Ryo Okumoto -- Crystal Highway

 

I remember when I first got Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）1980 "Miss M" album and marveling at the photos inside the liner notes since they showed proof positive that the band Airplay (David Foster and Jay Graydon) and some of TOTO (Jeffrey Porcaro and Steve Lukather) helped out in the arrangement and recording of half the album.

Well, those fellows helped out a number of other Japanese singers, and in that same year, all four of them also gave a good hand to rock keyboardist Ryo Okumoto's（奥本亮）album "Makin' Rock". They assisted in arrangement and songwriting on a majority of the tracks including the one featured here, the smooth "Crystal Highway". Specifically, according to the Tower Records description of the album, it was Porcaro and Lukather behind the creation of the song with Foster handling the arrangement. There's some fine meshing between the rock guitar and the gentle-but-not-diminished keyboard work by Okumoto, including a couple of solo passages.

Born in Osaka in 1959, Okumoto would later become known for his work in the band Spock's Beard when he joined the American rock group in 1996. He's been categorized as being someone performing progressive rock and experimental rock, but I think with "Crystal Highway", it's a bit more on the fusion side of things. And certainly, on the Tower site, the album has been given praise as an AOR/hard fusion work.