I used to play the Baked Potato every Sunday night. I took over => Larry Carlton's place in this band with [keyboardist] Greg Mathieson, Jeff Porcaro, and [bassist] Pops Popwell. In fact, we made a live record for Japan as the Greg Mathieson Project. Playing there was heavy scene. I almost puked the first night. Everybody was saying, "Where's Carlton?" and I said [meekly], "Hi, I'm Steve Lukather." This was [a while] ago and it was the greatest thing for my playing -- ever. You play in front of 80 people, a lot of whom are guitar players, musicians, or real music fans. It was all instrumental music; we didn't play any hits or any of that shit. We were playing like all blues, => Miles Davis tunes. We wrote some stuff. We could just take it out, man, and go for a bunch of choruses. Mathieson was great. He really enlightened me a lot about building solos. I was so used to doing everything in 16 or 8 bars that peaked in two choruses, and I still had three to go! I'd have to use the wang bar or break the guitar like Pete Townshend [laughs]. (Guitar Player Magazine, April 1984)