Well,this Dudek dude
was this close to be in Journey... 
Les Dudek:"Around this same time I was contacted by Herbie Herbert, who was telling me he wanted to get the two "guitar banditos of the Bay Area" together to form this new band, to do the dual guitar slam thing.
Basically he wanted me and Neal Schon to be in this band he was going to call Journey. He already had the name and everything.
The one thing he didn't have was Perry.
Steve Perry wasn't in there yet, so it literally went down like this: I was invited to go down to Columbia Records, which was right across the street from where Herbie wanted me to come for the first Journey rehearsal.
So I went to the rehearsal and Greg Rolie was there, Ross Valory, Neal Schon, Aynsley Dunbar. They were really into this heavy jazz-fusion kind of stuff.
After playing a couple of tunes I told them I had to go across the street for a minute, and I walked into Columbia records.
As it turned out, the President and Vice-President of Columbia records offered me a solo record deal right there on the spot. So now I had to decide what to do...
Go with Journey? Do this solo record?
In one week's time, I went from doing absolutely nothing to having to decide whether to go with Columbia Records and have Boz Scaggs produce me, or I could go with Capitol Records and have Steve Miller produce me, or I could join up with this new band called Journey.
I guess because of my affiliation wit Boz, I had been playing with him the longest, I decided to go ahead and start doing my own records.
Had Perry been hanging out that day, I probably would have done the Journey thing.
I thought that Perry brought that whole unit together with that voice, man. Rolie was a good singer, but let's face it, not like Perry.
Perry was just a great vocalist."
I giggled when I read this...At the same time it made me realize that what's meant to be is meant to be.Always.
The full lenght interview with Dudek is here:XMFan (check out the pic with Neal "Afro" Schon!)
Available @ 
