The standard for that is a lot different now. But there’s a charm to the strings being out of tune, or the horns being a little off. There were certain imperfections on records back then.Īll the records of my childhood have things like the tambourine being way on top of the beat or something. At the very end of it, it’s a little flat, but they wouldn’t let me fix it. It wasn’t written by us.” And it was their first hit!įor the solo at the end, there was one track left, and I had to do the thing in one pass. I overdubbed a bunch of guitars on it, and I also played bass, because the Tubes’ bass player refused to play on the track. It was written and recorded in less than an hour. I came up with the opening riff, and we ran with it and came up with the song. So it was me, Prairie Prince, Foster and Fee. I didn’t know until I got there that there was any bad vibe at all. ” I had never met Fee, and some of the other guys in the band were pissed off that they brought in a ringer. What about the Tubes’ “Talk to Ya Later”?ĭavid Foster was producing the record, and he said, “I need you to co-write a song with Fee. We were all over that Thriller record - me, Steve Porcaro, David Paich and Jeff Porcaro. We didn’t win, but it was nice for him to give us the credit. I wrote that part on the spot, to the point where he gave me arranging credit on the record, and we got nominated for a Grammy. I started noodling around, and I came up with the entire guitar part. So Quincy knew I did that, and he called me and said, “Look, this is a great pop song, but it’s not funky. I’d get a chord sheet and come up with these quirky little muted parts. I had been working with Quincy Jones since his The Dude record, and I came up with a lot of parts for that. I had been working with Quincy Jones since his The Dude record, and I came up with a lot of parts for that. The running joke was that Steve Porcaro wrote the song, so it’s really a Toto song with Michael Jackson singing Porcaro played keyboards in Toto. The running joke was that Steve Porcaro wrote the song, so it’s really a Toto song with Michael Jackson singing. You’ve told the “Beat It” story a million times.
He said, “You bastard! You never even heard the song!” I played the solo in one take and it was done. I just reacted to what I was listening to. What key is it in? Roll the tape.” With all due respect, I knew it wasn’t going to be “Giant Steps” or anything like that. We’d been there all day.Ĭrosby said, “Let me play you the song.” I said, “No, man. We had done one song and Crosby said, “Luke, do a solo on this other track.” I love Croz, but I was trying to finish up because I wanted to go hang with Danny Kortchmar - he was the other guitar player. I once did a solo on a David Crosby record without ever hearing the song. GP ’s Jude Gold called your “Running with the Night” performance a “zero-take solo.” Do you have any other zero-take sessions?