Lobotomys Have No Head for Pop : Steve Lukather Says the Band, at Coach House Tonight, Is an Antidote for Radio Fare

As valid as any artist’s argument about the awfulness of Top 40 radio may be, one usually has to wonder if there’s a bit of sour grapes mixed in with the mash, since most of the complaining types have never gotten within 20 miles of popular success.

Not so Steve Lukather, whose group Toto ruled the airwaves and Grammy awards in the early ‘80s with a string of pop hits. As a star session guitarist he’s also played on hundreds of pop recordings, including Michael Jackson’s monster sellers.

Despite Lukather’s lucrative run, he’s not an especially happy man when it comes to the charts these days.

“The music business used to be filled with people who love music,” he complained by phone on Wednesday, “Now, at least the people I’ve been forced to deal with for the last however many years, they don’t care about music, they care about selling product, about who’s the No. 1 record label, who’s selling more units.

“I’m pretty much out of doing sessions now, after 16 years, because it got to the point where I just don’t want to play bad music any more. Maybe 5% of it was really great and the rest you’d wonder how these people got record deals. There is great music, but if people never get to hear it, how can they be turned on to it? That’s radio’s and MTV’s fault. They enjoy great power, and they abuse it.”

He has no illusions about Los Lobotomys, the band he’s with at the Coach House tonight, ever getting on the radio. The band is composed of some of the hottest musician’s musicians in Los Angeles, and Lukather says, “It’s our antidote to all that radio crap.”

Los Lobotomys’ other players are keyboardist David Garfield (whose work has spanned Boz Scaggs and George Benson), drummer Greg Bissonett (from David Lee Roth and Joe Satriani’s bands), percussionist Lenny Castro (with studio credits from Stevie Wonder to metal bands), bassist John Pena on bass (Larry Carlton, Joe Sample) and studio sax player Larry Klimas. Lukather and Garfield are the group’s frontal lobes, while the other members may shift a bit dependent on who’s in town.

For the past seven years the group has packed North Hollywood’s Baked Potato and other night clubs, with guest jammers or audience members including Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, David Sanborn, Eric Clapton, Slash, James Rivers and others.

“We’re just a bunch of guys that really love to play music,” Lukather explained, “We don’t do it for the bread, because there’s hardly any in it at these clubs. We just play for fun, because we all really enjoy each other’s company and playing together, and I think that vibe comes across.

“We just get up and shred for two or more hours, and everybody blows. It’s intense music, very high energy. The numbers have a beginning and an ending, but what happens in between is never the same. Everybody gets to play from their heart and soul with absolutely no musical boundaries. Anything goes, and the musicians are of such a caliber that somebody can take off in a direction and everybody’s right on it. In one song it can go from the most intense speed metal band you’ve ever heard to the most subtle be-bop stuff, with Latin jazz, blues and a little fusion in there too. It’s anti-pop music.”

Meanwhile, Lukather’s other band has reconvened after a six-year hiatus, and he says Toto is a decidedly less pop-bent proposition than it was the last time around.

“It’s the core guys of Jeff Porcaro, Mike Porcaro, David Paitch and myself, like we used to be back in high school. I love the band, particularly the new configuration we have. We . . . got back to what it is we love doing, playing music with an edge.

“We’ve recorded a new Toto album (due out in Europe next month, to coincide with a tour there) and it’s a much different record than we’ve ever done. There are long songs with lots of stretching out, live solos, very unpretentious. There are a couple of pop-ish songs, but most of it’s pretty heavy, a lot more complex. It’s like a new band for me.”

The new album probably won’t be out stateside until sometime next year, as they’re negotiating for a new label. Lukather had several expletive-drenched things to say about their past affiliation with CBS-Sony, the folks at which, in short, he considers, “the lowest, most useless people.”

Toto hung it up for a period, he said, because, “The lead singer bummers were more than anybody could handle: Every few seconds there was some guy either (messing) up on blow or with an attitude or losing his voice. It just never fit. We four key guys have known each other since high school and have been playing together for 20 years. We’re best friends and all that, but it got to be musically unsatisfying for everybody, and we needed to rethink it.

“Getting back together was fun because we were writing music we wanted to write instead of forever chasing the four-minute single, which I find completely hideous in concept.”

But isn’t that a concept Toto once pursued all the way to the top of the heap?

“Yeah, but it wasn’t intentional. You sort of fall into a pattern, and the record company’s always breathing down your neck. They’re the reason why really creative people from our generation got frustrated and discouraged. They would discourage us from doing what we did best, which was stretching out and playing. Because we’re players , we’re not a bunch of pretty boys with tight Spandex pants and wigs. Half those guys you see don’t play on their records anyway, and half don’t have real hair!”

“I ain’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I’ve dedicated my life to music since I was 7 and my dad bought me a guitar and the ‘Meet the Beatles’ album. But if I’d known the music business would get to this I wouldn’t have practiced when I was a kid. . . . I thought that you had to work, work, work and try to be the best musician you could, and that’s the only way you could make it. Then it turns out halfway through the scene they change the rules on you!

“What we’re trying to do in Los Lobotomys is to break the rules. It sure doesn’t fit into anyone’s format, but it’s what we want to hear,” Lukather said.

Los Lobotomys play tonight at 9 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $15. (714) 496-8930.