ML: You’ve been out of the limelight since ’98. I actually came back to LA and started doing phone calls. ML: Good city to be in to be promoting a Houston 1981 DVD. It felt good to be wanted, so next thing I knew, I’m flying to Houston for game 3 (which lasted 5 hours and 45 minutes) and I was on another planet when we won that one and game four they won and swept ’em. You got to go to Houston and I had to think about that because they had booked me for all these interviews to promote this DVD. I got a phone call and went out there and was there for game one and two and was getting ready to leave and they said you can’t go.
I just couldn’t believe it and they adopted the ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ song back in July as their mascot and when they won and were going to the World Series their communications director wanted to try and get me to game one. SP: “Except for the World Series with the White Sox.” ML: And you’ve also been away from the public for quite awhile. ML: You’ve been away from the band for quite awhile. SP: “I don’t know if my heart can handle it.” ML: Will you be doing more DVDs like this? The interviews and all that was painful too. So, I got Allen Sides and we did the 5.1 and stereo mixes together then I did the editing. Since, I produced the first compilation DVD. If I do anything, I’m going to fight for those performances to be heard and the band is out doing what they’re doing and I was approached by Sony to do it, so I said absolutely. I’m a fighter for the songs and a fighter for the performances and I refuse to let them be evaporated into time. When I first heard the tapes and I remember that show, it was too painful to think what it once was, but the only thing I could not do was. SP: “The answer is yes – it was too much of a heartache to look back. Why did you accept to get involved with the project? Wouldn’t it be too much of a heartache? ML: Let’s talk about the DVD – Live in Houston 81. SP: “Yeah, but how about in the spring? Is that OK?” ML: Maybe, you’ll come back up here on vacation or for a show? In Quebec we stayed at the Chateau Frontenac and my big thrill was having onion soup at the Chateau Frontenac.” They hired me as a singer and I was one of their frontmen and we ended up in Quebec and Montreal.
I was on tour one time up in Canada with a band called The Privilege when I was a teenager. Steve Perry: “Talk to me – where are you?” In this rare and candid interview, he looks back at what was and what may be. By the fall of 2005, he was back (sort of) doing a limited amount of print-only press to help promote the Journey: Live in Houston 1981 Escape Tour DVD that he produced. Both fans and radio programmers alike couldn’t wait to hear his latest (be it with Journey or solo) multi-million selling song of a generation, but for almost a decade his voice has been silenced due mainly to a seemingly self-imposed exile from the music business. At one time, Steve Perry was THE voice of melodic rock.