Steve Smith

type85 said:
All the interviews I've seen (mostly from modern drummer) never mention that: it was Steve Perry who canned BOTH Steve and ross valory at the same time, in fact, Steve Smith wasn't fired, he just wasn't "invited" to the recording sessions for "Raised on radio"! He called Herbie or was called by Herbie Herbert and was told they were using a different drummer for the album, that was the last he ever heard from them.... game over!
Perry had liked using different musicians and running everything on his solo album, he wanted to do the same thing on the next Journey album. From what I remember Mike Baird played on Perry's solo album, Perry liked working with him so asked Baird to record and tour on the Raised on radio! Same thing may have happened with Randy Jackson.
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Larry Londin played drums on Raised on Radio. Steve Smith is on a few songs. Larrie was indeed one of 3 drummers who was on Steve Perry's solo album.

Mike Baird only did the tour and never recorded with them. Baird won the audition after Journey auditioned just about every name drummer available. They briefly hired Atma Anur fired him after two weeks, and eventually settled on Baird.

If you ever have a chance to read Baird's interview from the time in Modern Drummer, it's pretty epic on his point of view on how it all went down
 
Smith Henderson Wooten. That CD is Bad Ass. Steve Smith as a drummer/educator is 🌎 class..his fusion drumming blows my circuits.
 
Steve Smith (born in 1954) was one of the first drummers of my generation who had a global impact when he recorded in 1977 with Jean Luc Ponty, a jazz violinist from France who, after having a successful career in his country, began playing with John McLaughlin in the Mahavishnu Orchestra becoming world famous.

The impact it had on the generation of 1954-60 (Colaiuta, Weckl, Gary Husband, Simon Phillips, etc.) was enormous since it showed that also the drummers of the generation that followed the Baby Boomers (Tony Williams, DeJohnette, Cobham, Gadd, Mason, Clarke, Mouzon, etc.), could have had their mark too, or at least that was what I experienced then (I was 18), from a remote part of the world, it gave me a lot of encouragement to make an effort and continue trying to progress!

Please listen to this great album that Steve recorded when he was 22 years old. Please use your ears instead of reading gossip, remember that there are many people with perfect ears, without holes in them! :)

Enigmatic Ocean: Jean Luc Ponty (1977) Steve Smith: Drums
 
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Jeff Almeyda said:
I know three world class, well-known players who feel that Gruber screwed those people up.

No, I’m not gonna say their names but they are known, high level drummers and teachers.
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Hi Jeff,

Sorry to be so late to the conversation...

Do you feel comfortable sharing their observations while keeping their identity confidential?
 
GretschedHive said:
You weren't kidding. I love how he pretty much says "what you guys are looking for is Steve Smith. But you just fired Steve Smith. And there's really only one Steve Smith."
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Thanks.

I couldn't remember if Baird had named Atma specifically or just said "local guy" like the Journey box set did.

In the late 80s/early 90s when I still lived in San Francisco, I got to know Atma a bit. His road cases at the time still had the Journey name on them from his 2-week stint in the band. He is a monster player who never quite got his name to the next level.

But Baird was right, they should have just bribed Smith to come back.

Somewhere floating around the internet is an interview with then Journey manager Herbie Herbert who said he was pissed when they fired Smith and he actually kept Smith on the payroll for the tour because he thought Perry was wrong to dismiss Smith. Though I have never seen Smth ever mention continuing to get paid for the tour, nor has anyone else confirmed this.

If you can find the now-defunct podcast "I'd Beat That" there is a great interview with Smith discussing how he met with a financial advisor after getting fired and readjusted his life with the big checks no longer rolling in, and how he avoided falling into the trap of ending up in deep debt like so many former rockstars do when the big checks stop.
 
davezedlee said:
Steve Smith got fired from Journey because he (self admittedly) couldn't play to a click

the "mojo" and "testosterone" probably come from a brashful ignorance... as he learned to "clean up" his playing, he lost some of his edge

Neil Peart had a "grim determination" thing going on in his earlier years that he lost as he matured...

same thing, but i'm sure they didn't (and don't) care
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Maybe so, but everyone involved including Perry has said it was more about his (Perry's) ego etc.at the time ultimately.
 
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Alex Sanguinetti said:
To @Heretic and @fatrunner70,

I know Steve and is the highest gentleman in the "Via Lactea" (Milky Way) and beyond. I haven´t been at this specific event these two persons mentioned but the same year (or more or less), 2008 I think, I was at one of his workshops and he proved, as usual, his extreme generosity towards everyone and me.

Steve is known for this as well as his great and serious dedication to the instrument.

P.S.: with a marker wrote this!:

View attachment 139794
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There is an awful lot of smoke around this topic... Gambale and a few others will not play with him any longer. Not sure what happened with Journey but there certainly appeared to be shenanigans going on. To be fair, that's true of several members of that group. Him and Valory both got tossed again. Never met the man, but when these things keep happening it does leave one to wonder what the heck is going on
 
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AudioWonderland said:
There is an awful lot of smoke around this topic... Gambale and a few others will not play with him any longer. Not sure what happened with Journey but there certainly appeared to be shenanigans going on. To be fair, that's true of several members of that group. Him and Valory both got tossed again. Never met the man, but when these things keep happening it does leave one to wonder what the heck is going on
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I'm about a thousand miles from being In the Know, but this is the first I've ever heard of him being difficult. A cursory search didn't turn anyting about him and Gambale up but maybe I just missed all the sources.

davezedlee said:
as he learned to "clean up" his playing, he lost some of his edge
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I'm not sure I've ever heard this talked about, but I know I've read/heard some of the all-time greats, like Steve Gadd and Jim Keltner and Steve Jordan, talk about how as they got older, they found their earlier recordings way too busy. I forget which famous recording Keltner said he couldn't even stand to listen to, as it was just too lacking in taste for him. And I thought, yeah but...those are the recordings that most of us loved. And that—at the time, at least—the likes of Paul Simon and John Lennon and such thought sounded fantastic.

Bill Bruford talked about how towards the end of his career, he could no longer hear what came next in the music. He had either option paralysis or just sorta ran out of ideas. (It's been a while since I read his autobio, so I don't recall quite how he put it.) And when I heard one of the last things he guested on, the Gordian Knot LP Emergent, I thought, oh, yeah, he's right.

So I wonder if it's that his playing got cleaned up or he just matured as a musician. And if, in time honored music fan fashion, many of us "only really like the early stuff."
 
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AudioWonderland said:
There is an awful lot of smoke around this topic... Gambale and a few others will not play with him any longer. Not sure what happened with Journey but there certainly appeared to be shenanigans going on. To be fair, that's true of several members of that group. Him and Valory both got tossed again. Never met the man, but when these things keep happening it does leave one to wonder what the heck is going on
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To be fair to Smith, the common denominator of every ex-Journey member is Neal Schon.
I love Neal's playing and writing, but he's known for having a huge ego. Neal has been married 5 times. He openly fights with Jonathan Cain.

Steve Perry refuses to take Neal's phone calls.

Lots of egos to go around.


GretschedHive said:
I'm about a thousand miles from being In the Know, but this is the first I've ever heard of him being difficult. A cursory search didn't turn up anything about him and Gambale, but maybe I just missed all the sources.
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I have zero idea about Gamble.

In the late 80's/early 90s Steve Smith was known to have a big ego and had a reputation as difficult to get along with. The store I worked at hosted him in a drum clinic in 92. Before he arrived, many people warned me about him. To me, while he wasn't super difficult, he wasn't nearly as easy as most famous drummers that we hosted.

But in his defense, in my observation, he has mellowed out greatly since then. I saw him at NAMM several years ago, and he was pretty down to earth.
 
Ego can usually be heard in the product...I don't get the sense of ego overload from Steve...but I guess its not an exact science...

Ego usually takes on a rigid sound to selections that never seems to flex to anothers idea...and interpersonal ego(often trauma induced) can easily be confused with musical ego...but really, this is like the classic idea of dancing about architecture...
 
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