retroBlog

melodicrock.com recently posted a great interview with former Journey manager Herbie Herbert. the music industry giant never minces words and gives it to you plain and straight. Herbert confirms a lot of what Journey fans have been wondering these last few years in the interview including the Steve Augeri tape-gate, Steve Perry losing his vocal ability and his thoughts on Jeff Scott Soto and current vocalist Arnel Pineda. it’s a great read. head on over to melodicrock for the full interview.

here are just a couple of interesting quotes from Herbert:

On Steve Augeri: …And the thing is, the whole time that you were rooting and rooting and rooting for Augeri I knew that there was problems. Not because I was going to shows but because right at the beginning my company shot the Vegas show that was put out on Direct TV. And the original footage of that they insisted, you know, people at my company insisted that I come and watch. And I go, please I wanna come and watch Journey on video, what the fuck? And they said no you have to set and watch this for a minute. I go why, you know, it was like torture. So I sat down and then it was torture. I said what’s going on here? I go man he’s really, he’s missing everything. He struggled so badly that night you can’t believe it. There was hardly anything that could be saved in the lead vocal and the problem was to me at that particular time was Neal Schon was grimacing when he would miss these notes.

On Steve Perry and vocal range: ..you know if you’re a half step down from a major to a minor or whatever, you know, it’s a significant change in the tonality and everything else. And for whatever reason, the band, Journey has always had an obsession with playing the songs in the original key. 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. … Journey performed (at Bill Graham’s wake in ‘91), you take these songs and you get a tape of that and they took them down two whole steps. I mean, this is from E to A. They passed G to A, you know what I mean? 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…

On Jeff Scott Soto: He has much more of an alto voice. There was a lot of material, especially Raised on Radio material like I’ll Be Alright Without You that he might have done really well on but if you’re gonna try to do the really high songs like You’ve Got Something to Hide or La Do Da or whatever, I can’t recall, I went and saw them in concert and there was a bunch of material that was so far out of his reach he was just as bad as Augeri at his worst so you can’t. If you make a change it’s gotta be an upgrade. Kevin Chalfant would have been a much better choice at that point.

that’s Herbie Herbert for you. ya just gotta love ‘em!

Tags: Journey