Earning a nod of approval from the Jimmy Page is the sort of once-in-a-lifetime trophy moment most guitarists would brag about for decades. For Steve Lukather, that moment unfolded under even more surreal circumstances – with Eddie Van Halen standing right beside him.
Speaking to Forbes, the Toto legend and session ace shares the story of the only time he ever met the Led Zeppelin icon and how the night had left an unexpectedly deep mark.
“I have a funny story about Jimmy,” Lukather begins. “It was the one and only time I ever met him. I went over to this Guitar Center thing honouring Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap. In fact, I ended up producing four tracks on their next record because of that night.”
Lukather arrived with Eddie Van Halen, expecting nothing more than a fun hang and a chance to meet one of his heroes. But what happened next caught him completely off-guard.
“I showed up with Eddie and my boys,” he recalls. “Hey, we’re going to meet Jimmy Page, a big deal, right? Jimmy’s standing there greeting everyone. He points at me. I think he’s pointing at Ed, of course, but it’s me, and he motions for me to come over.”
Then came the compliment of a lifetime.
“He said, ‘You have something that these other guys here don’t.’ And I go, ‘What’s that, Jimmy?’ He said, ‘You understand and I understand, but those other guitarists don’t. We were studio players. They don’t know what that means.’”
Page then explained that he knew people sometimes dismissed Lukather because he was a “studio guy” – a notion he shut down instantly, speaking as someone who’d carved his own career in the studio trenches.
“‘That’s the opposite of the absolute truth. That sets you above these other guys,’ Jimmy said. I asked if I could give him a hug, and tell people he had said that,” Lukather continues. “He laughed, gave me a hug and said, ‘Sure.’ That meant the world to me.”
The post “He said, ‘You have something the others don’t’”: Steve Lukather recalls the night Jimmy Page complimented him – while he was hanging out with Eddie Van Halen appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.