Journey

Latest Release

Essential Albums

  • Escape (2022 Remaster)
    Escape (2022 Remaster)
    Escape (2022 Remaster)

    “Don’t Stop Believin’” wasn’t the biggest single on Escape, or even the second. But the fact that we’re still prepared to hear it anywhere and at any time—grocery stores, baseball games, karaoke bars, finales of revered prestige-television series—is a testament to how deeply the song lodged in the cultural imagination. Like The Beatles in the 1960s, Led Zeppelin in the 1970s or Nirvana in the 1990s, Journey captured their era, but they also transcended it. Listening to Escape, released in 1981, you can hear the blockbuster sound of the early Reagan years—the passion, the hair, the lights. But you can also hear the seeds of everything from Bon Jovi to Foo Fighters and Imagine Dragons—that blend of muscle and sensitivity that has defined arena rock for more than four decades. Interestingly, the singles that outshined “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the time—“Who’s Crying Now” and the Motown-esque “Open Arms”—pointed toward the past. And as an album in the era of so-called album-oriented rock, Escape is actually kind of weird, governed at one extreme by rowdy hard rock (“Dead or Alive”) and at the other by the fusion-curious sound the band had perfected long before vocalist Steve Perry was called up from the minors (“La Raza del Sol”). Talking to an interviewer in 2008, Perry described the feeling of being at a club and seeing a new generation sing along to “Don’t Stop Believin’” on the stereo: “There’s something reverent about that to me,” he said. “And I only wish to protect it, because it means something to them like it means something to me.”

  • Infinity
    Infinity
    Infinity

    Journey had been chugging along as a jazz-inflected rock ensemble for a few years before signing up diminutive dynamo Steve Perry as lead singer. Infinity (1978) was the first release with Perry on board, a template for later albums to follow. As before, the musicianship on the album is impeccable — Neal Schon’s overdrive guitar leads and Gregg Rolie’s gleaming keyboard lines are nothing less than high-class throughout. Still, it’s evident that without Perry’s yearning vocals, the album would be more of an exercise in technical excellence than a wide-appeal project. With a delicacy suggesting Sam Cooke at times, he turns ballads like “Patiently” and “Winds Of March” into mini-operas of rock romance. He can ride the band’s strutting groove on “Can Do” and rise to churning heights convincingly as well on “Wheel In The Sky.” No one ever accused this band of playing for the critics — tracks like “Lights” are radio-ready creations designed to melt hearts en masse. Judged on its own terms, though, Infinity is an unassailable work that inspired a host of imitators and set Perry on the royal road to stardom.

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About Journey

The epitome of all that is big, bold, and exhilarating about arena rock of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” feels both iconic and indestructible. A Top 10 single from the band’s 1981 juggernaut Escape, it has yet to lose its power despite its countless TV and film appearances, never mind all the attempts by karaoke singers. That’s a testament to the craftsmanship that was always at the core of Journey’s formula of pop hooks, heart-tugging sentiments, and go-for-broke bravado. Journey had even more flash when they formed in 1973 as a jazz-rock showcase for ex-Santana guitarist Neal Schon and other musicians from Bay Area bands. By the time they added vocalist Steve Perry in 1977, Journey had honed their sound into something more immediate while retaining their displays of prowess. Between “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” in 1977 and their commercial peak with Escape and 1983’s Frontiers, Journey seemed unbeatable thanks to Perry’s precise vocals and Schon’s guitar heroics. They remained a major live draw until health issues prompted Perry’s departure and a nine-year band hiatus in 1998. Then in 2007, with “Don’t Stop Believin’” resurging thanks to the finale of The Sopranos, the band found a fresh frontman in Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer Schon discovered on YouTube. Pineda’s Cinderella story and Journey’s revitalization on albums like 2011’s Eclipse showed a new generation what can happen when you keep believin’.

FROM
San Francisco, CA, United States
FORMED
1973
GENRE
Rock

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