With the release of For The Love Of Strange Medicine, Steve Perry shares these thoughts on his new album, his new band, and his new outlook:
On the difference between playing with a band and a group of hired guns...
"You can get yourself a great sounding section, but it's all about spirit. There are a lot of
groups that aren't proficient individually, but collectively there's a spirit. And, I feel that
and see that with this combination.
I wanted to have a band feeling. I had made a record like Street Talk already" - on which he
used various session musicians - "and I wanted to have an interactive, creative environment. That's
what you get with a band."
On avoiding the limelight for so long...
"I have a private side of my life. I like to keep a piece of Steve's soul for himself. I have to
have a life, and that's one of the things, I think, I had to go back and find.
I did not really miss the limelight. There were a few times where it became difficult to go places and
I didn't like the isolation that comes as an alternative. But I just feel like a different person now."
On writing For The Love Of Strange Medicine...
"A lot of the songs were conceived in a jam/rehearsal situation, which is the best. So, they have size to them already. They weren't conceived in a room with a keyboard then (made) big - they were born big. That's (why) they sound the way they do. I love working in that situation. You get to hear it, you get to feel it, you get to stand in front of it. And that's where the real follow through, emotionally, comes from."
On songwriting in general...
"I think that writing these things down and being able to see them definitely is an expression, a
venting of internal locks, that I get into. It kind of breaks the door down and lets air into some
corners of my soul.
In my opinion, it's probably why I'm alive."
What the songs on For The Love Of Strange Medicine say about him...
"The new record is a bit more emotionally exposed, I think, than anything I've ever done. It can be a little apprehensive to be vulnerable, but it's the only answer, I think, to grow."
In conclusion, it would be needless hype and it would seem far too cliched to try and sum up the first new music from Steve Perry in eight years by simply saying it was worth the wait.
Steve Perry - A Taste Of Strange Medicine - Song-by-Song
YOU BETTER WAIT
"This was one of the first songs we wrote in a group situation. One of the things I remember is that it started out differently than it ended up. The gentleman that I mixed it with is Niko Bolas, and we got this idea - I believe it might have been Niko's - to start with the 'Ahhhs'. At the last minute, during the mixing, we were able to pull that idea off, and I think it's really a great, last-minute idea."
YOUNG HEARTS FOREVER
"It was written with Clif Magness, here in L.A. I've had this song sitting around for a long time. It was one of the songs that the group didn't write, but that the group played. Jimbo Barton (Note: Queensryche producer) helped take that song to a very nice place."
I AM
"Paul and Lincoln had gotten together and they had this circle of chord changes that sort of went on its own little passage and then turned around and ended up back where it started. I thought it was a beautiful set of changes.STAND UP (BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE)
"I think it's about humanity standing up for the things that matter to us all - not to just each particular class or social structure of people, or race or religious sect. It's about all of us realizing the commonality in all of it. Nobody does get out of here alive, and we have to, in the short time that we're here, work something out a little better than what we're doing now."
FOR THE LOVE OF STRANGE MEDICINE
"More times than I'd care to mention, I have hinged my happiness on outside stuff - strange medicine. Whether it's gambling, or relationships, or a new car, or winning the lotto, whatever. It's all strange medicine because it only works so long. It's basically about all the things we do for the love of strange medicine."
DONNA PLEASE
"Paul started playing some chord changes one day and I just said, 'God I love those changes.' And I heard
the melody (and some lyrics), 'You are there, in my voice, inside of me.' That came out and I went, 'Oh, I
like that. Yeah, she's in my voice, she's inside of me. And I'm trying to get it out', you know, the misery
of hiding how I feel.
And then I got together with Stephen Bishop - who I've wanted to write with but have never had an opportunity
to - and I wrote the lyrics with him."
LISTEN TO YOUR HEART
"This was the song that Moyes came in and jammed on to get the gig with the group, and that song wrote itself in an afternoon. It's about a guy who is with a woman, and he thought he was on the inside, but she was on the outside with someone else. He's just asked her to listen to her heart. And perhaps she will - I don't know."
TUESDAY HEARTACHE
"This is a Clif Magness/Steve Perry collaboration. It was a little thing he had. It had such an eerie mood to
the changes, and the keyboard patch which he had was so ethereal, that I was inspired by it. I mean, in the matter
of a second, I just heard this rhythmic kind of thing. It was automatic."
It has an African drum loop in it, which is something I really enjoyed working and singing against."
MISSING YOU
"I wrote this with Tim Miner, which Larry Daulton did the string arrangements for, and conducted, and we did that in Dallas. That was one of the songs that was written in a day. I love that song. It's kind of a nod to some of my early influences - like Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye - some of the things that I just love to even attempt to be as good as. Because those guys were the ones, you know? I tried to attempt to get the heart they had in their voices - not emulating them as much as the heart in their voices."
SOMEWHERE THERE'S HOPE
"I wrote this with Paul, Moyes, and Linc, and it's about being kind of on the streets and running in the
cold, cold world. Your life is on the line when you're out there, doing the things you think you need to do.
The only problem with that is some people don't get back.
It was written to the ones that are out there on the street who are a little bit close to not getting back.
Or maybe someone who thinks they may want back into their own life."
ANYWAY (which was written for his former band mates in Journey)
"I was working with Tim Miner, and when it came to write the lyrics to Anyway, I knew it had to be written but I didn't know if I wanted to write it. I wanted to pay respect and I wanted to talk about my portion of the insanity of the relationship with my ex-compatriots."
