Journey frontman Steve Perry is back?

Steve Perry has performed live for the first time in 19 years, joining the Eels for an unbilled three-song set in St Paul, Minnesota. Journey’s reclusive former singer made his surprise comeback by singing two of his hits plus one of the Eels’ underground classics, It’s a Motherfucker. On Sunday night, at the Fitzgerald Theater, Eels frontman Mark Everett introduced Perry to his bewildered crowd. “This guy … hasn’t sung his songs for some 20, 25 years,” Everett said. “He walked away from it. Because it didn’t feel right … And for some reason only known to him, he feels like tonight in St Paul, Minnesota, it feels right. Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Perry.”

Perry, 65, entered wearing jeans and blazer, quipping, “Where you been all my life?” He immediately launched into the Eels’ plaintive, expletive-laden 2000 song, delivering its chorus with absolute conviction. “I love that song,” Perry explained after. “I’ve told [Mark] over and over again, ‘I love that song.’ When I first met him, I couldn’t believe [it] … [I said], ‘Someday, I want to sing that song.’ Tonight was the time I ever sang it.”

With the audience roaring its approval, Perry played two Journey songs: Open Arms from 1981 and Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ (1979).

Although he was once one of the most famous singers in the world, Perry appeared to retire from the music industry in the mid-90s, after releasing two solo albums. His last recording with Journey was Trial By Fire (1996). Since 2007, the band have toured with frontman Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer discovered by guitarist Neal Schon on YouTube.

Perry has long struggled with health issues: first a bad hip and then a “pretty substantial amount of arthritis”, as he told Billboard in 2011. “I live on anti-inflammatories.” But the singer recently indicated that he is working on a new solo album, and even opened the door to a Journey reunion. “We’re trying,” Perry told Artisan News in January. “It’s tough … [But] the older I get, the more I do realise how important what we had all together and how it worked.”

With album sales of 47m in the US alone, Journey are one of the bestselling rock groups of all time. Eels’ latest LP, The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, was released in April.

Video Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip4F9fGHZ00
Source: The Independent