A General, Warm Melancholy

It's one thing to regard an elderly celebrity or acknowledge when one passes, but it takes a lifetime of fandom — or at least of frequent regard — to really appreciate the contribution to your life a certain person has had, and the effect you experience when that person is revealed to be, simply, human.

These thoughts crept up on me during a recent concert I attended by the Temptations and the Four Tops. I was a big fan of neither group growing up, but each group had several hits that crossed over into the world of music that reached me during my childhood and teen years. Each group now has only one surviving original member; Otis Williams of the Temptations is 77, and Abdul "Duke" Fakir of Four Tops is 83. With younger, more agile talent keeping each group moving, it was a delightful show.

Perhaps it is just a middle-age thing, but I found myself fascinated and somewhat saddened by these old dudes up on the stage. Immensely talented and immeasurably fortunate, they chased and captured fortune and fame through their lives, but they couldn't outrun time. I found myself regretting that I hadn't followed their careers more closely.

But that got me to thinking about careers I did follow. One in particular is that of Steve Perry, most famously the lead singer of the rock band, Journey. I suppose I didn't so much follow his career so much as I was acutely aware of it because I am such a fan.

I didn't know much about Journey before 1981, when their album of that year, Escape, caught my attention. All I knew about them was their hit songs that had been played on local radio for only the whole of my teen years to that point. What I didn't realize was that, despite being a band since the early 1970s, they weren't a phenomenon until Mr. Perry came along in 1978 and gave them lyrical and vocal prominence. Of course, also little to my knowledge, I became a true fan of Journey just about at the peak of their fame, and about the middle point of Steve Perry's musical arc.

I wasn't much into music as a teen. Perhaps the only record I owned outright, the only record I listened to in my childhood that hadn't been handed down from my older siblings, was "Bohemian Rhapsody," by Queen, which I had purchased on 45 rpm single in 1975, when it was still in regular rotation on the local radio stations. I was 11 years old. Then, in my junior and senior years in high school, popular music truly started speaking to me. I remember asking for — and receiving — three distinctive albums for Christmas, 1981: Dream Police, by Cheap Trick; Permanent Waves by Rush; and Journey's Escape. Mixed in during that time was access to my siblings' handed down albums for already classic rock standards, and my formal introduction to/discovery of the Beatles.

After that, the first group I followed was Journey. In 1983 I breathlessly awaited the release of their new album, Frontiers. When my favorite radio station, after having played their new single, "Separate Ways...Worlds Apart" from Frontiers, for weeks on the radio, switched without mention to the album version of the song, which has a longer vocal/instrumental interlude after the last verse, I had a fan-girl type meltdown!

While in the US Air Force and earning my own money, I back-collected their offerings from their beginnings as an off-shoot from Santana (singer/keyboardist Gregg Rolie; guitarist Neal Schon), and into the Steve Perry era, connecting the dots to Escape.

With the entire library in my possession, I noticed between Departure and Frontiers a gradual deterioration in the overall quality of Perry's voice, and a distinct reduction in, if not his vocal range, then his willingness to go there.

I was a reluctant fan of Steve Perry's 1984 solo album, Street Talk. Reluctant because, shouldn't Steve be working on the next Journey album? Fan, because, dammit, there were some good songs on that album!

Then, in 1986, Journey released Raised On Radio. Indicated by the title, alone, there was trouble. It broke from their long tradition of one-word, themed album titles, certainly since the beginning of the Perry era: Infinity (1978), Evolution (1979), Departure (1980), Escape, Frontiers. Perry's voice was yet more scratchy, and gone altogether were the stratospheric high notes for which he was famous. Then, in the album liner notes, there was the photo of the band: Perry, keyboardist Jonathan Cain, and Schon, the only original member of what had always been a 5-man group. The list of credits for each song revealed the other longtime members abandoning ship and being replaced by studio musicians during the creation of the album. And it sounded more like a Steve Perry album than Journey.

And then there was silence. Behind the scenes there was turmoil and personal strife between the members. Publicly, there were rumors: "Steve Perry has throat cancer" had the strongest legs and persisted for a long time.

And then, 1995 brought Trial By Fire, the first Journey album in nine years! Perry's voice sounded even worse. But, the more-than-one-word title aside, the new album heralded to me the long-awaited return of Journey to the radio, to the arena, to rock and roll prominence.

They officially broke up shortly after the album's release.

And that was the last anyone, for the most part, heard of Steve Perry.

Until 2017.

The internet went abuzz when Perry made a surprise appearance with a band called The Eels at a small Minneapolis, Minnesota, venue. Performing in the band's encore, Perry sang an Eels song, and then two Journey standards, "Lights," and "Don't Stop Believin'." It was his first stage appearance anywhere in 25 years.

In 2018, Journey was inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Perry spoke on behalf of the band in their acceptance, but declined to perform with them out of respect for their current lead singer, of whom he spoke glowingly in recorded interviews after the ceremony. Then, later in the year, he surprised the music world by releasing a new solo album, Traces, written in the aftermath of the death of his girlfriend, who had succumbed to cancer.

In the collection of mostly mellow, reflective tunes, Perry, now age 70, retains the classic tone of his voice, but it is clearly tattered from the overuse and abuse in his heyday, and from lack of use after he stepped away from the business in the 1990s, not to mention his age.

Seventy years old. As I have mentioned in this blog before, celebrities who step away from — or who are otherwise shunned by — the spotlight don't age in my mind, so when one whose voice still rings pure in my memory and every time I spin one of his old tunes appears suddenly old, it is quite a shock, as it is often just hearing one's current age.

In moments such as these, I'm filled with a melancholy that's hard to shake. Is it their glory years I mourn, or my own? Will their music — or anyone's music, for that matter — ever make me feel like I did that day Frontiers was released?

I felt a brief spark when I learned of, and downloaded, and listened to Traces because I am still a fan, after all, but nothing was ignited.

Maybe it's maturity, or maybe it's just the result of getting old: there are a few sparks, even fewer fires, but, mainly, a general, warm melancholy.

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Jalopy

A thought occurred to me this week and, lo! And behold! It was a blog-worthy thought.

I harken back to the days of my adolescence when I would see an old “classic” car driving down the road, either in sad shape as it had rolled on and on with nary a thought to its upkeep, or one of the lucky ones that had been rescued from the cancer of rust and decay, and restored to or beyond its original luster. People of a certain age know to what I refer. The classics. The ’55 Chevrolet Classic or ’57 Chevy Bel Air, the Ford Fairlane...just about any car from the 1950s that teenagers and gear-heads of the post-Vietnam War era would transform in their garages from old cars to road glitz.

A restored '57 Chevy (1957 Chevrolet Bel Air).

I was 21 years old in 1985. I never drove one of those classic old cars, never got more than a gaping glimpse at the interior of one of them, feeling fortunate that I was able on a few occasions to stick my head through an open window to look at the ancient dashboard styling or the impossibly sprawling, skinny steering wheel; at the strange knobs and levers. To my eye, these cars were primitive compared to the cars belonging to family members that I was allowed to ride in or drive at the time. 


(A brief aside… when I was a small child — perhaps in the early 1970s — I would play in Uncle Frank’s big old Buick, which may have been from the 1950s, but I had no clue then of the significance of the car’s age.

Uncle Frank's Buick looked a lot like this one.)

When I looked these cars over, I was overcome with a kind of awe. What must it have been like to drive these things back in the day? They were so huge! Were they difficult to handle? Tough to steer? The sense of a bygone era, a time before my time, would fill me with the yearning to go back 30 years in time, from the 1980s to the 1950s, just to see what it was like then.

This week I was waiting to turn onto a busy highway when I saw a “boat” from the 1980s drive past me. Maybe it was from the 1970s, as it looked much like the 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass pictured here.

I’ll place the car in the 1980s, as that’s when I would have been most aware of such a car.

As it zoomed past me — in seemingly much better condition than the vehicle pictured — that blog-worthy thought occurred to me: that car is [at least] 30 years old.

It may not seem such a blog-worthy thought, but when set beside the thought of the 30-year-old cars of my youth, a disconnect occurs. As the 1980-ish Olds drove past me, I saw just an old, gas-guzzling tank, whereas 30 years ago I was filled with awe at the sight of a 30-year-old car.

The difference? Well, of course, just about every car from the 1950s is viewed as a classic, even the marketing bombs (Edsel, anyone?). I swear, if even the smallest handful of the most obscure automotive failure were manufactured, there is someone today who is an absolute fanatic about it, and owns three of them. Or thirty. Very few examples from the 1970s and ‘80s are viewed so warmly. "Planned obsolescence” — the manufactured flaws and weaknesses that were designed to kill a car by the time it reached 75,000 miles in an effort to generate repeat sales (remember 5-digit-only odometers?) — was an endearing, if unknown at the time, feature of our beloved cars of the ‘50s, but by the 1970s and ‘80s, it was killing our nation’s auto industry because the manufacturers of our imported Japanese and German cars weren’t interested in seeing their product rattle into heaps of rolling junk inside of 10 years, and neither were American auto consumers any more.

But more viscerally, I think the lack of awe at seeing a 30-year-old rolling throwback cruise by me was due, simply, to familiarity. In that Olds (or whatever it was) I saw an old beast that I had probably ridden in, either with a family member or with high school friends on a Friday night after pizza at Aurelio’s. There was nostalgia. It was “my” era. With a car of the 1950s, for me, there is no nostalgia, just a mystique, a wonder about what it was like to ride in such a car back then. With the ’77 Olds, I know what it was like. I knew what the various knobs were for. I knew how it handled. And I was never impressed.

After it passed by, though — and after I had the fleeting thought that became this post — I was rather impressed that the heap was still rolling after all these years. Like its classic predecessors, there probably aren’t too many left on the road...due not to the fact that few have survived the currents of time, but more probably due to apathy.

Impressed, yes, and hopeful that whoever was driving it was bringing it to his garage somewhere, and was that evening going to begin his labor, and soon that heap would once again be road glitz.



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