That’s because the people I admired as a kid, vocally, they did that.
That’s been a challenge my whole life to try to reach for such performances that stand alone. “But when it comes down to it, these new alt-versions and sketches show how the songs that were stripped down began, just chorded versions, melody, and vocal pockets in the phrasing and the lyrics. “From a songwriting standpoint, the original seeds when the song is written are the basic compass that you use to follow the song to a bigger production, like Traces was when it was first released,” he says. Perry has always gravitated to the simple power of lyrics and melody, especially when they’re expressed in the right way. And I wanted everyone else to hear them sort of stripped-down.” I’ve always felt that about these songs, because I believe in them. If you can play that song with an acoustic guitar and sing the melody and sing the lyric, and it just works, then most likely it’s a real song. “I was doing that, and I loved all the elements so much, separated out, that I told my engineer Thom Flowers afterwards, ‘I think at some point we should probably do these acoustically, because the songs are so sound melodically and lyrically.’ Because they’re songs, I want them to be stripped-down and naked and pass the campfire test. “At the last minute, I asked the video crew, ‘Why don’t you come in and I’ll show you what these multi-tracks sound like?’ I started soloing certain elements like the background vocal stacks of ‘No Erasin’ or the lead vocal of ‘Most Of All.’ “I had finished the record and we were doing an interview in my studio,” he recalls. Part of the impetus behind revisiting Traces, which was his first release in a quarter-century, was to spotlight what Perry thought was an especially sturdy set of songs. What is the success of all these groups without songwriting? You gotta have a song first.” But if you don’t have a song, you’re lost. “You can have vocal abilities, you can have a great band. “I don’t think that people have even looked at the songwriting aspect,” he says of his career.
In an interview with American Songwriter to discuss the recently-released Traces (Alternate Versions & Sketches), featuring reimagined versions of songs from 2018’s Traces, Perry makes it clear that those other two personas couldn’t have been possible without the songwriting first. But it’s probably time that Steve Perry the songwriter shares in some of those accolades. It’s the singer’s first album since his last solo effort, For the Love of Strange Medicine, in 1994.Steve Perry the singer and Steve Perry the former member of Journey get a lot of press. The track appears on Perry’s new album Traces, which will be released on 5 October (18). “She listened to it and then she quickly grabbed the remote and restarted the song… and got halfway through the second listen and said, ‘George would have loved this version’… I got the blessing.” “I was so nervous, because when you’re in the George Harrison environment, you just feel him there – and it’s Olivia!” he recalls. Perry visited Olivia at her office and played her the song. And she gets back to me immediately it was so beautiful.”
“All of a sudden I’m emailing Olivia Harrison and I’m trying to be very careful with every question: ‘Can I please talk to you? I just wanna play you this song’. So he comes back and he says, ‘I spoke to her. “A friend of mine, Steve Ferrone, is very close to Olivia Harrison, and I said, ‘Someday, I’d love to play the song for her and get her blessing. “I just heard it as a bigger song, because it is a bigger song – George Harrison wrote an amazing song. “I heard it (song) in my head as an R&B song, like I just recorded it, when I was a kid,” Steve tells New York City’s Q104.3 radio station. The singer first heard the track years ago and always dreamed of reworking it as an R&B tune, but he wanted to make sure Harrison’s family was OK with his rendition before going public with it, and recruited Tom Petty’s former drummer Steve Ferrone to help him. Former Journey star Steve Perry made sure he had the blessing of George Harrison’s widow before he added his version of the former Beatle’s I Need You on his comeback album.
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