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Dec 18th, 98
Steve Perry Reflects on His Long Journey
The premise, in principle, begs
for a snicker. Former singer for onceuponatime super group resurfaces to
release a retrospective of his solo career -- namely, two albums and a
handful of tracks from a third shelved ten years ago. Hardly the type of
move that's gonna get the denizens of the current Top 10, or even 100,
shaking in their boots, right?
Ah, but this is a little different, because we're talking about Steve
Perry here.
Steve Perry, whose unmistakable, Rod Stewart-dipped-in-shellac vocals
moved thirty-five million Journey albums between 1978 and 1987 -- and
oodles more since with the band's Greatest Hits, a perennial powerhouse
on the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. Steve Perry, whose 1995
solo album, For the Love of Strange Medicine, sold 400,000 copies and
paved the way for a top-five, platinum-selling Journey reunion album,
Trial By Fire, two years ago. Steve Perry who, in short, has an uncanny
knack for sneaking past the velvet rope that traditionally keeps the
rock and pop icons of yesteryear -- hell, even last year -- away from
the beautiful people at the gilded open bar of relevancy.
But don't think for a second that Perry doesn't sweat it every time,
particularly on the eve of releasing Greatest Hits + 5 Unreleased. "I've
seen too many people in this business have their moment, and then I've
seen them live on the expectation that the moment is still there, and
I've seen them crash real hard," says the forty-nine-year-old singer in
a call from his Burbank, Calif., home, confessing that his luck on the
comeback trail has never ceased to amaze him. "I've always trusted in
the music that moved me, but ... never in my wildest dreams ...."
When Perry toured behind Strange Medicine in 1995, the highpoint for
fans was the moment in the show when his long penguin tux jacket -- a
staple from his Journey days -- was lowered from the ceiling for him to
talk to. "I would look at it like, 'What the hell are you doing here?'
And I had a conversation with the coat in which I tried to dispel some
of the rumors that had been going around. I said, 'I heard you were
never going to tour again. I heard you had lost your voice ....' I used
that moment during the show to have some fun with some of the rumors.
And the coat upstaged me, which was kind of frightening in a way."
That won't be a problem anymore, because Perry won't be touring behind
Greatest Hits, which includes Strange Medicine cuts like "You Better
Wait," earlier hits like "Foolish Heart" and the No. 3 "Oh Sherrie" from
1984's Street Talk, and selections from a 1988 solo album, Against the
Wall, which never saw the light of day due to the Sony takeover of
Columbia records at the time. Perry's not taking the hits on the road
because he's still recovering from the hip surgery that kept him from
touring with Journey in support of Trial By Fire.
"It was debilitating enough that it shut my life down," Perry says of
the accident that sidelined him two years ago. "I was ready to tour and
the whole thing, but every doctor I went to said it would need major
surgery. The good news is I'm on the other side of it."
Meanwhile, Journey is on the road with a new singer, Steve Augeri, who
sounds enough like Perry to warrant suspicions that Scottish cloning
scientists were somehow involved in the auditioning process. Perry
diplomatically refuses to comment on the matter or speak ill of his old
bandmates, however, noting only that they made a choice, just as he did
when he decided to leave the fold on account of his hip surgery. He
looks back on the golden years with fondness, however, proudly claiming
that he can remember when, where and how each and every song was
written. He laughs about the savaging that the "Separate Ways" video got
at the hands of Beavis & Butthead and adamantly swears he had nothing to
do with the Atari 2600 Journey Escape video game, but still stands up
for the music against any and all criticism or "faceless, corporate
band" stereotyping.
"I always loved trying to define what that meant," he laughs. "You know,
can you explain that to me one more time? You mean I look like Lou
Gramm? In other words, the music is so generic in your opinion it
doesn't matter what band it is? Are you telling me you're so
close-minded that you can't hear the difference between these groups?
"The thing is, when music comes together and starts to move, it doesn't
move with just one group having a lock on a sound," he continues. "That
sound and everybody's sound becomes this large, wide, sweeping
interacting thing -- look at grunge. It's just a sign of the creative
process moving wide as it evolves."
Perry says he's not currently writing, and it's anyone's guess when
he'll record or tour again. Right now he's just thrilled to have the
high points of his solo years out for public consumption, particularly
the heretofore unreleased tracks from Against the Wall, which, he
theorizes, "would have made some noise" had it come out ten years ago.
Ask him, tongue-in-cheek, if he knows where he'll be tomorrow when the
old wheel in the sky turns again, and he quips, "Probably right here in
my chair," doctor's orders, you see. "Now I'm trying to learn patience.
That's my new thing. Now the more I feel better, the more I want to go
snowboarding. But I can't do that yet -- I'm still in the crutches
stage."
RICHARD SKANSE (December 15, 1998) |