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Steve Perry Gives His Honest Opinion on New JOURNEY Singer Arnel Pineda

• August 20, 2021
• 1 minute read

During a recent conversation with SiriusXM, classic Journey vocalist Steve Perry talked about the band’s new singer Arnel Pineda , who’s been a member of the fold since 2007.

Steve reached the topic while discussing Journey ‘s 2017 Rock Hall induction, saying (via Blabbermouth ):

“When I walked out there, that was a real thrill. They had a whole worked-up thing – they had a big teleprompter, and I said, ‘F that.’ I pulled out my piece of paper. I said, ‘I got some things to talk about here,’ and I just sort of did my thing. The fans, they were so wonderful.”

Asked on why he didn’t perform at the ceremony, Steve replied:

“I’m not in the band. I haven’t been in the band for quite some time. Arnel’s been in the band for almost 10 years, I think. He’s a sweet kid – he’s a wonderful kid. He sings his heart out every night. It’s his gig.

“There was a gentleman who we recently lost named Harry, part of the management team. Harry was there with me and he said, ‘Steve, listen, I don’t know if you know, but Arnel’s running up and down the halls. He heard you’re here, backstage.’

“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ He said, ‘I think he’s outside.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll come out.’ I walked out and he was there, and he comes up to me… there was something endearing about the way he looked at me. He was meeting, like, a grandfather. [Laughs] He’s got the gig. It’s his gig. He’s doing great.”

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• Steve Perry

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49 comments

Bring Steve back, ideots

the idiot is the one who can’t spell idiot

Why couldn’t Paul Rogers be a man like Steve Perry. Paul treated Brian Howe like sh*t.

Maybe he is not as good as Arnel’s voice almost copied almost same voice of Steve Perry that’s all I can say

Savage!!!!!😂😂😂

Both ” Arnel and Steve, and add, ” Taka” the lead singer from,” One O.K. Rock” all three would put on the show of shows!

He really is an edyot…

You’re damn right😁🤪.

You re very right!

Hey Andy, Speaking of IDIOTS!!

Bring back Steve Perry to the group so that Arnel may have substitute for vocal …just like john lennon paul mc cartney combination 🙏🥰💥

Steve doesn’t want to come back. He walked and was done with band. Why don’t you go back to an old job? Idiot

Steve can’t sing anymore. How he can do the things you want?

FUNNY HE JUST CAME OUT WITH A NEW AULBUM . HE CAN’T SING. LMFAO

welll idiot steve does not want back if he did he would be sooooo your the idiot idiot

Steve knew he can’t bring back the voice where the Journey was once before..Great that he recognize Arnel as the new lead singer of the band

Lmafol, how you spell Capital I•D•I•O•T🤣🤣🤣

Before I die, I would love to see the original Steve Perry and Journey together performing we need to do

Are you kidding me? Steve Perry- what grace and dignity you bring with this. Well done. Clearly your spirit, your conscience, is every bit as beautiful as your voice. ???

Got to love a class act like Steve Perry much love and respect ?

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT AND i JUST MET SOMEBODY WHO MET Steve Perry AND SAID HE WAS GREAT AND HUMBLE GUY AND VERY HUMOROUS.

Well done, Steve.

Awe yes, but he’ll never ever be you❤️

Steve Perry can never be replaced!

And can never sing his song exactly the same as what he did when he was at his prime with the band… that’s why he will never want to come back because he can’t do the same thing as what he did before like what arnel do at the present.

I sew him in concert 3 years ago and he was amazing Steve you will allways be number 1 but agree with Arnel is amazing Think journey is in good hands with him I would of like to seen you perform at the rock roll hall fame cearmoney but I think you were varry kind to say this is arnel crow dosin,t want to over well him I think you made a great choice but thir will allways be 1 Steve parry and that’s you. I’m going see them again next month with billy idol I can’t wait.

No one’s trying to replace Steve. He is Steve Perry. He is Arnel Pineda. Immature ppl don’t get it.

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, DID YOU SEE ARNEL PINEDA FACE OF APPRECIATION WHEN THEY MET BACKSTAGE AT THE AWARDS. ARNEL SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOWN ON THE STAGE DURING THE AWARDS SHOW TOO, BUT HE THOUGHT BECAUSE IT WAS FOR THE ORIGINAL GROUP ONLY. HONESTLY IT SHOULD NOT HAVE MATTER, ARNEL IS THE MAN FOR JOURNEY NOW. THERE IS ROOM FOR A NEW HISTORY MAKING MOMENT FOR TWO FRONT MEN FOR JOURNEY AND THIS WILL BRING ON TOGETHER LEGIONS OF NEW FANS FOR JOURNEY OF BOTH MEN AND EVEN THE UNDECIDED UNDER ONE UMBRELLA TO SQUASH THE DEBATE ON WHOSE BETTER.

DID YOU SEE THE REACTION OF ADMIRATION FOR STEVE PERRY FROM ARNEL PINEDA WHO COVERS STEVE PERRY MUSIC DURING HIS YOUTH AND NOBODY HAS DONE IT BETTER THAN HIM AND i HAVE TRIED MYSELF AS MY VOCALS JUST DON’T MAKE THE GRADE TO COME CLOSE TO THE LIVING LEGEND. IF JOURNEY DON’T JUMP ON A HISTORY MAKING MOMENT TO HAVE TWO GREATIST FRONTMEN TO HAVE LED JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE SOMETHINING IS WRONG IF YOU CAN’T GET THESE TWO TO WORK TOGETHER. SEAL THE LEGACY WITH AN ENTIRE DUET OF THESE TWO ON ANOTHER REBIRTH OF JOURNEY…WE ALL NEED A NEW FRONTEIR. WE HAVE TWO SUPERHEROES FOR JOURNEY. MAKE BOTH OF THEM A LEGEND BY HAVING THE ONLY GROUP TO EVER HAVE TWO FRONTMEN ACTUALLY WORK TOGETHER. UNLIKE THE FAILURE OF VAN HALEN WITH SAMMY HAGAR AND DAVID LEE ROTH. THAT WAS OIL AND WATER MIX.

Perry isn’t coming back. Isn’t that obvious? He felt he was screwed/betrayed. Schon mentions trying to communicate with Perry, just to say hi. Perry won’t answer. Does that sound like someone who would want to return even if the offer was made?

Every time someone says “Bring back Perry!” I just shake my head.

STEVE WOULD COMEBACK IF IT WAS WORTH SAVING JOURNEY, BUT AS HE SAID IT IS ARNEL TIME TO SHINE TO CARRY JOURNEY. ARNEL HAS PROVEN HIMSELF AS THE FAN HAS APPROVED HIM MUCH BETTER THAN THE PAST REPLACEMENT WHO DID A DECENT JOB BUT NOT THE POINT WHERE THEY MATCHED OR EVEN CAME CLOSE TO STEVE VOCALS THE WAY ARNEL VOCALS SOUNDS SO ORIGINALLY CLOSE. WHY WOULD STEVE WANT TO COMEBACK UNLESS THEY INVITE HIM BACK TO PERFORM WHICH JOURNEY MEMBERS SHOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM LETTING STEVE PERFORM LIVE WHENEVER HE WANTS TO PERFORM AGAIN. IF THIS IS SO TO HAVE TWO OF THE GREATEST FRONTMEN TO REVIVE A GROUP FOR AN EVEN LONGER LONGEVITY FOR FUTURE FANS.

Journey is a great group band but who run the group is stupid. ..we filipinos dont need journey for ARNEL PINEDA..we LOVE ARNEL PINEDA with his GREAT TALENT and his GREAT VOICE n SKILL…if there is no stupidity @ journey why steve perry left the group …🤨🤔

I WANT TO SAY THAT I LOVED HIS STREET TALK SOLO MUSIC AND HIS NEWEST ONE HE RELEASING TO WHAT i HEAR STILL CLASSIC STEVE PERRY. YOU CAN RELATE TO THE WORDS HE WRITE OR SING WHAT WAS WRITTEN FOR HIM. EITHER WAY HIS MUSIC IS ALWAYS GREAT.

Why didnt axl join journey during the nevermind days?

Steve Perry is a real gentleman. I salute him for speaking his heart out.

Schon Lechon is a devil in disguise. He must change his contaminated heart and mind before the Journey becomes NOBODY LIKE HIM.

you are the only ones who think that someone will replace steve even arnel doesn’t think like that infact arnel’s favorite singer is steve perry and he never thinks that he is replacing steve, the only problem is you narrow minded journey fans.

I can’t agree more bro. , a lot of people just keep on complaining and comparing between the which is really non-sense, Steve is Steve no matter what same as Arnel. They are unique in their own way in my opinion. It’s just plain stupid a lot of fans out there keep bashing Arnel for what he is, in reality Arnel has been with the Journey longer than Steve! Since Arnel took over as the front man I think he did the Journey a big favor in joining them as they can’t find any replacement until they discover Arnel on his Youtube channel.

You are one of the greatest artists Please come back to the world The one and only…..no replica No one can ever replace you

Love always B From Canada 🇨🇦

J Cain once said Arnel is not filling in Perry’s shoes. Arnel got his own shoes that shines.

Steve Perry is one of a kind a class act and amazing performer to this day i listen to Journey when Steve Perry sang

THE ONLY SATAN IN THE GROUP IS SCHION. WHO FEELS HE CAN MAKE JOURNEY ALIVE AS IT WERE IF NOT WTHOUT HIM. THANKS TO ARNEL, SCHION WOULD HAVE BEEN IN A NURSING HOME ON ROCKING CHAIR ROCKING HIS WAY TO OBLIVION. SO WATCH UR MOUTH SCHION

People, note that, Arnel Pineda did not replace Steve Perry he replace or took over the position as the lead singer.

Steve Perry really handled that well. Arnel really admires Perry and knows that he’s a legend. Star struck. Steve Perry is not coming back to Journey and can you blame him? It’s a drama and a mess of a band.

Jrny has always been evolving their music, line up ect. Perry was okay with it till it was his turn to take a pause He could have came back after his hiking accident but he didn’t So they moved on and have done well

Steve is Steve and Arnel is Arnel, both are great singers and should not be a topic for a battle of comparison. Steve Perry is done doing Journey and he won’t be back and that’s all there is to it. The international success is just the icing on Arnel’s cake, but with or without Journey he is doing well as a recording artist with his original band “The Zoo”. That “Bring Back Steve Perry” bandwagon is just very immature and silly, to say the least.

Everyone knows that nobody could ever be a “Steve Perry” However, Arnel Pineda—- I must say that you are very impressive and I love the way you came in and Rocked every single Journey song! Arnel, you’re amazingly BLESSED with a powerhouse of a voice, a great demeanor, and swag outta this world! I definitely am super happy that Journey continues!

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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.

[ Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. ]

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.

The Real Reason Steve Perry Left Journey

For years, Journey singer Steve Perry used to wear a necklace of a gold musical eighth-note. In 2018, he explained to Rolling Stone it was a gift he received from his mom when he was 12 years old.

"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."

Perry fronted Journey to its greatest commercial success in the '80s, catapulting the band to arena rock stardom through the likes of "Open Arms" and "Don't Stop Believin'." However , by 1987, even with the triumph of Raised by Radio tour, the band was greatly fractured and went on hiatus for nearly ten years. 

As time heals all wounds, Perry reunited in the mid-90s with bandmates Jonathan Cain, Ross Valory, and Steve Smith. Now under the management of Irving Azoff, Journey released Trial by Fire. The Recording Industry Association of America certified the album platinum and the Recording Academy nominated one of its hit singles, "When You Love a Woman," for a Grammy.

Through pain, Steve Perry came back to music

Just before tour arrangements could be made, Perry collapsed while on a hike. He learned he needed hip surgery due to a degenerative bone condition. The band could not wait for Perry to heal, and so he was replaced by Steve Augeri and later Arnel Pineda .

For years, Perry's surgery explained his reason for officially leaving Journey. But in 2018, he made a revelation. Ahead of the release of his solo album Traces , Perry admitted his actual motive.

"The truth is, that I thought music had run its course in my heart," Perry said. "I had to be honest with myself, and in my heart, I knew I just wasn't feeling it anymore."

Perry , in soul and spirit, was tired. But like any true rockstar, he could not be away from the limelight too long. Traces allowed Perry to find music again. In a promise to his late girlfriend Kellie Nash, who died in 2012 from breast cancer, this was the moment he stopped isolating himself from the world. 

"I found myself with not only just a broken heart but an open heart," Perry told Billboard . "And from that came rock and roll."

13 Things We Learned Hanging Out With Steve Perry

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

It’s a punishingly hot August day and Steve Perry is tucked into a corner table at a Lower Manhattan Italian spot taking a quick breather between a long round of radio interviews promoting Traces , his new comeback album that he spent the last five years recording in such secrecy that he made everyone on his team sign strict NDAs. He’s no more than two minutes into our conversation, barely enough time to dip a single piece of bread into olive oil and take a bite, when he stands up and announces he has to leave at once. There’s loud dance pop playing on the radio and it’s driving him crazy.

“This is very distracting,” he says, as a large, tattooed bodyguard and two publicists perched near the bar look on. “I’m hearing drums and rhythm. I have a very ADD, multi-track mind and I can’t listen to two things at once. I just hear these electronic drums. Let’s go outside even though it’s going to be a little sticky.”

With the bodyguard in tow, we head onto the street towards a park overlooking the Hudson River. It’s a complete shift from our plan for the afternoon, but Perry has never been one to stick to a script. Ignoring the desperate pleas of his bandmates, management team and fans, he walked away from Journey near the pinnacle of their success in 1987 to live a quiet life free from screaming crowds and record executives thirsty for another hit. And even when Journey-mania returned again in the mid-2000s and “Don’t Stop Believin'” became absolutely inescapable — used everywhere from the The Sopranos finale to Glee  — he refused to emerge from hiding in any way, allowing his former bandmates to reap the hefty rewards by playing about 70 shows a year with a soundalike they plucked from YouTube.

Dressed head-to-toe in black, Perry walks down the city streets, past throngs of tourists that don’t give him a second look, and attempts to explain why he turned in his rock star card over 30 years ago. “It seemed like the only thing I could do to stop some of the badness in my heart and the lack of passion for singing,” he says. “I just had to stop. I was feeling like a forced version of myself, getting into some bad habits and not connecting to my heart. I was completely deep-fried.”

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Rolling Stone published an extensive feature on Perry’s life earlier this month, but there was still a lot we learned that didn’t fit into the piece. Here are 13 of them.

1. He became interested in spiritual matters during his lost years. “I don’t attend any religious practices and I’m not religious,” he explains. “But I’ve devoted a lot of time to people like Joseph Campbell who opened the doors to all the theologists that I have opinions about now. It took a lot of open-mindedness to rewire my thinking about so many things. It needed to happen. They say that every seven years your body completely changes, that every cell in your body is no longer the same. There’s a metamorphoses. And right now, I’m more open-minded to the idea of not knowing the answers to all things.”

2. He has a crystal-clear memory of the moment they wrote “Don’t Stop Believin.'” “I know everyone has their own opinion about this,” he says. “I don’t know what Jonathan [Cain] thinks, but I remember it starting out in a warehouse in Oakland where we had a rehearsal space. I suggested we needed something with eighths on the piano because I always liked songs that began like that. It flowed from there. We were all in the room. It was me, Jonathan and Neal [Schon]. It was a true group effort. Then I went to Jonathan’s house and we wrote the lyrics together. There’s no one genius to any one moment. If you’re in a band, what you do is a group effort.”

3. Contrary to widespread rumor, he’s never suffered any vocal issues. “I have my vocal box checked all the time,” he says. “I have no nodules on it. I have a really good doctor. She sticks a camera down my nose. I call it the garden hose. It goes down to the vocal chords and then she grabs my tongue and I have to go, ‘Eeeeeee.’ She’s really able to see them well and, knock on wood, nothing wrong with my voice. The only thing is I didn’t really use if for a while, but it’s like working out when you begin using it again.”

4. His mother pushed him return to Journey in 1985 after he’d taken a long break to focus on his solo career. “I was ready to leave the group because she was so sick,” he says. “She couldn’t speak because she’d had so many strokes. She was also pretty quadriplegic at that point, but she loved my music. I asked her what she thought about it, whether I should make another solo record or go back to Journey. She said one word: ‘Journey.’ I went, ‘Are you sure? Mom, this means I won’t be around you much. Again she just said, ‘Journey.’ Then she died during the making of the record. I dedicated it to her.”

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5. The “corporate rock” label that Journey was stuck with still baffles him. “That was amazing to me,” he says. “Any band that came to America, whether it was Led Zeppelin or anybody, would incorporate in order to create a tax shelter and not leave penniless. The way to do that legally is to form a corporation. Everybody did that, but we got stuck with the label. Isn’t that fascinating?”

6. He enjoyed meeting Arnel Pineda at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2017. “He’s a sweet kid,” he says. “We talked for a while backstage. It was really fun.”

7. But he never even considered singing with Journey at the Hall of Fame. “I heard a rumor that the invitation was open,” he says. “But I’m not the singer in the band anymore. Arnel is. He’s been in the band for ten years. I just wanted to come and thank everybody for everything, including Arnel.”

8. He was the last one in Journey to give his approval for The Sopranos to use “Don’t Stop Believin.'” “I wasn’t too excited by the possibility that it might be used when someone is whacked,” he says. “Everyone else was okay with it, but I wanted to know more. So the girl who sub-licenses my music kept on asking David Chase’s people if they could tell us a little more. But since it was the last sequence in the entire show, they were a little tight with information. I told them I wouldn’t say yes unless they told me that nobody got whacked, which is how [Martin] Scorsese would have used it. So I just waited and Thursday afternoon my girl calls and says she just spoke to David Chase’s people and they told me how it ends, but I couldn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell me the screen turns to black, but they told me everything else. And I said okay that Thursday and it aired on Sunday.”

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9. Baseball gives him the same sort of satisfaction today that he used to get from music. “The electronic aspect of music just started wearing me out,” he says. “There’s not a lot of live musicians being played on the radio anymore. But when I’m watching baseball, these guys walk out there and hit, play, catch, run…I mean, they’re just killing it. There’s no auto-tune for baseball. They have to play. The musicianship of the music industry used to be that way.”

10. If he does tour, expect to hear a lot of Journey songs. “I don’t know if a tour will happen,” he says. “Right now it’s premature to even guess. But there would be no way in the world I’d go out there and not sing Journey music too. It would be solo and Journey together. But those songs are vocally challenging. They’re challenging for Arnel and everyone else. They’re not easy. They were challenging for me when I wrote the damn melodies, but back then I was young and in my olympic singer mode. [Barbra] Streisand lowers the keys when she does her old songs. There’s nothing wrong with lowering a key We’re not spring chickens.”

11. His time out of the spotlight after he left Journey in 1987 reinvigorated him . “I went back to my hometown and reconnected with old friends,” he says. “I bought a Harley Davidson and rode it around the country roads of my youth. I let the wind hit my face and my hair blowed behind me. There were no helmet laws back then. I disappeared. I went to the fair in the summer. I went to movies. I had dinner with friends. I had relationships. I lived.”

12. Money was never really an issue after he left the band. “I wrote every single song with members of the band with the exception, I think, of one,” he says. “And those songs kept selling. I don’t eat out a lot. I only drive one car a time. I live kind of small, so financially I never really had to work. There were certainly some sweet [royalty] checks as the years went by, but I’ll tell you something else: I was probably one of the only guys who saved his money. A lot of people were living very extravagant lifestyles. I was not raised that way. My grandfather said to me when I was very young, ‘It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you save.’ So I lived small and saved my money.”

13. When pushed, he refuses to make a Shermanesque statement that he’ll never, under any circumstances, return to Journey, even though it’s highly unlikely. “The only thing I’m willing to be definitive about is that at this age I am right now, I have to do things that I feel really great about, that feel life-sustaining and give me passion,” he says. “I really want to continue to move forward. I’m not too excited about going backwards. I’m more excited about moving forward to what is next. I’ve already written a lot more new material, in fact.”

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Journey Reflects on New Album, Whether Steve Perry Could Return for 50th Anniversary Shows (Exclusive)

Journey on new album and if steve perry or gregg rolie could return for 50th anniversary (exclusive), watch kellie pickler perform for the first time since her husband kyle jacobs' death, celine dion opens up about return to public eye following stiff person syndrome diagnosis, christina applegate explains why she's been wearing diapers, gwen stefani and blake shelton show off farming skills in the city, jamie lynn spears' daughter maddie glams up for prom, breckin meyer reflects on untimely death of ‘clueless’ co-star brittany murphy, alec baldwin punches phone of pro-palestine protester after being heckled at coffee shop, watch nicki minaj throw object back at fans who threw it at her during concert, catherine zeta-jones’ daughter carys stuns as her mini-me in her dress from the ‘90s, kim kardashian reveals she used to walk madonna’s dogs in exchange for her jewelry, ‘american idol’: ryan seacrest on whether meghan trainor will replace katy perry (exclusive), why zendaya is ‘nervous’ to attend 2024 met gala, 'designing women's delta burke naively used meth to lose weight at height of fame, emily blunt and ryan gosling on what they love about each other (exclusive), palace releases first new photo by kate middleton after photoshop scandal, 'american idol's ryan seacrest and executive producer on who could replace katy perry (exclusive), aaron carter's twin sister angel explains why she thinks 3 of her 4 siblings died young, jill duggar shares daughter isla's funeral after announcing stillbirth, lionel richie wants this 'american idol' winner to replace katy perry (exclusive), jelly roll’s wife bunnie xo gets emotional over online fat-shaming of country star, the rock legends revealed the surprising silver lining of recording during a pandemic in an interview with et..

The rock legends of Journey are approaching nearly half a century of hitmaking with a new No. 1 album and a Las Vegas residency, to boot! ET was with the icons in Sin City for an exclusive look at their orchestral show and to get the inside story on their first new music in more than a decade. 

"Hearing it when it was finished it was definitely emotional," lead guitarist Neal Schon tells ET's Denny Directo of their new album, Freedom , which marks their first full-length release in 11 years. "We had recorded this album in a way different way because of COVID." 

The band recorded Freedom entirely separate from one another, laying down their respective parts individually in different parts of the world. 

"You get lemons, you make lemonade," says keyboardist Jonathan Cain, revealing the surprising silver lining they discovered through the process. "We were stuck at home. We were supposed to be on tour with The Pretenders and everything got shut down. So we just thought, 'Why not?' And we also made the record for half the price. ... We spent half the money, so we got a blessing from it." 

"It will never be the same," vocalist Arnel Pineda chimes in with a laugh. "So we'll do the same thing again to save money, right?" 

Creatively, the band drew on both past and present experiences while striving to stay true to the heart of what fans have come to know and love about them. 

"I feel that we encompassed like a lot from Infinity to where we are now in this album," says Schon, referencing Journey's 1978 full-length featuring their first Billboard Hot 100 hit, "Wheel in the Sky." 

"It's very diverse, it's very musical," he continues. "I’m happy with that. I think it really represents that band well."

In 2023, Journey will celebrate 50 years in the biz. To commemorate their golden anniversary, the group has planned a slew of upcoming performances into the years ahead, including stadium shows and -- in their words: "More pyro!" and "Firing bombs onstage right, bro!" 

With more than 100-million records sold, 19 Top 40 singles and 25 Gold and Platinum albums under their belts, Journey remains one of the best-selling bands of all-time.

Pineda has been a part of that success for 15 years after replacing lead singer Steve Perry in 2007. The 54-year-old says his life went "from black to white" when joining the group. "These guys, I owe so much to them," he says. 

As for whether they would bring back former band members Perry and Gregg Rolie for the anniversary shows, Schon is open to the possibility. 

"I think that those two guys were a big part of the band," he says, "and I think that, you know, if the city permits, I think the fans would overall love it."

Just last week, Journey rocked two of four planned performances from July 15-23 at Resorts World Theater in Las Vegas alongside Violution Orchestra. Only ET was with them for the soundcheck. 

"So much came to life with that orchestra," gushes drummer Deen Castronovo. "I mean, they were already beautiful songs and they have such a life of their own. But when you get that orchestra, it's so lush, man. I mean, it's amazing sounding. It really is." 

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Arnel Pineda on JOURNEY’s Potential Reunion with Steve Perry and Career Impact

via GIGS / YouTube

In a chat with Rolling Stone, Arnel Pineda, the frontman of the iconic band Journey, shared his thoughts on the possibility of reuniting with the former lead singer, Steve Perry. Pineda, known for his upbeat personality and powerful vocals, revealed his openness to the idea, sparking excitement among fans.

Dreamy Encounter with an Icon: Arnel Meets Steve Perry

Expressing his amazement at the unexpected encounter with Perry, Pineda shared,

“I posted on Instagram that I had waited 35 years for that. It was dreamy. I couldn’t believe I met him since he’s very reclusive and he avoids people.”

Pineda reflected on the profound influence Perry had on him, stating,

“He’s one of my heroes when it comes to singing. I remember back in the ’80s, I would sleep on the bus with my Walkman on in my ears as his voice sang all these favorite songs from Journey.”

  View this post on Instagram Modafinil 5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;”>   A post shared by Journey (@journeyofficial)

A Career Sacrifice for the Love of Perry and Journey

When asked about the possibility of Perry’s return and the impact on his role in the band, Pineda responded,

“I miss them so much together. Every now and then, I watch their videos together. It’s always them with Steve Perry that I watch.”

Acknowledging the sentiment of fans who proclaim, “No Perry, No Journey,” Pineda sympathized,

“I understand it. Where I come from, we’re so influenced by Western music. We loved the originals, if you know what I mean.”

Addressing the potential impact on his career, Pineda shared a surprising perspective,

“That would be OK to me! I’m telling you. That’s how much I adore him and I adore Journey and how much I adore Steve Perry.”

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Retro and Nostalgia Creator (@70sandbeyond)

Anticipation for the Future: Pineda’s Genuine Enthusiasm

Recounting a personal anecdote, Pineda revealed,

“Back in 2005, I resigned from my job in Hong Kong because I lost my voice due to acid reflux. I was telling my friends back then that my only regret was I lost my voice before I had the chance to sing side-by-side with Steve Perry.”

He continued,

“I just wish that one show with him… it would change my life forever. It’s been 30 years now, and the band keeps changing my life in ways nobody would ever guess would happen.”

Arnel Pineda’s genuine admiration for Steve Perry and his eagerness for a potential reunion add a layer of anticipation to Journey’s future. As fans speculate on what could be, Pineda’s words reflect the profound impact that music and collaboration can have on an artist’s journey, transcending the boundaries of time.

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'I believed love could cure cancer': how grief sent Steve Perry on a new Journey

The man behind Don’t Stop Believin’ had abandoned music – until he fell in love with a dying woman, who made him promise to return to performing

S teve Perry is explaining all the ways in which Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ can hook a listener. “The quarters on the piano – that intro’s a hook.” He bursts into song, his alto/countertenor still distinctive at 69 years old, and he is so powerful that it is offputting: “‘Just a smalltown girl’ is a hook. ‘Strangers waiting’ is a hook. ‘Up and down the boulevard’ – hook. [His bandmate] Jon Cain thought the ‘streetlights, people’ section was a chorus. Then I turned round and said: ‘Now we need to write the chorus of choruses.’ No one knew what that meant; nor did I. But I knew we had to take it somewhere bigger and never go back to the song again. Because it had done all these things I had mentioned and, in my opinion, it needed to go one more place.”

Don’t Stop Believin’, a monster hit in the US on its release in 1981 and since championed on the TV show Glee, has been so unavoidable in the past few years that you wouldn’t guess Perry has largely been silent for 20 years, since he left Journey once and for all. There were a couple of low-key appearances on other people’s records, the very occasional interview (not a favoured pastime even when he was with Journey) and that was it. But the ubiquity of Don’t Stop Believin’ made it seem as if he was ever-present.

“I would say I was completely burned out, with touring, recording, writing music incessantly,” he says. “I was having an emotional PTSD breakdown in music. I’m not whining, I’m just saying there was a lack of connection to the passion for music I had discovered when I was seven years old. I walked away with no ideas of returning. Then, years later, things started to change.”

Quite how things started to change, leading Perry to record his first album since Journey’s Trial By Fire in 1996, is one of the oddest, saddest stories you will hear a rock star tell.

Perry had never married. “I was too scared of it after what I watched my parents go through,” he says. “And I was around a band that went through several divorces in the course of our success. I saw them lose half of everything multiple times.” He had serious relationships – his 1984 solo hit Oh Sherrie was inspired by his then girlfriend Sherrie Swafford – but he had never been completely swept away by love.

Then, in 2011, his friend Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman , showed him a cut of her TV film about breast cancer . Perry’s eye was caught by one of the cancer survivors who appeared briefly in the film. The woman was Kellie Nash, a psychologist who had undergone treatment. “I said to Patty: ‘Do you have her email?’ She said: ‘Why?’ Because she knew me. I’m not like that. I said: ‘I don’t know, but there’s something about her smile that’s killing me right now. Would you send her an email saying that your friend Steve would love to take her out to lunch?’ She said: ‘OK, I will, 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 it’s in her lungs and she’s fighting for her life.’ So I thought: I’m going to forget the whole idea. I thought: you walked away from a career, your mother has passed away, your grandmother and grandfather have gone, your dad’s barely hanging on … Maybe you should just forget the whole thing. But then I thought: bullshit.”

He told Patty to send the email, the pair met for dinner and they ended up together for a year and a half.

Perry entered the relationship knowing that doctors said Nash would die, sooner rather than later. What did he hope to gain from their brief time together? “You want to know the truth? I’ve not said this to anybody yet: I believed our love would cure her cancer. I really did. We sat in our tiny apartment in New York – a very expensive small box – and she said: ‘This might take me, but it’ll never be able to touch our love.’ I never thought about such a truth like that. Not just talking about it, but physically feeling it and emotionally seeing it was new to me.”

Before she died, Nash extracted a commitment from Perry. “She said: ‘Promise me you won’t go back into isolation, because I fear it would make this all for naught.’ I said: ‘OK, I promise.’ I lay in bed thinking about what I’d just promised. She was looking at the arc of her whole life and the possibility that she may not make it had to have some goddamn meaning. She was looking for purpose in all this. I grieved for two years – it was a whole new level of broken heart. It was completely fucking broken. I worked through that and, the next thing I knew, I started writing music.”

Eighteen months after Nash’s death, Perry returned to live performance. He had been a fan of the band Eels , visiting their rehearsals , going to their gigs and joining in with Mark “E” Everett’s weekly croquet game. Finally, Everett asked if Perry might fancy joining Eels on stage. “So, we worked up It’s a Motherfucker – I love singing that – and a couple of Journey songs. And I flew out to St Paul [in Minnesota] when they were at the Fitzgerald theatre in May 2014 and jumped on stage with them . It was really a thrill. I forgot what being in front of people felt like until I went out with the Eels. Looking into the eyes of people and singing for them felt good again.”

Perry had already started writing again before Nash died, but now he started working in earnest: building a studio at his home, fetching co-writers and musicians. “I wasn’t signed to anybody. I had no management. I funded the record entirely out of my own pocket. I built my own studio. I had to have the freedom to suck – nobody was going to put their foot on the back of my neck saying: ‘Is it done yet?’” The result is Traces , an album of slick, album-oriented rock that sounds as if Perry had not taken 20 years off and for which – keeping his promise to Nash – he is putting himself out into the world, doing interviews in numbers he never did with Journey, when he was zealous about guarding his privacy.

So, how does Perry feel about his life now – not only about losing the woman he loved, but also about forcing himself to talk about it to everyone who turns up with a voice recorder? “This has been amazing. Doing this has been cathartic for me. I guess it’s time to talk, it’s time to be open. It’s time to be honest about my feelings. I think I’ve been enjoying it, because it’s been a long time coming.”

Traces is out now on Fantasy

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Steve Perry Says He 'Would Love Nothing More' Than To Perform Live Again

By Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta

December 13, 2021

Steve Perry doesn't have any imminent plans to perform again, but the iconic former Journey frontman is open to arranging something in 2022.

While Perry was open to some live performances in support of his 2018 comeback album, Traces , none have yet materialized and the singer appears focused on writing and producing new music.

He revealed to Ultimate Classic Rock that he would "love nothing more than to be onstage again."

Perry's latest release is The Season , a holiday album. He says he's fielded proposals for residencies in New York and Las Vegas.

"It's been discussed, but nothing has been put together yet," Perry said. "I'm a spur of the moment guy. You never know — you might just see me in a nightclub singing a couple of Christmas songs."

Perry hasn't toured since releasing his second solo album in the mid-'90s. On more than one occasion he's suggested that Journey's unrelenting live schedule in the '80s played a part in driving him to retire the following decade.

Still, after so many years away, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame believes he has more to give to a live audience.

"There's a component of my voice that I can't find unless I'm in front of people," he said. "They bring something out of me that I can't find otherwise. I really hope that's something I get to participate in again."

For more on The Season , go here .

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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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50 Years Of Journey: How Former Lead Singer Steve Perry, 74, Fought Dangerous Skin Cancer After Losing Love of His Life to Breast Cancer

• Save This Video

Losing a Loved One to Cancer

• The American rock band journey recently celebrated 50 years since its formation.
• The band’s former frontman, Steve Perry, is a survivor of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.
• Melanoma is a kind of skin cancer that can develop from an existing mole or appear as a dark or pink growth on the skin even in places on the body that never see the sun.
• Perry fought the disease after losing the love of his life to breast cancer in 2012.
• Though he was only with Kellie Nash for a year and a half, he’s said “it was a lifetime of love packed into every moment.”

Journey is a classic American rock group that first formed in 1973. Current members of the band include Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain, and Arnel Pineda, according to the group’s website , but Perry was the lead singer during their height of commercial success in the late ’70s and ’80s.

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Steve Perry’s Cancer Battle

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

“Three weeks ago a routine mole was taken off my face and the lab report came back Melanoma skin cancer,” he wrote.

Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer, and it originates in the same cells that give your skin, hair and eyes their color. It can develop from an existing mole or appear as a dark or pink growth on the skin even in places on the body that never or rarely see the sun. This disease accounts for about 1% of all skin cancers , but it can be very dangerous if left untreated.

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"Melanomas are the deadliest type of skin cancer because they have a tendency to spread to other parts of the body," Dr. Anna Pavlick , medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, previously told SurvivorNet.

It’s unclear exactly what stage of melanoma Perry had, but treating stage 1 melanoma usually consists of a simple, in-office surgical removal by a dermatologist. When the cancer has spread beyond .08 mm in thickness , patients need an operation that is more involved.

“I’ve had two surgeries in two weeks to remove all the cancer cells and I’ve been told they think they got it all and no other treatments are required,” Perry wrote.

Although his cancer news was positive overall, Steve Perry’s 2013 post also included a heart-wrenching story about his late partner and her cancer battle.

When Perry first saw Kellie Nash, it was love at first sight. He was sitting in an editing room with a friend, Patty Jenkins, as she worked on a Lifetime breast cancer special when Perry noticed the Ph.D. psychologist in the opening scene.

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“When the scene was over I said to Patty, ‘Can you roll to the top of that opening scene for me?’ Patty asked, ‘Is something wrong?’ I said, ‘No. I want to see something,'” Perry wrote.

“As the camera again crossed Kellie’s smile I asked her to freeze right there.……. I asked Patty who that was. She said, ‘That’s Kellie Nash, a PHD Psychologist who was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a double mastectomy and she’s doing a cameo appearance.'”

That’s when Perry asked Jenkins to send Nash an email asking if she’d like to go on a date. Jenkins agreed but told Perry about the reality of Nash’s situation: She was currently fighting breast cancer that had returned as stage 4 and spread to her lungs and bones after eight months of remission.

“I was frozen……. I didn’t know what to do…….. I had lost my mom, dad, grandparents that raised me and I was an only child so my first thought was to maybe not send the email; then my heart said, Maybe we could be friends or maybe she could be my shrink,” he explained. “So I said, ‘Please send it.'”

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Nash happily obliged and gave Perry a call. In a couple weeks, they were on their first date, and the rest was history.

“I never felt like this before……. I had finally found her. She’s real and she’s right in front of me,” Perry wrote. “We started seeing each other and Yes, we both knew that we were meant to be together.

“My life was forever changed in ways I will explain at another time but it was all because of my Kellie.”

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Nash went courageously in and out of treatments, but she eventually passed away from the disease on Dec. 14, 2012. Although the two were together for just 1.5 years, Perry said “it was a lifetime of love packed into every moment.”

“She was so strong, so courageous and we really loved each other so very much,” he wrote. “I’ve been trying to grieve and not run from this loss so for the last 5 months that’s what I’ve been doing along with recalling everything being in Love with Kellie taught me.”

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Steve Perry Is Still Making Millions From Journey, Even Though He Quit The Band In 1998

• Steve Perry continues to make money from his association with Journey even though he left the band years ago.
• Perry received a lucrative sendoff from Journey when he left, earning a percentage of the net income from post-Perry albums and live appearances.
• Steve Perry's net worth is estimated to be $70 million, although it is unclear exactly how he earned that money.

Steve Perry, charismatic former frontman for Journey, had a stellar career with that band from 1977 to 1998. His vocal talent and down-to-earth stage persona made him and their hits such as "Open Arms" and "Separate Ways" extremely popular. Rolling Stone ranked Perry 76th among its greatest 100 singers ever. He won more kudos from a former bandmate. According to Biography , "Other than Robert Plant, there's no singer in rock that even came close to Steve Perry ," commented Randy Jackson, previously an American Idol judge and Journey bassist ( he's also been very busy since both of those gigs ).

Perry made his exit from Journey long ago, allegedly because he was "feeling burnt out." What many fans of his may not realize, however, is that he continues to make money — lots of it, reportedly — from his association with the band even though he left it years ago. What arrangement does Perry have from his long and successful connection with Journey that still adds to his net worth?

Related: The Real Reason Howard Stern And Journey's Steve Perry Absolutely Hate Each Other

Steve Perry Helped Make Journey Famous With Hits Like "Don't Stop Believin'"

Born on January 22, 1949, in Hanford, California, Perry developed an interest in music and singing as a teenager. He headed for Los Angeles at 18, determined to make his reputation as a vocalist .

Perry didn't hit it big right away, though. He got in at the ground level of the music industry, singing for television ads and radio and latching onto some little-known bands. It was a real, albeit very modest, start. Nevertheless, Perry began to despair that his dream of big-time rock stardom would ever materialize.

His mother did not give up on him, however. She urged Perry to hang in there a little longer. Her faith in him proved justified when Journey's manager at the time invited him to audition for the band's lead singer role. As music history proved, he and Journey were a terrific fit.

They reeled off a string of hits that seemed to define the era; "Oh Sherrie," "Send Her My Love," "Who's Crying Now," and "Any Way You Want It." But one tune became Journey's classic anthem- "Don't Stop Believin'." Its toe-tapping rhythm and upbeat message have made it a perennial fan favorite.

It had humble beginnings. According to New York Magazine via Songfacts , Perry reportedly said that he came up with the lyrics while he was sleepless in a hotel room in Detroit one night. The song gained traction, eventually turning up in the film Monster (2003), in a slew of TV shows like South Park and King of the Hill , and perhaps most memorably, in the last episode of The Sopranos in 2007.

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Steve Perry Left Journey In 1998, But He Didn't Leave Empty-Handed

When Perry left the band, he sounded downcast, relating that he felt "wrung out" and really empty of music post-Journey , something that scared him. But Perry's lucrative sendoff from Journey may have eased his angst.

In 2020, an agreement between Perry and two members of Journey, Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon, was reported by UltimateClassicRock.com. The three rockers apparently "licensed the Journey mark," per a 1986 deal between them. When Perry decided to leave the band, he was let out of that agreement at a price that made him far richer.

According to the outlet, Perry received "a sum total of 50 percent of the net income due Schon or Cain, whichever is higher, from the first two post-Perry Journey albums." He was reportedly also slated to rake in 25 percent of the income from Journey's third album sans Perry, and 12.5 percent of the income from each Journey LP thereafter.

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Perry also allegedly nabbed a piece of the money from Journey's live appearances, too, earning half the net income from the first two tours post-split, with a fraction of subsequent tours, too (a tenth tour, for example, would still net Perry 12.5 percent, per various sources.

Arrangements were reportedly put in place to pay Perry a slice of the "net income" from Journey's tours, which encompassed "tour merchandise, tour sponsorship income and any tour support payments." Altogether, it totaled an enviable payday for the legendary singer.

Steve Perry Is Worth $70 Million Today, And Makes Multiple Millions Per Year

Steve Perry's whopping net worth has been gauged at $70 million , according to Celebrity Net Worth. It's not clear exactly when or how he made that money. Fans can assume that most of his wealth stems from his time with Journey, although exactly how much is uncertain.

His numerous money-making endeavors reportedly include acting, investments, endorsements, licensing, and merchandise sales.

He has made a handful of solo records and clearly seems not to have forsaken music, even though his glory days fronting Journey are long past. What Perry does next musically is anyone's guess, but he told Forbes in 2018, "The only compass I have is the one in my chest and that's the one I listen to." Hopefully it will lead Steve Perry to produce more phenomenal music.

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How Steve Perry Came Up with Journey’s Hit ‘Who’s Crying Now’

If reports in recent years are to be believed, former Journey  singer Steve Perry and keyboardist Jonathan Cain don’t have much of a personal relationship anymore. But when they first met nearly 40 years ago, the situation was very different.

Cain was hired in January 1981 after the departure of Gregg Rolie , and it wasn’t long before he and Perry began writing together, as the vocalist told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show.

“One of the first things we did was a song called ‘Who’s Crying Now,’,” Perry said. “Driving up from Los Angeles I was in my car, and I always keep a mini cassette player with me. I heard in my head the chorus – I heard the whole chorus. I don’t know where it came from!”

He recorded his idea onto cassette than resumed his journey. Arriving in L.A. he decided to drive straight to Cain’s home to let him hear the work-in-progress. “I had all this stuff going on, but I didn’t have all the lyrics finished,” Perry recalled. “The melodies were done and the rhythm was done; I knew what the pocket was. I got up there, met with Jonathan Cain – and boom, he just like zeroed in on it. We had the beginning, we had the middle, he helped do the lyrics with me… it was done!”

“Who’s Crying Now” was the first single from Journey’s seventh album, Escape , and the No. 4 hit helped the LP achieve sales of over nine million copies. It remains their only No. 1 album.

Journey - ‘Who’s Crying Now’

Be sure to listen to Ultimate Classic Rock Nights on more than 50 stations across the U.S. from 7PM until midnight, Monday through Friday. You can see the list of radio stations where it airs here .

Journey Solo Albums Ranked

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Journey celebrates 50th anniversary: Rock band members then and now

Journey was formed in february 1973 by neal schon, gregg rolie and herbie herbert.

Fox News Flash top entertainment headlines of the week

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here.

Journey recently celebrated 50 years since the band first formed.

The band's most well-remembered lead singer, Steve Perry, was spotted on a walk in Los Angeles earlier this month. The 74-year-old was the frontman and prominent songwriter for the band for 10 years alongside Neal Schon, Gregg Rolie, Ross Valory, Jonathan Cain, Aynsley Dunbar and Steve Smith.

Current members of the band include Schon, Cain, Deen Castronovo, Arnel Pineda, Jason Derlatka and Todd Jensen.

Here is what Journey band members from the Perry era are up to now as the band's 50th anniversary tour comes to a close April 25 in Palm Springs, California. 

STEVE PERRY WOWS CROWD AFTER 19 YEAR ABSENCE FROM STAGE

Steve Perry 

Steve Perry was brought on as a replacement for lead singer Robert Fleischman and was the frontman during the band's most prosperous era. (Shutterstock/SplashNews.com)

Steve Perry joined the band as a replacement for Robert Fleischman, making his debut as the frontman in October 1977. As well as acting as the band's lead singer, Perry also was one of the band's principal songwriters. He was nominated to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2020.

Although fans were skeptical of Perry when he first joined the band, he was able to win fans over after the release of his first album, "Infinity," which had a much different sound than Journey had created in the past. They then began getting more radio airplay. He sang lead vocals on the albums "Evolution," "Departure," "Dream, After Dream," "Captured," "Escape," "Frontiers," "Raised on Radio" and "Trial By Fire."

Perry went solo for the first time in 1984 when he released "Street Talk," which sold over 2 million copies and featured the singles "Oh Sherrie" and "Foolish Heart." He was also featured on the 1985 benefit song, "We Are the World." He attempted to reunite with Journey. However, he was caring for his ill mother and couldn't be present for a majority of recording, and the band went on break in 1987 after its "Raised on Radio" tour.

In 1988, Perry began working on a second solo album, which he never released, eventually releasing a successful second album in 1994, called "For the Love of Strange Medicine."

Perry sang lead vocals on the albums, "Evolution," "Departure," "Dream, After Dream," "Captured," "Escape," "Frontiers," "Raised on Radio" and "Trial By Fire." (Michael Putland/Getty Images)

The singer once again reunited with his former band in 1996 to record the very successful album, "Trial By Fire," which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts and went platinum by the time the year was over. To capitalize on the success of the album, a tour was planned, but it had to be postponed due to Perry injuring his hip while hiking in Hawaii.

A doctor determined his injury required surgery, but Perry was reluctant to agree to go under the knife. The decision delayed the tour longer than expected, which angered his bandmates. They eventually went on tour without Perry, and he announced his permanent exit from the band.

"I had to have a hip replacement, and the band was telling me when they thought I should do it," Perry said in an interview with MelodicRock.com in 2011. "And I said, ‘Major surgery like this is not a band decision.' I said that I would get it done, but I didn't get it done quickly enough. They just wanted to get on the road, and there was an ultimatum given to me. And I don't respond well to ultimatums."

FORMER JOURNEY FRONTMAN STEVE PERRY REVEALS WHY HE LEFT BAND AT ITS HEIGHT

Following his departure from the band, he released his "Greatest Hits + Five Unreleased" compilation album, which featured songs from his 1988 unreleased album. In 2005, Perry joined a few of his former bandmates when Journey was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2009, he was voted one of the ten greatest rock singers of all time, and Rolling Stone placed him at number 76 in a list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time." 

Perry joined his former bandmates on stage in 2017 for the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame)

For the next few years, Perry continued singing and writing, appearing on background vocals or on stage with various bands and artists. In 2017, he appeared on stage with Journey for the first time since they were together on the Walk of Fame in 2005 to accept the honor of being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He did, however, opt out of performing with the band.

In 2018, Perry released another solo album, "Traces," which performed well, with a deluxe version debuting in 2019. In December 2021, he released a Christmas album, "The Season," and in 2023 he announced he would be singing background on Dolly Parton's new album.

Perry has a daughter and grandchildren but has chosen not to speak about them publicly to protect their privacy. 

Neal Schon is a founding member and guitarist for the band Journey. (Getty Images)

Neal Schon is a founding member of Journey and is the longest-serving original member of the band. Prior to helping create Journey, he was a member of the band Santana, playing guitar on the albums "Santana III" and "Caravanserai."

He briefly played with the band Azteca before founding Journey with Gregg Rolie and their manager Herbie Herbert. They initially called the band the Golden Gate Rhythm Section, however the name was changed after their roadie John Villaneuva suggested Journey.

Along with playing on the albums "Journey," "Look into the Future," "Next," "Arrival," "Generations" and "Revelation with Journey," Schon also released several solo albums, including "Late Nite," "Beyond the Thunder," "Piranha Blues," "The Calling," "So U" and "Universe."

The guitarist also produced two albums with keyboardist Jan Hammer and was a member of the supergroup Bad English. He also has fostered collaborations with Sammy Hagar as part of Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve and Paul Rodgers. Schon also plays guitar on Michael Bolton's album, "The Hunger.

Schon performed with his band at the 2017 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, where Journey was being honored. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

In 2005, Schon was present at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony to accept the honor of receiving a star alongside his fellow bandmates. They reunited again in 2017 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he and some of the other band members performed.

Schon is performing with Journey for the band's 50th anniversary tour, which also features Toto.

JOURNEY'S NEAL SCHON SLAMS BANDMATES OVER TRUMP MEETING

In September 2011, Schon confirmed his romance with former "Real Housewives of D.C." star Michaele Salahi, while also revealing they dated briefly in the '90s. Just a little over a year later, in October 2012, Schon proposed to her on stage while performing at a charity benefit, and the two were married in December 2013. 

Schon is married to his fifth wife, Michaele Salahi, a former "Real Housewife of D.C." (Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

Schon was previously married to Tena Austin from 1976 to 1986. He was then married to Beth Buckley from 1987 to 1992, and had two children with her, Miles and Elizabeth, before splitting up. He then married Dina Gioeli from 1993 to 1999, and then Amber Kozan (from 2001-2008), with whom he has two children, Aja and Sophia. He also has a daughter named Sarah.

Gregg Rolie

Gregg Rolie was a member of Santana before forming Journey and was the lead singer on the first two albums. (Getty Images)

Gregg Rolie was a founding member of Santana before branching off to join what would become Journey. For the band's first six albums, he was the keyboardist, and he was the lead vocalist for the band's first two albums. Once Perry joined the band, Rolie sang co-lead on a few songs on various albums.

The musician chose to leave the band in 1980 and started a successful solo career. His first solo album was "Gregg Rolie," and he followed up with "Gringo" in 1987. 

"I left because I didn’t like my life anymore," Rolie told Rolling Stone in 2019. "I’ve said this a million times. And I know there’s people that say, ‘That’s not the reason.’ But I left because I was unhappy with what I was doing in my own life. I loved the management. I loved the music. I loved what we built. I just wasn’t happy, so I had to blow the horn on it and just stop it."

A few years after releasing his second album, Rolie formed another band with Steve Smith and Ross Valory from Journey in 1991 called The Storm. Rolie worked as the keyboardist for this band. The band's eponymous debut album was a huge success, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard charts. It also featured a top 10 hit, "I’ve Got A Lot To Learn About Love."

Rolie left Journey in 1980 and started a solo career before founding another band. (Getty Images)

They did not reach the same amount of success with their second album. It was shelved by their record company before finally getting released in 1996. In 1998, Rolie and a few other members of Santana reunited to form the band Abraxas Pool, ultimately releasing one eponymous album.

Also in 1998, Rolie was inducted, along with the other members of Santana, into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He became a two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee in 2017 with Journey.

In 1999, while working on an album with Ron Wikso, they formed The Gregg Rolie Band, which featured Kurt Griffey on the guitar and Wally Minko as a second keyboardist. Together, they released the album "Roots" and a live CD, "Rain Dance," in 2009.

From 2012 to 2021, Rolie toured as a member of Ringo Starr and his All Star Band, during which he sang many of the hits he is known for, including some from his time in Santana. While performing, he also recorded an album with original members of Santana in 2016, "Santana IV."

Rolie frequently appears on stage with Schon and the rest of Journey during their 50th anniversary tour. (Rob Loud/Getty Images for Journey)

Rolie reunited with Schon in 2018 to perform some charity shows and occasionally joined Journey on stage during its most recent tour.

The keyboardist married his wife Lori in 1980 after first meeting her while on a flight in 1979. The two have remained together and live in Texas. They have two children together, a son named Sean and a daughter named Ashley.

Ross Valory

Ross Valory was an original member of Journey, which he joined after forming and releasing one album with the Steve Miller Band. (Getty Images)

Ross Valory was an original member of Journey, which he joined after forming and releasing one album with the Steve Miller Band. As a bassist, he has played on all the band's albums, except 1986's "Raised on Radio" and 2022's "Freedom."

During the band's hiatus in the late ‘80s and early ’90s, Valory played on Todd Rundgren's album, "2nd Wind," and released two albums as a member of The Storm, "The Storm," and "Eye of the Storm."

He returned to playing with Journey in 1996 on the "Trial by Fire" album. Valory was kicked out of the band in 2020, and he was once again replaced by Randy Jackson, who also took over for him in "Raised on Radio."

His 2020 exit came on the heels of a lawsuit involving him and Steve Smith, filed by their Journey bandmates Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain. Schon and Cain claimed Valory and Smith attempted to take over Nightmare Productions to gain control of the Journey trademark. 

Journey's management announced the two parties came to a settlement, releasing a statement in April 2021.

Ross Valory, right, was sued by his former bandmate, Jonathan Cain, left, for trying to gain control of the band's trademark. (Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

"Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain acknowledge the valuable contributions that both Ross Valory and Steve Smith have made to the music and the legacy of Journey," the statement said. "Ross Valory and Steve Smith wish their former bandmates well and much success in the future. Journey looks forward to continuing to tour and make new music for their dedicated fans around the world." 

Valory was once married to Diane Oakes, however the marriage ended in a divorced. He later married his current wife, Mary Valory.

Steve Smith

Steve Smith replaced Aynsley Dunbar as the drummer for Journey. (Getty Images)

Steve Smith replaced Aynsley Dubar as the drummer for Journey, joining the band in 1978 and staying on until 1985. His first album with the band was "Evolutions" in 1979, and he left for the first time following 1986's "Raised on the Radio."

During the band's hiatus, he joined Valory and Rolie in the band, The Storm, appearing on their two albums. He also started a second band, Vital Information, and released several albums with them in that time, including "Vital Information," "Orion," "Global Beat," "Fiafiaga" and "Easier Said Than Done."

He returned to Journey in 1995 for a comeback album, "Trial by Fire," staying on for a few years before leaving a second time after the release of 1998's "Greatest Hits Live" album. He continued to release music with Vital Information, including "Ray of Hope," "Where We Come From," "Live Around the World" and 2017's "Heart of the City."

Smith left Journey and started his own band, Vital Information. (D Dipasupil/FilmMagic)

Smith was also a part of the jazz group Steps Ahead and can be heard playing on their albums "Live in Tokyo," "N.Y.C," "Yin-Yang" and "Steppin' Out." As a musician, he can also be heard on albums for Jeff Berlin, Frank Gambale, Henry Kaiser and Neal Schon.

In 2001, Modern Drummer magazine named Smith one of the Top 25 Drummers of All Time, and the following year he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. Starting in 2007, he recorded two albums with Buddy's Buddies, a quintet made up of musicians who once played with Buddy Rich.

In 2017, Smith was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey. He performed with Journey during the ceremony.

Smith was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside the other members of Journey. (D Dipasupil/FilmMagic)

Smith was also named in the lawsuit filed against him and Ross Valory when they allegedly tried to gain control of the Journey trademark. Like Valory, Smith was kicked out of the band at this time. 

Jonathan Cain

Jonathan Cain was a member of The Babys before he left to join Journey, taking over the position Gregg Rolie held in the band.  (Getty Images)

Jonathan Cain was a member of The Babys before he left to join Journey, taking over the position Gregg Rolie held in the band. Cain's first collaboration was on the album "Escape." He was also one of the composers of the band's longstanding hit, "Don't Stop Believin'."

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One of his most well-known contributions to the band was when he wrote the ballad "Faithfully," a song about what it's like to live life on the road. Cain went on to play the keyboard on the albums, "Frontiers," "Raised on Radio" and "Trial by Fire."

Prior to "Raised on Radio," Cain reunited with his former Babys bandmates and formed Bad English, releasing two albums before breaking up in the early 90s. 

Cain wrote a memoir about his experience as a member of Journey in 2018, called "Don't Stop Believin': The Man, the Band, and the Song That Inspired Generations." (Brandon Williams/Getty Images)

Along with his albums with The Babys, Bad English and Journey, Cain recorded eight solo albums, including "Windy City Breakdown," "Back to Innocence," "What God Wants to Hear," "Bare Bones" and "More Like Jesus." He has primarily focused on making Christian-based faith music since 2016.

In 2018, Cain published a memoir, "Don't Stop Believin': The Man, the Band, and the Song That Inspired Generations," about his time as a member of Journey.

Cain married his first wife, singer Tane McClure, for which he wrote the song "Faithfully" before calling it quits. 

In 1989, he married Elizabeth Yvette Fullerton, and together they had three children — a daughter Madison and twins Liza and Weston. The two divorced in 2014 after 25 years of marriage. In 2015, Cain married his third wife, a minister named Paula White. 

Jonathan married his third wife, Paula White, in 2015. (Vincent Sandoval/WireImage)

Cain and Schon are currently at odds and are in a legal battle over a shared American Express account. 

Aynsley Dunbar

Aynsley Dunbar was the second drummer for Journey, taking over for Prairie Prince. (Getty Images)

Aynsley Dunbar was the second drummer for Journey, taking over for Prairie Prince, and played a big part in co-writing their first four albums, "Journey," "Look Into the Future," "Next" and "Infinity."

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Additionally, Dunbar played drums on albums for artists such as David Bowie, Lou Reed, Herbie Mann, Mick Ronson, Nils Lofgren, Ian Hunter, Sammy Hagar and Pat Travers.

Dunbar later joined Jefferson Starship and stayed with the band for three albums, including "Freedom at Point Zero," "Modern Times" and "Winds of Change." He then joined the band Whitesnake and stayed with them for two albums, including their eponymous record, which featured hits like "Still of the Night" and "What Is Love," and the album "1987 Versions."

Throughout the mid-90s, Dunbar played with some of the era's most notable bands and artists, including Aerosmith, Queen, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Pat Travers and Van Halen.  

Dunbar was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, along with other members of Journey. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

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Aynsley has three children, Gretchen, Bibs and Taylor. In 2000, his 5-year-old son Dash died of brain cancer. 

In 2005, Aynsley and the other members of Journey were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In April 2017, Dunbar and the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their contribution to the music industry.

Lori Bashian is an entertainment production assistant for Fox News Digital. 

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