.

You guys changed some pretty serious lyrics yourselves on “The Motor City’s Burning,” by bluesman John Lee Hooker, his song about the ’67 Detroit riot. Hooker sings at the end of his song, “Johnny Lee is getting out of here,” but you changed it during your performance at the Grande.
Yeah, I was shouting, “It’ll all burn, it’ll all burn.” Once a militant revolutionary, always a militant revolutionary. You don’t turn in your card.

How do you feel about your latest studio release, Citizen Wayne?
It’s my latest science. With my history of activism in the work, my political consciousness – I come from a political time and a political band – I think, “How do I do this work today as a thinking adult? Is there a place for me to compete with the Spice Girls?”

I’d like to think if I make the kind of music I believe in, and the kind of sounds and the kind of songs I think are important and beautiful, maybe there’ll be some other people out there who think so too.
Visit www.epitaph.com for more information on Kramer’s recent releases.

Cheap Trick recently played a three-night engagement at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles, where the band performed its first three albums on successive nights in early October.

Epic/Legacy recently reissued all three albums with digital remastering, liner notes, and outtakes, and the live show included songs even longtime fans have seldom, if ever, heard in concert, including “So Good To See You,” from In Color, and two from Heaven Tonight; “On The Radio,” and the title track. Bassist Tom Petersson sang lead on a cover of Lou Reed’s “Waiting For The Man/Heroin,” and his own “I Know What I Want.”

Former MC5 guitar god Wayne Kramer (a friend of CT from its Midwest days), who opened the first night’s show, returned during the finalé to lead Cheap Trick through a sendup encore of the MC5’s signature “Kick Out The Jams.”

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Dec. ’98 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Native Californian guitarslinger Steve Lukather has been a mainstay on the Left Coast studio and concert scene for longer than you think. He’s best noted for his longtime association with platinum-selling Toto, which has sold 30 million albums worldwide since its first single, “Hold the Line,” hit the top 10 in 1978.

Even Lukather’s high school band, Still Life, made some noise in the L.A. area, and the guitarist has appeared on a myriad of albums by other artists. Still, it was a new release, Mindfields, by that band that had Lukather in an upbeat mood when VG talked with him about the instruments he has used throughout his career and on the new recording, which marks the return of original Toto vocalist Bobby Kimball (Lukather handles some lead vocals, as well).

Vintage Guitar: Are you originally from L.A.?
Steve Lukather: I was born, raised, and corrupted in the Valley. My buddy, Mike Landau (VG, October ’97), is also a successful guitar player, and back around 1969 we used to go hang out at a place called Saul’s. He had all the vintage stuff – old Strats, Les Pauls. It was the only place in L.A. where you could go to get old amps and old guitars. They were surprised that two little 11-year-old kids could play!

What about your earliest influences and instruments?
Man, I had some real classics. When I was seven years old, I got Meet the Beatles and a Kay acoustic, and I still have that guitar, but my parents made it into a lamp for me! I’ve given it to my son; he’s playing guitar now.

I also had an Astro-Tone guitar; one of those four-pickup drugstore jobs. I had it for many years, then a friend of mine broke the neck, and my parents insisted that I learn how to play with that busted neck. The next guitar I got was a Voxton, a fake black Les Paul. I played that for about a year, and my parents finally realized I was getting pretty good, and sent me down to Guitar Center, where I got a Les Paul Deluxe; the one with the little pickups. It’s killer, and I’ve still got it. It was a cherry sunburst, and it changed my life; it was the first great guitar I got. I also got an Ampeg VT22 (amplifier) to go with it.

And after the Deluxe?
I got a ’71 tobacco sunburst [Gibson] ES-335. After I’d discovered Larry Carlton, I had to have one of those (chuckles)! I played the Les Paul all through high school, and when I got out and started doing demo sessions – before I started doing real sessions – I knew I needed that 335. I took it on the road with Boz Scaggs in ’77, one of my first really cool gigs. I was 18 or 19, and I’d just started to play on a few records.

Details about Still Life, your high school band?
That band started in ’72, and had Michael Landau and me on guitar, John Pierce on bass, Carlos Vega on drums, and Steve Porcaro on keys. Jeff Porcaro and David Paitch had already decided to form Toto, and they used to come down to our gigs. In fact, Jeff was in Steely Dan when we were in high school, and we got to hear their albums before they came out. We learned “Katy Lied” before it was ever released! When we played those songs, people thought they were great, but they also thought we’d written ’em (chuckles). We were like the Junior Steely Dan; Landau played the part of Denny Dias and I was Jeff Baxter. Donald [Fagen] and Walter [Becker] actually came to one of our high school gigs, and we freaked out! They’re still one my favorite bands.

Did Still Life ever play at clubs like Gazzari’s or the Whiskey?
We auditioned, and they loved us, but we had to be 18 to play.

Did Still Life ever do any recording?
Somebody gave me a cassette of a prom we did at Beverly Hills High School in ’74.

When you got out of high school, how did demo sessions differ from what you termed “real” sessions?
Nobody had home studios back then; they’d hire a band, and you’d get about 30 bucks a tune. That’s where you got practical skills and learned how to get your sound, timing, and headphone balances – you’d learn on the gig. Now, guys have a sampler and an ADAT studio, and nobody gets any practical experience. It’s almost too easy to make demos these days.

What was your rig on “Hold the Line,” Toto’s breakout hit?
That was a ’58 goldtop Les Paul, through a blackface [Fender] Deluxe Reverb modified by Paul Rivera. I’ve known Paul for a long time; he made my first pedalboard, with all of the old analog units. It’s amazing; almost all of that kind of stuff has been stolen. I had four Tube Screamers Ibanez gave me – the original ones – those ended up missing from our warehouse.

I bought that goldtop for $2,500 during the making of the first album. Then when we went on tour, I went into a vintage guitar store in Phoenix, and saw a beautiful ’58 sunburst Les Paul and the guy wanted $5,000. I was 20 years old and had never spent that kind of money on a guitar, but I had to have it. I took it on the airplane, and the stewardess gave me a real hard time about it, and made me buy a seat for it, but it was my prized baby. I even tucked it into its seat with a seat belt (laughs). I used that guitar almost exclusively from ’79 to ’82; I used the Deluxe, as well. As for amps, I used a couple of Marshalls done up by Paul.

At one time in the ’80s, you were an Ibanez endorser – guitars, not effects.
They came to me around ’81, and wanted me to design a guitar for them, and I have the only one – I designed it, they made it for me, I signed a contract, and then they put out another guitar with my name on it. It was basically a cheesy Rickenbacker copy that sounded like **** and played really bad. But I was tied, contractually. They make great guitars now, though.

And the one I designed is a real interesting guitar; a one-of-a-kind, but I don’t play it much anymore.

So I blew those guys off. I thought what they were doing was misleading. Then Mike McGuire at Valley Arts made me a Strat copy; I think it was the third one he ever made. That was also when I started digging EMG pickups. In those days, before Valley Arts was sold, they were really hands-on in making what you wanted and needed.

Toto performed on the ’84 L.A. Olympics soundtrack, and as I recall, different artists had different sports to perform themes for – Bob James, for example, did a song called “Courtship,” about basketball.

We had boxing. It was a really pompous, fanfare kind of tune, like ELP with horns.

Then there was the theme from Dune…
We wrote the whole score; the orchestral stuff. It was kind of an experiment for us, because we’d just fired our singer, and we didn’t know what we wanted to do. [Director] David Lynch came to us and wanted us to do this movie, and we thought it would be great; a Star Wars kind of movie, but they pulled the plug on the money, and he didn’t get to finish it the way he wanted, so now it’s known as a cult film.

It was a learning experience for us. At the time, we were offered Dune or Footloose; we chose Dune, and the Footloose soundtrack sold something like 10 million copies!

Still, unless someone had read Frank Herbert’s novel, the movie probably didn’t make much sense, and it was widely panned. Someone noted that Sting shouldn’t quit his day job.
(Chuckles) It was terrible. We were at the premiere, and as the movie went on, we kept sliding lower and lower into our seats (laughs). I remember Marty Paich, David’s dad, was sitting behind us, and he leaned over to his son and said, “Dave, I told you this was a turkey!” It’s not Lynch’s best work, but I’m still a huge fan of his; The Elephant Man was tremendous.

Around the time Toto IV broke, MTV was really starting to pick up steam, and the band did videos for “Africa” and “Rosanna.”
We’d done videos before that; we did a concept video in 1979 or ’80, before there even was an MTV, for our second album, Hydra. We used four songs, and almost everyone thought we were crazy.

When MTV came along, it was supposed to be a noncommercial channel, with just music videos 24/7, and the artists weren’t supposed to be paid anything – it was just supposed to be promo. We were one of the first bands that had videos, so we were all over MTV for the first couple years.

A general observation from people who recall the early days of MTV might be that the channel doesn’t show videos anymore.
No, they don’t. A group of guys think they’ve figured out what’s cool, what they can sell, and how much money they can make. And they’ve got a monopoly on the situation. For me, it has ruined the entire music business – it’s turned it into McDonald’s instead of an art form. There were some good videos – people like Peter Gabriel – and if you look back at our videos, all of them were pretty cheesy, because we weren’t too comfortable doing them; we were musicians not actors.

The video for “Stranger in Town” had more of a “concept” than some of your earlier ones, and Brad Dourif appeared in it typecast as a psycho, a la One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
We met Brad when we were doing Dune. He did that as a favor, and it was up for an MTV award. It was also the last time we would ever do anything MTV would play – 1985. So we stopped making them, figuring, “What’s the point?”

One of the things that had to be awkward around that time was the revolving door of lead vocalists.
Yeah, that was really unfortunate. But we’ve come full circle, back to our original guy.

We don’t have time for a complete list of your recording projects with other artists, but are there any you might want to highlight?
I’ve played on almost a 1,000 albums, so it’s really hard to say. I’ve had a chance to work with all my heroes. People used to give us a lot of flak (affects stoner/doofus voice), “Aww, you’re studio musicians – no soul…” That’s bull****. I’ve worked with all kinds of tremendous players – Miles Davis, Elton John, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, all of the Eagles on their solo stuff, Aretha Franklin. There have been some really great moments, but there’s a lot of cheese in there, too – “Let’s Get Physical,” for instance (laughs). But think about the era in which that came out; Olivia Newton-John’s really a sweet girl.

Another thing was the perception by some ***holes that we were a bunch of drug addicts. How could I possibly have done Toto and played on all of those records if I’d been wacked out? I experimented – everybody did – but not to the point where I was ****ed up and couldn’t get out of bed to go to a session.

What was the most successful record you played; chart ranking or sales?
Thriller. Michael Jackson. I played on almost the entire album.

Have you done instructional videos?
I’ve done one. It was the second one the company made, around ’84, and if you watch it, I look like a deer in headlights. I bluffed my way through it – showed up completely unprepared, and thank God for Wolf Marshall; he got me through it, telling me to just be myself. These days, some of the guys in Toto will get hold of the instructional videos that Simon Phillips, who plays drums with us now, and I made back in the early ’80s, and they’ll put ’em the VCR on the bus to torture us (laughs)!

You’ve gotten into some memorable jam sessions on occasions, particularly at NAMM shows, right?
Oh, yeah; the Music Man jams were fun – Eddie Van Halen, Steve Morse, Albert Lee. Albert, Steve Vai, and I once played at a birthday party for Sterling Ball at a little Mexican restaurant in L.A.

There was also some kind of offshoot band called Los Lobotomies that had a live track that appeared on a guitar magazine anthology album.
That was a one-off in ’89. Will Lee flew in, Joe Sample was on it, and there were three drummers – Jeff Porcaro, Vinnie Coliuta, and Carlos Vega. Lenny Castro was on percussion.

We rehearsed one morning, and recorded live later that day. One rehearsal, one take, no overdubs.

What’s the story on your signature Music Man instrument?
After Valley Arts sold out, Sterling Ball became a close friend, and he approached me about doing a model. The other signature players involved with his company were world-class, and it turned out Dudley Gimpel, who designs Music Man guitars, used to work for Valley Arts. I sent him my favorite Valley Arts neck, and he put it on a computer scanner, and made me a neck that was better.

We tried different pickups, and worked on the shape of the body, but I really didn’t have to do much because he sent me a world-class instrument right away. I kept going back to EMG pickups, and the final result was an unbelievably nice guitar that’s very versatile – it can sound like a Strat or a Les Paul. And we keep developing it.

I’ve always felt like if I had an instrument with my name on it, I’d have to want to play it all the time, and that’s how I feel about this guitar. It can take a beating, and it stays in tune. The Music Man company has actually asked me, “What do you need” on more than one occasion; they’ve even made me a guitar with a piezo in it. I’ve never worked with a company that’s more on top of what they’re doing. They don’t miss a beat.

You’re doing some of the lead vocals on the new album, on songs like “After You’ve Gone.”
I’ve worked really hard on my singing. I do about half of the lead vocals during a show.

What gear did you use on Mindfields?
My Music Man, plus a few vintage things here and there, like a Les Paul on “Mysterious Ways,” but I would also layer things with different guitars. Music Man made me a great “bastard” guitar – it’s got an Eddie Van Halen body, a Luke neck, and DiMarzio single-coil pickups on it, Telecaster-style. My amp is one I designed with Paul Rivera, called a Bonehead. That’s the only amp I used on the whole record. It’s a three-channel amp, and we got a patent on the subwoofer system. I like a lot of low-end on a guitar. It’s really versatile; great clean sound, great mid-crunch, great full-on shred, and everything in between.

In the liner notes to Mindfields, you thanked Larry Carlton, “…for teaching me how to play the guitar again.”
I went on tour with Larry in Japan last year. Every night before the show, he’d sit down and teach me about certain jazz improvisations, or wacky country licks. He was my sensei – Japanese for “teacher.” It really got me fired up about playing guitar again, and the only other time that’s happened was when I was working with Jeff Beck. Larry and I did a live album; hopefully it’ll be out by 2001; we’ve each got a lot of stuff coming out.

You’ve also worked with jazz-er Lee Ritenour…
Rit’s an old pal of mine, and he saved my ass one time (laughs)! When I was about 19, one of the first records I ever did was with him, and he befriended me. One time, I showed up late for a session, and there was a room full of session musicians – strings, horns, the whole deal. They were just about ready to count off when I came in. I sat down quickly and pulled out my guitar; I had Guitar Part #2, but when I looked at the sheet music, it was a ****in’ piano part in D-flat, and there were no chord symbols anywhere! I looked over at Lee, and I must have looked like I’d seen a ghost – you could probably have shoved a piece of coal up my ass and gotten back a diamond! Lee grabs my chart and gives me his, which had things on it like 24 bars passive, a few fills, nothing. And he nailed my original part. He made me look great.

Mindfields had an overseas release before it hit the U.S. market.
Everywhere else in the world, and it has sold half a million units so far. It just came out here, and we’re just starting to promote it with some gigs. We’ll be working for the rest of the year, and I’m also doing a blues tour of Europe with Edgar Winter. I’m also doing some solo stuff, and I’m doing some producing, as well, so I’ve got a pretty full plate. But it’s great to stay busy. I still love music, and I still practice. You never stop learning.

One gets the feeling Lukather’s plate has been pretty full for most of his career. And remains dedicated to providing memorable guitar work within many contexts, both with and without Toto.

Steve Lukather: Terrason.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s Nov. ’00 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The list of folks who use Tim Scheerhorn’s guitars reads like a who’s who of resonator and slide guitarists. Jerry Douglas, Mike Auldridge, Sally VanMeter, Rob Ickes, Ben Harper, Phil Leadbetter, and Jimmy Stewart all rely on their Scheerhorns. What is it that causes these artist to faithfully flock to these unique axes? VG talked with Tim Scheerhorn by phone from his workshop in Michigan.

Vintage Guitar: The first question is of all the instruments in the world to build, why square-neck resonator guitars?

Tim Ssheerhornr: I’m a player and I wanted to build something I couldn’t buy. I was fortunate enough to show my first guitar to Mike Auldridge in 1989. That instrument was built in April of ’89, and I was scared to death. I was in awe of the man and asked if he had a few minutes after one of his shows. He opened the case, his eyes popped, and he sat on the fender of his car for an hour and a half, playing it.

Two weeks later I got a wonderful letter: “It was a pleasure to look over your guitar. It was honestly the most beautiful guitar of its type I have ever seen. More importantly, it sounds wonderful. It is very difficult to tell what a guitar will sound like over a sound system or a recording studio when you play it live. I would love to have the opportunity to test drive one of your guitars in one of these environments. I feel pretty sure it would pass the test with ease…”

Anyway, he’s totally responsible for me building more.

How many do you build a year?
About 40; that’s a good number. They are all built to order and I have 50 on backorder. [There is] a 14-month wait, and a tremendous number of people want to know if I have any scratch-and-dents. I don’t.

How do your guitars differ from the traditional dobro?
They look like a Dobro and have Dobro parts – the cone, the spider, the assembly using a quarterman cone. But I do things different inside. I realized what we have here is a speaker cabinet. I studied bass reflex principles and realized there is air in there that has to do something to complement what’s going on. Consequently I don’t have the traditional soundwell construction. My whole motive was to build an acoustic guitar and let the wood work acoustically, as well as the mechanics of the resonator.

Your guitars are made of solid wood, as opposed to the traditional Dobro, which is a laminate.
Right. Solid wood from day one. Occasionally, Dobro would build a wooden instrument. It’s rare to see one in the pre-war days but in the OMI days they made special-order solid-wood instruments. The problem with them was that they had a sound well, which meant they tied the back to the top and locked all the resonant qualities of the top and the back.

What’s a sound well?
A sound well is a ring of wood with holes drilled in it. It sits underneath the cone, and the top and assembly are glued to it. Dobro tried to sell this as a great idea because it made the guitar indestructible. I’ve seen photos with guitar bodies stacked up with a guy standing on top of them. I’m building a musical instrument, not a piece of furniture. I’m sure I couldn’t stand on mine.

Some people have complained that your instruments don’t sound like a traditional dobro in that they are louder and less metallic in tone.
I certainly don’t represent my guitar as traditional-sounding. It’s very contemporary. My whole motive initially was to build a resonator that could go to a jam session and be heard. I didn’t want to build an old pre-war-sounding instrument. If you want that sound, there’s a ton of them out there.

Have you ever built anything besides square-neck resonator instruments?
Round-necks, banjos, and resonator banjos. I’ve built eight or nine round-neck resonators and I also make Weisenborn-type lap guitars on a limited basis. There’s a big interest in the Wisenborn style. I am certainly not building a ton of them, but I built about 15 and have eight or nine on backorder. On Restless on the Farm, Jerry Douglas is playing a lot of the Weisenborn I made. He’s holding it on the inside cover photo.

You destroyed a number of early instruments because they weren’t up to par. What’s the earliest instrument in the field?
Sally VanMeter has number three, and she’ll never give it back because I’ll destroy it. I have repaired it. It’s popped its buttons because some of the structural integrity was lacking. It has survived 10 trips around the world and a tumble out of the back of a Bronco going 60 MPH. On guitar number six – Jerry Douglas’ first one – I decided that if I’m going to make these guitars to survive, I’m going to have to make some changes.

Have the guitars evolved aside from the structural changes?
The body shape of the standard L-bodies (L for large) has stayed the same. Material selection, shape, and bracing have been identical. Small things like neck width and subtle dimensional changes have occurred. I felt more comfortable adding more material on the neck width, those are things nobody but me is aware of. At a certain point, and I am trying to remember when, I did an experimental guitar for myself with a radius back that is arched from the neck to the tailpiece, it’s not like a radius back on an acoustic guitar that’s arched in two directions. All of my guitars are tapered, the tail piece is thicker than at the neck. There is a slight taper. I was building flat back guitars for a quite a few years, after I did this experimental one I decided that the radius was giving me a little more depth of tone, and at a certain point I made a running change and put on the radius back instead of the flat back.

Is there more than one way to set up a resonator guitar? I know that for regular guitars there’s a myriad of ways.
I strongly believe in ebony-capped maple bridges. Ebony is harder, denser, and much more consistent than maple. My experience is that the old guitars all sounded different. You could pick up 20 pre-war guitars and all will have a different quality to their tone. Part of that I attribute to the bridge insert. Some were birch, some beech, and some maple. The string slots were also all done differently. Consequently if you have a lot of variety or variation of that wood, by introducing the ebony caps on top of that bridge insert, it gives it a clearer note with more sustain yet the maple bottom provides the woodiness. This design is sort of a derivative from the banjo bridge. Banjo bridges have been that way for years. People who want a more contemporary-sounding guitar seem to prefer it.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’99 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.