Journey (band)

"Don't stop! Believin'!"

A Five-Man Band formed in 1973. Released a string of multi-platinum hits from the late seventies to mid-eighties. Along the way, they became one of the most popular rock and roll bands in America, and quite possibly the definitive Arena Rock group of the decade. Ask anyone to name an '80s band and Journey will probably be one of the first names that pops out. Tuning in to any soft rock or easy-listening radio station gives you a roughly 80% chance of hearing one of their songs at any given moment.

Band members have shuffled over the years, but their main success was with:

Steve Perry: Lead vocals
Neal Schon: Lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
Ross Valory: Bass guitar & keyboards, backing vocals
Steve Smith: Drums, backing vocals
Jonathan Cain: Keyboards, guitar, backing vocals

The band still tours today with Arnel Pineda as the current lead singer and has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years.

Not to be confused with 3 video games of the same name, including the one released in 2012. ^[1]

Journey's hits include:

Journey songs featuring Arnel Pineda

Journey (band) provides examples of the following tropes:

Alternate DVD Commentary: This parody of "Separate Ways" by Literal Video. Hysterical!
Artistic License Geography: There is no such place as "south Detroit" - indeed, if one were to go south from downtown Detroit, one would end up in the strait of Lake Erie, and after that, Windsor, Ontario.
- AND IT GOES ON, AND ON, AND ON, AND OOON...
Audience Participation Song / Crowd Song: Spontaneously occurs whenever anyone starts singing or playing "Don't Stop Believin'". It is a proven fact of the universe that no one can hear that song without singing along.
- "Any Way You Want It": ALL NIGHT! all night... 3 lead singers have done the same audience call & response for the chorus.
- "Faithfully": Journey can and has simply let the audience sing the whole song to them. Steve Perry was known for that during the Raised on Radio tour.
The Band Minus the Face: Played straight with Steve Augeri; Journey never had the success with Augeri as they had with Perry, but then Journey averted the trope when Augeri left and Arnel Pineda came on-board. The band now enjoys a massive resurgence in popularity outside the US, and the album debuting Pineda, Revelation, has been their best-selling album to date since Perry left.
Biggus Dickus: Gregg Rolie on the back photo of the Evolution album. Wow.
Celebrity Game: Midway created an arcade video game based on the band around the time Frontiers was released. It was a series of mini-games (similar to Tron which they also did) where the player helps the band recover their instruments (and Steve Perry's microphone), all to the (electronically recreated) sound of some of Journey's songs. When all the games were completed, the player gets to play a bonus round accompanied by a looped, edited sample of Separate Ways (the actual song, and not an electronic recreation), which was made possible using a tape drive in the machine.
- Also the Journey Escape game for the Atari system.
Concept Video: "Chain Reaction", which tells the stylized story of two men arguing over a woman, and climaxes with Steve Perry laying the smackdown on Neal.
- Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie". See the description for the Talky Bookends entry below.
Chewing the Scenery:
- The video for "Separate Ways". Dear God, Steve Perry's facial expressions.
- "Chain Reaction" features Ham-to-Ham Combat between Perry and Schon.
- Don't forget "Any Way You Want It". Bonus points for the unedited shots from the making of the video!
Conveyor Belt Video: "Separate Ways".
The Eighties: In spite of having been around since the early seventies (and Schon and Rolie had been active musicians for longer than that as members of Santana), their most successful records came out between 1980 and 1986, and they're known primarily as an eighties band.
Expy: Hugo of Valentine. Compare Hugo in Valentine's "No Way" to Steve Perry in "Anyway You Want It". Considering Hugo then went on to found a Journey tribute band...yeah.
- Survivor's Jimi Jamison. Compare his look and sound in "Can't Hold Back" with any of Journey's Frontiers-era videos or Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" -- even Jamison's jacket in the train sequence matches Perry's shirt in "Oh Sherrie". It was so obvious that even Perry commented on it in interviews at the time.
The Four Chords of Pop: "Don't Stop Believin'", as seen here.
Four More Measures: "Don't Stop Believin'"
List Song: the title track to 1986's Raised on Radio.
Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Steve Perry, to the point that the man himself fetishized and parodied this trope during his solo tour for For The Love of Strange Medicine.
New Sound Album: When Journey started up in 1973, it was a jazz-fusion band influenced by Latin music and psychedelia (Rolie and Schon, the two leaders of the early group, were both former members of Santana) which mostly served as a showcase for Schon's guitar skills. The addition of Steve Perry on the album Infinity started a transitional period where they sounded very similar to Zeppelin or Queen, and the replacement of Gregg Rolie with synth-maestro Jonathan Cain for Escape completed the shift to the melodic Arena Rock sound the band are best known for today.
One Steve Limit: Averted. Journey has had three Steves, two at the same time: Steve Perry (lead singer), Steve "Smitty" Smith (drummer) and Steve Augeri (lead singer following Perry's departure from the band).
Painted-On Pants: Steve Perry wears these in the "Just The Same Way" video.
Performance Video: I'll Be Alright Without You, "Anyway You Want It", "Don't Stop Believin'", "Higher Place", "When You Love a Woman", "Girl Can't Help It". The band's videos more or less ran on this trope.
Power Ballad: Journey pioneered the form with "Open Arms" and "Faithfully" and continue to be known for their ballads.
Sad Clown: "I'm cryin'... the lonely tears of clowns..."
Scatting: The last minute-and-a-half of "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" go "na nana na nana nanana nana, na nana na nana na nana nana..."
Shout-Out: The lyrics to "Raised on Radio" are almost entirely composed of quotes from classic popular music.
Spell My Name with an "S": The song was originally titled "Don't Stop Believing" when it was first released on the album Escape. Subsequent releases of the song go by the more common form of "Don't Stop Believin'". Also, the album name itself is sometimes written E5C4P3, since that's how it's written on the album cover.
Spin-Off: After the group split following the Raised On Radio Tour, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain teamed up with John Waite (the lead singer in Cain's former group, the Babys) to form Bad English. Around the same time, Cain's predecessor Greg Rolie teamed up with Ross Valory and Steve Smith to form a similar group called the Storm.
Spiritual Successor: The aforementioned Bad English supergroup, which was really a successor to both Journey and the Babys.
Step Up to the Microphone: Current drummer Deen Castronovo (who played in Bad English with Schon and Cain) is a pretty accomplished rock singer himself, and often performs a few songs from behind his kit during live shows.
The Svengali: Herbie Herbert, band manager. Dear god, the man claims all the credit for founding Journey, to the point where he was playing group members off each other in a continual power struggle to keep his "creative" vision. Interview here.
Talky Bookends: The video for Steve Perry's solo number-one hit, "Oh Sherrie". It starts as a Concept Video set in the Middle Ages, but the music grinds to a halt and we discover we're on the set for the video. Perry gets disgusted with the video storyline (which has nothing to do with the song), walks off the set and ends up singing the song to his girlfriend as she walks up. The video ends with everyone getting back into position to film the "real" video again, as Perry walks out.
- Played straight with the long video version of Anyway You Want It, which is bookended by shots of Steve Perry selecting the song from jukebox.
Unusual Euphemism: "Homemade Love" from the Departure album. "Jellyroll sweetie" is (by Steve Perry's own admission in a 1980 interview) a euphemism for a "young girl". Yeah. That young.
Vocal Tag Team: Steve Perry & Gregg Rolie, on the Infinity, Evolution, Departure and Captured albums. Yes, Journey really did have more than one singer.
Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: The latest (2011) interview from Steve Perry, former lead singer. Cruelty to the common ellipse, lack of any punctuation, and the hideous color scheme make this one un-readable interview.
- It continues in the 2012 interview, too (same link as above). Fanasylum, PLEASE take the keyboard away from this man.

↑ Cause everyone in the industry has already made that joke.

[1] Cause everyone in the industry has already made that joke.

[1]