steve perry
Steve Perry in 1986 Wikipedia

Former Journey frontman Steve Perry announced he has been diagnosed with melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, and that he has undergone two apparently successful surgeries to fight the disease.

“Three weeks ago a routine mole was taken off my face and the lab report came back melanoma skin cancer. I've had two surgeries in two weeks to remove all the cancer cells and I've been told they think they got it all and no other treatments are required,” Perry revealed in a blog post.

In the same post, the “Don’t Stop Believin’” singer wrote about his grief for the loss of his girlfriend, Kellie Nash, who died from breast cancer that eventually spread to her brain.

“She was so strong, so courageous and we really loved each other so very much. I've been trying to grieve and not run from this loss so for the last 5 months that's what I've been doing along with recalling everything being in Love with Kellie taught me,” Perry wrote.

Perry, 64, pursued Nash in 2011 after seeing her cameo appearance in “Five,” an anthology of five short films underlining the impact of breast cancer. The singer asked a mutual friend to make an email introduction, who informed Perry that Nash, a psychologist who had been in remission for the previous eight months, was again battling cancer that had spread to her lungs and bones.

“I was frozen … I didn’t know what to do… I had lost my mom, dad, grandparents that raised me and I was an only child so my first thought was to maybe not send the email; then my heart said, Maybe we could be friends or maybe she could be my shrink. So I said, ‘Please send it,’” said Perry.

The two met and eventually fell in love, becoming inseparable until her death in mid-December.

“She helped me in so many ways,” Perry wrote. “I Love and miss her terribly”.

Perry, of course, is noted for his two stints as the lead singer of soft-rock titans Journey, in 1977-1987 and 1995-1998. The famously reclusive vocalist has not released a solo album since “For the Love of Strange Medicine” in 1994. However, that may change, as he told Billboard last year that he planned on getting back into the studio soon.