journey with stephen

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Read our most recent posts about journeys…

Sail on the Spirit of Dana Point

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If you haven’t been to Dana Point, California in a while, you are in for a treat. The already beautiful harbor area is undergoing a $600 million revitalization. And now, for a true retro tall ship experience, you can sail on the Spirit of Dana Point. A replica of a...

See Waikiki from a private sailboat

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Unique Myanmar culture seen through videos

by Stephen Henson | Asia-Pacific

My posts tend to be heavy with photos to better describe the travel experience; but the unique Myanmar culture seen through videos is an opportunity to even better explore this fascinating land. I provide a little background to set the stage for each short video (most...

Luxury and adventure Alaska cruise

Seabourn provides a rare combination. With 4-star dining, small ship service and amenities, and their own zodiacs and kayaks for exploring Alaska’s Inside Passage, you have the ideal luxury and adventure Alaska cruise. We will explain why to choose Seabourn and review...

7 Mexican Riviera cruise tips

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Visit Bryce Canyon in November

The pros far out way the cons if you are planning to visit Bryce Canyon in November. From fewer crowds, leading to easier parking, and snow-covered views to go with cooler temperatures, you will not be disappointed with a late autumn journey to this magical U.S....

Check out our latest travel tips and advice…

8 recipes inspired by my travels

by Stephen Henson | Tips and Advice

Most people would agree that food and travel go hand-in-hand. Some of our finest memories of a journey are tied to a wonderful meal steeped in the cuisine of a land. There is nothing like an authentic cheese fondue on a frigid night in Switzerland or Beijing noodle...

I avoid “best travel” lists

As a rule, I avoid “best travel” lists for several reasons. You should too, and I am about to tell you why. Whether it is a questionable motive, a one-size-fits-all mentality, clickbait, or simple bias, these lists of “The best places to travel this coming year!”...

8 travel items just for a cruise

I have been to 55 countries and more than 600 cities, so I know how to pack for a trip. But some recent cruising caused me to purchase 8 travel items just for a cruise. I will quickly share with you the essentials of what to bring and not bring the next time you take...

Upscale travel on a budget

This blog is all about upscale travel on a budget. Yet, despite the tips I will provide here and in my other articles, what you choose for luxury and where you decide to save is a very personal thing. These tips are suggestions from my travels to some 55 countries....

Memorable meals from my journeys

Food plays an important role in everyone’s travel memories. In my travel to some 55 countries, I remember many classic meals that expressed the culture as much as any sights did. Paring down the list of memorable meals from my journeys to just 26 entries was as...

10 tips for great travel photos of people

It’s not difficult to take great travel photos of people, even using your phone’s camera. Years ago, I used to avoid having people in scenic pictures of foreign lands. Now, I have found that people can bring perspective to nature, a cultural angle, and most...

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Steve Perry Walked Away From Journey. A Promise Finally Ended His Silence.

By Alex Pappademas

• Sept. 5, 2018

MALIBU, Calif. — On the back patio of a Greek restaurant, a white-haired man making his way to the exit paused for a second look at one of his fellow diners, a man with a prominent nose who wore his dark hair in a modest pompadour.

“You look a lot like Steve Perry,” the white-haired man said.

“I used to be Steve Perry,” Steve Perry said.

This is how it goes when you are Steve Perry. Everyone is excited to see you, and no one can quite believe it. Everyone wants to know where you’ve been.

In 1977, an ambitious but middlingly successful San Francisco jazz-rock band called Journey went looking for a new lead singer and found Mr. Perry, then a 28-year-old veteran of many unsigned bands. Mr. Perry and the band’s lead guitarist and co-founder, Neal Schon, began writing concise, uplifting hard rock songs that showcased Mr. Perry’s clean, powerful alto, as operatic an instrument as pop has ever seen. This new incarnation of Journey produced a string of hit singles, released eight multiplatinum albums and toured relentlessly — so relentlessly that in 1987, a road-worn Mr. Perry took a hiatus, effectively dissolving the band he’d helped make famous.

He did not disappear completely — there was a solo album in 1994, followed in 1996 by a Journey reunion album, “Trial by Fire.” But it wasn’t long before Mr. Perry walked away again, from Journey and from the spotlight. With his forthcoming album, “Traces,” due in early October, he’s breaking 20 years of radio silence.

Over the course of a long midafternoon lunch — well-done souvlaki, hold all the starches — Mr. Perry, now 69, explained why he left, and why he’s returned. He spoke of loving, and losing and opening himself to being loved again, including by people he’s never met, who know him only as a voice from the Top 40 past.

And when he detailed the personal tragedy that moved him to make music again, he talked about it in language as earnest and emotional as any Journey song:

“I thought I had a pretty good heart,” he said, “but a heart isn’t really complete until it’s completely broken.”

IN ITS ’80S heyday, Journey was a commercial powerhouse and a critical piñata. With Mr. Perry up front, slinging high notes like Frisbees into the stratosphere, Journey quickly became not just big but huge . When few public figures aside from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong had their own video game, Journey had two. The offices of the group’s management company received 600 pieces of Journey fan mail per day.

The group toured hard for nine years. Gradually, that punishing schedule began to take a toll on Journey’s lead singer.

“I never had any nodules or anything, and I never had polyps,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the state of his vocal cords. He looked around for some wood to knock, then settled for his own skull. The pain, he said, was more spiritual than physical.

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As a vocalist, Mr. Perry explained, “your instrument is you. It’s not just your throat, it’s you . If you’re burnt out, if you’re depressed, if you’re feeling weary and lost and paranoid, you’re a mess.”

“Frankly,” Mr. Schon said in a phone interview, “I don’t know how he lasted as long as he did without feeling burned out. He was so good, doing things that nobody else could do.”

On Feb. 1, 1987, Mr. Perry performed one last show with Journey, in Anchorage. Then he went home.

Mr. Perry was born in Hanford, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley, about 45 minutes south of Fresno. His parents, who were both Portuguese immigrants, divorced when he was 8, and Mr. Perry and his mother moved in next door to her parents’. “I became invisible, emotionally,” Mr. Perry said. “And there were places I used to hide, to feel comfortable, to protect myself.”

Sometimes he’d crawl into a corner of his grandparents’ garage with a blanket and a flashlight. But he also found refuge in music. “I could get lost in these 45s that I had,” Mr. Perry said. “It turned on a passion for music in me that saved my life.”

As a teen, Mr. Perry moved to Lemoore, Calif., where he enjoyed an archetypally idyllic West Coast adolescence: “A lot of my writing, to this day, is based on my emotional attachment to Lemoore High School.”

There he discovered the Beatles and the Beach Boys, went on parked-car dates by the San Joaquin Valley’s many irrigation canals, and experienced a feeling of “freedom and teenage emotion and contact with the world” that he’s never forgotten. Even a song like “No Erasin’,” the buoyant lead single from his new LP has that down-by-the-old-canal spirit, Mr. Perry said.

And after he left Journey, it was Lemoore that Mr. Perry returned to, hoping to rediscover the person he’d been before subsuming his identity within an internationally famous rock band. In the beginning, he couldn’t even bear to listen to music on the radio: “A little PTSD, I think.”

Eventually, in 1994, he made that solo album, “For the Love of Strange Medicine,” and sported a windblown near-mullet and a dazed expression on the cover. The reviews were respectful, and the album wasn’t a flop. With alternative rock at its cultural peak, Mr. Perry was a man without a context — which suited him just fine.

“I was glad,” he said, “that I was just allowed to step back and go, O.K. — this is a good time to go ride my Harley.”

JOURNEY STAYED REUNITED after Mr. Perry left for the second time in 1997. Since December 2007, its frontman has been Arnel Pineda, a former cover-band vocalist from Manila, Philippines, who Mr. Schon discovered via YouTube . When Journey was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last April, Mr. Pineda sang the 1981 anthem “Don’t Stop Believin’,” not Mr. Perry. “I’m not in the band,” he said flatly, adding, “It’s Arnel’s gig — singers have to stick together.”

Around the time Mr. Pineda joined the band, something strange had happened — after being radioactively unhip for decades, Journey had crept back into the zeitgeist. David Chase used “Don’t Stop Believin’” to nerve-racking effect in the last scene of the 2007 series finale of “The Sopranos” ; when Mr. Perry refused to sign off on the show’s use of the song until he was told how it would be used, he briefly became one of the few people in America who knew in advance how the show ended.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” became a kind of pop standard, covered by everyone from the cast of “Glee” to the avant-shred guitarist Marnie Stern . Decades after they’d gone their separate ways, Journey and Mr. Perry found themselves discovering fans they never knew they had.

Mark Oliver Everett, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter who performs with his band Eels under the stage name E, was not one of them, at first.

“When I was young, living in Virginia,” Mr. Everett said, “Journey was always on the radio, and I wasn’t into it.”

So although Mr. Perry became a regular at Eels shows beginning around 2003, it took Mr. Everett five years to invite him backstage. He’d become acquainted with Patty Jenkins, the film director, who’d befriended Mr. Perry after contacting him for permission to use “Don’t Stop Believin’” in her 2003 film “Monster.” (“When he literally showed up on the mixing stage the next day and pulled up a chair next to me, saying, ‘Hey I really love your movie. How can I help you?’ it was the beginning of one of the greatest friendships of my life,” Ms. Jenkins wrote in an email.) Over lunch, Ms. Jenkins lobbied Mr. Everett to meet Mr. Perry.

They hit it off immediately. “At that time,” Mr. Everett said, “we had a very serious Eels croquet game in my backyard every Sunday.” He invited Mr. Perry to attend that week. Before long, Mr. Perry began showing up — uninvited and unannounced, but not unwelcome — at Eels rehearsals.

“They’d always bust my chops,” Mr. Perry said. “Like, ‘Well? Is this the year you come on and sing a couple songs with us?’”

At one point, the Eels guitarist Jeff Lyster managed to bait Mr. Perry into singing Journey’s “Lights” at one of these rehearsals, which Mr. Everett remembers as “this great moment — a guy who’s become like Howard Hughes, and just walked away from it all 25 years ago, and he’s finally doing it again.”

Eventually Mr. Perry decided to sing a few numbers at an Eels show, which would be his first public performance in decades. He made this decision known to the band, Mr. Everett said, not via phone or email but by showing up to tour rehearsals one day carrying his own microphone. “He moves in mysterious ways,” Mr. Everett observed.

For mysterious Steve Perry reasons, Mr. Perry chose to make his long-awaited return to the stage at a 2014 Eels show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. During a surprise encore, he sang three songs, including one of his favorite Eels tunes, whose profane title is rendered on an edited album as “It’s a Monstertrucker.”

“I walked out with no anticipation and they knew me and they responded, and it was really a thrill,” Mr. Perry said. “I missed it so much. I couldn’t believe it’d been so long.”

“It’s a Monstertrucker” is a spare song about struggling to get through a lonely Sunday in someone’s absence. For Mr. Perry, it was not an out-of-nowhere choice.

In 2011, Ms. Jenkins directed one segment of “Five,” a Lifetime anthology film about women and breast cancer. Mr. Perry visited her one day in the cutting room while she was at work on a scene featuring real cancer patients as extras. A woman named Kellie Nash caught Mr. Perry’s eye. Instantly smitten, he asked Ms. Jenkins if she would introduce them by email.

“And she says ‘O.K., I’ll send the email,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “but there’s one thing I should tell you first. She was in remission, but it came back, and it’s in her bones and her lungs. She’s fighting for her life.”

“My head said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Perry remembered, “but my heart said, ‘Send the email.’”

“That was extremely unlike Steve, as he is just not that guy,” Ms. Jenkins said. “I have never seen him hit on, or even show interest in anyone before. He was always so conservative about opening up to anyone.”

A few weeks later, Ms. Nash and Mr. Perry connected by phone and ended up talking for nearly five hours. Their friendship soon blossomed into romance. Mr. Perry described Ms. Nash as the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

“I was loved by a lot of people, but I didn’t really feel it as much as I did when Kellie said it,” he said. “Because she’s got better things to do than waste her time with those words.”

They were together for a year and a half. They made each other laugh and talked each other to sleep at night.

In the fall of 2012, Ms. Nash began experiencing headaches. An MRI revealed that the cancer had spread to her brain. One night not long afterward, Ms. Nash asked Mr. Perry to make her a promise.

“She said, ‘If something were to happen to me, promise me you won’t go back into isolation,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “because that would make this all for naught.”

At this point in the story, Mr. Perry asked for a moment and began to cry.

Ms. Nash died on Dec. 14, 2012, at 40. Two years later, Mr. Perry showed up to Eels rehearsal with his own microphone, ready to make good on a promise.

TIME HAS ADDED a husky edge to Mr. Perry’s angelic voice; on “Traces,” he hits some trembling high notes that bring to mind the otherworldly jazz countertenor “Little” Jimmy Scott. The tone suits the songs, which occasionally rock, but mostly feel close to their origins as solo demos Mr. Perry cut with only loops and click tracks backing him up.

The idea that the album might kick-start a comeback for Mr. Perry is one that its maker inevitably has to hem and haw about.

“I don’t even know if ‘coming back’ is a good word,” he said. “I’m in touch with the honest emotion, the love of the music I’ve just made. And all the neurosis that used to come with it, too. All the fears and joys. I had to put my arms around all of it. And walking back into it has been an experience, of all of the above.”

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Journey's Neal Schon says he and Steve Perry are 'in a good place' before band's 50th anniversary

On the cusp of turning 50, the band that etched “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” and “Faithfully” into lighters-up lore is entering “a cleaned-up chapter of Journey.”

That’s according to Neal Schon, the band’s ace guitarist, lone original constant and de facto CEO.

Despite decades of fluctuating lineups and  snarly lawsuits among band members , Journey endures.

On July 8, the band released “Freedom,” its first new album in 11 years that also presents the return of Randy Jackson (as in "American Idol") on bass. The 15-song collection is steeped with vintage-sounding ballads (“Still Believe in Love,” “Live to Love Again”) and soaring melodic rockers (“United We Stand,” “You Got the Best of Me”).

Journey – including longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain,  peppy singer Arnel Pineda , drummer Deen Castronovo and keyboardist Jason Derlatka, adding bassist Todd Jensen for live shows – will hit Resorts World Las Vegas  this month for shows backed by a symphony orchestra before rolling through more arena dates this summer and in early 2023, the band’s official 50th year.

Journey in pop culture: Quarantined family perfectly re-creates 'Separate Ways' music video at home

Regular road warriors who consistently pack arenas and stadiums – their 27 shows this year grossed $28 million, according to Billboard Boxscore – Journey relies on a solid catalog of mega-hits and a devoted fan base that appreciates the familiarity.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers also received a boost from Netflix’s ’80s-centered “Stranger Things” when the show used “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” in the trailer for the just-ended season, launching the song onto Billboard’s Rock Digital Songs chart. The affable Schon, 68, talked with USA TODAY about the band’s complicated legacy, his relationship with former frontman Steve Perry and plans for Journey's golden anniversary.

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Question: Are you amazed at how the Journey train keeps rolling after almost 50 years?

Neal Schon: It’s quite an accomplishment and I’m very proud of what we’ve done and how we’ve gotten through emotional and personnel changes and survived. It’s pretty mind-boggling but also a lot of hard work.

Q: Does the title “Freedom” refer to anything specifically?

Schon: Our ex-manager Herbie Herbert  wanted to call the (1986) “Raised on Radio” album “Freedom” because he always came up with these one-word titles. Steve (Perry) fought him on that and got his way, so we sat on it for many years. When we got through the lawsuit with the ex-bandmates, we made the new LLC Freedom (JN) and when we were tossing around album titles said, why not just call the whole thing “Freedom?" It's for the times right now.

Q: There’s been a bit of a revolving door in the rhythm section. Deen Castronovo is back for the live shows, but Narada Michael Walden played drums on the album, and Randy Jackson is back in the band, at least on record?

Schon: Deen is singing and playing his butt off. He’s such a musical sponge, this guy. He’s been like my little brother for close to three decades and is such a joy to work with. Randy, he’d been working with me diligently this whole time. He’s so many things beyond being an amazing musician and bass player.

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Q: Will Randy play at any of the upcoming live shows or is Todd Jensen handling those duties?

Schon: Randy is still recovering from some surgery and he stays very busy and Todd fits like a glove. Having said that, I think with our 50th anniversary next year, there’s room for everybody to jump in if they want to participate. We did go through an ugly divorce with (Steve Smith and Ross Valory) with the court proceedings (in 2021, Schon and Cain settled a $10 million trademark lawsuit with the band’s former drummer and bassist). But definitely, if Steve Perry wanted to come on and sing a song, yes. If (original Journey singer) Gregg Rolie wanted to come sing a couple of songs, yes. Randy Jackson (can) come sit in on some of the material – he played on a lot of hits on “Raised on Radio.”

Q: Do you talk much with Steve Perry?

Schon: We are in contact. It’s not about him coming out with us, but we’re speaking on different levels. That’s a start, even if it’s all business. And I’m not having to go through his attorney! We’ve been texting and emailing. He’s a real private guy and he wants to keep it that way. We’re in a good place.

Q: Do you think, after 15 years, that people have accepted Arnel?

Schon: I was diligent in that I wanted to show the massive size of our audience, so I hired photogs to come out every show and shoot the audience and show the size of the crowd to make everybody see, what am I missing? From putting up the different photos every night and the reviews from the fans online, I saw very little of “This is not Journey, man.” I think we just shut everybody up.

Steve Perry

Who Is Steve Perry?

Steve Perry played in several bands before joining Journey in 1977. The band achieved tremendous pop rock success with its 1981 album Escape , which featured the now-classic "Don't Stop Believin'." As the group's lead singer, Perry became one of the era's most famous singers. He also had some hits on his own, including "Oh Sherrie." Perry left Journey in 1987, and except for a brief reunion, he remains a solo artist.

While attending high school in Lemoore, California, Perry played drums in the marching band. He tried college for a while, performing in the choir, but eventually abandoned school for his musical dreams. Hoping to break into the business, he moved to Los Angeles for a time. There, he worked a number of jobs, including singing on commercials and serving as an engineer in a recording studio. All the while, Perry played with a number of different groups as a vocalist and drummer. He seemed to be on the edge of a breakthrough with the group Alien Project, when it suddenly disbanded — tragically, one of its members was killed in a car crash.

Journey: "Oh Sherrie" and "Don't Stop Believin'"

In 1977, Perry caught his big break, landing a gig as the vocalist for Journey, which began performing as a jazz rock group in the early 1970s, in San Francisco. With Perry on board, the band moved more toward mainstream rock, and began to see some chart success with the first album with Perry, 1978's Infinity . The band's ode to San Francisco, "Lights," became a minor hit as did "Wheel in the Sky" and "Anytime."

Journey broken into the Top 20 with "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" on their next album, Evolution (1979). Buoyed by such hits as "Open Arms," "Who's Crying Now" and "Don't Stop Believin'," Escape (1981) became the band's first No. 1 album, selling more than 7 million copies. While the band was hugely popular with music fans, many critics were less than kind.

By the early 1980s, Journey had emerged as one of rock's top acts. Perry proved that while he may have been short in stature, he possessed one of the era's biggest and most versatile voices. He was equally adept at ballads, such as "Open Arms," and at rock anthems, such as "Any Way You Want It." Behind the scenes, Perry helped write these songs and many of the band's other hits. He penned their most enduring song, "Don't Stop Believin'," with guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain.

Journey continued to be one of the era's top-selling acts, with 1983's Frontiers . The album featured such songs as "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" and "Faithfully." To support the recording, the band undertook an extensive world tour. Around that time, Journey also became the first band to license their music and likenesses for a video game.

With 1986's Raised on Radio , Journey enjoyed another wave of success. However, Perry was ready to part ways with his bandmates. Perry left the band in 1987 after the album tour. In a statement to People magazine, Perry explained: "I had a job burnout after 10 years in Journey. I had to let my feet hit the ground, and I had to find a passion for singing again." Perry was also struggling with some personal issues at the time; his mother had become very sick, and he spent much of his time caring for her before her death.

Perry reunited with Journey in 1996, for the reunion album Trial By Fire , which reached as high as the No. 3 on the album charts. But health problems soon sidelined the famous singer—a hip condition, which led to hip replacement surgery—and his bandmates decided to continue on without him.

Solo Projects

While still with Journey, Perry released his first solo album, Street Talk (1984). The recording sold more than 2 million copies, helped along by the hit single, "Oh Sherrie." Burnt out after splitting with Journey, Perry took some time out before working on his next project.

Nearly a decade later, Perry re-emerged on the pop-rock scene with 1994's For the Love of Strange Medicine . While the album was well-received—one ballad, "You Better Wait," was a Top 10 hit—Perry failed to reach the same level of success that he had previously enjoyed. In 1998, he provided two songs for the soundtrack of Quest for Camelot , an animated film. Perry also released Greatest Hits + Five Unreleased that same year.

Recent Years

While he has largely stayed out of the spotlight, Perry continues to be heard in movies and on television. His songs are often chosen for soundtracks, and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" even played during the closing moments of the hit crime-drama series The Sopranos in 2007. In 2009, a cover version of the song was done for the hit high school musical show Glee , which introduced a new generation to Perry's work.

According to several reports, Perry began working on new material around 2010. He even built a studio in his home, which is located north of San Diego, California. "I'm finishing that room up and I've written a whole bunch of ideas and directions, all over the map, in the last two, three years," Perry told Billboard in 2012.

In 2014, Perry broke from his self-imposed exile from the concert stage. He appeared with the Eels at several of their shows. According to The Hollywood Reporter , Perry explained that "I've done the 20-year hermit thing, and it's overrated." His return to performing "has to do with a lot of changes in my life, including losing my girlfriend a year ago and her wish to hear me sing again" — referring to his romance with Kellie Nash, who died in late 2012 from cancer.

Although Perry and his old bandmates had long since ventured in separate directions, the group did reunite for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2017.

In the meantime, the singer began recording again. On August 15, 2018, he released his first new song in 20 years, the ballad "No Erasin." The track arrived ahead of his new album, Traces , his first full-length studio recording since For the Love of Strange Medicine in 1994.

Regardless of what the future holds, Perry has already earned a place in rock history. Rolling Stone magazine named him one of music's top 100 singers. According to American Idol judge and former Journey bassist, Randy Jackson, Perry's voice is one of kind. "Other than Robert Plant, there's no singer in rock that even came close to Steve Perry," Jackson said. "The power, the range, the tone—he created his own style. He mixed a little Motown, a little Everly Brothers, a little Zeppelin."

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Steve Perry
• Birth Year: 1949
• Birth date: January 22, 1949
• Birth State: California
• Birth City: Hanford
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Steve Perry was the lead singer of pop rock band Journey from 1977 to 1987. He is known for having a wide vocal range, which can be heard on such popular hits as "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Oh Sherrie."
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Steve Perry Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/steve-perry
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 23, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Steve Perry Still Believes

By Andy Greene

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It’s a Monday afternoon in August, and Steve Perry is cheerfully belting out the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me.” Perry is visiting a buddy at his house in San Francisco, and the singer — who grew up on Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and the Kingston Trio, and doesn’t listen to much current pop — is giving an example of a relatively modern song that caught his ear. “I love songs like this,” he says of the tune, a Max Martin–penned ballad from 1997. “I’m a sappy guy.”

It’s somewhat surprising to hear Perry, 69, sing a hit by a boy band a generation behind him. What’s really surprising, though, is that Perry is singing at all. Virtually nobody has seen him do this since he parted ways with his band, Journey , 20 years ago. Perry and Journey became famous in the Seventies and Eighties for big, soaring arena-rock hits about devotion, passion and seizing the moment, some of them a little sappy indeed, all of them driven by Perry’s skyscraping vocals, which exerted a massive influence on generations of wasted karaoke warriors. In the process, Journey basically invented the power ballad. Critics often dismissed the band as cheeseballs, but that wasn’t fair; songs like “Faithfully” and “Lights” stand up as beautiful and plainspoken showcases for Perry’s remarkable voice. “We certainly were part of pioneering [the power ballad],” Perry says. “I didn’t care what the critics thought about the band. I really didn’t. All I knew is every night we would get at least one to two encores. That was my critical review for me every night.”

Perry left Journey in 1987, but he never had sustained success as a solo artist. After the commercial failure of his second solo album, he got back together with his former bandmates in the mid-Nineties. They made a comeback album, scored a radio hit with the romantic ballad “When You Love a Woman” and earned a Grammy nomination. Irving Azoff, who had just made the Eagles a fortune for their reunion album, was brought in to manage the band. The future looked bright.

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Everything changed when Perry took a long hike in Hawaii and felt a horrible pain in his hip as he reached the top of a mountain. He was just in his mid-forties but discovered he had a degenerative bone condition that would require hip-replacement surgery. Terrified at that prospect, Perry experimented with alternative treatments that did little to address the problem.

Eventually, Perry’s bandmates started getting restless. “They wanted me to make a decision on the surgery,” Perry says. “But I didn’t feel it was a group decision. Then I was told on the phone that they needed to know when I was gonna do it ’cause they had checked out some new singers.” Perry begged them to reconsider, but then postponed the date of his big surgery. “I said to them, ‘Do what you need to do, but don’t call it Journey,’” he says. “If you fracture the stone, I don’t know how I could come back to it.”

They didn’t listen. Journey found a Perry soundalike named Steve Augeri and launched a tour that continues to this day. In 2008, Arnel Pineda — a Filipino singer they found on YouTube — took over on vocals, and the group began selling as many tickets as it did in its Eighties heyday, quite possibly thanks to Pineda’s uncanny ability to sound more or less exactly like Perry, whom he grew up worshipping. Understandably, Perry is a little uneasy talking about all of this, but he’s never made any attempt to reunite with his former mates. He showed up for Journey’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 and made an acceptance speech, though he didn’t perform with the band. “What they do is none of my business,” he says. “When I walked away from it, I did not go to any of the shows, nor did I listen to any of it.”

While his former bandmates were making millions on the road, Perry was doing, well, not all that much. He rode around aimlessly on his motorcycle and moved from the Bay Area to San Diego, though he routinely flew back for San Francisco Giants games. Perry lived off his royalties (he says he carefully tucked away money from his Journey days) and avoided the spotlight, rarely giving interviews and politely turning away fans who begged for a photo. Basically, he became the J.D. Salinger of arena rock. “I didn’t sing in those years,” he says. “I didn’t write music. I must have gained 50 or 60 pounds. I got a butch haircut. I just said, ‘I’m going to just become a plump kid in my hometown again.’ I’d already lived the dream of dreams and didn’t know how I could come close to being anything like what I was before.”

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Rumors about Perry began to pile up. “They say I’m a recluse with long nails saving my urine in jars and living on an island with a morphine drip,” he says. “They think I’m in a hospital somewhere with cancer. And they say I can’t sing anymore.”

That last one stings the most, and as he sings the Backstreet Boys song it’s clear it’s not true. Perry’s voice is certainly deeper than in his Journey days, when his upper register could rival any rock singer’s, but it’s still unmistakably Steve Perry: rich, raspy, expressive and overflowing with the sort of pulsating emotion that caused even Journey’s fiercest critics to compare him to his idol, Sam Cooke.

Perry hasn’t lost his voice, but he has lost a lot over the years: his grandparents, who had helped raise him in rural Northern California after his mom and dad split; both of his parents; and his stepfather, who gave Perry work in his construction business to help him make ends meet in the pre-Journey days. “You want to know what I did after I left the band?” he says. “I visited my mom’s grave a lot.”

Loneliness could creep in quickly. “One time I parked my car in front of the house I was raised in,” Perry says. “It was raining like crazy, the wipers were going and I was facing the house where I was raised, with my grandfather’s house to the right. I just started crying like a baby. I cried for the times we could have had together. I cried for the times that I took for granted. And they were all gone, and here I am, an only child, just missing them all. I used to think that if I became a performer and everybody loved me, that I wouldn’t have to go through these things. But guess what? There’s nowhere to run. If you’re alive, you have to walk through this eventually.”

All of the loss may explain why the frontman who radiated such passion in his Journey days no longer felt much like singing. There was another big loss to come, but this one would lead him back to music, and, eventually, to his new solo album, Traces. It’s a story about devotion, tragedy and a promise to a dying loved one. It’s so intense and heartfelt, it could be a Journey song.

Much of what happened to Perry in the past decade can be traced back to his most famous song. Perry wrote “Don’t Stop Believin’” with Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain and guitarist Neal Schon in 1981. The title phrase came from Cain’s father, something he’d say to encourage his son to keep going when he was a young musician eking out an existence in L.A.

Cain said he drew inspiration from characters he knew in the Sunset Strip rock scene of the early 1970s: These were the “streetlight people living just to find emotion” of the song’s lyrics. Perry has a different memory. “Jonathan and I scrawled out the lyrics about things that I had seen in Detroit one night after a show, looking way down to the street and seeing the streetlights light the streets,” he says. “I couldn’t see the lights, but could just see the glow of the lights facing down from about the 10th floor. I see people walking around at two, three in the morning. I thought, ‘Wow, streetlight people. That’s so cool.’” (He and Cain do agree on one thing: There’s no such place as South Detroit. They just needed an extra syllable before “Detroit” and weren’t familiar with the city’s geography.)

“Don’t Stop Believin’” hit Number Nine in 1981, though by the turn of the millennium, it was just one of Journey’s many hits, not even important enough to be mentioned by name in the band’s Behind the Music episode. But the song had one very important fan. Today, Patty Jenkins is one of the hottest directors in Hollywood, thanks to the Wonder Woman  franchise. Back in 2003, though, she was just a fledgling filmmaker who needed the perfect song for a scene in her low-budget movie Monster , about the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. During a key scene early in the film, Wuornos (played by Charlize Theron) roller-skates with her girlfriend. Jenkins figured that “Don’t Stop Believin’” would be the ideal song to punctuate the moment with a sense of unbridled optimism (before things went very, very bad, that is).

Jenkins had one big hurdle to getting “Don’t Stop Believin’” in her movie: persuading Perry to let her use the song. “Everyone told us the worst things about Steve,” says Jenkins. “They said he had disappeared, said no to everything, would never say yes and was all about the money.” Still, she sent him a rough cut of the scene along with her phone number. Much to her shock, he called her the next day and raved about the clip. “He gave us the song for practically nothing,” she says. “He just laughed at the rumors [I had heard]. The truth was, he said no to everything because he didn’t want the money. People weren’t understanding the song, and he didn’t want it to be sold out in that way.”

Monster became a surprise hit and won Theron a Best Actress Oscar. It also helped kick off the amazing second life of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” All of a sudden, the song was everywhere: On TV ( Glee used it six different times), on Broadway (it was the closing number in the musical Rock of Ages ), and even in the clubhouse of the 2005 Chicago White Sox, who made “Don’t Stop Believin’” their unofficial anthem on the way to winning the World Series. The song’s renaissance went into overdrive when The Sopranos used it in the show’s last-ever scene, in 2007.

There was something weirdly profound in the song’s sudden universal popularity: This slightly goofy Eighties anthem seemed to hit all of America in an emotional sweet spot that went way beyond mere “ironic” nostalgia, wiping out cultural barriers in an avalanche of cheesy optimism. It’s no wonder people literally sang it in the streets the night of Barack Obama’s election. The tune Perry was happy to sell for next to nothing had become the new national anthem. “It’s amazing to me,” says Perry. “All of my songs are like children to me. Once you send them out to the world you hope they’re strong enough to survive out there. All of them got the same attention, but the world decides which ones become the ‘Don’t Stop Believin’s,’ not me.”

For Perry, the song’s rebirth was important in another way. He and Jenkins became friends while she was working on Monster, and with plenty of spare time on his hands in the following years, Perry liked to lounge around the director’s editing suite and watch her work. One day in 2011, she was editing a Lifetime movie about breast-cancer patients when Perry saw a face on the screen that caught his eye. It was Kellie Nash, a Los Angeles psychologist. She was two decades Perry’s junior, and she was battling breast cancer. “I went, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, can you spool back to … stop right there. … Who’s that?’” Perry remembers. “Her smile killed me. I felt like I knew her somehow, and I never met her before.”

Perry asked for her e-mail address, but Jenkins said he should understand her condition before reaching out. Nash’s cancer had spread to her lungs and her bones. There was no exact timetable for how long she had left, but the prognosis was grim. “At that moment I had the opportunity to send no e-mail, pull back, no harm, no foul,” he says. “It just would all die at that moment. I would just go back to my safe life. Instead, I said, ‘Send the e-mail.’”

It placed him in a vulnerable position. “I didn’t want to go through another loss,” he says. “I was trying to continue moving through life on my own. But there was a simple gorgeousness about her that was just stunning.”

They met up at a restaurant near Nash’s house and talked for six hours. Before long, they were living together. For a few months, it was bliss. “Then one horrible day she said she was having headaches,” Perry says. “We got an MRI, and then later the oncologist called the house and said she had brain metastases. She fell apart right there in front of me, screaming and crying. It was the most difficult day in my life because she just melted in my arms in fear.”

Perry and Nash moved to New York so she could have access to an experimental treatment in the Bronx. His favorite time of day came in the evening, when he held Nash as she tried to fall asleep. One evening, she turned toward him with something very serious on her mind. “She said, ‘If something ever happens to me, I want you to make one promise,’” he recalls. “ ‘Promise me you won’t go back into isolation. If you do, I fear this would all be for naught.’” She urged him to make music again.

Nash died on December 14th, 2012. “Ever since I was a kid, and especially since I became successful in the music industry, I just wanted people to love me,” Perry says. “I never knew when someone did for real. I always had a reluctance to believe it. I think it comes out of my youth when my parents split up, but something inside me always had doubts.

“But let me tell you how I know. When you’re in love with someone like Kellie Nash and she looks you right in the eyes and says, ‘I love you.’ That’s how you know. She made me the luckiest man in the world.”

What Perry really wants to talk about — the reason he’s willing to sit down and revisit these parts of his life — is  Traces. It’s the result of five years of work (though there was an extended break in the middle for another hip-replacement surgery). He cut it at his home studio without any record label paying the bills or making him sweat out a deadline. The songs, many of them ballads, reflect on love, loss and the difficult moments in between. Some are directly about Nash, like “October in New York,” where he looks back at their final weeks together, while others are character-driven. The sound is a little more subdued than classic Journey: elegant, tasteful, soulfully autumnal. (Backstreet Boys aside, he avoids modern pop and has a particular aversion to drum machines; when a Top 40 station comes on one day over lunch, he insists on bolting from the restaurant to talk outside.)

Perry’s collaborators were delighted to find out he still had his voice. “When I first heard his demos, I was like, ‘Wow, there’s the voice!’” says guitarist Thom Flowers, a co-producer on the album. “But then in the studio, I got to see it myself. He likes to record in the control room, so we’d both put headphones on and he’d be two feet away from me. Without any warm-up, it just came out of him. It reminded me of watching a thoroughbred horse work.”

Perry almost couldn’t believe it himself when work on the album wrapped. “I told some friends of mine that I actually did something I said I’d never do again,” he says. “I made that commitment to Kellie and then a commitment to myself to actually complete it.”

“I always hoped that he would do this one day,” says Jenkins. “All along he’d been playing me these stunning tracks. I was always like, ‘Steve! What the hell? That’s a masterpiece!’ Hearing him give this to the world again is so moving.”

Perry may be willing to sit down for a series of extensive interviews, but there’s still an aura of mystery surrounding him. For example, his buddy Steve, whose home Perry is visiting. Steve — tall, kind, bald — lives in Mill Valley, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Bay Area. After answering the door, he offers us coffee. There are photos on the wall of this Steve fellow with the pope. “He’s just a friend of mine,” says Perry, refusing to say anything about him. “An old friend of mine. Keep him anonymous.”

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Perry says he’s had a number of serious relationships in his life, but besides Nash and his 1980s girlfriend Sherrie Swafford (immortalized in Perry’s 1984 solo hit “Oh Sherrie”), he won’t talk about any of them. Perry concedes that he has never been married and is-currently single, but goes quiet when the subject of children comes up. (Internet sleuths theorize that a woman he’s often photographed with named Shamila is his daughter. She bears a striking resemblance to him.) “I don’t want to talk about [kids],” he says. “There’s a private part of my life that I won’t have if I talk about it.”

I notice a gold pendant in the shape of a musical eighth-note around his neck. This gets him talking. “My mom gave it to me when I was 12,” he says. “She always believed in me. I wore it for years and years, but hung it up in May of 1998, just after the band and I legally split and I had a complete contractual release from all my obligations to the band and label. I put it back on about 10 years ago.”

As we spoke, Journey were hours away from taking the stage at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans — on a double bill with Def Leppard — one of 60 shows they played this summer. As they do every night, they’ll dedicate “Lights” to Perry. It’s a gesture of gratitude, and for good reason. When Perry joined Journey in 1977, none of the group’s albums had sold well, and the band was pumping out anonymous jazz fusion. Perry changed everything. In him, Journey found a singer who not only wrote big, concise, catchy songs, but also belted them to the cheap seats. Without him, Journey might well have been a prog-rock footnote.

Perry claims to feel no bitterness toward anyone in the band, even though he’s seen the members only twice, and briefly at that, in the past 20 years, and has rebuffed attempts to reconnect on a social level. Guitarist Neal Schon seems desperate for some sort of reconciliation and often tells interviewers he wants to create new music with Perry — not even necessarily for Journey. Schon has heard that Perry frequents his favorite coffee shop, and the guitarist hopes to run into the singer there. Pressed on this, Perry says he can’t imagine working with Schon in any capacity or even re-establishing the friendship.

“I’m not sure that’s possible without stirring up hopes of a reunion,” he says. “Please listen to me. I left the band 31 fucking years ago, my friend. You can still love someone, but not want to work with them. And if they only love you because they want to work with you, that doesn’t feel good to me.”

When I bring up Cain’s new memoir, Don’t Stop Believin ’ — an innocuous, uncontroversial book where he looks back on his life and heaps endless praise onto his bandmates, past and present — a look of disgust comes across Perry’s face. “I don’t really care to read Jonathan’s book,” he says. “And I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell me about it. I don’t need to know. It’s none of my business.”

But his mind is also on the future. Plans are still unclear, but Perry wants to launch a tour of some sort to promote Traces. He says he’ll sing the Journey hits again, meaning that “Faithfully,” “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” and, yes, “Don’t Stop Believin’” will come out of his mouth for the first time in nearly a quarter century. He clutches the eighth-note his mother gave him, the one he put back on around the time Nash came into his life, and tries to make sense of it all. “I’m not the only one that goes through life,” he says with a deep sigh. “We’re all going through it, and I’m tolerating it the best I can.”

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The Wisdom Journey

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The Wisdom Journey with Stephen Davey is a three-year journey through the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, with one 10-minute lesson each weekday. The Wisdom Journey will help you understand the truth of God’s Word and apply that truth to your life. Follow along and learn to know God, think biblically and live wisely.

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Travel Through The Bible Each Weekday

Theology Plus Sympathy Builds Bridges (Romans 9:1-5)

Paul's heart breaks for his people who reject Christ, their Messiah. Stephen Davey unpacks Romans 9:1-5, reminding us that both truth AND compassion... read more

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know (Romans 8:35-39)

Stephen Davey closes out Romans 8 with a powerful reminder of God's unfailing, unbreakable love. Learn how hardship, persecution, angels, demons, the... read more

Eternal Security (Romans 8:31-34)

Stephen Davey unpacks the believer's eternal security in Christ. Discover how God's work—not our own—guarantees our safe arrival in heaven. Find... read more

An Explanation of Predestination (Romans 8:29-30)

Diving into deep waters, Stephen Davey explains the controversial doctrine of predestination. He illuminates the fivefold chain of salvation and... read more

Making Sense of Circumstances (Romans 8:28)

Stephen Davey continues unpacking the true meaning of Romans 8:28. God's purpose is certain, comprehensive, and continuous! Though the twists and... read more

The Most Misused Verse in Scripture (Romans 8:28)

Romans 8:28 is often pulled out as a quick reassurance, but what does it truly mean? Stephen Davey tackles common misunderstandings about this verse.... read more

Groaning in the Grip of Winter – Longing for Heaven (Romans 8:23-27)

Even as believers, we feel the groaning of a broken world. Stephen Davey unpacks Romans 8:23-27, exploring our longing for our full inheritance,... read more

Inheriting Our Father's Fortune – Heirs of God (Romans 8:16-22)

Stephen Davey delves into Romans 8:16-22, revealing the astonishing inheritance Christ-followers possess as sons and daughters of God. Discover how... read more

Led by the Spirit: Hand in Glove with God (Romans 8:12-15)

How can we live lives that honor God? Stephen Davey explores Romans 8:12-15, showing how the Holy Spirit's presence transforms us. Discover the power... read more

Friends Forever – The Holy Spirit (Romans 8:5-11)

In this episode of The Wisdom Journey, Stephen Davey delves into Romans 8:5-11 to explore the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit. He contrasts... read more

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Theology Plus Sympathy Builds Bridges (Romans 9:1-5)

Paul's heart breaks for his people who reject Christ, their Messiah. Stephen Davey unpacks Romans 9:1-5, reminding us that both truth AND compassion are needed to reach the lost. He highlights Israel's blessings, emphasizes Christ's deity, and urges us to trust God's wisdom even amidst life's burdens. Learn more and access additional resources at Wisdom Online website: https://www.wisdomonline.org.

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know (Romans 8:35-39)

Stephen Davey closes out Romans 8 with a powerful reminder of God's unfailing, unbreakable love. Learn how hardship, persecution, angels, demons, the powers of darkness, or even the stars themselves cannot sever believers from Christ. Rest in the assurance of His eternal love. Learn more and access additional resources at Wisdom Online website: https://www.wisdomonline.org.

Eternal Security (Romans 8:31-34)

Stephen Davey unpacks the believer's eternal security in Christ. Discover how God's work—not our own—guarantees our safe arrival in heaven. Find peace as you learn that your salvation cannot be revoked or returned! God will defend you, not condemn you. Enjoy the voyage! Learn more and access additional resources at Wisdom Online website: https://www.wisdomonline.org.

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We Wouldn't Have "The Fonz" Without This Gritty, Brutal Street Drama

Henry Winkler drew some major inspiration from Sylvester Stallone.

The Big Picture

• "The Fonz" from Happy Days was inspired by Sylvester Stallone's performance in The Lords of Flatbush .
• Henry Winkler's audition for Happy Days was based on Stallone's confidence in The Lords of Flatbush .
• The Lords of Flatbush became successful thanks to Winkler's portrayal of "The Fonz."

Despite the plethora of streaming services that currently release original programming, the notion of “event television” has somewhat declined in recent years. It’s perhaps because of the incredible number of options that viewers have at their disposal that there are very few shows that become larger cultural events that transcend the medium. While there are a few shows in recent years like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones that have had significant broad appeal, the classic sitcom, Happy Days , is one of the most significant series of its era. Although it featured an extensive cast of breakout stars, Happy Days was best known for Henry Winkler’s performance as Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, more commonly known as, “The Fonz.”

Initially introduced as a supporting character, The Fonz began to surpass the series’ leads, Richie ( Ron Howard ), Potsie ( Anson Williams ), Marion ( Marion Ross ), and Howard ( Tom Bosley ) in terms of popularity. The epitome of counterculture swagger and inherent sex appeal, The Fonz became a cultural icon whose influence lasted long after Happy Days was off the air. While it was a performance that came to define his career, Winkler drew inspiration from Sylvester Stallone in the film, The Lords of Flatbush , when auditioning for Happy Days .

The Lords of Flatbush

Two members of a social club in 1950s Brooklyn have more interest in romance than in rumbles.

What Is ‘The Lords of Flatbush’ About?

Like many of the stars of Happy Days , Winkler was unknown at the time that the series was first heading into production. His screen credits were quite limited, but Winkler had previously appeared in the coming-of-age drama , The Lords of Flatbush. The film is a throwback to classic 1950s character dramas that focused on a group of high school students preparing for their graduation. Although the film evokes nostalgia for the time period with its leather jacket-wearing characters, slick cars, and singular needle drops, it presents a gritty, brutal depiction of what life was like for “greasers.” The film takes a sensitive approach to masculinity by showing the unsustainable lifestyle that teens of that era learned to live by.

The Lords of Flatbush is best known for the breakout performance by Stallone , who was also an unknown actor in the period before Rocky changed his entire career overnight. Stallone stars as the greaser, Stanley, who is content to party and play pool for the rest of his life with no prospects for his future. However, Stanley is forced to start taking his responsibilities seriously when he realizes that his girlfriend, Frannie Malincanico ( Maria Smith ), is pregnant. The performance featured a level of sensitivity that feels uncharacteristic of Stallone; as much as Stanley relies upon a tough persona to hide his feelings, he finds that he’s forced to be vulnerable when faced with existential questions about parenthood.

Henry Winkler Reveals the Moment Cousineau Snapped in 'Barry's Series Finale

Stallone was arguably the breakout of the film, but Winkler has a brief yet critical role in The Lords of Flatbush . He co-stars as Butchey Weinstein, a goofy buddy of Stanley’s who is much smarter than he lets on; while Butchey initially tries to mask his intelligence by goofing around in class, he soon realizes that he shouldn’t be ashamed of his academic skills. Although The Lords of Flatbush is a surprisingly dark coming-of-age teen film , Winkler adds a few major laughs with his comical side performance, setting the standard for him to occupy a similar role when he joined the cast of Happy Days .

Henry Winkler Channeled Sylvester Stallone To Play "The Fonz"

Despite the brevity of his role, The Lords of Flatbush had a significant impact on the way that Winkler approached his career. It was after the film completed shooting that Winkler was asked to audition for Happy Days ’ producers, which he admitted to having trepidation about. However, Winkler based his audition to play The Fonz on Stallone’s performance in The Lords of Flatbush . After asking himself, “what would Sly do here?,” when first reading his dialogue, Winkler decided to alter his voice to resemble Stallone’s thick drawl. He stated that seeing Stallone’s confidence on “the cold streets of Brooklyn” during the intense production of The Lords of Flatbush had inspired him to have greater confidence in his characterization. That charisma persisted throughout the run of Happy Days , birthing one of the most iconic television characters of all-time.

Ironically, the popularity of The Fonz on Happy Days ended up aiding The Lords of Flatbush at the box office . Prospects were low for the micro-budget independent drama, as its budget was just a little more than $380,000. Even though Winkler made his Happy Days audition after completing The Lord of Flatbush , the film was released in theaters around the same time that The Fonz mania was taking off. With over $4 million at the global box office, The Lords of Flatbush became a surprise hit that is still cited as one of the best roles of Stallone’s career.

The Fonz Became Henry Winkler’s Most Famous Character

As Happy Days continued, Winkler’s performance became so popular that he began to overshadow his co-stars. The show’s continued focus on The Fonz led the writers to conceive of some seriously unbelievable storylines in order to coast off of Winkler’s broad appeal; an episode where The Fonz literally jet skis over a shark is often cited as the moment that Happy Days collapsed. The character’s popularity made it difficult for Winkler to earn roles in the aftermath, as it was hard to differentiate him from the role that he had played for over a decade.

While he tried his hand appearing in a few mainstream movies, Winkler’s career rebounded thanks to a few standout television roles . Guest roles on Parks and Recreation and Arrested Development certainly revitalized his star power, but it was his surprisingly complex turn as the acting coach, Gene Cousineau, in the HBO dark comedy, Barry , that finally earned Winkler the Primetime Emmy Award that he had long since deserved.

The Lords of Flatbush is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.

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The Wisdom Journey

With stephen davey.

Times: Weekdays 9:30 PM – 10:00 PM

The Wisdom Journey with Stephen Davey is a three-year journey through the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, with one 10-minute lesson each weekday. The Wisdom Journey will help you understand the truth of God’s Word and apply that truth to your life. Follow along and learn to know God, think biblically and live wisely.

About Stephen Davey

Stephen Davey, the son of missionary parents, was raised to love Christ and the gospel. In his last year of high school, Stephen committed his life to serve Christ vocationally wherever God chose to assign him in ministry. His first part-time opportunity was as a college student, serving one summer alongside his father, who had recently planted a church in Virginia Beach. As a part-time youth pastor, Stephen saw the Lord impact the lives of students with His timeless word.

More about Stephen

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1 hr 33 min

The Bold Journey of a Spiritual Warrior with Stephen Prouse Brave Men Podcast

• Christianity

Embarking on a spiritual odyssey often means confronting the comfort zones that dull our fervor. Stephen Prouse is a spiritual warrior - boldly confronting the comfort zones of a culture committed to self justification. A strong man with a strong voice Stephen is well known online as the Fifth Horseman and the Fourth Watch. But his personal story has been one of a series of obstacles resulting in a dynamic faith in Jesus that defines his heart and life.  Today on Brave Men a robust conversation that unveils the perils of spiritual complacency and the church's posture amidst societal turbulence. Together, we dissect the necessity for believers to put on the full armor of God, not for a parade but for the warfare of faith. We hit the power of prayer to reshape not just our circumstances but our own hearts. Why we must be clear on the fight that we face and the pivotal role of adversity in crafting a robust, Christ-centric life. Stephen opens up a personal narrative most have never heard … the gritty realities of navigating family dynamics and the shaping of our faith amidst a culture that denies Christ. Stephen is a leading voice in the Godly restoration of manhood and masculinity. There is a renewal taking place and it’s time for the men of God to stand for truth, love and righteousness. Today’s Brave Men calls upon men to anchor their identities in Christ, building a life lived with vigorous faith and divine purpose. Join us as we call men across the nations to the adventure of following Jesus Christ and his call to rise up as warriors of faith. Brave Men is a production of the Christian Men’s Network, a movement of Godly men in over 100 nations. Resources for men’s discipleship can be found at https://CMN.men. The host of Brave Men is Paul Louis Cole. Follow Paul on socials at @paullouiscole (00:00) Spiritual Warfare and Faith Refinement(08:35) Passion and Authenticity in Faith(17:39) Life, Music, Trauma, Spiritual Conflict(22:22) Family, Divorce, and Spiritual Warfare(30:42) Men, Faith, and Society Revisited(41:53) Journey of Faith and Spiritual Warfare(47:28) Churches, Ministries, and Cultural Influence(58:56) Father-Son Relationship and Faith Journey(01:03:08) Exploration of Faith and Family Loyalty(01:15:06) Navigating Life and Faith Journey(01:20:53) Fatherhood and Biblical Masculinity

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Father and Nonprofit Founder Stephen Johnston Shares His Inspiring Journey on the Simple + Intentional Podcast

In a recent episode of the Simple + Intentional podcast, Stephen Johnston, a father, radiologist, nonprofit founder, and Ironman athlete, opened up about his remarkable story of resilience and purpose in the face of his son’s devastating diagnosis.

When Stephen learned that his 10-year-old son Luke was going blind due to a rare genetic condition called Bardet-Biedl syndrome, he was initially overwhelmed by grief and a sense of helplessness. However, he soon transformed his pain into a driving force for action, founding the nonprofit organization A Race Against Blindness.

During the podcast episode, Stephen candidly discussed his journey, from the initial diagnosis’s emotional turmoil to embracing the mistakes and lessons learned while building his nonprofit from the ground up. He emphasized the importance of allowing oneself to fully experience and process difficult emotions as a crucial step toward healing and finding purpose.

Stephen shared, “Feeling is a very important thing. It’s okay to feel that pain and embrace it and let that pain go through its process that it has to go through. It’s a healing process.”  

This approach ultimately led him to channel his energy into creating A Race Against Blindness , with the mission of funding sight-saving research for Luke and thousands of others affected by the same retinal disease.

Despite having no prior experience in the nonprofit world, Stephen’s passion propelled him forward, and he actively sought knowledge from others’ experiences to navigate the challenges and mistakes inherent in any new endeavor. He emphasized the importance of prioritizing self-care, seeking deliberate challenges to build mental toughness, and minimizing distractions to maintain productivity and focus.

In closing, Stephen encouraged listeners to find a cause that ignites their passion and get involved, emphasizing the immeasurable benefits of being part of something greater than oneself. “It will inspire and change you in ways you cannot imagine,” he said.

Hear the full episode of Simple + Intentional by visiting https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/42-turn-your-pain-into-action-live-more-intentionally/id1678834022?i=1000641584107 . 

About Stephen Johnston

Stephen Johnston, MD, MBA, is a father, radiologist, non-profit founder, and Ironman athlete. When he found out his nine-year-old son, Luke, was going blind as a result of a rare disease, he founded A Race Against Blindness to fund sight-saving research for his son and thousands of others like him.

Though Stephen is relatively new to the nonprofit world, he’s a man on a mission to raise $1 Million for a clinical trial and taking on challenges like Ironman to raise money and be an example for his son. So far, they’ve raised over six figures, been featured on GoodMorningAmerica.com and the Dan Karaty If I’m Being Honest podcast, and had TV spots in multiple major markets.

Stephen lives outside of Phoenix and spends his spare time training for his next Ironman and traveling with his family to create lifelong sighted memories for Luke. 

Screen Rant

Knuckles ending explained: knuckles’ journey & sonic 3 set-up.

The six episodes of the Knuckles spin-off show are now streaming on Paramount+, complete with an action-packed ending setting up Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Knuckles season 1.

• Knuckles' journey with Wade Whipple establishes Earth as a home for the Echidna warrior, finding a sense of belonging on the planet.
• Knuckles' villains, G.U.N. agents and The Buyer, set up a thrilling showdown that ends with Knuckles defeating them and finding peace.
• Wade Whipple's transformation into a braver character and ally hints at exciting developments for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, setting the stage for new adventures.

Knuckles is a spin-off of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 , with the six episodes on Paramount+ ending the show in an action-packed fashion. Since Sonic 2 's release in April 2022, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 's story has been highly anticipated. In order to make the wait for the third installment slightly easier, Paramount has crafted a spin-off TV show centered around Knuckles , telling a solo story about the Echidna warrior.

Knuckles ' voice cast sees Idris Elba return as the titular character, while Adam Pally leads the human cast as the returning Wade Whipple from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. While many will question how much Sonic and Tails are in Knuckles , the show solidifies itself as a Knuckles-centric storyline. Journeying across the United States to train Wade in the ways of an Echidna warrior, Knuckles ' ending is suitably action-packed , expectedly hilarious, and even features some elements that set up the story of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 .

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will release in theaters on December 20, 2024.

Why Knuckles’ Journey With Wade Whipple Was Important

Knuckles' adventure with wade is a story about finding a home..

By the time of Knuckles ' ending, the titular Echidna and Wade Whipple had traveled to Reno, won a bowling tournament, and defeated the G.U.N. agents pursuing them. Concerning what the point of this journey was, it was to establish Earth as a home for Knuckles. After Sonic the Hedgehog 2 , it became clear that Tails and Sonic have acclimatized to Earth well. Knuckles quickly established that this was the opposite for him, with the warrior struggling to adapt to the more peaceful ways of everyday life on Earth.

Knuckles finally accepted Earth as somewhere he could live rather than begrudgingly stay to watch over the Master Emerald.

Similarly, a big part of Knuckles' story is that he is without a family after his tribe was destroyed. That said, through Knuckles' journey with Wade, he came to accept that Earth could be his home. Through his newfound friendship with Wade, his connection to Wade's family, the people he met, and the places he saw throughout the show's six episodes, Knuckles finally accepted Earth as somewhere he could live rather than begrudgingly stay to watch over the Master Emerald.

Knuckles Villains Explained: Who Are The G.U.N. Agents & The Buyer?

Knuckles' antagonists are connected to the echidna, sonic, and doctor robotnik..

The three villains of Knuckles were introduced earlier in the show; two of the villains are G.U.N. agents who wish to track Knuckles down and sell him to the other of the show's villains, The Buyer. The G.U.N. agents are called Agent Willoughby and Agent Mason and are played by Ellie Taylor and Scott Mescudi respectively, while The Buyer is played by Game of Thrones alum Rory McCann. Concerning the two agents, they are tasked with capturing Knuckles, driven by the money they will be paid for this but also their disillusionment with G.U.N.

Willoughby and Mason are annoyed that G.U.N. began allowing aliens like Knuckles, Sonic, and Tales to live on Earth after supposedly being an agency that prevents such instances from occurring. McCann's aptly named Buyer is the one who will be paying the agents to capture Knuckles in a bid to steal the latter's power. By the time of Knuckles ' ending, The Buyer is revealed as a former lackey of Jim Carrey's Doctor Robotnik, desiring Knuckles' power to exact revenge on the aliens that caused him to lose his position as a G.U.N. agent.

What Happened To The G.U.N. Agents In Knuckles' Ending?

Knuckles' ending sees the g.u.n. agents and the buyer face off with the warrior..

In Knuckles ' ending, the titular Echidna is cornered by the G.U.N. agents. This leads to a lengthy action sequence in a hotel penthouse in Reno, in which Knuckles faces off against his enemies while Wade Whipple saves his family. Eventually, Knuckles uses the power of two rings to defeat Willoughby and Mason , sending the two to an unknown location. The agents are not seen again by the time of Knuckles' ending, proving that the Echidna defeated them once and for all.

Knuckles uses a giant globe-like structure atop a nearby building to crush The Buyer and his suit, ending the threat to Knuckles' life and allowing Knuckles ' ending to be a happy one.

However, Knuckles ' ending then has The Buyer ambush Knuckles as the two battle on the streets of Reno. Sporting a massive exoskeleton that runs off Knuckles' power via GUN experiments , The Buyer quickly overpowers the hero. Wade Whipple then comes to Knuckles' aid, buying enough time for the Echidna to regain his strength, before he begins destroying The Buyer's robotic suit. After a battle, Knuckles uses a giant globe-like structure atop a nearby building to crush The Buyer and his suit, ending the threat to Knuckles' life and allowing Knuckles ' ending to be a happy one.

Wade Whipple Learned What It Means To Be An Echidna Warrior

Wade's journey is just as transformative as his alien friend's by the time of knuckles' ending..

Despite the show being named after Knuckles, Wade Whipple is arguably as important a character as the Echidna himself. Knuckles ' ending allows the warrior to come around to the ways of Earth, coming to call the planet his new home. Where Wade is concerned, the journey allowed him to become a much more confident, competent character as he learned the ways of an Echidna warrior from his new friend Knuckles. In Knuckles episode 4, Wade is shown fighting through his fears and becoming much braver.

Wade's arc then came to a head in Knuckles ' ending , where he came up against his father, who had abandoned him. Cary Elwes' "Pistol" Pete Whipple is cartoonishly evil as the show's bowling antagonist, but serves a purpose in that Wade confronts him for his mistakes. After proving his father was wrong to abandon Wade, his mother, and his sister, Wade beats Pete in a bowling competition. This, combined with Wade standing up to The Buyer after Knuckles was momentarily defeated, proves that Wade found his inner warrior by Knuckles ' ending.

How Knuckles' Ending Sets Up Sonic The Hedgehog 3

The next installment in the sonic the hedgehog franchise can include many knuckles elements..

Knuckles is admittedly more self-contained than many assumed it would be and has little in the way of explicit setup for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 . That said, several character changes, thematic elements, and small world-building aspects could be tied into the story of Sonic 3 when it releases in December 2024. Knuckles ' ending sets up Sonic the Hedgehog 3 with the Echidna now being more willing to protect Earth. While he swore a vow to protect the Master Emerald, his experiences with Wade could see Knuckles fight not just for that, but for Earth itself in the future.

The Buyer's mention of Doctor Robotnik also sets up Jim Carrey's return in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 as Eggman.

Sonic 3 Has The Robotnik I've Been Waiting 4 Years For & It Makes Jim Carrey's Return So Much Better

Similarly, Wade's character change could see him be more of a direct ally in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 . Rather than just being a bumbling friend of Tom's, Wade could present his newfound bravery in a way that directly impacts the third film. Furthermore, The Buyer's Knuckles storyline indicates that G.U.N. has a lot of ways to harness the powers of creatures like Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. With Sonic the Hedgehog 3 officially including Shadow the Hedgehog, it could be the case that the villain's powers are used to create a larger arsenal of G.U.N. weaponry.

Knuckles is a spin-off of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise created for Paramount+. Idris Elba reprises his role as Knuckles the Echidna in the action-adventure series, and the show will follow him on a new adventure as he meets new allies and faces new foes.

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Stephen review – fact blurs with fiction in powerfully raw study of addiction

Stephen Giddings gives a committed performance as a recovering alcoholic who’s started betting again in this often tense experimental docudrama

T he line between fact and fiction is thin to vanishing in this Liverpool-set experimental docudrama, a study of addiction and how it rumbles down through generations. It’s directed by visual artist Melanie Manchot and is being shown as a multiscreen installation in Cornwall as well as screening in cinemas. Manchot worked with a Liverpool recovery group, hiring members, with lived experience, as actors. At its worst the result has a bit of a workshop feel, stilted and a bit studied; there’s also expressionist dancing. But at its best, this is a painful, raw study of addiction, with a powerful, committed performance by Stephen Giddings.

Giddings plays himself (or a version of himself), a recovering alcoholic and aspiring actor up for the lead in a film; the character is called Tom, a bank cashier who had problems in the past with gambling. Tom has made a fresh start with girlfriend Sarah, who’s pregnant, and together they’re buying a flat – but Tom has started betting again, and alarmingly, he’s dipping into the bank funds at work.

We watch Stephen audition, rehearse, and share his life experience. There are also scenes from the film-within-a-film. Among the best is a horribly tense backroom card game in which Tom loses big time. (My only gripe was an appearance by the ex EastEnders actor Michelle Collins as a tough loan shark, giving a performance that feels more calibrated to a Guy Ritchie movie.)

The questions the film asks are important: about addiction and how it affects families. I wasn’t convinced it fully comes together and perhaps in the end it works best in a gallery space. Another layer of fact and fiction is the mention here and there of the real-life early 20th-century case of Thomas Goudie , jailed for embezzling almost £170,000 from the bank he worked at as a clerk in Liverpool. His arrest became the subject of the first ever police reconstruction filmed in 1901 – which you can watch for free on BFI Player .

Stephen is in UK cinemas from 26 April; the installation is at the Exchange, Newlyn, Cornwall from 5 May.

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