most difficult steve perry songs to cover

With 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. In its ‘80s heyday, Journey was a commercial powerhouse and a critical piñata. “I thought I had a pretty good heart,” he said, “but a heart isn’t really complete until it’s completely broken.” 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.Īnd 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: Over the course of a long midafternoon lunch - well-done souvlaki, hold all the starches - Perry, now 69, explained why he left, and why he’s returned. With his forthcoming album, “Traces,” due in early October, he’s breaking 20 years of radio silence. 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 Perry walked away again, from Journey and from the spotlight. 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 Perry took a hiatus, effectively dissolving the band he’d helped make famous.

Perry and the band’s lead guitarist and co-founder, Neal Schon, began writing concise, uplifting hard rock songs that showcased Perry’s clean, powerful alto, as operatic an instrument as pop has ever seen. In 1977, an ambitious but middlingly successful San Francisco jazz-rock band called Journey went looking for a new lead singer and found Perry, then a 28-year-old veteran of many unsigned bands. Everyone wants to know where you’ve been. Everyone is excited to see you, and no one can quite believe it. This is how it goes when you are Steve Perry.

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

Most difficult steve perry songs to cover