Steve Perry - Up Close

Steve Perry arrived at the arena for the soundcheck in a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of well-worn gym shoes. "This", he told us "is my work-out, up here onstage. I lose pounds every time we do a show. Hey, if the band fails maybe I can go and work for Weight Watchers!"
Steve, the Journey singer with the fairytale-prince looks and the killer vocal cords, is undoubtedly one of the hardest-working vocalists in rock and roll today. He leaps, he runs, he scoots from one side of the stage to the other, catching roses from adoring fans while encouraging others to clap along, all this without leaving a trace of sweat on his white-tailed stage suit. And he does this almost every night for more than six months out of every year.
"We've worked so long and so hard to build this band up", he said. "We've not been an overnight success at all, even though there's a lot of people who think we are. When I joined Journey I was thrown straight into the deep end, and I never got out of it. I love it! Sometimes I get mad at it because it takes up so much of my life, but I could never live without

it. I'm a very hyper person really." When he talks, words run out of his mouth at enormous speed; what sounds like a slight stutter is actually words and ideas spilling out over each other, because he's so impatient to get his thoughts across. "That's just my personality. If I didn't have this band as some kind of release, I'd probably go nuts!"
Journey may have done wonders for his mental health, but being in such a successful and demanding band can be very dangerous indeed. "Perhaps Journey should have a government health warning stamped on it," Steve laughed. But he wasn't laughing when he went to a doctor with a high fever halfway through another grueling Journey tour, and was told that he had "walking pneumonia." If he hadn't been so young and in such good physical condition, the doctor told him, it would have been no surprise if he went to bed one night after a show and never woke up again...
"I said 'wha-aaa-at?!' I couldn't believe it. I started thinking about what that meant, and that if I was going to die, it would have been in

St. Louis where I was at my sickest and the tour was at its heaviest. Luckily I found out in time and got better."
Though he has a steady girlfriend, the big love in Steve Perry's life is still Journey. That's where he spends most of his nights.

"When you're on the road as much as we are," he told us, "it's hard to think of any place as home except the road, the hotel rooms, the bus. I don't know if that's good or bad or healthy, but I feel more at home on the road than any place else. At first it was almost like a way of avoiding responsibilities, never having to grow up and behave yourself, that sort of thing, because if you haven't got a home you can't have a settled domestic life and all that entails. But it's different now; it's changing. Journey is a big responsibility - we have our own company, Nightmare, and we employ our own people, so it's like having a big family who you have to take care of, but who take care of you as well. But it's not all work. This

band is so much fun!"
    The members are very close indeed, all voting democratically at office meetings on their various projects, all seeing each other socially, and all keeping each other in line.
    "There's no way any of us can get big-headed," said Steve. "For one thing, we've all worked too hard to have it go to our heads." And for another thing, the members invented a "Prima" award. Now and then they award it to the Journey member who is acting like "the biggest prima donna." Steve is the latest recipient, though it's hard to believe this nice guy - who told us he's shy, and you believe him - could ever show off.
    "The only time I really show off is onstage; that's what the audience wants and I enjoy it too. I just go out there and whamm, I'm this vocalist running around all over the place. Maybe if I stood still in one spot I'd

die of nerves." The only time he did get nervous onstage was when he first joined Journey, "in the middle of a big tour." His cute stage presence and more commercial rock voice did not go down too well with fans of the then cult band with the psychedelic almost progressive jazz sound. "I saw a lot of middle fingers back then," Steve recalled with a chuckle, glad he was fit enough to dodge the beer bottles thrown at him onstage.
Steve writes a lot of Journey's songs; most of them are love songs. "I'm just romantic, I guess," said Steve, who says he's never tired of singing about romance.
The nice thing about Journey is we're always changing. When we do a song onstage, it's always a bit different form the last time and our music is always moving on." A journey towards greater and greater success? "I think so. People just can't ignore us any longer!"

1. Steve is Californian, but his parents are Portuguese.
2. Journey's vocalist first tried out his vocal cords in a church choir. You can just imagine him as a choirboy!
3. Although he like rock music as a boy, he had no aspirations to be a guitar hero. His first instrument was the drums, which he played in the school marching band.
4. His childhood home was in a small farming town in the San Joaquin Valley in California.
5. He was in his first band at the age of 13, and his first professional rock band at 18, when he left home to move to Los Angeles (though he did keep coming back to his parents in the Valley whenever his money ran out!) The band was called "Pieces."
6. He got into Journey "on the rebound." He joined a band called Alien Project, "a really unique band," that was about to sign to CBS (Journey's label) when the bass player was killed in a freeway accident. Someone at CBS mentioned to Steve that another of its new bands was

looking for a permanent vocalist. "I sent some tapes to Journey's manager and they sent me a ticket to Colorado where they were on the road with E.L.P. (the then-big Emerson Lake & Palmer). Next thing I know they asked me to join the band.
7. The first day Steve Perry and Neal Schon met, they wrote two songs together; and they don't seem to stop!
8. Steve loves touring, but loves even more to get back home to California, where he spends a lot of time with his parents. "There's no place like the West Coast."
9. Steve is still a big music fan and goes to see bands in his spare time. His tastes run to everything from Weather Report to the Police. And some of his happiest nights are a quiet evening with his girlfriend and his favorite albums.
10. Steve loves to eat! He keeps that tiny trim figure by adhering to an exercise program designed by the group's manager, plus all that running about onstage! And he's the star player on the Journey softball team, which plays regular charity matches.