Classic Rock Revisited Vol. 1: Rock Icons & Metal Gods

Steve Perry of Journey

Steve Miller

Sammy Hagar

Tom Scholz of Boston

Paul Rodgers of Free, Bad Company & The Firm

Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick

Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top

Michael Anthony of Van Halen and Chickenfoot

Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith

George Thorogood

Alan Parsons of the Alan Parson’s Project

Tommy Shaw of Styx

Jon Anderson of Yes

Circa 2007

Author’s Notes: 2011

Steve Perry is an amazing singer, beloved my millions of Journey fans around the world. Steve Perry is also cantankerous. He is well known for band in-fighting, and he has remained away from the world of rock, giving only mysterious hints at a physical ailment.

When I was invited by Sony’s Legacy Recordings to speak to Steve concerning Journey’s release of a 1981 concert film that originally aired on MTV, I actually wondered what my experience would be like. What I discovered was a man who did not live up to his reputation, as I found Perry on this day to be very accommodating, open, and honest about his feelings and attitudes towards Journey, and the legacy of songs he created with the band.

Perry admitted that is was hard for him to produce the DVD of the Escape era Journey, because that time period was so special to him. Emotionally, it was a real struggle to get through it, because it was such a walk through something – I didn’t realize what it was. When you are in it, you can’t see it. But twenty four years down the road – you can see it now!

You are releasing a new Journey DVD from the Escape tour of 1981. How did this come to be?

MTV started in August of 1981, and three months later they were filming us in Houston. It’s from the Escape tour. We were on tour, so we could not oversee the mixes of the music. It was mixed very quickly for television. There were some bootlegs of it running around, but none of them have had the original tapes pulled out and mixed like this one was. I mixed it in stereo and in 5.1 Surround, plus there are interviews, and a slide show featuring pictures that have never been seen before. It is kind of a collector’s edition with a DVD and CD of the show.

Was this like returning to the past and listening to some old songs?

It was very difficult for me to mix this stuff, emotionally. It was not difficult logistically. I had my head down on the console several times, because I couldn’t look up to the screen that we were running simultaneously. It was a flash of what it was like being there and reliving the experience. I was getting full of emotion again, and it was really tough. It was really because the performances were so good. I shook my head many times, thinking it was really sad because we really had something really great – until May of ‘98, we were pretty good.

How long had Jonathan Cain been in Journey? How did he change your songwriting dynamics?

He joined the band, wrote the album, and went on tour. I think he brought in another perspective that we didn’t have. He is a good songwriter, and I think I was able to sit down with him, and really go for some different lyrical content. He really knew some great inversions, being a keyboard player. He allowed me to have some melody changes that I had not had before. I think when you put it all together; it just improved the quality of the songwriting.

I heard Cain offered Open Arms to the Babys and they didn’t want it.

My understanding is that he had most of it sketched. He showed up at my house one day and played it. I asked him what that was, and he said, This is a song that I started. I played it for my wife, and I played it for John Waite, but he said it was too syrupy. I told him, Too bad for him, and good for us.

How fast did it come?

That particular one kind of wrote itself. Escape was not easy. Jonathan and I had a moment writing lyrics where there was difficulty between us. He would make a suggestion, and I would say that I would try to sing it; but then I would not be able to believe it, or own it for myself, so I would have to throw in a couple of changes or make additions to it to make it mine. I think it was always collaboration with difficulties. I think there was a point in the band during Escape where it turned a corner, and started coming fast. It is almost like it finally discovered something that it didn’t know it had.

Did you find that when you started rehearsing the songs that this was special, or were you just doing your job?

You’re just doing what you believe in, and hoping that people will like it as much as you do. Unfortunately, that is the fearful driving force of my heart. Whatever I believe in, I just hope they believe in it as much. You wait for that moment, live, when they let you know if that is—or isn’t— the case. You get your validation from that. Whatever center you were believing in or feeling about the music, you find out quickly from the audience whether they believe it too.

Earlier, you said you had to put your head down on the console. Tell me more about that moment.

I was watching Don’t Stop Believing. There is a point in the concert where I say, "Here is some new Escape music for you, and then Jonathan starts playing Don’t Stop Believing." The crowd goes crazy. I remember how emotional it was for me to see the crowd know the song already, because we had not played that song live yet. They already knew it, embraced it, and made it their own. They were hearing it live for the first time, and they let us know how they felt about it.

In the back of your mind, did you think you would have emotional moments during this project?

I knew that it was going to be a walk through a plethora of emotions, because it was a long time ago. I knew it was going to be difficult for me, but I had no idea that it would be such an amazing amount of different emotions; I really didn’t. Back in 1981, when I was singing with Journey, I realized that there was a drive, and there was a passion, and a real mission within the group to be the best they could be and to be one of the contributing forces in the music business. We wanted to write great songs, and we wanted people to love them as much as we did. You lose sight of that after twenty four years. I had to see this footage twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week because you have to listen to it, and you work really hard on this stuff. You have to catch all the nuances in the music, and you have to make sure all the nuances in the music correlate with the visual. It is like mixing a film; it took time. Along with taking time, it was dragging me around. It dragged me all through it again, and I really did relive it.

A younger man who gets hit with an emotional onslaught can make impulsive decisions. With maturity, we deal with it differently. How did you deal with it?

I had to keep my head down on the console when Open Arms was on. There is one line in the song that I always wanted to be a certain way. I have ideals about certain things. The line wanting you near – I just wanted that line to go up and soar. I wanted it to be heartfelt. Every time it would come by, I would just have to keep my head down and try to swallow the lump in my throat. I felt so proud of the song that I had written with Jonathan. I felt proud of the performances we were doing as a band twenty four years ago. It was something that I didn’t know I would feel.

The way you are talking to me, you sound as if you know it was 24 years ago. You sound grounded in the fact that it was 1981 and not 2005.

That is right. It took me there and back very seriously. I had to talk to a couple of friends of mine, and tell them that the project was really great and that the performances were really great, but that is was beating me up a little bit. It was really great, and that is probably why I felt that way.

Was Escape more Journey or more Steve Perry?

It has always been more Journey. When this band was together back in 1981 – if you think about it, we went from Wheel in the Sky, to Lights, to Walks Like a Lady, to Anyway You Want It, to Who’s Cryin’ Now, to Open Arms, to Mother, Father, to Don’t Stop Believing. I think this was a very interesting period in the band’s time; we had just turned another corner, creatively.

Is this for the fans, or is it for Journey?

This is for the songs. I think that the songs deserve every ounce of respect that they always deserved. When we went into the studio, we would record the music the way we heard it. Those master recordings have become timeless pieces of art. These live versions deserved the attention to be mixed and heard the way I knew they sounded on those multi-tracks, and not the way they sounded on MTV, and not the way they sounded on those bootlegs. Those same tracks were blown into a hard drive, and brought out through a beautiful console so you could hear all of the instruments with as massive fidelity as possible. It had never been heard that way before. I knew the performances paid great respect to the songs in a new way – in a way that I don’t think anybody has ever heard before.

There were a lot of songs that I always believed in that were not hits. Mother, Father is an amazing song, but it wasn’t a hit. Still They Ride was not a huge single, but I love that song. Stay Awhile, which we turned into a segue from Lights— I have always loved Stay Awhile, but that wasn’t a single. Too Late was a great song, but it wasn’t a hit single. They weren’t hits, but that doesn’t mean that I am not still fighting for these songs. To answer your question, what really makes me want to do something like this is me fighting for the songs to have their moment in the light one more time.

A lot of people would not be that involved with Sony putting out an old concert video.

The other option is to turn it over to someone else and let them do it. They don’t know what the original intention was or what the original heart was when we were in those studios when we recorded the original songs. They don’t know what it was like, standing on that stage, and they don’t know what the emotion was. I wasn’t going to allow somebody to take it over and send me a tape and say, What do you think? I didn’t want to do that.

Do you still have the fire?

I just got back from the World Series with the White Sox. They adopted Don’t Stop Believing as their theme song back in July. The Monday before their first World Series game, I heard that they wanted to get a hold of me, and get me out to Game 1. The team played the song in the clubhouse after every game, and they would sing it. I was hanging out with these guys, and I ended up singing more stuff than I thought I would end up singing. They ended up winning the World Series, and I had to sing it on camera. They asked me to ride in the victory parade with them, and they asked me to sing at the end with them a little bit of Don’t Stop Believing, so we all, as a group, sang it.

I always loved performing for people. If it was up to me totally, then that’s what I would do for the rest of my life. It is just more difficult than that right now. I have some physical limitations. It is a tough question. Do I want to go out there and beat the pavement like I used to? Probably not. There are some places that you can find the tour schedule that this DVD was made from for the Escape tour. If you look at the schedule, there were four days in a row where I had to sing two hours a night. Sometimes it was five days in a row. There were four days on and one day off, and three days on and one day off. It went on for over a year. That kind of touring? No, I don’t think I would like to do that kind of touring. Would I love to perform again? Of course, I would love to perform again.

Do you still write songs?

I write all the time. In fact, I have a new sketch on something I just started yesterday. I am always sketching something. Honestly, it is a love/hate relationship, and I think it has been that way from the very beginning. I am being honest with you, it is a love/hate relationship that I have tried to put down and not do, and then every now and then I catch myself just back in it again.

Writing emotional songs is difficult, and runs the composer through the whole gambit of emotions.

Somebody told me one time that I wore my heart on my sleeve as a singer. You either like it or you don’t. It doesn’t matter, because I am going to put it out there the way I feel it. There was a time that Journey used to get a lot of flack for what it was. They used to belittle us in the industry, years ago. The critics were not pleased with it. You know, it doesn’t matter. The band member lineup back in 1981 was a great lineup; it was a magical lineup. I think time has settled the historian question. Some of the music we wrote was timeless, and I don’t think there is a goddamn thing wrong with that.

Before we go, I have to tell you what my daughter said. My daughter watched the DVD with me, and she told me that the music was a lot more timeless than the clothing.

[Laughing] Your daughter is right! I have got to tell you, that’s true. When I was wearing Levis, a T-shirt and my tails, that was cool, but before that – holy mackerel, what was I thinking? That is where we were at the time. That is how we felt comfortable walking on stage. That is the best line that I have ever heard, The music is more timeless than the clothing was. I don’t think I have ever heard it put so well. I am going to take that, okay? I am having that.

Circa 2008

Author’s Notes 2011

Growing up in the Midwest of the United States, I cut my Rock’n’Roll teeth on Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits. This interview covers everything, from his upbringing as a kid, when he hung out with his dad’s best bud Les Paul, to the Chicago blues scene where he played onstage with every living blues legend, to the San Fran hippie scene where he honed his pop rock craft, to the song The Joker, which launched his career forward in an explosion of popularity that not even a near-crippling car wreck could prevent.

Your father’s hobby was recording music. You got to meet some legends as a child.

I was really lucky. Les Paul and Mary Ford were good friends with my father. My dad was the best man at Les’ wedding. They stayed at our house when I was four or five years old. I learned everything I knew about multi-track records, guitars, jam sessions, and how to have fun with a band from him. Later, we moved to Texas, and T-bone Walker was a friend, and came and played at the house a lot of times. My dad recorded all of this. I have tapes of T-bone Walker playing in my house in 1951 and 1952. I just learned all of this stuff as a child.

Parents back then did not want their kids to be musicians. Did having musical parents make it easier for you?

No, I came from a very middle class family. It always amazes me that they never took my music seriously. They loved musicians. They had musicians over all the time, and they were always hanging out at the hippest jazz or blues club. They invited the musicians over on Sunday for dinner and a party.

They never wanted me to be a professional musician, because that meant you were going to be broke and playing in nightclubs. They knew it was a hard life. They wanted their kids to grow up, and go to college, and get a good job, and do better than they did. I had a band from the time I was twelve years old – it was a serious working band. We were playing fraternity parties every weekend all school year. Boz Scaggs was in the band. I booked the band, and we did all this work, but they never thought of that as anything other than just goofing around.

There was that moment at college where they asked me what I was going to do, and I told them I was going to go to Chicago and play blues. My mother, bless her heart, said, You are young, so you should go and try to make it. If that is what you want to do, then you should follow your heart. My father’s attitude was, I just put you through college, and you are just going to ruin your life, and be a bum. He was really unhappy, and my mother was unhappy, but she told me to follow my heart. At that point in time I had no choice; I had to play music.

Did you finish college?

I was six credits short. I kind of got caught up in a Catch-22 at the University of Wisconsin. I had gone to the University of Copenhagen, and they refused to acknowledge that. At the last minute, when I thought I was graduating, they told me that I was six credits short. At that point, I knew I’d had enough of college. From college, I went right to Chicago from Madison, because Chicago was only ninety miles away.

After the Chicago thing dried up, I went down to the University of Texas, and I was going to go to music school, but they wouldn’t admit me because I couldn’t read or write music. They let me take an advanced composition course, because I had all of this stuff on tape. It was another Catch-22, because they were not going to teach me anything or work with me. I spent about three or four weeks at the University of Texas, and then just I just said, I am going to the West Coast. I sold all my books and got some new tires on my Volkswagen bus, and put my guitar, amp, tape recorder, and sitar in the backseat and headed west.

What years did you live in Chicago?

It was 1963 through 1966. It was just a magical time, because Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf had both of their major bands together and were playing in nightclubs. They would be at three nightclubs a week. They would be at Big John’s, or at Silvia’s, or the Blue Flame, or Peppers.

We were all competing for the same gigs, so we saw each other all the time. This only lasted for a short period of time. You’d think that it is going to be there forever. I remember going to play some gigs in New York, and I came back to Chicago, and the scene was gone six weeks later. What happened was that Muddy Waters started getting a lot more money to play a college concert than he could playing a nightclub.

We all wanted to get out of the nightclubs, because you couldn’t make a living playing in nightclubs. It was horrible work. You were in a place where there were a bunch of drunks and thugs, and you had to play from nine o’clock at night until four o’clock in the morning, six days a week, and you only made $125. You could barely live. If somebody was going to pay you $2,000 to play a college — no brainer.

How did the West Coast scene compare with the blues scene in Chicago?

It was much more interesting because it was bigger. We had heard about that scene in Chicago. Paul Butterflield had gone out there and played some gigs and come back. Instead of playing in a nightclub, you were playing at the Fillmore where there would be 1100 people, and you could make a couple of thousand bucks. You could live for months on a couple of thousand bucks, and that was just one night’s work. It was a big step up.

I got to San Francisco on a Sunday evening. I went right over to the Fillmore and saw Butterfield was playing. I weaseled my way on stage and jammed with Paul. I announced who I was, and that I was moving there, and bringing my band. I started working it the minute I got here. I got a job playing bass for Lightening Hopkins. I brought my own band in, and started playing at the Family Dog, and then I started playing at the Fillmore. After that,we started playing free gigs in the park. The scene just kept getting bigger and bigger, and people kept coming to see what it was about, and it became the psychedelic revolution.

Were you out of the scene by the time it started to collapse?

I was there before it started to collapse, and it was all really idealistic. My dad was a doctor, so I wasn’t going to be shooting drugs or getting involved in any of that. There was pot smoking going on, and people were taking acid, but then it got really bad. There was a lot of speed and other bad drugs. The Summer of Love was a mess. A hundred thousand kids came to San Francisco in 1967, and everybody from San Francisco moved out to Marion County to get away from that. It was sad. It was a social phenomenon. You had groups like the Grateful Dead, who were really advocating LSD when you went to see them play. When we played, we were about music; we weren’t about drugs. We were part of that scene because we were about the light show and the production. Other bands were more of a social phenomenon than a musical phenomenon.

Was it frustrating to keep making records without getting any hits?

It took from 1967 to 1973. We made a lot of albums; we did five albums in eighteen months. As the ‘70’s came, it became more about the music than