Original MTV VJ Martha Quinn adds key perspective in Nick DeRiso’s new Amazon best-selling biography ‘Journey: Worlds Apart.’ She was just one of dozens of interviews conducted with principal contributors including Neal Schon, Gregg Rolie, Steve Smith, Jonathan Cain and Steve Augeri, as well as collaborators like John Waite and Jan Hammer, noted experts, sidemen, producers, crew, label personnel, video directors and the band’s best-known album-cover artist. The result is a definitive accounting of “every era, every album and every tour.” Here’s a look at the Top 5 things Quinn said about Journey along the way:
5. How Steve Perry’s Legend Has Grown Over the Years:
“Can I talk about Steve Perry for one second?” Quinn said. “In the ’80s, it’s another example of how the dust of time has to settle before we can accurately see what was going on. With Steve, it seems like: ‘Oh, he’s just another rock singer. That’s what rock singers of our time sound like.’ But Steve has probably emerged as the greatest arena-rock singer of all time. I don’t think we knew that at the time.”
4. On Growing Up Together on MTV:
“I called it, ‘MTV High.’ We all went to the same high school, even if we didn’t go at exactly the same time. So, Steve Perry didn’t go to MTV High at the same time that Simon Le Bon did, but they all know each other—and those of us who are alumni, we all stick together.”
3. On the Big Shift MTV Made in the ‘90s Toward Reality Programming:
“Sometimes you can’t know, until a lot of time goes by, how amazing something was,” Quinn tells Nick DeRiso in Journey: Worlds Apart. “MTV is a perfect example. I think that we know MTV was blowing our minds and all that, but then Remote Control came along and all of the reality shows. That signaled the end of the golden era, if you will, of MTV. Over time, we started to appreciate that this was such lightning in a bottle. We were so lucky to have lived it. Sometimes it takes time to grasp that.”
2. Pushing Back Against People Who Made Fun of the ‘Separate Ways’ Video:
“This is one of those third-rail topics: I always loved it. I thought it was fun; I thought it captured a really fun vibe,” she said. “If you went to a concert any day of the week, everybody was playing air guitar. It didn’t seem weird to me.”
1. On Why ‘Don’t Stop Believin’” Became So Culturally Resonant Despite Not Being the Biggest Hit on ‘Escape’:
“I think that the dust of time of an era has to settle before we can see the mountains that are left standing,” Martha Quinn said. “Like, if you look at Modern English’s “I Melt With You,” that got to No. 78 on the charts, but now everybody knows that song. It’s an ’80s classic. This is one of my favorite categories of songs that didn’t chart well but lasted a really long time. AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” is another one; it got to No. 35. But these songs have somehow stood the test of time. Not all songs do, but these songs do.”
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