Walter “Herbie” Herbert died tonight, may he rest in peace forever..✝️🙏🏼 Without him there would be no Journey, and Steve Perry wouldn’t have had a career. We owe it all to him.
This is gonna be long and maybe not that interesting to some of you but I think it is fascinating reading about the band's history and dynamics.
I've shared fragments of the 2001 interview with Herbie before. He's very harsh about Steve in that one, I think this following part explains the reason. He talks about how power shifting to Steve during Frontiers and his bandmates sort of going with it. He also explains how Jon joined the band:
A little more about Jon joining and Steve making him cry.
He had finally agreed, and we go through all of the machinations. (I've) got the band at their rehearsal facility in east Oakland, and I'm picking up Jon at the Oakland airport. I had my 928 Porsche at the time, my 1980 928, and I popped the hatch in the back, and I put his keyboard in. The doors aren't even closed - I haven't closed my driver door, he hasn't closed the passenger door - he hands me a tape, and says 'this is a tape of my wife, Tané. Now, here's the deal - you manage her, you get her a label deal, you make her career happen, or take my keyboard out of the back, I'm out, I'm going right back to LA, no Journey.'
M: Oh man.
H: I go, 'Hey we had an agreement, and you had committed to me. And you're touching upon the single biggest problem I have with all people who pick up an instrument and decide that they're entertainers and performers and players. It's at the expense of any sense of commitment. And you were committed on other terms and conditions, and you want to change the deal right now. And that is jive.' And he said, 'Well, than call me jive. Do I get out of the car, or do I stay in?' And, so I said, 'Well, I will get her a label deal. I'm sure it won't be because she deserves it.' And he said, 'Let's listen to the tape.' and I said, 'No, let's not. Just shut the door.' And so, I gotta tell you, in no uncertain terms, I knew what Jon Cain was like day one. Day fucking one.
Anyway, Jon Cain's come-uppance came very quick. We go, we write that Escape record. We record the thing (and) it's magnificent. I sequence it, entitle it, and package it, as I always would. We're ready to hit a home run. We had this big party at Fantasy records in Berkeley, with all the press, media and radio there to hear this new masterpiece. Something goes wrong, and Perry's in there with Jon Cain, and somebody suggests 'Wow, this is so great, Jon Cain sure did bring a lot as a songwriter!' And he did! You said it yourself. You know, I agree. Whether I like these people as individuals doesn't have anything to do with my total respect for Perry's talent, for Jon's talent, for all of their talents. But, boy - Perry bristled so much at the notion that Jon Cain had contributed much of anything to that, that he just proceeded to dismiss and diminish Jon Cain's contributions and involvement to the point where Jon Cain had to leave the room and was out in the parking lot, I mean bawling like a fucking baby. Bawling like a baby. So I went out in the parking lot, and I said, 'Now you see what happens when you run into even a bigger asshole than yourself? This is what it feels like. Now if you think that you can go tit for tat with that prick, and be as much more a bigger prick than he is, I got news for you. You have met your fucking match. You know why? Cause everybody sees you coming, Jon Cain. You advertise what a prick you're going to be. Perry - he's got the bulk of the world fooled. And he had you fooled until tonight.' That was it. That was the beginning of the realization for Jon Cain. I betcha right then and there he said 'I wonder a little bit less why Gregg Rolie walked away from such and incredible enterprise, at such an incredible point in their history.'
So he's saying Jon was a prick but Steve takes the prize in that area. What he says about Gregg is something we have discussed before, his conflict with Steve.
About his son Neal:
Here is the dichotomy of my relationship with my 'son', Neal Schon. Matt and Barbara (Schon, Neal's parents) sired him. They divorced (and) I took him out of middle school with Santana as a fifteen year old. (I) was his surrogate parent for the next ten years - easily until he was 25 or older. Before he was out and started making any decisions on his own at all. Every decision he made on his own was a funky and bad one, and every decision I made for him was based in total love, and nobody knows it better than him. And he knows it now. I love him - like a son, but I visit him in San Quentin and we talk to each other through the glass. He's my partner in Nocturne, and I am a tremendous partner to him.
About Ross (very mean to poor Ross):
But I remember going to Ross Valory's room. I knocked at his hotel room door and stood in the hallway. I was probably emotional, and said, 'this is Gregg's last show. And I'm losing; I'm losing my right arm here. Organizationally speaking, power base, strength, I've got the real leader of this band walking away. And he takes with him my power base in so many ways. And Ross, you're so weak. You've been such a weak friend. As a musician, I feel like you've progressed very little since I first saw you play when you were 15 or 16. You're the same guy. If I applied myself to management the way you've applied yourself to your instrument and your craft, this band would still be playing a nightclub in Willimantic, Connecticut.' It was one of the few nightclubs we had ever played, but I said that, cause I new he would know exactly what I was talking about. And he stood in this doorway and just shuddered. I'm like, 'Right now, I'm thinking if I'm losing an arm, why not lose a leg, too? If I'm gonna have to go through a radical change like this, why not replace a couple guys in this fuckin' band. So this is a wakeup call - you get off your ass and start playing, or there's gonna be bigger changes here.' You know, since I gotta chop down this forest, what's another tree or two?
M: Hmm. What was his reaction to that?
H: He became a lot better player! (Laughs)
About raised on radio:
Replace Smith and Valory? Over my dead body! What the fuck - this is a group, this is a band! This isn't Steve Perry and his side band. He had corrupted Jon Cain, but the two of them (had) damaged Neal Schon so bad that in his darkest moments I fear that Neal Schon is suicidal over the primrose path he let (them) take him down. That turned out to be a brutal mistake. I said 'OK, but these guys are going to be paid as if though they were here. And we will all eat the cost of this stupidity, and the cost of these sidemen.' - which turned out to be Mike Baird and Randy Jackson.
I think it's clear he's frustrated by Steve having more power over the band than him but I agree that the decision to let the best guys go was a bad one. I'm glad they got paid anyway.
Now lets move to Herbie's opinion about Neal and his conflict with Jon in recent years (2018):
“It’s a tragedy,” Herbert says. “It’s all rooted in financial issues, and it’s too bad because it could be the undoing of what is a great business.”
Herbert says the band’s problems stem from one source — Neal Schon. Herbert discovered Schon when he was 15 years old and, after bringing him into the Santana band, he helped the now-guitar hero found Journey in 1973. Herbert has stayed in touch with Schon since parting ways with the band; Schon even sent Herbert YouTube videos of singer Arnel Pineda before the Filipino phenom was brought in as vocalist in 2007. But now Herbert says Schon has taken over the “Steve Perry role” in the band, referencing the former lead singer’s divisive tenure.
“For years and years and years, I treated him like a son. Towards the end there, I would introduce him as, ‘This is Neal Schon, my son. He just didn’t turn out that well.’ It would always be good for a laugh,” Herbert says. “You know the old saying: half in jest and half serious. But then it was getting more and more serious.”
Journey has yet to reply to requests for comment. But looking at Schon’s social media posts, it appears that much of the fighting centers around Cain’s recent embrace of evangelical Christianity and his new wife Paula White, the televangelist who also serves as Trump’s spiritual adviser. Schon has posted videos and other statements critical of White, and has repeatedly stated that the band he founded “doesn’t need to be tagged with any one religion or politics.”
But Herbert says he’s welcomed Cain’s newfound evangelicalism with open arms. Herbert had issues with Cain from the moment he brought him into the group, and yet the “borderline atheist” says finding God has made the keyboardist “a better Jon Cain.”
“I’d love to be able to say the same for Neal and what he’s doing with his life,” Herbert says.
Along with bitter tweets about his feud with Cain, Schon has discussed going off to do other projects, such as a blues project with former Bad English singer John Waite. But if he breaks up Journey, Schon would lose his biggest moneymaking venture, which Herbert insists would be “stupid on steroids” considering Schon’s many financial obligations.
Currently married to his fifth wife Michaele Salahi Schon, Schon has paid millions in alimony for previous marriages. To at least one ex-wife, Amber Fazon, he confirmed payments totaling $1.3 million by 2013. Furthermore, according to Herbert, Schon’s divorce settlement with his first wife dictates that she receive half of his royalties from Journey’s best-selling greatest hits album. After getting together with Salahi in 2011, Schon settled a lawsuit by paying an undisclosed sum to his then-girlfriend, former Playmate Ava Fabian.
Selvin says he spoke with one of Schon’s accountants at a party a few years back, and was told that for every hour the guitarist works, 50 minutes of that work goes to paying his alimony. With stories like that going around, stunts like Schon’s decision to turn his 2013 wedding at the Palace of Fine Arts into a pay-per-view event start making sense. (A portion of the pay-per-view profits went to typhoon relief in the Philippines.)
“I’ve managed a dozen bands very successfully and one of the most common problems is a failure to understand commitment,” Herbert says. “That is a tough thing to manage, because they’re basically shitting the bed and wanting somebody to clean up the mess.”
Days after the articles about Journey’s impending breakup ran, Schon tweeted that he wasn’t mad anymore, and that he was merely concerned about “the band’s legacy.” But for Herbert, the public fighting is just as damaging — and if Schon really cares about the band, he says, he’ll stop quarreling with his bandmates.
“This is the mothership,” Herbert says. “Quit fucking around.”
That's some good advice for Neal! And I'm surprised to read Herbie's opinion about Jon and religion.
Well, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!
