My First Love: Steve Lukather on the Beatles

“The album changed my life? I don’t even have to think about that. It was With The Beatles (released in the US as Meet The Beatles). That album was the ‘on’ switch for me, and fifty years later I’m playing in a band with Ringo (Starr). It’s pretty crazy.

“The music on that record touches me deeply inside, more than everything else that came after it. And the song that really did it for me as a kid was I Saw Her Standing There. When I heard the guitar solo, George’s solo, I wanted to be that guy. Whatever makes that sound, that’s what I want to do.

“When I saw The Beatles on TV that was it. It was all sewn up. For so many people of my age, that was a game changer. There was something that resonated within me."

“I ended up working with Ringo, I worked with Paul (McCartney), and George was a friend and we played together. To know those guys and work with them is so weird, but wonderfully weird.

“And there’s another really weird thing: a story about when my mother was pregnant with me. She was nineteen years old. My grandmother had very interesting friends – one of them was a psychic. This woman put her hands on my mom’s tummy and said, ‘It’s a boy. He hears the music. When he’s seven years old, something’s gonna change. And the world is going to know who he is.’ 

My mother was like, ‘Great – a musician! I wanted a doctor.’ And when I was seven years old, I heard The Beatles, got a guitar, it changed my life, and here I am. So that’s freaky shit – I wasn’t even born yet and it was all figured out.”

Paul Elliott

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q. He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar. He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”