Following Journey's 1986-87 tour, Steve Perry disappeared. He vanished. Not only had Journey disbanded, but its frontman had become MIA.
"At the end of that tour, I honestly had to stop," he says, armed with the objectivity of one who has carefully observed these events from a safe distance of about seven and a half years. "I was suffering from serious fatigue, job burnout, and all sorts of other things happening in my personal life as the result of the 10-year burn." So, in essence, Steve Perry set out in search of Steve Perry. "I had to get off the merry-go-round," he admits. "And there is no easy way to get off when everybody else is on it with you. But it really felt that my life depended upon it."
In 1992, Steve hooked up with keyboardist/guitarist Paul Taylor, and things started to really click. "He had a sense of melodics in his chord changes that I had not heard before, and I liked a lot," Perry says of his new collaborator. A few months later, Randy Jackson (A VP/A&R at Columbia and himself an alumni of Journey) gave Steve a tape that had come across his desk. The demo was from a guitar player by the name of Lincoln Brewster.
In early 1993, Steve began recording the album. Perry and his band (along with a combination of Mike Porcardo, Larry Kimpel on bass, and Todd Jensen) entered the studio to begin recording For The Love Of Strange Medicine. It's his second solo outing, and ultimately comes 10 years after 1984's double-platinum Street Talk which produced four hit singles, including the #3 smash "Oh Sherrie" and "Foolish Heart."
"After eight years of absence from the music scene I must say that I never knew how much I loved something so much until I let it go. It feels good to be back." Back he was! The album, "For The Love Of Strange Medicine", was released on July 18, 1994, leaving him 3 months before this 6 month Tour would begin...
Continued next week...
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