Toto guitarist Steve Lukather has shot down rumours that he will be playing guitar on a new Van Halen album, following recent speculation sparked by comments from Alex Van Halen.

“Ever since Alex Van Halen dropped some we were gonna work together I think there is a huge misunderstanding,” Lukather clarifies in a new Instagram post. “I will not ever play a guitar note on a Van Halen song ever!”

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The rumours began circulating after Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported last week that Alex had personally enlisted the help of Lukather to complete unreleased Van Halen material. The drummer was quoted as saying [via Guitar World], “Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends and they often worked together. There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”


Lukather, seemingly surprised by the reports, was quoted in the same article responding, “Did Alex say that? Oh, in that case, the news is true. Ed, Alex and I were very close for years. It is true that we worked on it together.”

That said, Lukather has since taken to social media to clarify the extent of his participation in the project. The Toto guitarist explains that while the older Van Halen had asked for his help on some “unfinished recordings”, his involvement has not included any sort of guitar playing or recording.

“Al asked me to help him go through a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now that’s all I got.”

“The fact that anyone would think for even a second that I would play anything on this is ridiculous,” he continues. “I have too much love and respect for that and I play nothing like Ed. More as a co-producer or something. I am honoured Al would ask me though. Let’s see
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In other news, Alex Van Halen previously revealed that there is enough Van Halen material locked away for another “three or four records”.

Speaking on an episode of Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, the drummer said, “I’ve talked about it loosely, and I am rather superstitious, but I can say a couple of things that I’ve mentioned before. We’re gonna go through the ‘vault’ and go through some of the musical ideas that were there.”

“There was some good stuff in there. And you have to remember, when in the thick of it, sometimes the really great stuff kind of passes you by. And it’s not until you revisit it going, ‘Whoa, I forgot about that. This kicks ass.’ But that takes time. And you wanna do it right. I wanna do it right.”