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The first thing that I ever worked on with John was the project I did with Sammy Hagar, when he was at Geffen, the HSAS project.  He was awesome for that.  He completely loved everything we did and he let me do what I wanted to do and I liked it.  I’ve known him throughout the years and now he’s at Sony.  He’s moved around.  He’s just always been a really great guy to me.  He’s like definitely on my side.  I’ve got a lot of respect for him.  I can’t say that I love that he controls my art (laughs) sometimes but I guess that’s his gig.  I definitely look past all that stuff but you know, it’s just a friendship. 

You know what?  To tell you the truth, John’s the first A & R guy I’ve ever had.  Throughout all the years, I’m used to him being a friend and working at another label, I’m not used to him being at the same label I’m at.  In our prior contract with CBS, we never had an A & R guy.  I liked the freedom and we basically would record our records and we’d hand them in at the end when it was done.  We didn’t have to go through like, “Well, do you like this?  Do you like that?  Do you like this? Do you like that?”  I thought we had a pretty good grip on it.  I mean, we sold quite a few records. 

With Trial By Fire, the first record that we did in ten years with Steve Perry was awesome.  They really got behind it all and your label needs to be there.  John was definitely there.  He wanted the best for everything.  We had the best studio.  We had the best place to cut the video.  We had the best video director, for ONE IN A ROW.  We finally had a decent looking video after all these years.  We had a number one single.  We had a number three record, entering at number three, and then we had no singer.  That was very frustrating.  John was definitely there all the way.  He was quite essential in putting that old line-up back together.  It is something that he worked on, I know, very hard for probably a year or more before it actually came down. 

He’s meticulous.  He’s eccentric and he definitely has a mind of his own. (Laughs)  Like he should, I guess.   I mean how do you have a gig like that without it.  He’s just a funny guy.  I like it when he comes to our shows because then I know somebody from that freaking label cares!  The only people that came to our show, from Sony, is when John brought everybody when we were in Dallas, Texas.  He brought a room full of them and I know if it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t have come because they haven’t been here throughout the whole rest of the tour.  If John had his way, then Perry would probably be back here in a second and it’s not something that I’ve completely ruled out, but nothing more than you’re looking at dollar signs.    Instead of playing in here where 10,000 people or whatever is going to be here tonight, we’d be playing baseball stadiums. 

He’s had some of the funniest clothes.  I swear to God, once I saw him in Dallas, not this year but two years ago and it was really hot out and he came in sort of like his ‘Ice Cream Man’ suit.  It’s like, white shorts, short-sleeved shirt but not like a t-shirt but like an ‘Ice Cream Guy’s’ shirt, a diamond buckle that had the diamonds all the way around it.  He had his little holster that he keeps his flashlight in, little white bobby socks and white shoes.  Wooooooo!

-July 18th, 2001

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