Stephen Perry is someone that many of us remember from the 80s and all of the songs that he was responsible for. He was the frontman of the rock band, Journey, and he had quite an influence on stage.
At one point in his life, Steve Perry decided to walk away from Journey and from music. He then fell in love with a woman who had a terminal illness at that point in his life, and his life took a turn that he wasn’t expecting.
He may have stepped away from music for quite some time but he eventually returned and became a part of pop culture once again. Even before he left music, however, he was responsible for the greatest rock song of all time, ‘Don’t Stop Believin”.
When he spoke about leaving music, Perry said: “I would say I was completely burned out, with touring, recording, writing music incessantly. I was having an emotional PTSD breakdown in music.”
He wasn’t saying that he was complaining but he didn’t have the deep connection that he had for music, such as he did when he was younger.
When he joined Journey, he had something specific in mind. He once said: “I just wanted to write music with the guys that mattered, that people would love and embrace and take into their hearts. There’s nothing else that meant more to me than to be part of that.”
He led the band and the 1980s to incredible heights but in the 90s, he walked away from it. He was exhausted and a hip injury made things even worse. He admitted: “It was my heart. It became a group decision, major surgery, and I wasn’t very happy about that. So I chose to put it off and decided when to do it, and they checked out some other singers, and we went our separate ways.”
In order to keep going, the band chose a new frontman, Arnel Pineda. He had a voice that was very similar to Steve Perry, which was important because Perry was away from the scene completely.
Perry said that he just wanted to move forward and the decision wasn’t easy. It was tough adjusting to living outside of the music industry but he said that going back to his hometown helped.
That is when he met a woman who would be very close to him, Kellie Nash. She was a psychologist featured in a made-for-TV film about cancer, Five.
Marriage was not something Perry was interested in. He admitted: “I was too scared of it after what I watched my parents go through. And I was around a band that went through several divorces in the course of our success. I saw them lose half of everything multiple times.”
Perry had seen a copy of the documentary, and when she appeared, it was love at first sight. He asked his friend if she had her email, and that is when Perry was told that her cancer had returned and spread.
Perry had thought about ignoring his feelings but he had already been through a lot of loss. He decided not to walk away, sent the email, and met for dinner with Nash.
He said: “You want to know the truth? I’ve not said this to anybody yet: I believed our love would cure her cancer. I really did. We sat in our tiny apartment in New York — a very expensive small box — and she said: ‘This might take me, but it’ll never be able to touch our love'”.
Eventually, Nash did pass away and it changed Perry on a very deep level. He said: “When someone who has stage 4 cancer turns to you and says, ‘I love you,’ you’re gonna feel it for the first time, which is what happened.”
They held onto hope for a while but by the fall of 2012, she had declined seriously. Perry said: “One night she said that, ‘If something was to ever happen to me, promise that you won’t go back into isolation, for I think that would make this all for naught.’ I had to make the promise, and I said, ‘I promise'”
She died in December 2012 and he mourned her loss for two years. During that time, he also returned to the stage and his first studio album in more than 20 years.
Perry is sure that Nash would have appreciated him returning the music but he wasn’t planning on touring. Fans would also ask if he was reuniting with Journey but he was more focused on what was happening at the moment.
Something else that he made clear was that his return to music was not about making money. It was his passion. He said: “Maybe it took a broken heart to get there, a completely broken heart. “Yes! Yes, it is still broken. But it’s open. That’s okay.”
We appreciate that he has had quite a journey in his life. We love his music and we wish him many years of happiness and success.
