Ex-JOURNEY Vocalist STEVE PERRY

Ex-JOURNEY Vocalist STEVE PERRY - "I Think The Beginning Of The End Was When NEAL SCHON Started His Solo Career"

Alex Pappademas recently spoke with ex-JOURNEY vocalist Steve Perry for GQ. Following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Journey had already made three records by the time you joined the band.

Perry: "Yeah. I joined the band in 1978. What happened was, I was in Los Angeles, trying to get signed, with a band that I was in at the time—it was called the ALIEN PROJECT, but it was also called STREET TALK. The name wasn't settled yet. Don Ellis, who was running the west coast side of Columbia at the time, heard the tape and really liked the group. We were supposed to talk serious contract papers with him right after 4th of July weekend that year. And our bass player Richard Michaels got killed in a Fourth of July holiday accident on the freeway. We were destroyed by that—he was a wonderful singer, a wonderful bass player, and a great guy, and he was part of a real interesting chemistry that Columbia wanted to sign. So Don Ellis took the liberty, about two weeks after that, of sending our tapes to Herbie Herbert, who at the time was managing Journey. And I got a phone call from Don Ellis telling me that Herbie had called back and wanted to meet me and talk to me about joining the group. Because Journey had made a conscious decision, along with Columbia's—what's the correct word here—request [laughs] that they become a little more song-oriented. So they thought that I would be a good addition to the band. So Don Ellis called me and said Herbie wanted me to fly out and meet Neal (Schon). I think it was in Denver, Colorado—they were opening for EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER at the time. So I flew out there, hung out with the band. Neal and I wrote our first song that night in the hotel room, after the show. Called 'Patiently'. It began at that point for me, with the band."

Q: What did you mean when you said, on that VH1 special, that you'd never really felt like part of the band?

Perry: "Okay. So—[long pause] when we did the VH1 thing, I said there was quite some time where I never really felt part of the band. And people didn't understand what that meant. And what that meant was that there was a period of time where I always felt, from Neal, that I had to prove myself worthy of the position I was trying to occupy in the group. And not until it really took off, I think, did that question really get answered.

But along with this, you have to print that I can't blame them. Because they'd had a certain amount of success without me, and they were wondering, once I joined, 'Is this the right direction?' I could tell that. I didn't have years of being in SANTANA under my belt, like Neal and Gregg. Ross Valory had played with Steve Miller and people like that, I didn't have that. Aynsley Dunbar had played with everybody. I didn't have that under my belt. So, yeah. I was the new kid. And I think that proving myself was something that went on for quite some time with the band members."

Q: When you started your solo career, was that the beginning of the end for Journey?

Perry: "No. I think the beginning of the end was when Neal started his solo career. Neal did a solo album way before I was thinking about it, with Jan Hammer. And I said to Herbie, the manager, 'I think this is a bad idea'—that it would fracture the band on some level. And he said 'No, he's gotta do what he's gotta do. I've tried to talk him out of it, but he wants to do it.' And then he did his second one, and I said 'OK, look, if he does a second one, I'm probably going to end up doing one.' Then [drummer] Steve Smith wanted to do a jazz record. And the theory coming from Steve, and I kind of understood it, was that everybody'll go out and be able to express themselves musically in some other areas, and then when we reconvene, perhaps we will have discovered or found things that we can bring to the group to help the group evolve. And so I thought that was okay. So after Neal did his second solo album, I went to LA, and in about three weeks, I wrote Street Talk, which was a bit of a nod to the earlier band, and to the bass player who'd passed, and with some great studio musicians and cowriters, we just knocked the record out and we released it."

Go to this location for the complete interview.