#toto #stevelukather #rock #guitarsolo #70s #lespaul

Did you know that this iconic solo was written & performed by a 21 year old?

Hold The Line was my gateway to Toto & Steve Lukather.

A guy named Anthony Callea sung it on Australian Idol in 2004, and I was just blown away by what a great riff/song it was.

I spent that summer driving around in my 1990 Pulsar Vector SSS listening to it. Then a friend showed me Africa and Rosanna, and I was hooked.

I researched Toto and learned all about Lukather, the history of the band, as well as his session career. I had just begun studying music at University and I needed a new guitar hero to look up to, someone who was out there with a feel for the jazz stuff I was learning, but could still rock out and shred.

Along the way, one friend lent me that great live DVD from Paris in 1990, and another showed me Toto IV. Hearing all those great album tracks like We Made It, Make Believe, Lovers In The Night & Good For You were like a time capsule. You could hear how much fun they were having during those sessions.

While I tried to sit down and learn some of the songs and solos, it was so much harder in the 2000s with nothing but iTunes to figure it all out by ear. I'm grateful to have more effective tools for transcribing these days, so I plan to go back and properly learn many classic Luke moments as authentically as possible.

This one is still a bit raw and not quite under the fingers, but I'm sure in the coming months it'll loosen up ????