Herbie Herbert wrote:...The road is grueling on a voice, that's the hardest thing. And if you get sick you get sick. You lose your voice and you've got to power your way through it. There's just nothing you can do about it. It takes X amount of time to recover and man, trying to go through and get through gigs when you have laryngitis is just the worst. ...Yeah it's so hard on a singer and just brain damage, traumatizing is what it really is.
...Knocking 'em down hard and Steve Perry's voice was all broken up. So, you know, forget about it. It was just so revealing. That was in '91 at which point that day I hadn't seen him since 1986 Raised on Radio and that was five years. And what an ugly encounter that was with Steve Perry that day.
...Ok busted, the party's over, this ruse is up, now you're gonna have to try to get somebody who can really sing so you get Jeff Scott Soto without the benefit of the same crutches and help that Augeri had. He was just quickly and after a few dates in a row he was raw. Those songs will get you. They're very difficult to sing. Playing them in the original voice (key) is like murder on a voice.
...Despite the logic, the unavoidable logic, that if Steve Perry was still in the band, and I know that there's a giant public out there that would love nothing more, they're clueless to the fact that the guy can't sing anymore.
It would seem based on what Herbie has said here that all of the anger towards Steve Perry for not wanting to tour with Journey in the 90's has been unfounded. If the guy really cannot sing anymore (as Herbie admitted above), then how can you blame Steve Perry for that? As Herbie said, the high tenor range of the classic Journey songs are "murder on a voice."
Here's more of what Herbie had to say about the technological limitations back in the 80's that would have never allowed any help for Perry in regards to sampled backing tracks:
...I remember with Steve Perry we had a four night sellout at the Reunion Arena in Dallas and he really was in rough, rough, rough shape and it was the one time when I had to sit down and go 'Steve', it's horrendous, this is why the pressure is what it is, but we would put in suspense the settlement on this, what at the time was an obscenely big gross in rock 'n roll and until we returned and played the postponed fourth date we couldn't settle because all the deals were really tightly negotiated predicated on four days.
They were extraordinary low deals but they were justified by the band playing four nights sold out in the round and all the ancillary income from parking and all would be frozen if he couldn't perform. [b]And so, somehow he got through that performance and in those days, when that happened, the crutches hadn't been developed. They hadn't come up with the Akai Samplers and the various technologies that would allow for it.
It seems pretty clear that the writing was on the wall regarding Perry's vocal limitations - at least by the mid-90's. Since then, many of us have wondered why Perry never returned to Journey... or to music in any form. If I ever had any doubt as to why Perry didn't want to tour with Journey after TBF was released, it's all but gone now.
