Steve Perry Fans - Rock World

It's easy to make fun of Journey - critics have been doing so from time immemorial. Nodoby should be able to do this well and get away with it. Nobody, when they play live, should be able to match their albums note for note. Nobody with such nondescript personal lives should be allowed to be rock stars. But Journey gets away with it all. In fact, they do better than get away with it - they succeed. They play nice music with no messages concealed in the lyrics and it drives the critcs nuts.
    It drives their fans nuts, too, of course, but in an entirely different way. Somebody out there must appreciate how hard the guys in this band work - Journey just completed a six month tour in support of their Frontiers album, which followed close on the heels of a nearly two year long tour in support of Escape, their first number one lp.
    "I think touring is especially tough for the singer," guitarist Neal Schon ruminates. "Steve's forced into being out there for five or six months just like a priest in order to keep his voice. If I had to do that, I'd go wacko - sometimes you need to get a little crazy just to feel normal."
    "We travel with air conditioning," Steve Perry elaborates, "and out there a little laryngitis is a lot. The voice is a very fragile thing; it breaks down instead of toughening up. You have to be walking the fine line all the time where you can make it through one more two-hour show, and then the voice needs 24 hours

to sleep again. And this year the material is more demanding. The material demands more intensity in the voice."
Unlike the Stones, say, or the Who, who are always announcing their last tour, Journey has been as consistent in its touring as it has been in its vinyl output. "We've been doing the same thing quietly for six years," Schon points out. "The Stones go out or David Bowie goes out once every three or four years and they get the covers of magazines and there's a big splurge where everyone says 'Multimillion dollar business.'

But we do that kind of business every year."
Between now and next July, when these guys start recording their next album, you'd think the critics would get a break. Nine months of not having to worry about whether or not Steve Perry is planning to grow back his moustache. But no. In between time, we'll have the "journettes" - the solo projects. Jonathan Cain is looking foward to producing a second album for his wife, Tane. Steve Smith has finally put together his Vital Information album, a jazz-edged musical project he's been working on with

friends of his from Boston since last January. Neal Schon, as we go to press, is doing live dates in San Francisco with Sammy Hagar and drummer Michael Shrieve (who played with him in the old Santana line-up), which will be put together in a live Hagar/Schon album. And Steve Perry is anticipating recording an album with a full symphony behind him, as soon as he's given his vocal chords a well-deserved rest. Ross Valory, perhaps the sanest of them all, isn't talking about solo projects. With any luck, he'll be able to relax until the next frontier looms.