Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Yeah, two drummers!)
Best song
Thats a tough question.
Mother, Father is very orchestral and very musical compared to our more pop-oriented rock songs.
And then my father, while he was living, wrote really interesting notes for it on the piano.
It pulled the whole song together.
I like the sentiment of what Steve and Jonathan wrote lyrically about the song.
I usually dont come from that area.
Theres a few songs that Ive written choruses on, but I dont really consider myself a lyricist.
I thought it fit perfectly for the music.
I also like our deeper musical cuts that are a bit more involved musically.
I tend to like the more orchestral songs likeStill They Ride,Mother, Father, orWinds of March.
Heaviest song
Youre on Your Own.
Or songs like Of a Lifetime and Kohoutek.
That early material was very much more progressive and heavier, in a sense.
I feel people are misled by our albums a lot like, they havent seen us live.
Our band tends to be heavier live than the albums are.
So Separate Ways is heavy in another way.
It sounds like Motown or like it could be a Four Tops song, for Christs sake.
I dont think we have anything thats heavy,heavy,like metal.
Weve never tapped into that key in of music.
When Jonathan came into the band, there was immediately a push to go bigger in an organic way.
I dont consider us soft rock.
We have a broad spectrum.
We show our dexterity and diversity on all of our albums.
Weve traveled the spectrum musically fromAtoZ.
There are kids that come to see us who look like 16 or 17 at most.
It reminds me of when I would go see my favorite bands as a kid.
They were all up the wall compared to what was on the radio.
The entire audience loved all that music, but they would sit down at concerts in that era!
So I would sit on the floor and observe and listen.
Then at the end of the night, we would all get up and go nuts.
Its an overall experience and how you take people on it.
I think the more you lay on them, the better.
A simple, bluesy stroll song.
The second song I ever wrote with Steve Perry was Lights.
Its become a freakin anthem.
More people in the audience light up and sing that song louder than anything else.
It used to be lighters, but now its cell phones.
It wasnt pushed out there by the label; it just happened in an organic way.
It had a different feel to it when Steve first showed it to me.
He had the melody; he had the bass.
I was like, What if we did this?
Then I wrote the bridge.
A lot of nights, I cant even hear the band onstage because of the audience.
She had written down, Wheels are turning on my mind.
I came up with the chorus.
Ive since ripped that song apart and put it back together.
I keep reinventing Wheels, and it ends up being a big and powerful highlight in our shows.
Most romantic ballad
It depends on what era you want to go in.
Theres a lot of romance.
It depends on what punch in of romance youre talking about.
I think the ones that are obvious picks are Faithfully and Open Arms.
They probably get played more at weddings than any song ever.
Send Her My Love is very romantic in a different way.
I love that song.
It has such a great melody and I love that its not too radio-friendly.
Its coming from a deeper place.
Faithfully, though, is a beautiful song.
Jonathan hit it out of the park with that one.
With Faithfully, it started off more off the wall.
It was like a Police song twisted up sideways.
It sounded like a beautiful country ballad.
I couldnt quite imagine what it would sound like with us playing it.
I couldnt imagine Open Arms, either.
I fought hard on Open Arms.
At the time I was not getting it and didnt want to get it.
Now I enjoy it.
But when he showed us Faithfully, I wrote out a little chart because I dont really read music.
We ran through the song once, and I just free-formed my way through it.
Steve was not singing.
At the time, there was no singing and we were just trying to get the basic track done.
I played one guitar through the whole song, thats it.
What you hear on that track is the second take we did.
I came up with a line that sounds like a French horn.
Its like me singing the Who with John Entwistle playing the French horn.
I like the sound of that instrument.
I had attuned my ear to symphonic music and classical music when I was younger.
I played oboe in school.
It was a great way to pass the time because I was not into school at all.
I liked music and I liked art.
I was always in the art room or playing something.
I couldnt decipher how someone like Steve would interpret it.
So it was interesting how it came about when we cut the song.
We all did it together.
Jonathan wanted to be in the studio and Steve refused.
He said, No, you got to leave.
So coming back into the studio and hearing what Steve did, I was like, Oh my God!
Theyre extensions of the vocals.
If theres a guitar solo, it needs to convey a strong melody.
You learned to love melody.
I mean, the Beatles taught us all about that a long time ago.
So Lights would be a masterpiece.
Whos Crying Now, probably another.
Funny enough, I absolutely hated my Whos Crying Now guitar work when I did it at first.
It was true frustration with that song because it didnt come out immediately.
I was trying to be more demanding with myself.
Wed get off to a good start, and then Id have nowhere to go.
It was just kind of plotting along and doing this pop thing.
So the producers and the whole band were getting frustrated with me because I wasnt giving up.
I probably did about, I dont know, 15 takes, and it was going nowhere slow.
Usually the best stuff comes out of me on the first or second take and then it goes downhill.
When Im not thinking, it comes out.
When I start thinking, it never comes out.
So out of pure frustration, I played the simplest thing, just kind of being like a smart-ass.
I was in the studio and I thought,Oh, this will shut them up.
And I played it, and I went, There you go.
Thats what you want.
And they go, Its fucking perfect.
Now, the audience loves singing it.
Dont Stop Believin is also important to me.
The chorus is such a crazy arrangement when you think about it.
It didnt soar that high on the radio when we released it.
The way its structured is unusual its not your usual verse, chorus, verse, chorus.
It really is so cliche, what they considered a format for radio.
The song never got to the fucking chorus until the end!
It does a little symphonic instead.
It sounded to me like something that would happen in an orchestra.
I sped up the arpeggio and started playing around and realized,Oh, thats cool.
Because it actually sounded like a train!
So it came together like that, and then it came time for a little guitar solo.
I was going to implant it in their heads before it was even sung.
Guitar solo that doubles as the greatest endurance test
I have no signs of tendinitis.
I play almost every day, even when Im at home.
I play because thats how things dont freeze up on you.
Its a muscle; you have to use it.
I really dont practice scales.
I dont know scales; I never wanted to.
I play all by ear.
What I practice at home is just following the flow of whatever vibe Im in.
And then you have guitarists who are kind of jazz bros.
Some jazz cats can be really snooty though.
Someone will be like, Dude, what are you doing?
Youre playing the same chord in every song.
Every day you sound the same.
And I go, B.B.
King did the same, ever heard of him?
I fell into that a long time ago.
Youre just going to confuse people.
People know what you sound like, dont be afraid of sounding the same every time.
Now I have this style thats stuck with me, and he was correct.
Thats a hard thing to do and I dont see a lot of younger guitarists doing it.
I dont see a lot of personality.
You dont see that kind of voice coming out of people anymore.
Thats where I come from its a natural place and more of an organic blues background.
While we were down in this pandemic, I spent time experimenting a lot as a guitarist.
I consider myself a real musician.
Im always going to strive to get better and learn more because you never learn everything about any instrument.
You might as well just go and never venture to create any new stuff.
I know I can emulate myself.
I can play exactly what I did back in 1973.
I won in that regard.
Its just embedded in me.
So I strive to move to new places all the time because thats what motivates me with music.
Most endearing Steve Perry memory
We were very, very tight.
Im talking about a Journey trademark that Ive obtained, as weve never owned our own trademark.
All these years, many people lied to us.
My wife and I finally got to the bottom of it after investigating for years.
We were fought hard by everybody, but we managed to obtain the trademark.
So were talking about that and figuring out the future of that, but were talking.
I have great memories of when Steve and I first met.
We hung out all the time, man.
We were like brothers.
We spent a lot of nights out way too late doing things we shouldnt be doing.
We overindulged in a lot of stuff.
But bottom line, we had a really good time for many, many years.
Lots of enduring moments onstage and offstage.
He was a really funny guy.
I saw a fraction of a moment of it when we got together beforethe Rock Hall of Fame induction.
I managed to get into his room, which was locked down like Fort Knox.
We had a good hang in there.
I felt like I still knew this guy and we were still really great friends.
I felt good about what was going to partake on the stage.
Some people like to feel like theyre more important because they have to talk longer.
Or they feel like they dont get the attention they need so they want to talk longer.
Rating the Separate Ways video from 1 to 10 on the cringe scale
Oh my God!
You know what a lot of people dont understand?
This was the very beginning of MTV.
Nobody was making $200,000 videos or $500,000 videos or $3 million videos.
What a freakin rip-off.
I mean, thats what it became.
Who should we use?
I suggested the director Wayne Isham.
He came in and put together the storyboard.
It was going to be in New Orleans, on a pier.
The air guitar and keyboards are cheesy as hell.
I give it a 10 on the cringe scale.
Its so silly, man.
Journey was not a band that did well with videos that had story lines.
After the Fall was terrible.
Chain Reaction was a little more fun.
Steve and I were pushing each other around for that one, and Im in his face.
I think the only videos that really worked for Journey were when live concert footage was used.
It was like a live performance showing the audience, showing us onstage.
Thats the message its conveying its an uplifter for people who may be second-guessing themselves in their lives.
I absolutely watchedThe Sopranosduring its run.
I remember getting an email about using the song about six or so months before it aired.
They were thinking about using it but didnt give any context.
I honestly didnt think anything of it.
It just rocketed the tune to a whole different spectrum.
I mean, how could you ever even imagine that?
I thought the final scene was amazing.
I received a lot of phone calls that week, thats for sure.
We were on tour and hadnt had a song on the radio yet.
We looked at each other and laughed like hell.
I remember saying, I cant believe this.
We were both jumping up and down.
How beautiful is that?
