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After 20 Long Years Away, Steve Perry Finally Joins Journey Onstage

photo credit: rockaxis.com.co

Reunited And It Feels So, So Good

We’ve spent the last 20 years hoping, praying, pleading – even appealing to Steve Perry directly through the likes of Journey guitarist Neal Schon and even Carlos Santana to rejoin Journey, if only for a little while. As news of Journey’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came to light late last year, the possibility of a Steve Perry reunion was closer to us than it had ever been but the former Journey frontman’s famed reticence when it came to anything related to his old band forced us to be realistic and prepare for the very real possibility that he wouldn’t show for Journey’s big moment.

Against all odds, however, Steve was there for Friday night’s festivities , just as excited to reunite with his former friends and bandmates as he was gracious to the legions of fans who propelled Journey to the top of the food chain and into rock and roll legend.

While Perry ultimately decided against performing with Journey and left the honor to current singer Arnel Pineda – who got his wish and finally met his idol for the very first time Friday night – his acceptance speech reflected a lifetime’s worth of love and gratitude to his bandmates as he gushed about their respective talents and thanked them individually and by name for “all the music we’ve written and recorded together.” Lastly, for the Journey fans who stopped believing that Steve heard them and cared, he had this to offer:

“You put us here,” he said. “We would not be here had it not been for you and your tireless love and consistent devotion. You never have stopped. I’ve been gone a long time, I understand that, but I want you to know that you’ve never not been in my heart.”

What a magical night! There’s no indication that Steve will ever be involved with Journey again, but who knows? It’s been an impossible year full of impossible events, and to forget that anything is possible would be absolutely foolish. Congratulations, Journey!

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American Anthem

'don't stop believin" goes on and on, because we need it to.

Roben Farzad

Steve Perry performs with Journey at a Chicago-area concert in 1981. Paul Natkin/Getty Images hide caption

Steve Perry performs with Journey at a Chicago-area concert in 1981.

This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem .

It's midnight on a Tuesday in Richmond, Va. At Sticky Rice, a sushi joint that hosts this college town's most raucous karaoke night, the crowd is already at fire-code capacity, and would-be crooners are forming a line outside. At around 12:30 a.m., a set of famous piano chords begins to play, and the place explodes. Friends stand together on tables; the people stuck in line outside press against the windows. For a fleeting moment, everyone's on the same midnight train going anywhere.

Twenty-somethings Matt Malone and Shilpa Gangisetty are tonight's lucky performers of Journey's " Don't Stop Believin' ," for which the DJ has received as many as five requests — though you can't exactly hear their singing beneath the overflowing crowd shouting along. When they're done, Gangisetty, who is Indian American, says she loves the song because it's something she can enjoy with her immigrant parents.

"This came out right before my parents came to this country," she says. "There aren't too many cultural things that we can relate on."

"It's like the 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' of, like, middle school," Malone chimes in. "You have to know it. Everyone hates to love it."

Thirty-eight years after it debuted on the album Escape, "Don't Stop Believin'" is the go-to anthem for perseverance that has itself persevered, successfully riding wave after new wave of media. Though born in the era of rock radio and cassette mixtapes, the song found its real glory at the dawn of binge TV and the smartphone, and it has woven its way into weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations, the 2005 World Series, The Sopranos and Glee .

Its fate was hardly a given. Critic Deborah Frost didn't even mention "Don't Stop Believin'" by name in her October 1981 review of Escape in Rolling Stone, which gave the album two out of five stars. "Maybe," she wrote, "there really are a lot of 'streetlight people' out there. If so, my guess is that they'll soon glow out of it." They didn't: According to Nielsen Music, "Don't Stop Believin'" holds the record as the most downloaded 20th-century song, and it has nearly 700 million streams on Spotify, at last count. What is it about this track that just won't stop?

The story of the song itself begins with Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain. In the late 1970s, he was a struggling rocker who was ready to quit SoCal and move back to Chicago. Cain says everything had been going wrong: He and his girlfriend had split up, and he'd had to pay a costly vet bill to save his dog after it was hit by a car.

"I called my father for some money," he says. "I said, 'Dad, I'm out of cash here. ... Should I come home? Is this thing just not, you know, panning out?' And he told me, 'We've always had a vision, son. Don't stop believing.' I had a lyric book next to me, and I wrote it down."

Things started looking up for the musician after that. Cain found himself in a band opening up for mega-act Journey. Then, Journey itself poached him.

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In 1981, when the band was recording Escape, lead singer Steve Perry asked Cain to come up with a final track. Cain still had his dad's advice in the dog-eared lyric book and from it drew inspiration for the pedaled, keep-the-faith piano part that builds and releases over and over until the phrase itself arrives in the chorus, more than three-quarters of the way into the track.

The characters introduced in the first verse, a small-town girl and a South Detroit city boy, are familiar by now — enough so that it's rarely addressed that there is no such neighborhood as South Detroit, apart from Perry needing an extra syllable. As for the singer in the smoky room with wine and cheap perfume, that tableau evokes the desperation Cain says he felt at the Sunset Strip's Whisky a Go Go during his rough Los Angeles days.

"I really believe this song is about wanting to make it," he says, "Where you think you're stuck in life — that you're able to get out, the same way I got out of Chicago."

The fictional William McKinley High School's glee club sang "Don't Stop Believin'" in a 2009 episode of Fox's Glee . FOX Image Collection/Getty Images hide caption

By the late 1990s, Perry had left Journey, and the band's career was in the wilderness. But the requests for "Don't Stop Believin'" kept coming.

Charlize Theron roller-skated to the song in her Oscar-winning turn as a serial killer in 2003's Monster . Four years later, The Sopranos ended its pioneering six-season run on HBO with — spoiler alert — a tense sequence involving a diner and parallel parking, soundtracked by "Don't Stop Believin'." Downloads of the track on iTunes soared. In 2009, the earnest high school show choir on Glee covered the song for the first of several times throughout the series' run, sending its download numbers through the roof again.

"Don't Stop Believin'" has been heard on Scrubs, South Park and Family Guy. A string ensemble played it in the Adam Sandler comedy The Wedding Singer. It was the rally song for the Chicago White Sox in the team's 2005 World Series run, and it was the climax of the hit Broadway jukebox musical Rock of Ages. On social media, you can find plenty of photos of stop signs playfully defaced with the title exhortation.

For all its new success, Journey still needed a new lead singer who had something approximating Perry's trademark high tenor altino . Desperate, guitarist Neal Schon turned to searching for singers on YouTube — where, late one night, he discovered Arnel Pineda, a formerly homeless kid in the Philippines who was covering the band's ballads at smoky venues that reeked of wine and cheap perfume.

In 2007, Journey flew him to the U.S. for a tryout and hired him — a fairy-tale story chronicled in the 2009 documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey .

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

As for Frost — the critic who originally panned Escape in Rolling Stone — she tells NPR that four decades later she's still not a fan but that maybe those streetlight people might — might — have a point.

"You know, I think maybe it helps them celebrate their high school years — or their hopes," she says. "And if it does, what can I tell you? Good for them."

Roben Farzad is the host of Full Disclosure on NPR member station VPM.

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Steve Perry Walked Away From Journey. A Promise Finally Ended His Silence.

By Alex Pappademas

• Sept. 5, 2018

MALIBU, Calif. — On the back patio of a Greek restaurant, a white-haired man making his way to the exit paused for a second look at one of his fellow diners, a man with a prominent nose who wore his dark hair in a modest pompadour.

“You look a lot like Steve Perry,” the white-haired man said.

“I used to be Steve Perry,” Steve Perry said.

This is how it goes when you are Steve Perry. Everyone is excited to see you, and no one can quite believe it. Everyone wants to know where you’ve been.

In 1977, an ambitious but middlingly successful San Francisco jazz-rock band called Journey went looking for a new lead singer and found Mr. Perry, then a 28-year-old veteran of many unsigned bands. Mr. Perry and the band’s lead guitarist and co-founder, Neal Schon, began writing concise, uplifting hard rock songs that showcased Mr. Perry’s clean, powerful alto, as operatic an instrument as pop has ever seen. This new incarnation of Journey produced a string of hit singles, released eight multiplatinum albums and toured relentlessly — so relentlessly that in 1987, a road-worn Mr. Perry took a hiatus, effectively dissolving the band he’d helped make famous.

He did not disappear completely — there was a solo album in 1994, followed in 1996 by a Journey reunion album, “Trial by Fire.” But it wasn’t long before Mr. Perry walked away again, from Journey and from the spotlight. With his forthcoming album, “Traces,” due in early October, he’s breaking 20 years of radio silence.

Over the course of a long midafternoon lunch — well-done souvlaki, hold all the starches — Mr. Perry, now 69, explained why he left, and why he’s returned. He spoke of loving, and losing and opening himself to being loved again, including by people he’s never met, who know him only as a voice from the Top 40 past.

And when he detailed the personal tragedy that moved him to make music again, he talked about it in language as earnest and emotional as any Journey song:

“I thought I had a pretty good heart,” he said, “but a heart isn’t really complete until it’s completely broken.”

IN ITS ’80S heyday, Journey was a commercial powerhouse and a critical piñata. With Mr. Perry up front, slinging high notes like Frisbees into the stratosphere, Journey quickly became not just big but huge . When few public figures aside from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong had their own video game, Journey had two. The offices of the group’s management company received 600 pieces of Journey fan mail per day.

The group toured hard for nine years. Gradually, that punishing schedule began to take a toll on Journey’s lead singer.

“I never had any nodules or anything, and I never had polyps,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the state of his vocal cords. He looked around for some wood to knock, then settled for his own skull. The pain, he said, was more spiritual than physical.

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As a vocalist, Mr. Perry explained, “your instrument is you. It’s not just your throat, it’s you . If you’re burnt out, if you’re depressed, if you’re feeling weary and lost and paranoid, you’re a mess.”

“Frankly,” Mr. Schon said in a phone interview, “I don’t know how he lasted as long as he did without feeling burned out. He was so good, doing things that nobody else could do.”

On Feb. 1, 1987, Mr. Perry performed one last show with Journey, in Anchorage. Then he went home.

Mr. Perry was born in Hanford, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley, about 45 minutes south of Fresno. His parents, who were both Portuguese immigrants, divorced when he was 8, and Mr. Perry and his mother moved in next door to her parents’. “I became invisible, emotionally,” Mr. Perry said. “And there were places I used to hide, to feel comfortable, to protect myself.”

Sometimes he’d crawl into a corner of his grandparents’ garage with a blanket and a flashlight. But he also found refuge in music. “I could get lost in these 45s that I had,” Mr. Perry said. “It turned on a passion for music in me that saved my life.”

As a teen, Mr. Perry moved to Lemoore, Calif., where he enjoyed an archetypally idyllic West Coast adolescence: “A lot of my writing, to this day, is based on my emotional attachment to Lemoore High School.”

There he discovered the Beatles and the Beach Boys, went on parked-car dates by the San Joaquin Valley’s many irrigation canals, and experienced a feeling of “freedom and teenage emotion and contact with the world” that he’s never forgotten. Even a song like “No Erasin’,” the buoyant lead single from his new LP has that down-by-the-old-canal spirit, Mr. Perry said.

And after he left Journey, it was Lemoore that Mr. Perry returned to, hoping to rediscover the person he’d been before subsuming his identity within an internationally famous rock band. In the beginning, he couldn’t even bear to listen to music on the radio: “A little PTSD, I think.”

Eventually, in 1994, he made that solo album, “For the Love of Strange Medicine,” and sported a windblown near-mullet and a dazed expression on the cover. The reviews were respectful, and the album wasn’t a flop. With alternative rock at its cultural peak, Mr. Perry was a man without a context — which suited him just fine.

“I was glad,” he said, “that I was just allowed to step back and go, O.K. — this is a good time to go ride my Harley.”

JOURNEY STAYED REUNITED after Mr. Perry left for the second time in 1997. Since December 2007, its frontman has been Arnel Pineda, a former cover-band vocalist from Manila, Philippines, who Mr. Schon discovered via YouTube . When Journey was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last April, Mr. Pineda sang the 1981 anthem “Don’t Stop Believin’,” not Mr. Perry. “I’m not in the band,” he said flatly, adding, “It’s Arnel’s gig — singers have to stick together.”

Around the time Mr. Pineda joined the band, something strange had happened — after being radioactively unhip for decades, Journey had crept back into the zeitgeist. David Chase used “Don’t Stop Believin’” to nerve-racking effect in the last scene of the 2007 series finale of “The Sopranos” ; when Mr. Perry refused to sign off on the show’s use of the song until he was told how it would be used, he briefly became one of the few people in America who knew in advance how the show ended.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” became a kind of pop standard, covered by everyone from the cast of “Glee” to the avant-shred guitarist Marnie Stern . Decades after they’d gone their separate ways, Journey and Mr. Perry found themselves discovering fans they never knew they had.

Mark Oliver Everett, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter who performs with his band Eels under the stage name E, was not one of them, at first.

“When I was young, living in Virginia,” Mr. Everett said, “Journey was always on the radio, and I wasn’t into it.”

So although Mr. Perry became a regular at Eels shows beginning around 2003, it took Mr. Everett five years to invite him backstage. He’d become acquainted with Patty Jenkins, the film director, who’d befriended Mr. Perry after contacting him for permission to use “Don’t Stop Believin’” in her 2003 film “Monster.” (“When he literally showed up on the mixing stage the next day and pulled up a chair next to me, saying, ‘Hey I really love your movie. How can I help you?’ it was the beginning of one of the greatest friendships of my life,” Ms. Jenkins wrote in an email.) Over lunch, Ms. Jenkins lobbied Mr. Everett to meet Mr. Perry.

They hit it off immediately. “At that time,” Mr. Everett said, “we had a very serious Eels croquet game in my backyard every Sunday.” He invited Mr. Perry to attend that week. Before long, Mr. Perry began showing up — uninvited and unannounced, but not unwelcome — at Eels rehearsals.

“They’d always bust my chops,” Mr. Perry said. “Like, ‘Well? Is this the year you come on and sing a couple songs with us?’”

At one point, the Eels guitarist Jeff Lyster managed to bait Mr. Perry into singing Journey’s “Lights” at one of these rehearsals, which Mr. Everett remembers as “this great moment — a guy who’s become like Howard Hughes, and just walked away from it all 25 years ago, and he’s finally doing it again.”

Eventually Mr. Perry decided to sing a few numbers at an Eels show, which would be his first public performance in decades. He made this decision known to the band, Mr. Everett said, not via phone or email but by showing up to tour rehearsals one day carrying his own microphone. “He moves in mysterious ways,” Mr. Everett observed.

For mysterious Steve Perry reasons, Mr. Perry chose to make his long-awaited return to the stage at a 2014 Eels show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. During a surprise encore, he sang three songs, including one of his favorite Eels tunes, whose profane title is rendered on an edited album as “It’s a Monstertrucker.”

“I walked out with no anticipation and they knew me and they responded, and it was really a thrill,” Mr. Perry said. “I missed it so much. I couldn’t believe it’d been so long.”

“It’s a Monstertrucker” is a spare song about struggling to get through a lonely Sunday in someone’s absence. For Mr. Perry, it was not an out-of-nowhere choice.

In 2011, Ms. Jenkins directed one segment of “Five,” a Lifetime anthology film about women and breast cancer. Mr. Perry visited her one day in the cutting room while she was at work on a scene featuring real cancer patients as extras. A woman named Kellie Nash caught Mr. Perry’s eye. Instantly smitten, he asked Ms. Jenkins if she would introduce them by email.

“And she says ‘O.K., I’ll send the email,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “but there’s one thing I should tell you first. She was in remission, but it came back, and it’s in her bones and her lungs. She’s fighting for her life.”

“My head said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Perry remembered, “but my heart said, ‘Send the email.’”

“That was extremely unlike Steve, as he is just not that guy,” Ms. Jenkins said. “I have never seen him hit on, or even show interest in anyone before. He was always so conservative about opening up to anyone.”

A few weeks later, Ms. Nash and Mr. Perry connected by phone and ended up talking for nearly five hours. Their friendship soon blossomed into romance. Mr. Perry described Ms. Nash as the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

“I was loved by a lot of people, but I didn’t really feel it as much as I did when Kellie said it,” he said. “Because she’s got better things to do than waste her time with those words.”

They were together for a year and a half. They made each other laugh and talked each other to sleep at night.

In the fall of 2012, Ms. Nash began experiencing headaches. An MRI revealed that the cancer had spread to her brain. One night not long afterward, Ms. Nash asked Mr. Perry to make her a promise.

“She said, ‘If something were to happen to me, promise me you won’t go back into isolation,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “because that would make this all for naught.”

At this point in the story, Mr. Perry asked for a moment and began to cry.

Ms. Nash died on Dec. 14, 2012, at 40. Two years later, Mr. Perry showed up to Eels rehearsal with his own microphone, ready to make good on a promise.

TIME HAS ADDED a husky edge to Mr. Perry’s angelic voice; on “Traces,” he hits some trembling high notes that bring to mind the otherworldly jazz countertenor “Little” Jimmy Scott. The tone suits the songs, which occasionally rock, but mostly feel close to their origins as solo demos Mr. Perry cut with only loops and click tracks backing him up.

The idea that the album might kick-start a comeback for Mr. Perry is one that its maker inevitably has to hem and haw about.

“I don’t even know if ‘coming back’ is a good word,” he said. “I’m in touch with the honest emotion, the love of the music I’ve just made. And all the neurosis that used to come with it, too. All the fears and joys. I had to put my arms around all of it. And walking back into it has been an experience, of all of the above.”

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Steve Perry: ‘My Heart Bleeds Daily to Be in Front of People And to Sing for Them’

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Steve Perry has kept a low public profile ever since he shared a lockdown rendition of the 1963 Beach Boys classic “In My Room” in April, but he tells Rolling Stone that since that time, he’s been busy creating new music. “I have a studio and I’m always writing and always recording stuff,” he says. “I have lots of music, so much stuff.”

First up is an acoustic version of his 2018 comeback LP Traces that he plans to release on December 4th. “It’s eight songs from the Traces record done acoustically and I’m really proud of it,” he says. “It’s called Traces Alternate Versions and Sketches . I cut the vinyl in Abbey Road. I’m really pleased with the sonics and I’m really pleased with the simplicity of the song and the lyric and the chords, which is basically what it’s stripped down to.”

Perry dropped out of the public eye in 1998 when he was sidelined by a hip injury and Journey opted to hire a new vocalist to take his place. “I had my time,” he says, “and I was very pleased with all the history I was fortunate to be around and I was proud of my musical contributions to any of it.”

He was drawn back to music after losing girlfriend Kelly Nash to breast cancer in 2012. “I made a promise to her that I would not go back into hibernation,” he says. “If something was going to happen to her, she asked that I wouldn’t do that because she felt it would make everything for naught. Those were her words. I kept that promise.”

He released Traces in 2018 and went on an extensive media tour to support it, but he didn’t play any live shows. Perry last toured in 1995 and the only time he’s played to a live audience since then took place in 2014 when he joined the band Eels at three shows.

“E [Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett] and I became friends and he kept busting my balls saying, ‘When are you going to come out and just sing a couple of songs on our little tour?'” Perry recalls. “We’d always laugh, but I’d always go to his rehearsals because I love the band. He said, ‘Is this the year you’re going to do it?’ I said, ‘OK, what do you want to do?’ We worked up a bunch of songs and lowered the keys so I’d feel comfortable.”

The first appearance took place May 25th, 2014, at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. Perry joined Eels for their original tune “It’s a Motherfucker” before closing the show with the Journey tunes “Open Arms” and “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.”

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“Oh, my God,” Perry says as he thinks back to that night. “I forgot what it was like to be in front of people. I had forgotten that this voice [I have onstage] doesn’t belong to me. In a studio, I can probably get 80 or 90 percent of it. But that extra 10 or 20 percent only happens in front of a crowd.”

The three Eels appearances raised fan expectations that Perry might finally return to the road. It hasn’t happened so far, but the singer says that a tour remains a real possibility. “It’s always been on my mind,” he says. “My heart bleeds daily to be in front of people and to sing for them.”

One thing holding him back is the physical toll any tour would take on his body. “I’ve got some physical injuries from touring,” he says. “It’s a tough thing, touring. People don’t realize. It’s like sports. I’m watching baseball these days and there’s injuries. People’s backs and necks start to go out. It’s a young man’s game, but I do miss it.”

During Perry’s long absence from the road, Journey reinvented themselves as a touring powerhouse, especially after Arnel Pineda took over on vocals in 2008. But it’s been a contentious journey marked by persistent band infighting. Earlier this year, the band parted ways with drummer Steve Smith and bassist Ross Valory after a business dispute over the band’s copyright.

“I have no clue what that’s all about,” Perry says when the matter comes up. “I’ve been out of that band since May of 1998.”

When told that fans continue to fixate on his tenure in the band and pray for some sort of reconciliation, he laughs. “I don’t know what people think rock & roll is about,” he says. “Are we supposed to be like Bo Peep, sheep herders that are kind and loving? No. We bump heads like motherfuckers. But from that comes beautiful music like ‘Open Arms’ and other songs.”

Still, fans will likely never let go of the fantasy that everything can go back to the way it was in 1981 when it seemed like the band was in harmony and singing “Kumbaya” together offstage. “I don’t understand what these people base their thinking on,” he says. “There never was any ‘Kumbaya’ with us. But were the Chicago Bulls singing ‘Kumbaya’? How about the [San Francisco] 49ers with Bill Walsh? What are we talking about here?”

For now, Perry is focusing strictly on his own career, far away from the battles of Journey. “The acoustic Traces is going to close the Traces chapter,” he says. “Then I’m opening up another chapter next year at some point.”

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4 Songs You Didn’t Know Former Journey Singer Steve Perry Wrote for Other Artists in the ’80s

by Tina Benitez-Eves January 29, 2024, 1:06 pm

As the vocalist of Journey from 1977 through 1987, Steve Perry led the band with his powerhouse vocals and co-wrote a collection of their biggest hits, including “ Don’t Stop Believin ’,” “Anyway You Want It,” and “Separate Ways” with more through his solo career from his 1984 debut, Street Talk, and hits “Oh Sherrie,” and “Foolish Heart.”  Throughout Perry’s career outside of Journey, he has collaborated with dozens of artists, everyone from Sammy Hagar —singing background vocals on “The Iceman,” “Heartbeat,” “Run for Your Life,” and “Love or Money,” from Hagar’s 1980 solo album Danger Zone . In 1988, Perry also appeared on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ‘s American Dream track “Soldiers of Peace,” and in 2023 Perry joined Dolly Parton for a duet of Journey’s 1981 hit “ Open Arms ” on her Rockstar album. Perry released his tenth solo album For the Love of Strange Medicine in 1994 before taking a nearly quarter-century break from music. He returned in 2018 with his third solo album Traces , and the holiday album, The Season , in 2021.

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“When I left the music business, I was gone for about 25 years, and I had no intentions of coming back,” Perry shared with American Songwriter in 2021. “In my heart, I truly had done everything that living the dream could have possibly been, and I really believe that’s true. We [Journey] were so successful, and we really had such a blast and we had such great songs in the band. And I had some solo stuff that was great. It’s good. I’m good. So I left.” Perry continued, “Then over 20 years go by and all of a sudden the creative juices just started to come back.”

[RELATED: The Writer’s Block — Steve Perry Talks Songwriting with American Songwriter]

Though Perry’s collaborations as a songwriter stretch across four decades, here are five songs Perry wrote for other artists throughout the 1980s.

1. “Don’t Fight It,” Kenny Loggins, Featuring Steve Perry (1982)

Written by Steve Perry, Kenny Loggins, and Dean Pitchford

Appearing on Kenny Loggins ‘ fourth album, High Adventure , “Don’t Fight It” also features Perry on vocals and Pat Benatar ‘s husband guitarist Neil Giraldo on guitar. “Don’t Fight It” went to No. 4 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and peaked at No. 17 on the Hot 100. In 1983, Loggin’s song also picked up a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Live long enough you’re bound to find Moonshine’ll make a man go blind Never can tell what the brew will do But there’s times you’ll wind up feelin so fine Some women seem to have a knack They’ll turn you on and leave you flat Never can tell who’s playin for keeps So tell me now what’s holding you back I know your heart can take it Don’t fight it Don’t fight it Don’t fight it It’ll do your heart so good

2. “Self Defense” Schon & Hammer (1982)

Written by Steve Perry, Neal Schon , and Jonathan Cain

On Here to Stay , the second collaborative album from his then-bandmate Neal Schon and composer Jan Hammer, Perry’s vocals can be heard behind the track “Self Defense. The song marked the only time Perry and Schon collaborated outside of Journey.  In 2005, Journey rerecorded the song for their album Generations with the title “In Self Defense” and Schon on vocals.

The situation’s got me rattled I twist and turn late at night This whole world is up in shambles Who is the one to make it right Missing persons lost in action (action) Forgotten victims of the night (victims of the night) They are making crime the main attraction (attraction) They are making everyone uptight They are all looking for a fight In this confusion from day to day Sometimes fear just makes no sense In this crossfire I see one way In self defense

3. “Only the Young,” Scandal with Patty Smyth (1984)

Written by Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain, and Neal Schon

Though Journey was the first to record “Only the Young” in 1984, the band shared the track with Scandal with Patty Smyth, who released it first on their breakthrough debut album The Warrior . Initially, Journey had written “Only the Young” for their 1983 album  Frontiers but the band later recorded the song for the soundtrack of the 1985 film Vision Quest, starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino. Their version hit the top 10 at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Another night in any town You can hear the thunder of their cry Ahead of their time They wonder why In the shadows of a golden age A generation waits for dawn Brave carry on Bold and the strong Only the young can say They’re free to fly away Sharing the same desires Burnin like wildfire

4. “(Can’t Fall Asleep to A) Lullaby,” America (1984)

Written by Steve Perry, Dewey Bunnell, Bill Mumy, and Robert Haimer

Perry appears on America’s “Can’t Fall Asleep to a Lullaby,” which he co-wrote for the band’s 12th album Perspective . America’s Dewey Bunnell later appeared in the music video for Perry’s 1984 solo hit “Oh Sherrie.”

It’s late at night, I’m all alone I call you up, hear your voice on the phone Say that you’re mine, tell me it’s true Say that my love, is still right for you ‘Cause I can’t fall asleep to a lullaby And I miss you so much I don’t wanna cry, you are why I love you, oo-oo-oo, you don’t know Here I am, part of the crowd Need you so bad, I’m dreamin’ out loud Say that you’re mine, tell me it’s true Say that my love, is still right for you

Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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How Steve Perry Recorded a New Version of a Journey Deep Cut

Steve Perry has enjoyed revisiting songs from his time with Journey in recent years, updating " Only the Young " and " Separate Ways " in an innovative fashion. Sometimes, the opportunities present themselves in unusual ways.

That was the case when he found out that his longtime friend Trev Lukather had plans to record an updated version of " It Could Have Been You " -- originally a deep track from 1986's Raised on Radio -- with his band, The Effect . The California band has a finished album in the can and they've already released several singles, including " Toxic Envy " earlier this year.

Still, Lukather found himself thinking about "It Could Have Been You." He decided he wanted to take a crack at it. But he also wanted to know that Perry would approve of what they had done. Before he knew it, Perry was in the studio with them, adding his legendary voice to their new version . It was a moment which gave the singer a chance to go back to a song from his past that he terms as " a diamond in the rough ."

"He surprisingly mentioned 'It Could Have Been You' is one of his favorite tracks," Perry recalled on social media, and "I told him I felt the same. I then said, 'Why don't you record it?' He asked if I would sing on it if they did, I said, 'Of course, my most precious!'"

With The Effect heading out on tour with Billy Idol this week, Lukather and the band's vocalist, Emmett Stang, told Ultimate Classic Rock Nights host Matt Wardlaw about the experience -- and why Perry is where he is in the song's final mix.

People are freaking out about getting new music featuring Steve Perry. As you and I have talked about, Steve is a longtime friend of yours. How did you develop the arrangement for this new version of "It Could Have Been You" that we're hearing now? Trev Lukather: I knew for it to be something that would sound like our band, we wanted to play with the chorus a little bit. Because the chorus, to me, was the only thing from the original that I was like, “Well, does that sound like something we would do?” We love the lyrics and all of the great hooks, so how do we make that us? It was one of those really scary moments. It’s like, there’s two ways this is going to go. When Perry hears this, he’s either going to love it or he’s going to hate it. And it’s the same thing with my father-in-law [ Jonathan Cain , who co-wrote the song with Perry and Neal Schon ].

There’s no in-between. What was so great is that they accepted our tweak. Perry was like, “Man, that’s so fresh and modern.” What I love about Perry and Jon, they’re open-minded [and realize] that we’re in the year 2024, we’re not in 1986 anymore. It’s like, “You guys brought this to 2024 in a fresh way.” The changes and everything came naturally for us. We put it together, literally, the night before we saw Steve and we did the drums. Production-wise, I knew I really wanted to present him something that he’s going to be able to listen to as a listener. We wanted to build it up. So Emmett actually sang the lead vocal. It was done when Perry heard it.

Wow. Lukather: Emmett really just channeled his own voice, but also gave some serious love to Steve’s original [performance]. You know, there’s certain parts that even Steve said, “There’s too much of me,” like in the breakdown of the original. So we were like, “No, let’s make it more what Em would do.”

Emmett Stang: That was Trev looking out for me. Because I was stuck on, I mean, just his voice and what he does with it. I was walking to our session, having that in my mind. And Trev was going, “Dude, I want to hear you in this spot. Let’s make it The Effect.” The fact that Perry was hip to that? I mean, just to see his face listening to it for the first time…

Lukather: It was the best. I still bottle up that reaction every time.

Stang:  Oh yeah.

Lukather: Obviously, you have Steve Perry in the room and he sounds like a million bucks, you want more. You’re like, “C’mon, man, do a verse!” But you know, what’s so cool about Steve -- he said, “I don’t want to step on what you guys are doing. I love what you’re doing [with the song]." We were able to get him to do as much as he felt comfortable doing -- he didn’t want to overstep what Emmett had done, because he loved his lead vocal. We tried and he was like, “No, man. Emmett sounds too good. Let me do this, then.” Then, he does the cool add-ons -- like, the second verse where Perry continues with two harmonies in the back and holds it out. It almost sounds like a reverse vocal, but that’s Perry’s technique and it was so killer! The fact is, this is something that we did something out of respect, love and fun. We [got] to work with the G.O.A.T. on vocals, which is really amazing.

Steve’s been doing something similar recently in the past few years with a couple of the Journey songs he’s updated like “Separate Ways” and “Only the Young,” so this fits really well in that vein. I think it’s probably very freeing, artistically for him to be able to do something like this. Lukather: It was really cool, because even his ad-libs, you know, after the breakdown, when it comes in, you’re hearing him go in-between Emmett. He had this really cool idea he was messing with when he heard back the drums. I was like, “Well, why don’t we do that?” Like I said in my social media post , he shook the house.

Stang:  It was incredible.

Lukather: One thing that people need to know is that Perry can still sing his ass off, okay? He doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody. People think they deserve [that] in a weird way. He doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody. He still has it and he gets excited working with younger artists, because it gives him that energy and that buzz to want to do [things like this].Who knows what he wants to do? More music? Another record? Whatever -- that’s up to him, man. People have to respect those boundaries and respect whatever he wants to do. But he’s still a powerhouse, man. I think that shows on this track. What’s so cool is Emmett channeled that. They worked so well together. Because Perry was in the mixing session too, by the way -- people should know that. Perry was there with us and [mixer] Will Brierre. All of the vocal balancing is the stamp of the man himself.

He was like….”It’s about The Effect, it’s not about me.” He believes in our band to want to do this and loved what we did. That’s his gift to us, being like, “I believe in you guys” and saying, like, “You guys deserve more than just being my backup band on a song.” So people should understand that this is something that wasn’t intended for Steve to be the lead singer. It was always, “Let me sprinkle my legendary fairy dust on this and make it something really cool for both the new fans and the old fans.” Like, younger people. We also chose a song that isn’t a greatest hit. It’s a deep cut, that’s one of my favorite Journey songs. It deserved to be heard. I think the younger crowds are going to hear it and go, “What is this?” But we are seeing a lot of love, with people accepting it. Because it’s a very drastic change from the original, too. We love the fact that people are digging it too.

Watch The Effect's Video for 'It Could Have Been You' 

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Gallery Credit: Ultimate Classic Rock Staff

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