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The Last Performance Of Steve Perry With Journey

via Journey on MV/YouTube

For Bill Graham and The San Francisco Crowd

Steve Perry performed with Journey for the last time on November 3, 1991 in Golden Gate Park at a memorial concert for the late rock promoter Bill Graham who was killed in a helicopter crash. Perry’s final full concert with the band was on February 1, 1987.

Graham helped Journey get their start by giving them their first gig at Winterland Arena in San Francisco, CA on December 31, 1973.

As for the tribute, Journey’s set was only less than ten minutes but they powered through three songs – Faithfully , Lonely Road Without You , and Lights . It was short but sweet especially for those who have long wanted to see The Voice reunite with his bandmates. ( hikeaddicts.com )

After a few years, Perry went back to the recording studio with Journey for their 1996 album Trial by Fire . It was a commercial success and peaked at #3 on the US Billboard 200.

In an interview earlier this year, Perry said: “As much I missed the lights, as much as I missed the stage, the applause and the adoration of people who were loving the music I was participating in, I had to walk away from it to be okay emotionally on my own without it. And that took time. That doesn’t mean I didn’t miss it, it means I had to keep walking the other way. There was some personal work to be done within myself, to be honest with you.”

Check out their performance below.

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Flashback: Journey Introduce Steve Perry to America in 1978

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Steve Perry emerged from two decades of seclusion in August with new single “No Erasin'” off his upcoming album Traces . It was a rather stunning development for Journey fans that had largely given up on ever hearing him sing again, especially after he refused to perform with his old group when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. But in new interviews, Perry revealed that after losing his girlfriend Kellie Nash to cancer in 2012, he decided it was time to face the world again.

Perry said he’s considering promoting Traces with a solo tour, but don’t expect to see him back onstage with Journey. They’ve been doing just fine without him ever since Arnel Pineda became their new singer 10 years ago and have even played stadiums this summer on their co-headlining tour with Def Leppard. They exclusively play songs from the Perry era of the group, and Pineda sounds almost exactly like his predecessor did in 1983. Most audiences are quite happy to sing along with their favorite hits and don’t really care if the original guy isn’t actually on the stage.

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Forty years ago, however, Perry was a crucial part of Journey’s success. The group began in 1973 as an offshoot of Santana with guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist/singer Gregg Rolie, but their first three albums failed to find a mass audience and they faced getting dropped from their record label. Steve Perry was brought into the group to help them develop a more commercial sound, beginning with 1978’s Infinity. The gambit worked immediately as lead single “Wheel in the Sky” reached Number 57 on the Hot 100. Here’s video of them playing their first hit song on The Midnight Special in February 1978, which was the first time many in America saw the group play with Perry.

If Perry decides to tour in support of Traces , Journey will face some competition on the road. Fans have had plenty of chances to see Journey minus Perry play the hits, but Perry minus Journey hasn’t done any sort of tour since a brief one in 1995 to support his solo album  For the Love of Strange Medicine . The tour generated very little interest since Journey were aggressively uncool in the Lollapalooza era, but things have changed quite a bit since then. He hasn’t sang “Wheel in the Sky” in over 23 years, but should he decide to go out and do it again he’ll probably be shocked by how many people are willing to pay big bucks to hear it.

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Top 35 Videos by Journey, Together and Apart

Journey managed to release one of the most talked-about clips in MTV history during their brief time making videos. As you'll see below in our ranking of every Journey music video, however, there were plenty of other high and low points beyond the ubiquitous "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)."

Because of their relatively small video catalog, we've expanded the rankings to include closely related clips from Steve Perry , Bad English (which included three members of Journey's current lineup ), Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon . That serves to provide a broader overview of their career arc from the '70s through the '20s without drifting too far afield thematically.

Some feature composed storylines while others lean on lip-synced performances. Along the way, you'll find knights and motorcyclists, big hair and even bigger hooks, backstage shenanigans and long-gone girlfriends, cartoon beetles and (yes) air-keyboards.

READ MORE: Ranking All 52 Journey Songs From the '80s

Taken together with a multi-platinum discography, the Top 35 Videos by Journey complete a winding narrative from obscure jam band to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame . Additional commentary for the entries is excerpted from the new Amazon best-selling Journey biography, Journey: Worlds Apart . No. 35. Journey, "After the Fall" From: Frontiers (1983)

By the time Journey returned for 1986's Raised on Radio , they had sworn off scripted videos . This clip makes the case for that decision, reeling off a sort of greatest hits of bad choices. A set resembling an empty builder-grade apartment was lit through the blinds. There's awkward lip-syncing, awkward dancing, even awkward standing – and, sigh, band members actually falling. Even Journey looks bored, at one point reaching for a caffeine boost of coffee while singing the chorus.

No. 34. Journey, "City of Hope" From: Eclipse (2011)

Smart use of video from Arnel Pineda's homeland for one of this album's better songs, but it's all undercut by a series of remarkably cheap-looking band shots.

No. 33. Journey, "Chain Reaction" From: Frontiers (1983)

For some reason, this era saw a lot of singing into women's ears. (More on that later.) This time, they sing into a mannequin's ear! Seriously, though, that tussle between Steve Perry and Neal Schon looked a little too real. Their next project together wouldn't arrive for three years.

No. 32. Gregg Rolie, "Young Love" From: Gregg Rolie (1985)

Videos like this were so common as to be anodyne in the '80s. That's not the problem. It's that Columbia Records somehow picked "Young Love" over "I Wanna Go Back," the Gregg Rolie deep cut that would become a Top 15 hit for Eddie Money just one year later.

No. 31. Schon and Hammer, "No More Lies" From: Here to Stay (1982)

Neal Schon sings some stuff to a woman, then he and Jan Hammer get trapped in a twine box? Hey, it was the '80s.

No. 30. Bad English, "Love is a 4 Letter Word" From: Bad English (1989)

A rudimentary lip-sync video is enlivened by an actual crowd at an actual show in Atlanta.

No. 29. Neal Schon, "What You Want" From: So U (2014)

For some reason, the deeply talented Deen Castronovo shared singing duties on So U with Marco Mendoza and leader Neal Schon, as Schon continued an occasional flirtation with vocals that went back to Journey's Next in 1977. History tells us, however, that Columbia Records demanded that Journey hire a new singer for the LP which followed.

No. 28. Journey, "Wheel in the Sky" From: Infinity (1978)

An otherwise nondescript performance video is paired with the single. Best part: Neal Schon's seriously kick-ass kimono.

No. 27. Bad English, "Straight to Your Heart" From: Backlash (1991)

Arguably Bad English's best single arrived on their well-named second album: The whole AOR sound that its members from Journey and the Babys had created was about to be subsumed by the tidal wave of grunge.

No. 26. Journey, "Send Her My Love" From: Frontiers (1983)

As with "Wheel in the Sky," a performance video is paired with the single – only this time with some utterly enraptured gazes from the audience.

No. 25. Journey, "Why Can't This Night Go On Forever" From: Raised on Radio (1986)

"Why Can't This Night Go On Forever" featured an appropriately wistful clip-file video from a band that was grinding to another sudden halt .

No. 24. Journey, "Lights" From: Infinity (1978)

Unlikely controversy surrounded this clip, and not because of the dizzying visual effects during the choruses. "I went to some Billboard conference, and [founding manager] Herbie Herbert was there," Journey video producer Paul Flattery told me. "He came up to me and he was blasting me for the Journey video. His big complaint involved Aynsley Dunbar, the drummer. His stomach stuck out in one of the shots. They were lined up, in kind of a profile thing. It was like, 'He complains to me about this every day.'"

No. 23. Neal Schon, "The Calling" From: The Calling (2012)

You get a sense that Schon maybe loves motorcycles? What actually made this session so great: Steve Smith. Initial work on a few tracks eventually became an album-length collaboration, then The Calling – Schon's best solo album to date – precipitated a completely unexpected return to Journey.

No. 22. Journey, "Any Way You Want It" From: Departure (1980)

An otherwise nondescript performance video is bookended with jukebox scenes that neatly presuppose the placement of "Don't Stop Believin'" in the finale of The Sopranos .

No. 21. Steve Perry, "Missing You" From: For the Love of Strange Medicine (1994)

Typical of its time, this clip from Perry's long-awaited sophomore solo LP is more texture than actual context.

No. 20. Bad English, "Forget Me Not" From: Bad English (1989)

This band included three former members of the Babys, the doomed opening act that provided a tour-long audition for future cornerstone Jonathan Cain . Bad English would suffer a similar fate, hinted at (once again) by the way John Waite and Neal Schon push each other around in this clip for their failed debut single.

No. 19. Journey, "Just the Same Way" From: Evolution (1979)

OK, not much happens. But there was a cool juxtaposition of light and darkness when Rolie shared vocals early in Perry's tenure. Unfortunately, it was an all-too-brief moment in time. Media attention was soon focused squarely on the newcomer, and Rolie exited in 1980. "I don't think Perry really liked me singing. 'I'm the singer,'" Rolie told me. "Well, OK. But my answer to that is, you know, the Beatles did great with four singers. Four, right? Not one." In the end, Rolie felt "there was a design to all of that: 'You've got to have a frontman now,' and it was so they've got something to write about, and focus on. Now hopefully the frontman in any band is going to rally behind the guys behind them that helped them be the frontman. Bands are bands and they've got to live like that — and that's hard to do, especially when the press gets involved."

No. 18. Gregg Rolie, "The Hands of Time" From: Gringo (1987)

You may assume that Rolie couldn't pull off the sleek plasticine sound of the '80s, since his departure coincided with Journey's shift in that direction. "The Hands of Time" proves otherwise.

No. 17. Bad English, "Price of Love" From: Bad English (1989)

They whiffed on a rocker, then hit with a Diane Warren power ballad. So guess what their next single sounded like? A somehow forgotten No. 5 hit.

No. 16. Neal Schon, "Love Finds a Way" From: So U (2014)

Schon's best solo single agan showcases Castronovo and Mendoza, both of whom participated in offshoot bands and the main Journey lineup. Castronovo's ability to pull off Perry-type vocals while manning the drums is a remarkable thing to watch. A friend of Rolie's son memorably walked up to Castronovo after a performance and "and he goes, 'I'm convinced that you're only half human' — because he can do that," Rolie told me, with a laugh. "I couldn’t believe that he was singing the way he was singing and playing these complex things. It's amazing to me. He thinks 'What? Can't everybody do that?' 'No, no, not at all!'"

No. 15. Journey, "When You Love a Woman" From: Trial By Fire (1996)

A suitably staid clip for a very staid song.

No. 14. Journey, "I'll Be Alright Without You" From: Raised on Radio (1986)

Points given for the new accapella ending. Points taken away for Randy Jackson's polka-dotted bass.

No. 13. Steve Perry, "No More Cryin'" From: Traces (2018)

Notable for the unwelcome absence of organist Booker T. Jones. The Stax legend connected Traces with Perry's love of R&B, while girding it all with mirthful soul. Keyboardist Dallas Kruse mimes the part.

No. 12. Bad English, "When I See You Smile" From: Bad English (1989)

In which three past or future members of Journey are shown up by John Waite's gloriously hair-sprayed visage.

No. 11. Journey, "Feeling That Way" From: Infinity (1978)

Love the Budweiser on Gregg Rolie's keyboard. The only disappointment was learning that he wasn't simply boozing it up. The beer company was a Journey tour sponsor.

No. 10. Steve Perry, "Most of All" From: Traces (2018)

Notable for its welcome showcase of Thom Flowers, who turns in a delicately involving guitar solo after helping shepherd Perry's long-awaited comeback as co-producer of Traces . "Most of All," an emotional goodbye to Perry's late girlfriend Kellie Nash, was one of its triumphs.

No. 9. Gregg Rolie, "What About Love" From: Sonic Ranch (2019)

Rolie was inspired by Ringo Starr 's message of peace and love as a member of the longest-tenured lineup of the All-Starr Band, and "What About Love" is the result. Rolie then enlisted his son Sean Rolie to help with a music video. Its jittery blend of candid backstage footage, performance clips from the Journey Through Time offshoot band, and open-road imagery served as a canny update of Rolie's image for a new era.

No. 8. Steve Perry, "You Better Wait" From: For the Love of Strange Medicine (1994)

It's cool that he carried the patented tuxedo-jacket look into his solo career, but a run-down shack out in the desert clearly wasn't the most hospitable setting. Perry loses the shirt.

No. 7. Steve Perry, "Foolish Heart" From: Street Talk (1984)

Deceptively difficult to film, this concept came courtesy of Journey video producer Paul Flattery's director of photography. But slowly zooming in and out on Steve Perry from the balcony of this intimate theater proved to be outrageously expensive. "You didn't have a crane that could have the camera actually in the balcony and below the parapet, and then come up and go all the way down," Flattery told me. "So, the solution was to build a fake balcony, which you could then strike as soon as the camera was clear of it. Then you could get everything and everybody out of the way by the time you got down to the stage and the camera turned around. For something that looks so simple, that was a lot of hard work."

No. 6. Journey, "The Way We Used to Be" From: Freedom (2022)

They made the best of pandemic-era restrictions with a fizzy animated video that finds Neal Schon suddenly transforming into Journey's familiar scarab .

No. 5. Steve Perry, "We're Still Here" From: Traces (2018)

Perry's first scripted video since 1994's "Missing You" recalls the pitched nostalgia of Journey's "Still They Ride" – but from a much different perspective. "I think I was the first person to ask him about 'We're Still Here,' and I was taking that as, like, existential," former Rolling Stone editor David Wild told me. "Instead, it was him remembering how he went down to record some- thing in Hollywood at one of the studios and all these young people and rock 'n' roll freaks were out, sort of crawling around — 'streetlight people,' as he once coined it. He was praising and con- necting with them. There's still youth and still energy on the streets."

No. 4. Steve Perry, "Strung Out" From: Street Talk (1984)

Perry began sessions for this first solo album by tearing through an early version of "Strung Out." It was largely indistinguishable from the average Journey song in both construction and approach. Things got more interesting with the video, as Journey video producer Paul Flattery oversaw a prequel for Perry's "Oh Sherrie" promo clip. "We were trying to make pieces of art as opposed to pieces of commerce," Flattery told me. The obvious goal was to "build on the success of 'Oh Sherrie,' which was a huge, huge hit — and so we wanted to ride the coattails of that. I don't know if anybody had ever done a sequel, let alone a prequel. What happened was, it gave MTV an incentive to play both together as a kind of a suite. So they would say, here's the new Steve Perry thing — and then of course, it would lead into his biggest hit, which wasn't a bad thing to do."

No. 3. Journey, "Faithfully" From: Frontiers (1983)

A road video for song written on the road about life on the road, and the terrible strain that can put on a relationship. The funny scene with Steve Smith belies this song's underlying message: Author Cain and singer Perry were both struggling against heartbreak. The track itself came together spontaneously, before Perry asked to be alone in the studio to record his vocal. The finished take was unlike any Perry ever tried. He credited that, in part, to the fact that Cain had written "Faithfully" in his own key. "From the opening lines, he's just absolutely dripping with emotion," founding MTV VJ Martha Quinn told me. "Every time you put the needle down, you can just feel it." Perry completed the song by conjuring an ending dance between his “whoa whoa whoa” and Neal Schon's guitar out of thin air.

No. 2. Journey, "Separate Ways" From: Frontiers (1983)

The set up, featuring Journey members playing air instruments while a model marches around, has been mercilessly mocked . But "Separate Ways" was simply a product of its time – and hardly the worst example of '80s-era video excess. "It goes back to that optimism and sense of fun that people will return to, time and time again," Quinn said. "Rock aficionados may have said, 'Oh, that was cornball.' Well, ask people that are still doing send-ups today, down to every last camera angle." At the same time, the video inadvertently set the stage for future solo success. Perry brought then-girlfriend Sherrie Swafford to the set, and she reportedly became jealous. "You're going to have a slut in your video?" Jonathan Cain remembered Swafford asking Perry. That left Perry to openly wonder if he'd have to write a song for Swafford to smooth things over. " And so he did ," Cain said with a laugh.

No. 1. Steve Perry, "Oh Sherrie" From: Street Talk (1984)

Journey video producer Paul Flattery came up with a story-within-a-story approach that showed Steve Perry pushing back against a typically over-the-top shoot in order to film a more straightforward plea to namesake girlfriend Sherrie Swafford. The rejected high-concept portion originally had an Egyptian motif, but they couldn't find a suitable location, so they switched to a Shakespearean approach. ("I like to think of it as 'Richard III' — with Steve's hair," Flattery quipped.) On set, Perry's concluding interaction with Swafford may have provided some hint at what was to come: "The weird thing was at the very end, the first take we did, he goes: 'Hey, I kinda love you.' By take 6, it was 'I kinda like you,'" Flattery said with a laugh.

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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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Ex-JOURNEY Singer STEVE PERRY Was 'Emotionally Stunned' By 'Don't Stop Believin'' Achievement

Former JOURNEY singer Steve Perry has reacted to the news that the band's timeless rock anthem "Don't Stop Believin'" has officially been declared the "Biggest Song Of All Time" by Forbes . According to the RIAA ( Recording Industry Association of America ),the hit rock song likely heard by everyone around the world is now an 18-times-platinum-certified single.

Earlier today (Wednesday, March 20), Perry shared a link to the Forbes article and he included the following message: "When this 'Don't Stop Believin'' , 'The Biggest Song of ALL Time' article came out yesterday {3/19/24}I was so emotionally stunned. To be part of such a moment as this made me reflect on my parents. By that I mean, though I lost them both years ago, I was so happy for them because they are truly the reason this is happening. My dad was a singer and both of them were very musical. So on behalf of my Mom and Dad, I thank every one of you for so many years of support."

JOURNEY co-founder and lead guitarist Neal Schon was one of the musicians who commented below Perry 's post on Instagram , writing: "That's great Steve . God Bless. I myself reflect on the great time we had writing this song. Respectfully Neal Schon ".

You've heard "Don't Stop Believin'" literally everywhere since the 1980s: on the radio of every car you've ever owned, at every major sporting event you've attended in the last 20 years (including a live performance by the band at this year's NFC Championship Game between the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers ),sung by Tom Cruise , Alec Baldwin and Mary J. Blige in the film "Rock Of Ages" , and covered by the cast of the TV show "Glee" . You heard it and then stared at a black screen in horror for a full 10 seconds wondering whether your DVR wasn't set to record the full episode, and then had it running through your head while you argued with friends over whether Tony Soprano got whacked in the diner or not.

Released in October 1981 for JOURNEY 's seventh studio album "Escape" through Columbia Records , "Don't Stop Believin'" quickly became the band's signature song. Critical acclaim was instant, with Billboard praising the "fluid guitar and vocal." AllMusic declared "Don't Stop Believin'" a "perfect rock song" and an "anthem", featuring "one of the best opening keyboard riffs in rock." Schon wrote the instantly recognizable bass line, and keyboardist and rhythm guitar Jonathan Cain had kept the song title from encouragement his father gave him as a struggling musician living on Sunset Boulevard. Decades after its release, the song became the best-selling digital track from the twentieth century, with over seven million downloads.

In a 2009 interview with CBC 's "Q" cultural affairs show, Perry said he always thought "Don't Stop Believin'" had potential as a single. It was always a hit with live audiences, though it didn't get great radio play at the time it was issued, he said.

"When we were doing the song in 1981, I knew something was happening, but honestly, when I saw it in the film 'Monster' with Patty Jenkins , I started think, 'Oh my goodness there's really something.'"

He added: "The lyric is a strong lyric about not giving up, but it's also about being young, it's also about hanging out, not giving up and looking for that emotion hiding somewhere in the dark that we're all looking for. It's about having hope and not quitting when things get tough, because I'm telling you things get tough for everybody."

Current JOURNEY singer Arnel Pineda , who has been fronting the band for 17 years, told CBS News in 2012, "Even before I discovered 'Don't Stop Believin'' , it has been my motto — you know, to never stop believing in myself. The life that I've gone through, all those hardships, I never stopped believing that someday there is something magical that will happen in my life."

In 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, "Don't Stop Believin'" became a rallying call for patients recovering from COVID-19 at two hospitals in New York and Michigan. The 1981 hit was being played at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan and the New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital during celebrations for patients prevailing over the coronavirus.

Perry reunited with JOURNEY for the first time in years as they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in April 2017. The iconic singer appeared onstage with his former bandmates as they each gave speeches, but did not perform with the group later in the event.

Perry 's final full concert with JOURNEY took place in early 1987. He later rejoined his bandmates for a brief performance in 1991 to honor late concert promoter Bill Graham . He also appeared with JOURNEY when they received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 2005.

JOURNEY will team up with DEF LEPPARD for a 2024 stadium concert tour of North America. The 23-city tour opens July 6 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and concludes September 8 at Coors Field in Denver. The opening act for most of the tour dates will be fellow Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer Steve Miller and his band. Two other Rock Hall inductees will alternate as opening acts for the seven shows Miller is not playing — CHEAP TRICK and HEART .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Steve Perry (@steveperrymusic)

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