Love and loss prompt Steve Perry to resume his singing career
Lost love reignites Steve Perry’s passion for music
A heart is not complete until it’s completely broken. And I’m telling you, my heart is completely broken, and it’s open again.
In the years after Steve Perry left Journey, he didn’t sing for anyone — not even for himself.
No songs in the shower, humming tunes on the radio or private concerts for family and friends. He was that burned out, despite owning one of the most powerful voices in rock ’n’ roll.
But a misstep in a relationship forced him to give an impromptu performance, albeit for one, while hiking in the mountains.
Perry recalled in a recent interview that he was in the doghouse with his girlfriend and was begging for forgiveness when she gave him an ultimatum — sing for her.
“I said, ‘Come on, you know I don’t do that, I haven’t done it in years. You know that,’” he said.
But wanting to salvage the relationship, he asked her for her request: It was Open Arms.
“I started singing it to her. And after I was done, she said ‘OK,’” he said. “So I was taken off the hook for it.”
That same girlfriend, Kellie Nash, is the reason he released his first album in almost 25 years, Traces, which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 albums earlier this month. It’s a surprising return from the man whose disappearance from the music scene seemed to be one of the few lasting things in pop music. For decades, Perry refused to make music; even when Journey was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Perry declined to sing with the band as they performed Don’t Stop Believin’.
But Nash, who had breast cancer, made him promise that if anything ever happened to her, he would not go further into his shell. When she died, he honoured her wish. And to his surprise, Perry found his passion for music again.
“A heart is not complete until it’s completely broken. And I’m telling you, my heart is completely broken, and it’s open again. But it’s open to emotion, whether it’s a rock song or a song about loss or just a breakup song,” the 69-year-old said.
“The album has all that in it. But it’s about having an open heart, I think.”
QWhen you left the music scene, was it a matter of a loss of love for music or performing and the “work” of it?
ABoth. It really was. I loved performing but it was wearing me out. I loved writing music and recording music and arranging music and coming up with these melody ideas that I thought were memorable, but they weren’t coming anymore. And the ones that were coming, I didn’t feel good about. So my mind told me it’s just time to stop, and the only solution I had was just to walk away. Q A
And you didn’t miss it?
I did not. I didn’t miss it because it was more uncomfortable to realize when I was doing it or trying to do it or even singing in the car by myself, I wasn’t feeling it. So if I’m not feeling it, I don’t miss it.
QWho is Kellie Nash to you, and how did she inspire this return?
AKellie was a girl I met that was fighting for her life with stage 4 cancer. But I really met her on a screen when I was hanging out with (director) Patty Jenkins because Patty Jenkins was doing a TV show called Five for Lifetime network. And she was in one of the scenes, and I asked Patty, “Who is this?” and she said “That’s Kellie Nash, she’s a PHD psychologist. You need to know one thing, she’s fighting for her life.” So in that moment, I decided, ‘Well maybe this is a bad idea.’ Then my heart said, ‘You need to go ahead and send that email.’ So I did. We went to dinner for the first time — six hours we were together, and we were inseparable.
QNow that you’ve fulfilled your promise to Kellie, has this reignited something ? Is more music in the works? A tour?
AI think that the next phase would be to confront live shows and if I’m gonna do those, and we’re talking about that now. Uncle Steve is no spring chicken you know, so we have to figure that out.
QFor Journey fans, would there ever be any possibility that you would ever perform with them again?
AI can only tell you what I’m doing now is a life-sustaining passion for me at my age. And it took me so long to find it again. I didn’t think it was ever going to come back again. And so I kinda, with certain protective reverence, I have right now to (do) that. And I don’t want to upset that apple cart. Because creative juices are so fragile. And I would say what I’m doing right now is moving forward and going in a direction that I’m really excited about, and I want to continue to do that.
QWhen you hear Journey, what memories come to mind?
AWell, I have a bit of a total recall memory bank that can haunt the living (expletive) out of me, unfortunately. And it does spark a lot of memories — some not so good, some great ... It’s been really nice to be able to hear that music from the outside looking in, ’cause forever I was only on the inside looking at what it was to make it, how we did it, how we put it together, and the struggles to get it to where it was and where it’s been all these years. They’re like paintings on the wall, you know, but now it’s able for me to finally, to look at the painting on the wall from the outside.