During a recent appearance on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather called out Rolling Stone Magazine for the way they treated his band throughout the years, describing them as bullies.
The musician said while discussing his new book “The Gospel According to Luke” (transcribed by UG):
“They just got me again the other day, and you know why? Because I refused to talk to them again. So they set out this f*cking wanker just to purposely go after us like it was 1978. These guys have been after us since day one, and I know why.
“Here’s the thing – we came out at exactly the same time when Sex Pistols came out. We were young guys who studied music and our heroes were The Beatles, Steely Dan, stuff like that.
“We spent our whole life trying to be great, growing up, and all of a sudden they picked us out of the pile of all the bands of that era probably because, you know, we had a sh*tty name.
“When the guys wanted to name the band, I was like, ‘Really guys?!’. But I’ve grown to love it – it’s been very good to me.
“At the time, we were the band to pick on. We didn’t have a cute lead singer, we didn’t dress right – we didn’t play the game. We studied music and we thought that was good enough, and in the ’70s it was, but after that, it got weird.
“These guys were tragically all failed musicians. They couldn’t make it as players so they start writing about what they can’t do and they hate people that can do it well. Through history, you look at who they like and who they don’t like, you don’t even have to ask the question.
“I don’t think Lou Reed is the greatest guitar player in the world, but he’s in Top 10 in the Rolling Stone [Lou is at No. 81 on Rolling Stone’s list of Top 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, above Alex Lifeson, James Hetfield and Dimebag Darrell, among others]. He’s a great songwriter, he’s a great lyricist, no argument there. But best guitar player? Come on…
Steve added:
“Here’s the thing: we turned down the cover of Rolling Stone in 1982 – because they hate us. I mean, would you put your b*lls*ck into a woodchopper? Of course you’d turn this down. ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’
“All these years later, the resurgence of all that stuff, all of a sudden they want to make nice? After 45 years, you want to keep up this bully sort of vendetta against people you’ve never even met?”
Earlier this year, Lukather told Guitar Interactive about Toto’s rocky relationship with the music press:
“We took every punch there was. The UK press wasn’t real nice to us either. All the English-speaking countries would beat the sh*t out of us. And we just said, ‘Thank you man, have another.’ We just laughed it off.
“We got slacked off for playing on Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ record. And Rolling Stone goes, ‘[Producer] Quincy Jones manages to get some taste out of the members of Toto.’ We came up with our own parts! What the f*ck?! I mean, what did I ever do to this guy? I don’t even know.
“And the guy who co-wrote my book, Paul Rees, he used to work for Q Magazine. He said he was not allowed to write about us. Not allowed! Like as if we were the kryptonite or something. I mean, I can dig that you don’t like the music – that’s fine! I don’t like everything either.
“But to not be allowed – to dismiss us – is like we had nothing to do with music when we had so much to do with the music from 1975 to 2005. At least one of us was on a record coming out of LA. I was even on some punk records!”