Toto guitarist Steve Lukather has dismissed reports that he will play on a ‘new’ Van Halen album.
This came about after De Telegraaf, the Dutch daily newspaper, reported that Alex Van Halen was working on a load of unreleased Van Halen recordings and that Lukather was helping him complete the project. The drummer said: "Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can."
In the same article, Lukather, is quoted as saying: "Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together."
However, over the weekend the Toto man took to Instagram and cleared up what all this means - whilst he’s involved, he is absolutely not playing guitar on any ‘new’ Van Halen tracks. "For the record: Ever since Alex Van Halen dropped some we were gonna work together I think there is a huge misunderstanding. "I will NOT EVER play a guitar note on a VH song ever!
"Al asked me to help him go thru a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now that's all I got.
"The fact that ANYONE would think for even a second that I would play anything on this is ridiculous. I have too much love and respect for that and ... I play nothing like Ed.. more as a co-producer or something. I am honored Al would ask me though.”
So that’s that sorted out.
Lukather and Van Halen go back a long way. The two guitarists both played on Michael Jackson’s Beat It and Eddie contributed to both Lukather’s 1989 solo album and his 2003 Christmas album SantaMental.
When this unreleased material will see light of day is unclear. Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020. His brother has talked about there being enough unheard tracks for another “three or four records.”
Speaking on Steve Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, Alex Van Halen said: "I've talked about it loosely, and I am rather superstitious, but I can say a couple of things that I've mentioned before. We're gonna go through the 'vault' and go through some of the musical ideas that were there."
He added: "There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember, when in the thick of it, sometimes the really great stuff kind of passes you by. And it's not until you revisit it going, 'Whoa, I forgot about that. This kicks ass.' But that takes time. And you wanna do it right. I wanna do it right."
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