STEVE LUKATHER AKA LOS LOBOTOMYS AKA THE CANDYMAN

From my interpretation, you may or may not interpret it the same way, the song HERO WITH A 1000 EYES, the opening track from the 1996 STEVE LUKATHER solo album CANDYMAN, is a reference to the man in the clouds, the supreme supernatural being. God is not mentioned anywhere directly in the song, but i think it should be categorised as a gospel song. CANDYMAN was Lukather's second solo outing since taking a sabbatical break from TOTO in the early 90`s, although technically, it was a LOS LOBOTOMYS album, a band made up of journeymen, sessionmen and a couple of his bandmates out of TOTO. Obviously the copy of CANDYMAN i got my hands on years ago was the european release, because it is under the title of STEVE LUKATHER, in the US and Japan, it was released under the LOS LOBOTOMYS moniker, and with the additional track RED HOUSE, a scorching JIMI HENDRIX cover, included on the japanese release. It seems counter-productive why Lukather would have confused the title of the album between continents, thus making what was already a cultish, minority appeal album even harder to identify and track down for his not so loyal followers. Maybe the analogy was that LOS LOBOTOMYS was well known in the US but in Europe the name Lukather would ring a bell more because of the familiarity of TOTO in Europe. It's exactly like when australian pop rock band DRAGON renamed themselves HUNTER in 1986 for the DREAMS OF ORDINARY MEN album to make themselves sound more like a metal band. Hunter being the surnames of singer Marc and guitarist Todd. Anyhow, that issue aside, CANDYMAN was a great heavy rock guitar experimental diversion for the AOR trained STEVE LUKATHER, it allowed him to explore themes outside the limited lyrical range of AOR, as displayed with some of the other great tracks on CANDYMAN like EXTINCTION BLUES, one of his own compositions, and the JOE WALSH cover THE ROCKER, where Joe himself makes a guest appearance on guitar. The european release that i have doesn't have RED HOUSE on it, but it does have another brilliantly eclectic JIMMY HENDRIX cover to boast about - FREEDOM. The frenetic heavy rock guitar of PARTY IN SIMON'S PANTS' i take it is a reference to one of it's co-writers - drummer SIMON PHILIPS, who at that stage had only been the drummer in TOTO for a few years following the tragic death of the late, great JEFF PORCARO, who i rate as being in the top 5 drummers of all time. Brit guitar legend JEFF BECK is honoured in the final track SONG FOR JEFF. Although Lukather didn't create an epic like Van Halen 1 or TOYS IN THE ATTIC with CANDYMAN, he did create the closest thing you'd get to a heavy rock guitar masterpiece in the 90`s. A good mixture of party rock and some more seriously minded material. It should also be noted that MR. MISTER singer RICHARD PAGE and FREE and BAD COMPANY frontman PAUL RODGERS also had an involvement with CANDYMAN.