Happy Birthday, Steve Perry. The One. The Only. The "Voice."

One of the gifts that I received on Christmas, 1978, was a "Bert & Ernie" AM/FM radio. At the tender age of nine, I couldn't possibly know what this gift would come to mean to me over the next year. It was a toss-away gift at best, I was far more interested in the gifts that contributed to my growing Barbie collection.

Shortly after Christmas we moved to a new house across town. This wasn't unusual for my family. By the time I was 9 years old we had moved at least ten times. This move, however, meant a new school. A new school meant new people, and by the time I was 9 I was really kind of over it.

In the end, I spent the better part of 1979 in the safe haven that was my pink bedroom in our new house.

This is where I'd wile away the hours of that summer, creating stories using my Barbies and my Fisher Price Little People. It was just me, my imagination, and my only other constant companion that summer - my Bert & Ernie AM/FM radio.

It was that summer I discovered the true gift I had been given. Instead of listening to the Country/Western twang of good ol' Hee Haw music many of my hometown folks were listening to (including my own parents,) I was able to find my own music. I gravitated to the Top 40 station, spending many a Saturday afternoon with Casey Kasem. It didn't take very long at all before I discovered that I didn't much care for Country Western. I, instead, preferred the more popular beat of rock and roll.

Of course in 1979, the top 40 list was filled with all kinds of music - including the much maligned disco. (Yes, I liked that too. And I still do.)

But my favorite song of that year came from a rock band. They were called Journey.



I can't tell you why I latched onto a song that had such a primal, sexual beat and a message far too mature for my delicate third/fourth grade mentality. All I can tell you is that when that song hit the radio, I'd turn the volume up and belt it out with gusto. It was all about the music. I didn't care about bands or singers because my heart still belonged to Davy Jones of the Monkees. It would take another couple of years before Journey and Steve Perry entered into my consciousness beyond the music on the radio.

It was 1981 and my father had recently passed away. My mother worked long hours at the Levi plant in Amarillo, Texas. We had moved. Again. I was in a new place. Again. Fortunately the Good Lord above had sent an earthbound angel my direction in the shape of an eleven-year-old classmate, to guide me through the next painful periods of my life. We'd stay up for hours on the phone so I wouldn't feel so all alone. After he'd gone to bed, however, my babysitter was my television set. And one weekend I happened to catch a rerun of The Midnight Special. Imagine the thrill I got when I found out that Journey would be performing my favorite song!

The thrill soon abated the minute I got a look at the guys who made the music I so loved. Growing up in Abilene, Texas, I was used to two types of people: shit kickers and Air Force personnel. There weren't a lot of long-haired Portuguese guys or short Italians sporting Afros in my neck of the woods. The only band I knew up to this point, really, were the Monkees. To say that Steve Perry is a far cry from Davy Jones is a bit of an understatement. So I spent the better part of seeing that song performed for the first time wrapping my head around this entirely unexpected development. It wasn't until this unusual man stepped down into the audience and crooned to one of the girls in the audience that I went from "WTF" to "mmm okay." It was a moment that tattooed itself on my brain. Eventually it emerged in my popular Rubenesque romance, "Groupie," as one of the tactics the hot rock singer Vanni would use to win over the squealing fangirls who came to see the show. Looking back now I see it as a defining "idol" moment.



It wasn't the same starry-eyed infatuation I had when I saw Davy Jones for the first time, but the fascination lingered. Through the "Escape" era that followed, when Journey was all over the radio, I would remember that moment with a bit of a thrill. This is the magic of being a front man of a rock band. It's your job to make all the girls fall in love with you. They get to color themselves into the fantasy girls you sing about, so the more personal you make that connection, the more successful you'll be.

Never was this truer than that fateful night a couple of years later, when Mr. Perry unknowingly sent an arrow straight through a thirteen-year-old's heart courtesy of Friday Night Videos.

In 1983, those of us who didn't get our MTV had to get our video fix every Friday night after Johnny Carson. It was must-see TV in my house. And just like that night two years prior, the minute I heard that Journey was coming up with a new music video, an unexpected thrill surged through my body. Only this time it wasn't just about the music. I really wanted to see the lead singer again. Even after all that time, I hadn't forgotten the impact he had made on me.

Things had changed a bit down Steve Perry way by 1983. His hair was shorter and he sported a mustache. I wasn't sold on either look until he shaved off the 'stache half-way through the video. I was just getting settled in with all these changes when he did something that no one had ever done to me. He gave me "The Look."

Oh sure, he was probably thinking of Sherrie when he glanced ever so lovingly and soulfully into the camera. He had no way of knowing he was filming a gesture that would forever change the course of some daydreamy Texas teenager's life who lived a million miles away in another galaxy. But in that moment, that connection was with me. And everything I thought about love before then rewired itself in an instant.



It sounds silly now, of course. This was 30 years ago (GAK) when I was an impressionable, lonely, insecure teenager. And perhaps that was why I latched onto this new "love" with all the passion I could muster. If you have ever met a teenage girl then you'll already know that was quite a lot. Within a week I had purchased the Frontiers album and showed my mom the picture on the back cover, letting her know that was the guy I was going to marry.

(She was less enthusiastic about it than I was.)

It was a safe daydream when I was 13. At the time I was an awkward, overweight girl on the losing end of acne. Guys my age who noticed me at all only thought I served one purpose: the butt of the joke. I hadn't been kissed. I hadn't been asked on any date. I could only dream about getting the same attention the other girls who didn't fight my particular battles got. But for three or four minutes, I could listen to a song and I could do what I did best... I could pretend. I could pretend I was the kind of girl he sang about, the kind of girl any guy would write or sing any song about. I could daydream about the day a man would look at me, for real, and love me, for real.

Thanks to Steve Perry, I learned how to dream big. And it was a much bigger than the life I could expect marrying a high school sweetheart and settling down into a nice, traditional, picket fence lifestyle with 2.5 kids and a dog. I could reach as far as my daydreamy little heart could take me, which was fortunate. My life was never going to be traditional because *I* wasn't traditional. There were no high school sweethearts on bended knee, no picket fence futures on the horizon. I could either settle for much less than I deserved or shoot my expectations into outer space and just see where they landed. Steve was the first of such lofty aspirations. I learned how to hang on through the disappointments and never give up hope that one day I would find someone who was happy to give me the love I wanted more than anything, when all the evidence in my "real" life pointed towards a life of endless pain and rejection.



I wanted love so badly I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I kissed my fair share of frogs and settled for way less than I deserved, mostly because I bought into the lie that it's unrealistic to aspire to an "exceptional" life when you're less than ordinary. Instead I forfeited love for sex, trading in my self-esteem in the process. I got hurt - a lot - as my heart bounced around like a hacky sack from one loser to another. Despite it all, I found myself returning to Steve again and again. Something in my spirit wouldn't settle for settling. I wanted something exceptional. I wanted to believe I was worth something exceptional. His music... his songs... were my lifeline. Two notable occasions included a night in 1987, when I was in a hospital room and lonelier than I had ever felt in my life. I turned on MTV (because I finally could access the cable network) and they just happened to be running a Raised on Radio special, and suddenly I didn't feel so alone anymore. Around that same time frame, when I was distraught, feeling I was nothing and no one, I got the Journey newsletter with an interview with Steve, sending a much needed piece of advice to hold on, to believe, that I could be something great. Coincidences, maybe, if you believe in that sort of thing. I'm in the "Everything Happens for a Reason" camp. And I believed then (and now) Fate used these things to toss me a nod from the universe that I wasn't alone and I'd be okay, in a language I'd understand and could be open to receive.

I was able to grow beyond the limits of the ordinary, which were ill-fitting at best. His voice created a bubble that was safe. Pure. Untouched by the letdowns of "real" life relationships. It's still where I go when I feel sad. It still lifts me up when I'm down. It reminds me to never give up - that something better is coming. To hold onto hope. To never stop believing. (Yeah. I went there.)

Over these many years I finally figured out why that message is so universally powerful. It isn't so that you'll one day get that thing exactly the way you think you want it. It's so you are open and receptive to things even bigger and better than you'd let yourself dream. Obviously I didn't marry Steve Perry, but I married men who saw me the way Steve Perry saw the women he sang about - which was my heart's truest desire.



In the end, I can honestly say that Steve Perry was more than just a celebrity crush. He was a significant influence throughout my childhood. He was a beacon... a light in my darkness. Looking back I can't remember a day when he didn't brighten my world with dreams worth reaching for. Even after 30 years, his songs are my safe place to fall. It was more than just music. It was a connection that someone as disconnected as I was really needed in order to get from one day to another. He held my hand as I navigated over the perilous, rocky path of adolescence, and he didn't even know it. Without that... without him... I really don't know where I would be. As silly as it sounds, I mean it sincerely when I say I love him as true today as I loved him when I was 13.

So happy birthday, Steve.

And thank you.