His injury required surgery, but Perry was hesitant to go under the knife. The delay led to tensions with the band. Journey, needing to tour, gave him an ultimatum: get the surgery or they’d move on without him. Perry chose to walk away and became a recluse for the next 20 years.

“We’d worked so hard, and we were fortunate to have such great success. But with that success came a serious schedule […] I just hit the wall, and I started to lose my passion for singing,” he told radio station 106.7 Lite FM.

Kellie Nash

But there was more to it than burnout.

Perry – had found love with a woman named Kellie Nash, a psychologist who had terminal cancer.

“I was loved by a lot of people, but I didn’t really feel it as much as I did when Kellie said it,” he told the Times. “Because she’s got better things to do than waste her time with those words.”