Van Halen probably didn't know it at the time, but even as a young band it served as a valuable example of how to put on a great live show.
A veteran band with a new singer on the verge of a major breakthrough, Journey might have thought it had things figured out. But experiencing Van Halen's fierce live show night after night proved Journey had much to learn if it wanted to stay on top.
Steve Perry recalled the awe of Van Halen's early performances in a recent interview with Ultimate Classic Rock.
“Now, you’ve got to remember that Eddie and the group were on their first tour with Journey and we brought them out to open at the 3,000 seaters we were doing at that time," Perry said. "They cleaned our clock plenty of times and woke us the f--k up pretty quick. They were so focused and so on fire that they were just relentless. That was the most musical relentlessness that I’d ever seen."
Van Halen was such a disruptive force that Journey shuffled its lineup as soon as the tour was over. The bill's other band, Montrose, broke up.
Perry was so inspired by how seamless Eddie and Alex Van Halen played together that he convinced Journey's Neal Schon that he should be similarly locked with Aynsley Dunbar.
Journey was making significant changes to its approach with Perry in the band, moving away from the fusion-influence of its earliest, post-Santana records and towards a more commercial radio-rock sound.
Dunbar, a fusion drummer who had worked with the likes of Frank Zappa before joining Journey in 1974, was unwilling to simplify his playing to facilitate the new direction.
As a result, Journey parted ways with Dunbar and hired former Montrose drummer Steve Smith, who would play on Journey's best-selling albums with Perry.
Van Halen became close friends with Journey on that tour and the band's ties to Montrose are numerous. Van Halen used Montrose's 1974 album Paper Money as a template for the production of its debut album, recording the LP with Paper Money producer Ted Templeman.
Former Montrose singer Sammy Hagar was considered for the frontman gig in Van Halen in the band's early days. When David Lee Roth left Van Halen in the mid-'80s, the band hired Hagar, but not before Eddie took Perry's temperature on the opening.
Perry told Rolling Stone this fall that he never took Eddie up on his invitation to jam; he was worried about stepping out of a great situation and right into Roth's shadow.
"I don't know that I could be the guy to go out and represent the David Lee Roth years with my voice," Perry said. "It's a different kind of singing."
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