Author: wamdiness

The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 are far more than a model number revision. These wireless wonders sound sensational for the price, and boast a stack of innovations that reward where it counts – in your ears. Battery life is good, noise cancelling is more than up to everyday use, and they’re as at home with Cream as they are Hot Milk. They’re the best Bowers & Wilkins over-ears to date.

The Px7 S3 is the latest active noise cancelling wireless headphone from Bowers & Wilkins. While it’s the third iteration of the Px7, there are significant upgrades which make this an enticingly fesh proposition from a brand famed for its recording studio affiliation.

With an overhauled design and new internal architecture, some might even argue that these are Bowers & Wilkins most advanced headphone to date. If you’re looking for headphones able to do justice to both airy Prog and three-cord thrash, they could be right up your street.

Design

Noticeably slimmer than their predecessor, the Px7 S3 are lovely headphones to wear. Weight distribution is good, and the notorious B&W clamping force has been mellowed for a more forgiving, all-day fit.

Build quality is also reassuringly premium. The ear cups are soft vegan PU leather, and there are minor improvements to the headband and arm mechanism. The latter pivots effortlessly but doesn’t fold down.

Features

There’s a lot that’s fresh about these head-huggers. Bowers & Wilkins may have traditionally lagged behind rivals when it comes to noise cancellation technology, but that’s been largely addressed here.

The Px7 S3 employs a total of eight microphones. Four are used to monitor and neutralise ambient noise, each angled to maximise environmental data capture, while two more measure the output of each driver; the final pair are dedicated to call duty.

It’s this choreography that gives the Px7 S3 its ability to muffle everything from general chit chat to more noisy commutes. The Quick Action button on the left hand cup steps you through the three ANC options: On, Off and Pass through. I’d hesitate to suggest the headphones are class leading when it comes to noise cancellation, but they’re now so near the best of the rest, it’s no longer a practical concern.

The underlying architecture comes from Qualcomm, now equipped for aptX Adaptive 24-bit 96kHz and aptX Lossless streams.

Unlike some headphone designs that leave DSP and amplification to one catch-all processor, the Px7 S3 splits duties, employing both a dedicated digital signal processor, and a discrete headphone amplifier. This separation brings several benefits, including superior musicality, and a cleaner transient response.

Want future-proofing? Bluetooth LE Audio, with Auracast broadcast support and LC3 codec, is promised via a firmware update later this year. Auracast supports streaming to multiple compatible headphones (think late night silent discos), so that might be useful. Spatial audio support is also inbound via OTA, which I’m particularly excited about. Bowers insists its flavour of Spatial will stay true to its naturalistic house sound, and definitely won’t incoporate Head Tracking, so I’m intrigued.

Battery life? 30 hours with ANC on, plus a 15-minute quick charge that gets you an impressive seven hours of additional playback.

Sound

These over-ear headphones sound fulsome and fabulous. The 40mm biocellulose dynamic drivers may have been carried over from the S2e, but Bowers & Wilkins didn’t leave them alone. The entire drive system, including voice coil, suspension, magnet, and the rigid chassis that holds them, has been completely re-engineered.

The result is lower mechanical resonance, greater rigidity, and tighter control over driver excursion. This matters, because it translates to reduced distortion at both low and high volumes, an especially important factor when you’re pushing the sonic envelope with double-kick drums and shuddering riffs.

Stereo presentation is wide but never untethered. Pink Floyd’s Money makes a virtue of its stereophonic looping coins and ringing cash registers, and these cans make the mix a joyous thing. When Dick Parry’s tenor sax rips up the sweet spot, it’s like he’s barged into the room through some 70’s wormhole.

When the clocks and alarms go off, heralding Time, I could swear I was having a foretaste of Spatial niceties to come. Bass handling is spot on, those big drivers doing majestic justice to Nick Mason’s cascading roto-toms.

The dynamics, and imaging are sensational. The escalating boogie of Some Mutts (Can’t be Muzzled) by Amyl And The Sniffers might smother the vocals but the music is locked in place, furiously pounding away. The Px7 S3 effortlessly preserves the balance, keeping the centre stage clear for chorus and gnarly guitar soloing.

The ear cups are also a whizz portraying ambiance, be it the choral chanting that opens Templars by Sabaton, or the epic staging of Thin Lizzy‘s Live And Dangerous. The Px7 S3 somehow always knows how to capture the moment.

Low frequencies are controlled, but not heavy handed. The bass solo that opens Black Sabbath’s N.I.B sounds fat and fleshy, just like it should. Detail and timing is sharp and tight.

Obviously, hi-res file playback sounds glorious. One of my favourite recordings, a 24-bit 96 KHz cut of Lou Reed’s Satellite Of Love, is crisp and beguiling. There’s an uncanny realism here. Shut your eyes and you’re suddenly in the studio, finger snapping in the background.

What’s striking is how detailed the Px7 S3 sound, even at low volumes. Some may put that down to cleaner amplification, improved driver control, and minimised distortion. I prefer headphone hoodoo. You decide.

The alternatives

Marshall Monitor III A.N.C
Marshall’s flagship over-ears are Louder favourites. They wear their rock‘n’roll styling with pride, and combine fold-down convenience with great everyday noise cancelling. They also frickin’ excellent with guitar rock.

Sony WH-1000XM5
Sony’s ever popular over-ears are the definition of cool and comfortable. Memory foam ear cups make them good for an afternoon session of double albums, and noise cancelling is excellent. However, drivers are just 30mm, which looks a little polite in this company.

Steve is a home entertainment technology specialist who contributes to a variety of UK websites and mags, including Louder Sound, Yahoo UK, Trusted Reviews, T3, The Luxe Review and Home Cinema Choice. Steve began his career as a music journo, writing for legendary rock weekly Sounds, under the nom de plume Steve Keaton. His coverage of post punk music was cited in the 2015 British Library exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, as a seminal influence on the Goth music scene.

Three weeks into The Stone Roses’ 1993 recording session at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, the band’s producer John Leckie placed a phone call to their American A&R man Gary Gersh to express some concern. Using the legendary studio where Queen recorded Bohemian Rhapsody, Rush recorded A Farewell To Kings, and more recently Sepultura had recorded Chaos A.D. was costing Geffen Records £800 a day, and Leckie felt duty-bound to tell Gersh that the Manchester band had recorded precisely nothing.

Leckie had actually begun work on the work on the follow-up to The Stones Roses’ widely-acclaimed self-titled 1989 debut album on January 30, 1990. And while the quartet, vocalist Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire, bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield and drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren, had undeniably been creative in the intervening years – during their 1991 stay at Bluestone rehearsal studios in Pembrokeshire, Wales arty guitarist Squire had created an eight-foot “snow penis” – they just hadn’t recorded much in the way of actual music. In fact, only two songs, July 1990 single One Love and its B-side Something’s Burning, had been completed.

“Eventually I said, For fuck’s sake, let’s get up at 11 o’clock in the morning, or lunchtime. Let’s try and get here by four. They’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll do that tomorrow, definitely: we’ll have an early night, get up at 12, have a good lunch’… And then it’d be three, four, five o’clock, and lan would come and say [blearily], ‘What’s happening?’ You can’t change people.”

“It was hard to get the momentum kicked in for a while,” Mani admitted to Vox magazine in 1995.

“And after such a whacking delay, we thought, Why rush it?” John Squire added. “We were going to be criticised anyway.”

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Preceded by the excellent, driving, Led Zeppelin-esque single Love Spreads, Second Coming finally emerged in the UK on December 5, 1994. The album sold over 100,000 copies in its first week on sale, but only charted at number 4, being out-sold by The Beatles Live At The BBC, among others. Geffen, however, were bullish about its potential in America, where its release was set for January 16, 1995.

“This is a great English band,” Geffen executive Tom Zutant, the man who signed Guns N’ Roses to the label, told Vox. “They have the potential to put English rock and roll back on the map. If I was a UK journalist I would feel proud about a British band reclaiming the throne. It’s been American music for years, and British music has been in the fucking toilet.”

The band, however, were confident that album three would be the one, with Ian Brown boldly telling Vox that the aim was to make “the best LP of all time” next time out.

The Stone Roses wouldn’t make a third album.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

In the UK in 1994, grunge was taking its final breaths, Britpop was making its lager-breathed presence felt in the mainstream, and the rock and metal scene was ready for something smarter, wilder and way more exciting.

Enter Skunk Anansie, a genuinely revolutionary force Hammer readers fell head over heels for. Early songs such as Yes It’s Fucking Political and Little Baby Swastikkka raged in on a wave of righteous, socially conscious punk energy, and, in frontwoman Skin, they had a ready-formed star, a born performer whose astonishing voice was matched only by her electric onstage charisma.

Their albums – three released before their 2001 split, three since they reformed in 2009, with a new one on the way – mix politics and social commentary with soulful confessionals. In 1999 they headlined Glastonbury – in a set that went off – making Skin the first Black British woman to do so.

They’ve toured with the likes of Rammstein and Killing Joke, been admired by luminaries such as David Bowie and Lemmy, and continue to defiantly follow their own path.

Now they’re back with An Artist Is An Artist, a furious takedown of social media negativity and the first single from their new album, The Painful Truth. Given the lightning speed with which the accompanying UK tour sold out, it’s clear their fans were ready and waiting for their return.

“We’re a bit of a people’s band,” says Skin, from her record company’s London office. “People identify with what we have to say and the way that we say it. There’s a lot of authenticity in our band. There’s no fakeness. People enjoy our gigs because we put everything into it. Maybe they just like great music. It can be as simple as that.”

You grew up in Brixton, and your grandfather had a nightclub in his basement. What was it like growing up in that environment?

“In the 60s, when a lot of Black people came over to England, most clubs wouldn’t allow a bunch of four Black guys into their club. They weren’t playing the kind of music that those guys wanted to hear anyway. So all around London, all these clubs started where it’d be a DJ with all the ska records and the bar in there. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs watching everybody dance.”

What kind of music did you hear there?

“I heard reggae and dub. The Beatles. Jamaicans love country and western, so Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, and Motown.”

Who came through the doors?

“I remember seeing a picture of me dancing with the guitarist from Bob Marley’s band [Peter Tosh]. Bob Marley used to go. Michael Manley, the prime minister of Jamaica. Muhammad Ali, when he was Cassius Clay, he used to go.”

Why were you living with your grandad?

“My dad was in the Air Force, so we lived in Air Force bases up and down the country. Then when I had to go to school, we moved to Brixton. My grandad had that base in Brixton, and he helped my mum buy a house.”

How did you first discover metal and rock?

“Top Of The Pops was this window to another world. I never missed it. I remember Boy George when he came on, and everyone was shocked because he had a dress on. I remember Shalamar with the breakdancing, and Prince singing Little Red Corvette, and this was my world.

And the whole ska thing – The Beat, The Selecter, all those bands, I loved that. When I was a bit older, I started listening to The Cure, and then I heard Led Zeppelin and it was all over.”

What was it about them that appealed?

“It was very complicated music, riffage, great vocals, sexy tunes, sexy band, and they were so different. It was a theme tune to Top Of The Pops, so that was the first rock song I got to know.”

You witnessed the Brixton riots in the 80s. What was that like?

“Brixton in those years was forgotten about, because Margaret Thatcher underfunded the Labour towns and cities, all the people that didn’t vote for her. And they brought in the sus law [‘suspected person law’], which meant you could be searched on suspicion.

Black people just got stopped all the time and searched in a very aggressive way, because they wanted you to retaliate and then they could be violent towards you, and then you’re thrown in prison. That meant that there was a lot of tension in Brixton.

My brothers were always getting stopped and searched, and people got fed up with it. That’s why there were riots. But I have fantastic memories of growing up in Brixton. I had an idyllic inner-city childhood, and we’d go to Jamaica for holidays. That was amazing. Yes, we were raised in poverty, but we did get to go to Jamaica. We did get to play and have a lot of freedom, even if we didn’t have any money. So for me, it was good times.”

What was your first band called, and what did they sound like?

“My first band was called JASS, which stood for ‘jazz and soul septet’, because there were seven of us. But we didn’t really do anything jazzy. We used to do covers of obscure indie songs, like Blind by Talking Heads. I was learning all these weird songs that I didn’t really know. It was terrifying, but it was fun.”

How did Skunk Anansie come together?

“I left my interior design job, and I met my manager, Leigh [Johnson], who introduced me to [songwriting partner] Len Arran. I’ve been writing songs since I was 13. The more we wrote songs, the more I wanted to be in a rock band, but that was a very difficult thing to do in the late 80s into the 90s – there were no lead singers that looked like me.

There was a lot of rejection, because I was a skinny Black girl trying to be the singer of a rock band. But then I found the Splash Club scene [in Kings Cross, London]. We had a lot of interest for [previous venture] the Mama Wild band, but it was too bluesy, it wasn’t modern, it wasn’t fresh, so I ended the band and started Skunk Anansie. Mama Wild got everything wrong, and then when we started Skunk Anansie, me and [bassist] Cass got everything right. We knew what we wanted to do and it blew up from there.”

What do you remember about that first gig at The Splash Club?

“It was mad. We were in a little scene at The Splash Club, which was started by [guitarist] Ace and his band at the time. I’d hang out with Ace a lot, I really liked him. I wanted him to be in my band.

We saw Oasis, Echobelly, a bunch of those bands. Record companies loved coming to that club. When we got together, the word got out that we were playing our first gig. Everybody came because I was the best singer, Ace was the best guitarist, Cass was the best bass player, and people liked our drummer at the time. He left because he didn’t think we were going to be successful with me singing!

The first gig was rammed. It was spectacular. And the next gig we did was full of A&R men, because we didn’t have any demos, so we just said, ‘If you’re interested, you’ve got to come down to see us live’, because we knew we could wow them. The beginning of Skunk Anansie, from first gig to being signed, was three gigs.”

Did you experience much homophobia when the band first broke through? Or do you think it’s worse now?

“Politically for queer people, it’s much better now. But at the same time, people are deliberately being homophobic. They’re doing it with knowledge, whereas back in the day, people were just a little bit ignorant. But it’s much easier to find your community and to get strength and support from that.

I’ve never come out, I don’t believe in it. I’m just myself. I don’t see any straight people coming out. It’s a ridiculous idea that at a certain point in our life we’ve got to tell people that we’re gay. And everyone just shouldn’t assume that everybody’s 100% straight.”

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Your first release was Little Baby Swastikkka, a bold introduction to the band… [Sample lyric: ‘Who put the little baby Swastikkka on the wall?’]

“It was a different way to tell a story about the indoctrination of kids. I saw a little baby swastika halfway up a wall, it looked like it was done by little kids. A lot of those early songs were quite odd, but they just worked somehow, and they were very different to everything else that was going on. That was good for us, otherwise we would have got lumped in with Britpop.”

You didn’t fit in with it, did you?

“No, we weren’t part of it at all. We had a moment of wanting to be part of it, just because they were just sucking up all the press and TV shows and radio. So there was a bit of jealousy from afar. Within a year and a half, we were like, ‘No, don’t do that shit.’

It very quickly became a bloated, dead whale on the beach that was just rotting, while we were swimming our way to each country in Europe. Pulp, Blur, Oasis, Elastica… these were just great British bands. But then a lot of bands that were not very good jumped on a bandwagon.”

People look back on that time and think of it as such a blokey thing, but there were loads of women in bands. Your friendship with Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson is one of the loveliest things on Instagram.

“I interviewed her for my show on Absolute Radio. She started off saying, ‘In the 90s, I had a bit of a beef with you, because I was always getting compared to you.’ I had no idea. They were always trying to tear her down by saying I was better than her. And she’s like, ‘Now, I realise it was so much harder for you.’

I mean, Garbage are massive in America. They did a fucking Bond theme [1999’s The World Is Not Enough], we were nowhere near the size that they were, and the way that people would try and knock her down is by comparing her to me. But yeah, me and Shirley love each other.”

What kind of person were you back then?

“I was very ambitious. The aim was to be in a rock band forever, like The Rolling Stones. It was all about climbing mountains. It was very stressful having that mentality, because you have your goals, but you’re not enjoying the process. It’s only when we stopped and then we reformed that I just enjoyed the climbing more than the goals, and that comes with maturity and age.”

You were good friends with Lemmy. What was he like?

“He was very gentle. He was the most authentic person I’ve met. He was who he was, and he wasn’t going to hide it. Also, he had absolutely the most perfect skin you’d ever imagine on a man, good baby skin. He was such a gentleman.

We were writing music together whenever I was in LA, and I had the sweetest messages from him. I remember one time I was supposed to write with him, and I couldn’t, because I’d had a break-up, and he just left me the loveliest, kindest thing: ‘I’m here for you. Come over to LA and we’ll hang out.’ He was a sweetheart.”

You coined the genre ‘clitrock’. What was that about?

“Clitrock was an accident. In the very beginning of our career, people were like, ‘What do you think about being a Britpop band?’ And I said, ‘Britpop? We’re Clitpop?’ It was a joke, but it became a whole thing. There’s a Clit Rock festival, which, of course, I give my blessing to. But it was just a sideways comment, I was just being cheeky.”

Who were your allies in the rock and metal scene?

“We played a lot with David Bowie. He was the ultimate inspiration. I loved him. I was nervous meeting him, because there are certain people who’re elevated beyond everybody else. But he was just a down-to-earth dude. And his wife Iman is as hugely iconic as he is, and she was a delight as well. The only people that I didn’t like were boybands. Five were fucking horrible. I think it’s because they didn’t have control, they didn’t write their songs, they were just puppets.”

What was the Rammstein tour like?

“Those guys are unbelievable live. They’d have the pyrotechnics and the fire was just beyond anything, and then they’d have these backstage parties where they played this really fast, Russian, cheesy pop. It was so funny that they love that kind of music.”

You released the song Yes It’s Fucking Political in 1996. Was it the big statement that it seemed?

“That song came out of people slagging us off because we’re political. My point was, everything’s political. It’s in everything we do, whether it’s clothes or the food that we eat. If you want to live in a world where you don’t talk about politics, that in itself is a political statement.”

Why did the split happen in 2001, and how did that affect you?

“We were just worn out. We had really overworked ourselves and hadn’t really taken care of ourselves. We didn’t even have an argument – we just stopped and went off and did a bit of solo musicianship.”

You’re based in the UK and in Brooklyn now. How’s life in the US post-election?

“That was the saddest day I’ve had in a very long time. Us lefties have got to stick together and not tear each other apart, because these people literally don’t want us to exist. Especially trans people. They’re trying to wipe trans people off the face of the Earth. And when they come for them, they come for all of us, they’re just first on the list. Next it’s diversity, it’s queer people, Black rights. But I’m in New York, and it’s like its own country. That counts for a lot, because otherwise I think it’d be very difficult to be there.”

You were awarded the OBE in 2021. What did that mean to you?

“It’s a weird thing, because I think that for Black people, there’s so much negativity around us accepting any award. But of course I wanted to accept it, it’s a great honour. It was a lovely thing to happen. It was a record of everything I’d done up to that point. And it made my mum really happy and proud. It’s not like Prince Charles even knew who I was. It’s a body of people that decide, and that body is extremely diverse.”

Do you think you paved the way for bands like Nova Twins?

“They supported us in their early days. It gets irritating for them to be compared to Skunk Anansie, because they’re nothing like us. They’re their own entity. I’m really happy that bands like that are getting through. But I’m not into the role model thing. I think athletes are great role models, because they really do have to be perfect and pure people. I’m an anti-role model.”

New album The Painful Truth is out May 23. Skunk Anansie’s UK tour resumes May 14 at Great Escape Festival and the band play with The Smashing Pumpkins in August. For the full list of dates, visit their official website.

Emma has been writing about music for 25 years, and is a regular contributor to Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog and Louder. During that time her words have also appeared in publications including Kerrang!, Melody Maker, Select, The Blues Magazine and many more. She is also a professional pedant and grammar nerd and has worked as a copy editor on everything from film titles through to high-end property magazines. In her spare time, when not at gigs, you’ll find her at her local stables hanging out with a bunch of extremely characterful horses.

Rory McIlroy has admitted to being “humbled” to receive a message of congratulations from Elton John after his historic US Masters triumph last month.

In winning the prestigious tournament at Augusta National on April 14, the 36-year-old golfer from the North of Ireland completed a career Grand Slam – having previously won the US Open (2011), the British Open (2014), and the PGA Championship (2012, 2014) – a feat only five other male golfers have managed before him.

During an appearance last week on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, McIlroy admitted that he was “overwhelmed” by the messages of support he received in the wake of his win, and revealed that he was particularly blown away to hear from Sir Elton John… or more specifically, a member of Sir Elton John’s team.

“That was, like, incredible,” the world number two golfer admitted.

“His assistant left me a voicemail,” McIlroy said, “and said, ‘Sir Elton would love to congratulate you in person. The only problem is, he doesn’t have a cell phone. So you might get a call from Windsor, England, from a land line. And I’m like, Sure!”

“We haven’t been able to connect, so I’d love to reach out” McIlroy confessed, “I just think it’s so… it’s Elton John!”

“He’s an icon,” Fallon interjected.

“It’s so cool, it’s amazing,” McIlroy agreed. “I didn’t even know Elton John knew what golf was! It’s awesome, so I’m just super humbled.”

McIlroy also revealed that his childhood hero Tiger Woods had also reached out to him with a message of congratulations, saying, ‘Welcome to the club, kid.”

“There are only six people who have ever achieved the career Grand Slam in golf, and there are only four of us who are living,” he added. “Gary Player, who is 90 years old, Jack Nicklaus, who is 86 years old, and then Woods and myself, so it’s really cool to be a part of something like that.”

Watch the clip below:

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“I have everything I’ve done behind me and it’s been brilliant, amazing. But this is the new start for me. As far as I’m concerned, this is the start of my career mark two.”

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

Journey weren’t always the AOR superstars they became – for much of the mid-70s, fans were largely resistant to their jazzy rock. All that changed with 1978’s mighty Infinity album and the introduction of new vocalist Steve Perry. In 2014, Classic Rock say talked to Perry and keyboard player Gregg Rolie about how a huge sonic makeover set Journey on the road to superstardom.

Steve Perry is on the line. The commonly held notion that he’s a dark and sombre recluse couldn’t be further from reality. Frankly, I’m staggered by his zest for life and music. He’s a veritable ball of energy, dispensing charm and cheer like it was going out of fashion. Before long he’s singing down the phone, and hinting that he wants to stop kicking his heels and put a ‘section’ together (that’s old-school parlance for a band).

We’re hooked up to talk about Journey’s fourth album, 1978’s Infinity. Steve doesn’t give many interviews, but he speaks at length and opens his heart about a record that changed his life, and the course of history for his band; a record that heralded the arrival of one of the greatest voices of our time, and set Journey on a crash course for superstardom that would ultimately result in their 1981 anthem Don’t Stop Believin’ becoming on of the biggest download and streaming hits of the 21st century.

All the facts and figures in the Journey story complete a cluster of astonishing accomplishments which are the envy of the music industry. Achievements that, in today’s music marketplace, would be almost impossible to duplicate. For a good 12 years, Journey took position at the very top of the food chain, releasing album after album of instantly recognisable songs all embellished with clear-cut hooks and melodies to die for.

These are records that have stood the test of time, and because of the musicianship inherent in each and every song they have never sounded dated. In many ways, then, Journey were not only pioneers of a style but they were also uniquely aloof – in a league of their own and a world away from the processed, hard-on-the-ears clamour of similar-sounding acts trying to carve out a slice of the same market.

When all is said and done, it was Steve Perry’s presence that really cemented the band’s reputation. Prior to his arrival Journey had been a fairly inconspicuous and mainly instrumental fusion outfit, looking to muscle in on the jazz-rock scene perpetrated by the likes of Weather Report and the Mahavisnu Orchestra.

Great players, Journey’s early style and meticulous arrangements would, inevitably, limit their appeal unless radical changes were implemented. Their sound had attracted stellar critical reviews but, as a commercial entity, they were stuck in a rut. Not surprisingly, at the behest of their label, Columbia, changes needed to be made, a radical remodelling of the band was demanded to expand their appeal.

Infinity marked Perry’s initiation into the world of professional recording, a milestone in contemporary aural acrobatics. Within the confinement of 10 songs he effortlessly switched from breezy improvisation (La Do Da) to epic bombast (Wheel In The Sky), providing a template from which future creative diamonds would emerge, forever cementing the appeal of Journey and securing his place in rock’s vocal Hall Of Fame. Unlike the brusque delivery of British blues-belters such as Coverdale and Rodgers, Perry’s reference points evolved from diverse and somewhat unexpected sources, including the sweet soul sounds of Sam Cooke and Smokey Robinson.

Born in California in 1949, Steven Ray Perry was of Portuguese extraction. The family’s original name of Perrera was quickly anglicised to Perry when the family had entered the US, to disguise the fact that they were European immigrants (a common policy back then to improve employment opportunities). Growing up, his epiphany moment was hearing the Sam Cooke song Cupid on the radio while riding in his mother’s car. From that moment on, becoming a musician was all he dreamed of.

By his teens, Perry was a veteran of several garage bands, singing and drumming with names such as The Nocturnes, Dollar Bills, Ice (also featuring future producer Scott Matthews) and The Sullies. He even joined a Toronto-based unit called Privilege and toured Canada.

“They were a 12-piece brass group that had played in my home town near Fresno,” says Perry. “I was so blown away by how amazing they were I kept in touch with the guitar player, one of two brothers, Andy and Harry Krawchuk, and they hired me for a few months. I toured Canada with them – they were a very high-end covers band.”

By the mid 70s, Perry focused all his energies upon infiltrating the music business and moved to Los Angeles, where he formed a band called Pieces alongside experienced musicians like Cactus/Beck Bogert & Appice bassist Tim Bogert, guitarist Tim Denver Cross and drummer Eddie Tuduri. Sadly no deal was forthcoming. Bogert and Tuduri then moved to the UK to join British prog rockers Boxer.

In order to support himself, Steve took a gig as a second engineer at Crystal Studios while piecing together his next outfit, called Alien Project (the group occasionally switched to the moniker of Street Talk, which Steve later used for the title of first solo album). It was this unit that caught the ear of a couple of labels, including Chrysalis and Columbia. The latter’s A&R man, Michael Dilbeck, was hot to sign them.

The group featured drummer Craig Krampf who would later go on to become an in-demand session musician. “Craig had some contacts in the business,” says Steve, “enough where he could pick up the telephone and call them. He was really good at hustling and got us into Chrysalis and Columbia. Michael Dilbeck was one of the Columbia people who heard Alien Project and liked it. He talked with Don Ellis who was running the West Coast office. They were thinking of signing the band.

“Back in those days, the sweetest thing that could happen was signing to a record label and making a record – that was the pathway of dreams for all of us. Michael liked the band, but I must say the demo got kind of shelved a little bit, meaning he liked it but wasn’t really moved to sign us right away. So we were kind of vacillating, thinking should we go back to Chrysalis who had been pretty excited. Then the next thing that happened was, someone at Columbia decided to go around Michael and send my demo tape to Herbie Herbert, Journey’s manager, in San Francisco.”

It’s impossible to talk about Journey without the towering presence of their manager Herbie Herbert, a bear of a man with a personality and reputation that, at times, has almost seemed to eclipse (pun intended) the band. Think Peter Grant, if he weren’t quite so intimidating and wasn’t surrounded by henchmen with fists at the ready. Herbie loved music and loved Journey. He dedicated his life to their needs and to the advancement of their career. He had a vision and nobody was gonna fuck with it, and recruiting a vocalist to the group was paramount to his plan.

In Steve Perry, Herbert had found the proverbial needle in the haystack – a vocalist with unlimited range, unique delivery and looks that killed. The consummate frontman, in fact. There is every reason to believe that Perry singlehandedly rescued Journey from interminable underachievement.

“This is where its gets complex,” Steve says, of his initial meeting with Herbert. “Herbie had already heard my name. I was mentioned to him by one of his team, Jackie Villanueva. Jackie had a friend in Frisco by the name of Larry Luciano who, as it happens, was a childhood friend of mine. We had grown up together. Larry had moved up there and become friends with Jackie and the Santana clan. That’s when he and Larry became friends with Herbie.

“Larry told him that he had a cousin called Steve Perry and that I was a pretty good singer and he should check me out. That never came to fruition until the guy at Columbia sent the Alien Project demo tape to Herbie, who saw the name and thought, ‘Steve Perry… Hmmm… Larry’s cousin?’ And of course it was. Then Herbie called me up and said, ‘I love the way you sing, I love what you’re doing and I love the band.’”

However, this budding relationship between Herbert and Perry was suddenly derailed due to the tragic death of Alien Project’s bassist Richard Micheals Haddad, who was killed in an automobile accident on the July 4th weekend. The rest of the band felt like the rug had been pulled from under their feet.

“We were due to resume talks with the labels after that weekend but, of course, it never happened,” says Perry. “I started to pack it in and called my mom to say, ‘I’m coming back home.’ It felt like the closer I got to achieving my dream, the bigger something in my life would say ‘no’. At that point I’d never been so close to someone who had died and I thought, ‘I’m not supposed to do this.’ I was so distraught and knocked back by it all. But my mother said, no, don’t give up – something will happen. And that’s when I got a telephone call from Don Ellis, who said, ‘I’m sorry to hear about your bass player, but Herbie Herbert has your tape and he loved it. We have Journey on Columbia and we’d love you to be the singer of that band. What do you think about it?’

“I had seen Journey come to town and play many times in LA and I knew that my voice with Neal Schon’s guitar would be like salt and pepper. I knew that if I could ever work with him that would be a dream. It was Neal who really attracted me to that set up.”

Journey’s origins go right back to the beginning of the 70s, with the band members based in San Francisco, the centre of hippy counterculture. Keyboard player Gregg Rolie was a founding member of Santana, immortalised by the group’s stunning appearance at the Woodstock festival. The footage of Rolie trashing the living daylights out of his organ during Soul Sacrifice became iconic.

Guitar prodigy Neal Schon was also cooking up a name for himself in the Bay Area, not only as another alumni of Santana but also by working his way through a number of musical cabals, including Latin rockers Azteca and the Golden Gate Rhythm Section. Joining Journey on bass was Ross Valory and second guitarist George Tickner, both of whom were from the curiously named Frumious Bandersnatch. The band’s first drummer was Prairie Prince from fellow SF band The Tubes, but he was quickly replaced by British ex-pat Aynsley Dunbar, who had moved to the US to play with Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention.

Journey’s interest in experimental jazz-fusion was confirmed on their self-titled debut album issued in 1975. A classy work, the album resonates with a surety beyond their recent formation, all players coming across as both fluid and experienced. Neal Schon in particular rips up his fretboard like combination of Jeff Beck and Robert Fripp. Check out the seven-minute long Kahoutek where he trades call-and-response licks with Gregg Rolie.

Surprisingly for such complex music, the album sold moderately well, reaching No.138 on the Billboard chart. After George Tickner bailed out of the band, their next two albums – 1976’s Look Into The Future and 1977’s Next – repeated the pattern, with Gregg Rolie making a concerted effort to deliver reasonably effective vocals atop what was clearly a jazz-fusion fanfaronade.

Despite the concerted efforts of both Columbia Records and Herbie Herbert, it was clear that Journey had reached a sales ceiling. They could continue no further in an upward trajectory unless major changes were implemented. Effectively this meant adding a proper vocalist/frontman and modifying the musical direction. It was a bitter pill to swallow but the band took it on the chin and cast their net to see what was possible.

They settled on Californian Robert Fleischman, who teamed up with the band in June 1977, at the request of label president Bruce Lundvall, who asked Robert to fly to San Francisco and see the band. Fleischman rapidly assimilated with his new bandmates, co-writing a handful of songs, three of which –Wheel In The Sky, Anytime and Winds Of March – would later surface on Infinity. Pretty much an unknown, Fleischman was, at one point, in the running to replace Peter Gabriel in Genesis for their A Trick Of The Tail album, a move scuppered when Phil Collins made a last-minute decision to step up to the microphone.

Things were moving swiftly – if not completely smoothly – when, as previously mentioned, Steve Perry’s name entered the frame. Fleischman had been out on the road with Journey during the summer, supporting Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and matters had progressed to the point where it was understood by all that Robert was their new vocalist. Behind the scenes, however, Robert had apparently been ruffling feathers. Herbie was seemingly concerned that Fleischman was unwilling to relinquish his previous manager, well-known US concert promoter Barry Fey. A reputed incident where Robert allegedly refused to go onstage unless the band played newly written material may not have helped matters either.

By now Herbie and Columbia were coming to the same opinion: that Steve Perry would be the better option for Journey frontman. Matters accelerated when Herbie asked Steve to go out on the road with the band to get to know each other. Fleischman was unaware of his diminishing status within the set up, which resulted in an uncomfortable situation. Perry’s presence in the Journey camp was explained by passing him off as Jackie Villanueva’s Portuguese cousin.

“That really only happened one time,” says Perry. “I think it was when they were playing a show at Long Beach Arena, and I don’t think Robert was actually performing with the band – he was doing soundchecks with them. I think they had pretty much told him he was going to be the singer. I was also told that internally they were conflicted about it. I said to John Villanueva [brother of Jackie, and also part of Herbie’s management team] at the Oakland Coliseum, ‘Do you think this could really happen?’ And he said ‘yes’. So I was hanging around, waiting for my opportunity.

“Actually, it should be pointed out – and I only found this out a few years later – that the label had told the band that if they didn’t get a singer they were going to drop them.”

Gregg Rolie has some further insight.

“At the time Neal and I were looking for someone with more of an edge, but Herbie brought us Steve Perry,” he says. “We thought that he was a bit of a crooner and we were looking in a different direction. Robert is a great singer, but there was a lot of politics with the record company and various other things that took place there. They’re two very different singers.

“Steve actually came out on the road with us as my keyboard tech John’s cousin,” continues Gregg. “We had to make the change, and it was a difficult thing to do, but Robert made a bit of a mistake. We were opening for ELP and he kind of made an ultimatum in Fresno, that he wanted us to play the new songs, but we were just trying to get the band across. We wanted to do the older material because it was more in keeping with the audience.

“He said he wouldn’t go on and that was a mistake on his part. Herbie made the decision right there to fire him. Nothing was really written in stone until that happened. For me, it’s now water under the bridge. I like Robert a lot and I liked what he brought to the situation. Robert has more of an edge but they’re both quality guys. It’s always a struggle.”

I asked Steve if he felt that he had been forced upon the band by the label and Herbie.

“He [Herbie] said in essence, if not the actual words, ‘This is your new singer, deal with it,’” Perry replies. “I don’t think I would have been in the band if Herbie had not just said, ‘Look guys, get used to it, keep going and shut the fuck up and write the music.’ Herbie and I have had a lot of artist/management collisions across the years. We accomplished so much together but it’s almost normal that artists and management have their issues. That being said, had it not been for Herbie my life would be profoundly different right now. He gave me my chance.”

Gregg: “In the end we made the right choice. Quite frankly, Herbie presented it as ‘this is your new singer’ and we were like, OK. And the fact is, he was absolutely right. Y’know, the proof is there.”

Did the band embrace Steve or were they a little apprehensive?

“You have to remember that the band had recorded three records and toured extensively,” says Perry. “Herbie was very talented in his ability to get that band to open for some very big acts – ELP and Santana – and play big outdoor shows. However, even though that was happening, they weren’t selling enough records. I think they wanted to make it on their own terms, so maybe it was a little weird for them to have to bring in a singer.

“Neal Schon was the guitar prodigy and stood centre stage. The group was built by Herbie around Neal, showing off his virtuosity. They had more of an instrumental Mahavishnu Orchestra thing going on, so it was a transition for them. Sure, I think we had our moments of difficulties with me being the new guy, so for a while I had to sort of walk on thin ice.

“It was a ‘let’s do it and see’ kind of attitude, and I had to prove myself, and I understood that, I really did. I can’t fault them for any hesitancy, because yes, they had a following before I joined them and they had fans out there that wanted the band to be successful as a fusion-based band with Gregg Rolie singing a little bit and Neal, Ross and Aynsley going off into fusion rock. When I joined I think they were concerned whether the fans would embrace me. Some did and some didn’t, and it was difficult walking out there. I remember one time we were in Paris I had a [camera] flash cube thrown at me and hit me in the eye.”

Gregg: “Perry wasn’t nervous, and if he was, it sure didn’t show. He knew he was good and he was co-writing a lot of the material. When you co-write, you get pretty comfortable about what you are doing, because it’s customised for you.”

I ask Steve how he thought Gregg Rolie felt about all this, as he’d been the band’s vocalist up until this point?

“It was certainly a transitional period, and I had to adhere to the band’s legacy,” concedes Steve. “I do believe in my heart that Gregg wasn’t that excited about the idea, but on the other hand he was certainly amenable and open-minded. We wrote Feeling That Way together, sharing vocals, and that was cool. In fact that’s the song where I would walk out on stage.”

From Gregg Rolie’s perspective, the situation was clear. “I expected to still sing a couple of songs here and there, but Steve was our lead singer,” he says. “I was stretched pretty thin playing four keyboards, harmonica and singing lead. With Santana I was the lead singer, and with Journey I was lead also. So, I’d never shared vocals before. I wanted to continue to do that – I looked at it like, well, The Beatles didn’t do so bad with four singers. So the more the merrier, and I still feel that way about it, but it just slowly got to be less and less.

“Eventually the band got built around Perry,” Gregg continues. “He came in at it slowly and it evolved into this situation where we were writing songs for an actual lead vocalist, which is totally different from where early Journey and Santana came from. Back then we had vocals, but it was really about the solo work and then, slowly, it became more about the lead vocals. It was great for me because I became a much better songwriter.”

So, once Steve was fully ensconced in the band, it was the beginning of a new chapter for both of them. Blessed with an appealing personality, good looks and a voice from heaven, Perry soon became the focal point of attention. It was now time to unleash his talent in the studio by recording Journey’s fourth and pivotal album, Infinity.

The plan was simple: write songs, hire a producer, select a studio and make an album that would set out their stall for the next 10 years or more. Steve immersed himself in songwriting with all the band members, but mainly with new creative partner Neal Schon, eventually securing co-writing credits on eight of the 10 songs.

Steve and Neal struck up a strong rapport and quickly established a beachhead, strengthening the band’s sound and setting in place a new direction. The emphasis was now on fully formed songs with melodies, hooks and the sort of contemporary buff that made the competition quake in their boots.

The choice of producer was inspired. Band, management and label all agreed on Roy Thomas Baker, the flamboyant British studio craftsman who had worked with some of the most influential rock bands around, including Free and – most importantly – Queen.

After seeing the band live in Santa Monica, RTB (as he is affectionately known) and his trusted engineer Geoff Workman rendezvoused with the band at His Master’s Wheels Studio (formerly Alembic Studios), located on Brady Street in downtown San Francisco.

“They put me in a little apartment on Bay Street,” remembers Steve. “I went to SIR [Studio Instrument Rentals, a well-known rehearsal room] every day and wrote songs with band.

“Then, all of a sudden RTB comes in. We had enormous respect for him, because he’d produced Queen and Free. He was so much fun. The studio [His Master’s Wheels] had an old Neve console and a large tracking room, and the next thing you know he was really giving us a different sound.

“Neal’s doing what we called ‘violin guitars’. Roy had me stack all the vocals on a 40-track machine, and I really enjoyed that process. Also, Geoff Workman was so instrumental that we ended up grabbing him to do one of the records [Departure] without RTB.

“We rehearsed the material quite a bit before we recorded it so everything was ready to go before Roy got there. What Roy gave us was the opportunity to try different textures and ideas, but the foundational aspect of the songs and the arrangements were done. He really gave us a direction, and from there the band found itself.”

“I have fond memories of working with Roy and Geoff,” says Gregg. “Roy was very into experimentation, and quite wild in the studio. The multi-tracking of guitars and vocals was a brand new thing for us – all the layering. It was intense work. He created a sound which a lot of the guys didn’t like because it was so edgy, but I happened to dig it.

“Those tracks had a specific sound to them, which is what a good producer does. He was, and still is, a real character. Him and Workman both – they were fun to be around. Workman did a lot of the heavy lifting, inasmuch as getting things done.

“Geoff had worked with Roy for a long time and knew what he wanted. If Roy disappeared for a couple of hours, Geoff just carried on because he knew what they were doing as a team. We used the same team on the next album, Evolution. It got us on the map.”

Not surprisingly, the biggest impact was the quality and strength of Steve Perry’s vocals.

“I certainly discovered the depth of multi-tracking, as I never had a chance to work on a 40-track machine before,” says Perry. “I’d never had the ability to do eight root notes and then bounce them to one track, then wipe those and do the eight thirds, wipe those then do eight fifths and eight octaves and so on – and suddenly you have a big stack like on Anytime. When they are layered and smeared tight they just really block up. Roy knew how to do that.”

But despite the good vibes and enthusiastic progress, the glue soon came unstuck when a studio prank backfired…

“One night we went out for Sushi and drank a bit of Sake,” laughs Steve. “Roy drank a little bit more Sake than most of us, along with a couple of the road crew. When they got back, Scotty [Ross, roadie] remembered a story about how Roy had once chased Freddie Mercury around the studio with a fire extinguisher.

“So Scotty decided to be funny and grabbed one of the studio extinguishers and chased Roy. Then Roy grabbed an extinguisher to reciprocate and fired it off, but it was one of those dry chemical types. The next thing we knew was that we couldn’t breathe – it had sucked the oxygen right out of the room and we couldn’t see in front of us for the smoke. So we ran outside thinking, ‘Oh my God, what the hell happened there?’ After a while we walked back in and the place looked like it had snowed, everything was covered in white powder. The problem was that the console, the recording tape and everything had this fine, very abrasive powder all over it.

“The Neve console was ruined. We had to quickly remove the tape because the dust would eat the oxide, so we moved to Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles to finish the vocals.”

With the album completed, a design makeover followed. The band brought in renowned San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse (real name Stanley George Miller). The duo had first hooked up with San Francisco’s counter-cultural doyens the Grateful Dead (designing their album covers) and legendary West Coast promoter Bill Graham (designing his gig posters). During the early 70s they had formed the Mouse Studio, and helped rebrand Journey by designing and standardising their cover art, including Infinity’s colourful flaming wings. The pair also came up with a Journey logo.

Says Perry: “Bruce Lundvall was the president of Columbia at the time, and he quipped that, in order for us to make another record with me singing, we would have to sell one million units. Hence the reason we stayed on the road for 298 shows that year. We started touring in February and didn’t come home for almost a year.

“Wheel In The Sky was the first single. Neal and I went to a pizza place, and I went over to the jukebox and saw a Wheel In The Sky 45 in that machine – an ecstatic feeling. I didn’t tell Neal, I just put two quarters in, pushed the button and sat down and the song started. Neal looked at me and started laughing. It was a monumental moment. Back then if you were starting to show up in jukeboxes it was a sign that you might be finally starting to happen. My mom had an eight track in her car and she would play the cassette to everybody saying, ‘That’s my Steven.’”

Although the tour emphasised the band’s growing stature, it also highlighted that while Aynsley Dunbar was an exceptional rhythm king, he was perhaps too complex for the way Journey’s music was developing.

“Van Halen were the opening act on the tour,” remembers Steve. “They were a brand new band back then. We were doing 3,000-seat auditoriums and they were killing us every night. It was eye-opening. We were keeping up with them, but they were certainly making us be a better band. They were so musically simple.

“Well, I was a drummer before becoming a singer and one of the things about being a drummer is that I’m kind of hard on other drummers. Foundationally you can have a really great band, but if the drummer doesn’t measure up you’re not going to do very well. But if you have a mediocre band and a great drummer you’re going to do better. So we’d do soundchecks and sometimes Aynsley might not be there or be off doing something like radio promotion and I would do soundcheck for him – set his drums up and play a few songs. It started to be apparent to Neal and to myself that the band sounded different with me because I’m a slamming R&B-style drummer, as opposed to a jazz-fusion drummer like Aynsley.

“Aynsley’s style had been perfect up to when the band changed style. As the music evolved, we started to work up some of our new ideas with me playing drums, and they didn’t sound as good with Aynsley playing them. So we toyed with that for a while, but occasionally we kept being reminded about it while jamming new ideas for the follow-up record. And then we saw Steve Smith playing drums with Ronnie Montrose, who was also one of our support bands, and we thought, ‘Help, what do we do now? Because this guy sounds like the cat.’ We started hanging out a lot – the next thing is we made a switch.”

Journey’s run of success continued with their follow-up albums, from Evolution through to blockbusters such as Escape, Frontiers and Raised On Radio. Their continued uphill trajectory was an unprecedented triumph, propelling the band into increasingly larger arenas and stadiums, right the way through to the late 80s, before they implemented a (theoretically) indefinite and somewhat strained hiatus. With hindsight, the appointment of Steve Perry and the creation of the Infinity album was one of the pivotal moments in the development of modern rock.

“I liked the songs, I liked the edge and I liked the dual vocal stuff,” reflects Gregg Rolie. “The band had a lot of colour to it and I think we could have explored more of that. Infinity for me personally was a big change; writing songs for singing rather than writing songs for playing. The addition of harmonies and multi-track vocals… we’d never sung harmonies like that before.

“Also, the songs were great: Patiently, Winds Of March, Lights… Later it started going away from where I thought it should have been, but I’m only one member of the band so you’ve gotta roll with it. On Infinity there was still solo and instrumental work influencing how it sounded – it still had that vibe of being alive. It was always powerful. We actually carried that edge into the Evolution album.”

“If I had the chance I would do it all again exactly the same way,” says Steve Perry in conclusion. “I swear to God. I would not hesitate for a minute.”

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents AOR magazine issue 11,

Derek’s lifelong love of metal goes back to the ’70s when he became a UK underground legend for sharing tapes of the most obscure American bands. After many years championing acts as a writer for Kerrang!, Derek moved to New York and worked in A&R at Atco Records, signing a number of great acts including the multi-platinum Pantera and Dream Theater. He moved back to the UK and in 2006 started Rock Candy Records, which specialises in reissues of rock and metal albums from the 1970s and 1980s.