Journey guitarist Neal Schon doesn’t know why former singer Steve Perry won’t take his calls.
And he admits the band considered hiring Michael Bolton as their new frontman after Perry’s 1987 departure – but didn’t think about it for long.
Schon takes part in a question-answer session in Classic Rock Magazine No.176, on sale now.
He says: “The last time I spoke to Steve face-to-face was when we did the Hollywood Walk of Fame eight years ago. It was good – but there were so many reporters around, it had to be. To this day I don’t understand why we can’t just pick up the phone and talk.”
Bolton’s name came up but was quickly dropped because Schon had previously recorded a track with the singer.
“Michael was a little eccentric,”he reflects. “I played the solo in his version of Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay, and Bolton made me re-do my solo about 200 times.
“We thought about him for a second. Michael definitely had pipes – he was pretty bionic when I worked with him. But even then there was a lot of personality clashing. I didn’t feel we would get too far, that’s all I can tell you.”
Another former collaborator, vocalist John Waite, who worked with Schon in Bad English, recently described Journey’s music as “super-white.”
The guitarist says: “I got a good chuckle out of it. I mean, John is a great guy. I love John. I loved working with him when I did. But to say Journey is ultra-white is really off the wall.”
Reacting to Waite’s statement he’d rather “shoot himself” than regroup with Bad English, Schon says: ” I think maybe John has got a few chips on his shoulder. Whatever’s not right in his life, I think he should change it.”
In the full interview he discusses the band’s battle to recover from Perry’s final departure, his $50m lawsuit over starting a relationship with reality TV star Michaele Salahi, and seeing an alleged picture of his penis on national TV.
Read the full interview in the current edition of Classic Rock, in which Schon discusses the band’s battle to recover from Perry’s final departure, his $50m lawsuit over starting a relationship with reality TV star Michaele Salahi, and seeing an alleged picture of his penis on national TV. Classic Rock 176 is on sale now. Get it on your iPad and iPhone here:http://goo.gl/z4Yhu (in the UK) or here http://goo.gl/YUnR9 (for the US).
-Classic Rock
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