STEVE LUKATHER

The top sessioneer and Toto stringsman recounts his early six-string experiences and an epic deal on a rare Vox 12-string

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

"I played a lot of really shitty guitars when I was young. I started out with a Kay acoustic guitar, which was like five bucks at a Thrifty Drug Store. The action was so far off the neck, it was painful to try to get a noise out of - guitars were not very sophisticated in the early 60s. Then the first electric guitar I got was another Thrifty Drug Store guitar called an Astrotone. That one fell over and broke its neck - somebody let somebody play it and they dropped it. My old man goes, "Well, you're gonna have to play it with a broken neck...

"So what I used to do was borrow guitars from people who had good guitars. A Fender or Gibson or something like that was rare back then, but they existed. My father would go on the road while he was working behind the cameras in the television movie business and he would come home and say, 'Where do you want to go?' Instead of going to the toy store I wanted to go to the guitar store and play all the expensive guitars I couldn't afford.

"One time I got in there and I grabbed this Les Paul Deluxe off the wall and I was playing my ass off, I guess. I was gonna put it on the wall again and my dad goes, 'Well, let's get it in the car... I thought he was buying me an amp, but he said, 'No, the guitar, too. He gave up getting a new car for himself to give me an Ampeg VT-22 amp and a Les Paul Deluxe. My parents were great."

What was the last guitar you bought and why?