CUT TO THE CHASE
Steve Lukather reveals how Eddie hijacked “Beat It.”
EDWARD VAN HALEN rarely participated in musical projects outside of his namesake band, but when he did, it often involved his fellow guitarist and good friend Steve Lukather. The two both played on Michael Jackson’s mega-hit “Beat It” (although their parts were recorded separately); Ed appeared on two of Lukather’s solo albums; and he joined Lukather and George Harrison onstage on December 14, 1992, for the Jeff Pocaro tribute concert, which was broadcast on KLOS-FM and later released as a live album. “We were friends for 40-plus years,” Lukather says. “We went through life together — all the good times, bad times, ridiculous times, sad times, the whole shit. We were much more than just guitar pals. I adored the man as a human being.”
The first record that the two of you ever did together was Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Was it your idea to get Eddie to play the solo on that song?
No. That was entirely Michael’s idea. A lot of people don’t know that Michael was also a rocker. He loved Van Halen and he loved Toto.
That’s why he hired us to work on several songs on his record. Michael had a very wide musical palette. I knew Eddie, but I wasn’t going to just give them his number. They had to go through the right channels. I wasn’t Ed’s agent or manager. Ed wasn’t all that up on Quincy Jones and what he did. He was asking me, “Who is this Quincy dude?” I told him that he was a really heavy cat and that he should do it.
It was ironic that we both ended up playing on the same record together. Ed later called me up and said, “I just played on your record, ‘Beat It.’” And I was going, “I know. We had to redo it because you cut up the tape!” He just started laughing.
What’s the story behind that?
We recorded a version of the song at Westlake Recording Studios, which is where Michael recorded the entire album, and Ed recorded his solo later at Sunset Sound. Michael had already recorded five separate vocal tracks. They spent a lot of time working on his vocals, because they wanted it to sound as good as possible. Those finished first-generation vocals were on a 24-track tape that we gave to Ed so he could record his solo. Either Ed or his engineer [Donn Landee] cut up that tape because Ed didn’t want to record his solo over the original backing part where Quincy and Michael wanted him to play. He just edited the tape to create an
“I NEVER KNEW ED TO LABOR OVER ANYTHING, SO I THINK HE WAS JUST GOOFING ON IT”
entirely new section with chord changes that he liked better.
The problem is that back then we would record one track with SMPTE code [Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers timecode] for synchronizing one 24-track recorder with another 24-track recorder. That allowed us to record more than just 24 tracks. When you cut the tape, the SMPTE code doesn’t lock up to the master tape any more. Quincy called me and [drummer] Jeff Pocaro and told us to go to Sunset Sound and record all of our parts all over again, because he didn’t want to lose Ed’s solo or Michael’s first-generation lead vocals. Jeff had to make an entirely new click track with drum sticks so he could play his drum part. He did that and nailed his drum track on the second take. Then I had to cram my guitar tracks onto it, and I also played bass.
We sent the tapes back to Quincy and he said, “It’s too big sounding. It’s too rock.” I thought that since Eddie was on the track, I’d better crank up some Marshalls and record quadruple rhythm tracks. Quincy explained that he wanted the song to get airplay on R&B radio as well as rock radio, so he asked me to play through my small Fender amps. I did it again like that, and that’s the version that’s on the record. I’m honored to be playing guitar and bass on “Beat It.” It’s one of the biggest records of all time.
What did you think of Ed’s solo?
That solo was like a collection of everything that Eddie ever did before, crammed into 20 seconds — harmonics, tapping, whammy-bar dives, superfast tremolo picking. I don’t think that a whole lot of thought went into it. He just played and was probably thinking,
I don’t even know what I’m doing this for. I never knew Ed to labor over anything, so I think he was just goofing on it. But even when he was goofing, great things would come out of him.
Excerpted from Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen (Hachette Books), by Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill.