Steve Perry on covering Journey’s ‘Faithfully’ with Willie Nelson: ‘You’d be silly not to drop in with him’
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For a Bay Area band famous for selling out stadiums with immaculately dramatic ’80s rock, Journey had some country roots too.
“I was raised in the San Joaquin Valley,” the band’s former singer Steve Perry told The Times. “My grandfather had two dairy farms. I remember getting ice cream made from that fresh cream at the top of that vat. I saw the commitment that farmers have to what they do.”
That might explain a bit of Perry’s new single, a duet with country godfather Willie Nelson, where the pair revisits “Faithfully,” one of Journey’s finest, high-lonesome ballads with a weary tenderness that leans into their respective ages (92 for Nelson, 76 for Perry).
The single, out today, benefits Nelson’s longtime go-to charity Farm Aid. But it’s an unexpected return to the Journey canon for Perry, who left the group for good in 1998 and then disappeared from public life for two decades, give or take a prime “Sopranos” sync.
The Times spoke to Perry, from his San Diego-area home, about his long history with Willie Nelson and country music, how Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” almost wrecked him and if he’ll ever have a tour or follow-up to 2018’s comeback LP “Traces” in the works.
This new version of “Faithfully” with Willie was really moving. It takes on new gravity to hear this song from your perspective later in life. How has the the meaning of this song changed for you over the last 40 years?
I think that the lyrics are so sound that they’re timeless. But I must tell you that Willie Nelson set a tone when he sang it. That launched me in his direction, of how to interpret those lyrics and sing with him. It sets the tone and the watermark. Willie is the Sinatra of country music. When you sing laid back like that, like Tony Bennett does, he just says it like he feels it, and he puts it where he feels it. It takes a minute to really fall into that relaxed emotional expression. It was a new experience for me to sing with such a legend like this guy.
You can hear the weight of everything that’s happened in your life over the decades. There’s a lot of personal loss behind lyrics like “Wonderin’ where I am lost without you / Being apart ain’t easy on this love affair / I’m forever yours, faithfully.” Do you feel like the sound of your voice carries any different meaning now than it did 40 years ago?
I think that back then, the interpretation of what it should be was a different approach. It was a band sound. It was sort of an R&B rock ballad thing, and I think that that was the template to drop into it and drive it vocally. This one is completely the other way. Wherever Willie goes, it’s so definitive that you would be silly not to drop in there with him.
This is your second country duet in recent years, after you sang with Dolly Parton on her “Rockstar” album. Why is that such a fun format for you now?
At this point in my life, I’m really enjoying doing anything that feels just emotionally expressive to me. It’s a new freedom for me. You know, Willie used to come to the shows in Texas when we were touring in the early ’80s, that’s where I first met him. When we were doing the song “Faithfully,” I swear to you, back then, I always wanted to hear his voice on it. This is the 40th anniversary of Farm Aid, so it was the perfect time to just for us to be together, and it’s a bucket list thing to sing with Willie Nelson.
You were raised in the San Joaquin Valley, I imagine that’s a cause close to your heart.
Farm Aid is close to my heart, because I know how difficult it is to be a farmer. You’ve really got to love it.
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You famously spent decades out of public life after leaving Journey. But at the behest of your late partner Kellie Nash, you eventually recorded a solo album “Traces” in 2018, and put out some Christmas records more recently. Does being in public feel easier now than it did, say, a decade ago?
That’s an interesting question. I think I really do enjoy the solitude and privacy that my life has right now. I enjoy my studio. I’m staring at my speakers right now, and it’s an environment that is so creative and so fruitful with all these other ideas that I have coming that need to be finished. So, I don’t know. I think I really enjoy committing to this creative new buzz that I’m falling into with new music, new writing, new recordings.
Whether it’s two years or two decades, how do you know when it’s the right time for you to reemerge?
I think the emotion just came back to me to write and sing. I wasn’t quite sure it was going to, because I had worked so hard for so many years touring and writing, and that’s when I left Journey. I didn’t even know I needed a sabbatical. I just took one. Then music returned to my soul. Some of the early music of my youth started to become something that rescued me emotionally, like when I was young. It came back to me and rescued me again. My dad was a singer, and he used to sing around the house, and I got to sing with him on the Christmas record — I found a cassette of him singing, so we put that together. I think it’s always just been part of my life.
Does writing or listening to music affect you in different ways now than it did as a child, or when you joined Journey?
Songwriting is the most important thing to me, whether it’s the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or, more recently, I love this guy Leon Thomas. He’s got a song called “Answer Your Phone.” When I hear him sing, it just resonates with what feels right, because the songwriting he’s doing. “Answer the phone / I need to talk to you” — it’s an honest emotion in the lyric.
I think that’s always been something I’ve heard in country music too. Growing up in the San Joaquin Valley, with the Everly Brothers or Willie, there’s just a certain believability to their performance and songwriting that I’ve always reached for, no matter where I was.
It does seem like there are some young guys like Teddy Swims or Benson Boone that are drawing from your vocal style. Do you feel like young singers today are rediscovering the pleasure and nuance in the way you perform?
I can’t attribute it to anybody saying “I think I like this guy, Steve Perry,” but I’ll tell you what, when Teddy Swims is singing “Lose Control,” when I first heard that, I had to pull the car over. The track is fantastic. His vocals are fantastic.
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Hey, that was nice, August. But yes, it’s songwriting, songwriting, songwriting. There’s certain newer artists like Leon Thomas and Leon Bridges that really are paying attention.
Any desire to get on the road with all this new material?
You know, I really don’t have any plans for that at this moment. I’m really having so much fun recording, writing, mixing and mastering at this moment that I just don’t want to break up the flow I’m in right now.
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Your music has always had a unique place in film and drama history — the “Sopranos” final shot, obviously, but also inspiring the play “Rock of Ages” and your friendship with Patty Jenkins, who used your music in “Monster.” Ever given any thought to how you might want to handle a Journey biopic?
I don’t have any plans for it. It’s hard to imagine what that might be.
You reconnected with your old bandmates at your Rock Hall induction in 2017. I know they’ve been through some recent personnel challenges, but what’s your relationship with the band these days?
I mean, we’re all good. We were great together. I think the material and our accomplishments stand the test of time, which proves that we were good together. I’m really proud of what we accomplished together, because we were kind of like soldiers in the trenches trying to do something together. We knew we could do what we believed in.
But I really love new music, and when I’m writing here in the studio, I try to remove myself so I can continually chase after these new ideas, and not be influenced by anything except these new ideas wherever they show up. That’s the thing that has always been a goal, to come up with the definitive version of something you’ve never heard before, the true struggle to make it that believable.
There’s also this timeless, yearning quality to your work in Journey. It’s hard to imagine a world where those songs didn’t already exist. I think that’s why filmmakers are so attracted to them, or why “Faithfully” can sound compelling today.
You just nailed it. The believability of something that never existed before, but you have a familiarity like it did exist. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s reaching and never giving up, reaching for that definitive version that makes you or everyone else feel like they’ve heard it before.
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