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Open Arms by Journey

Songfacts®:

• Written by band members Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain , this song is about a couple who drifted apart but found each other again and realized how much they love each other. >> Suggestion credit : James - Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
• According to the liner notes in Journey's Time3 compilation, Jonathan Cain came to Journey with this melody already written. It could have been a song for the Babys, his previous band, except that Babys vocalist John Waite rejected the melody as "too syrupy." He sheepishly showed the tune to Perry on his portable Wurlitzer keyboard and Perry immediately wanted to do it. The rest of the band wasn't so sure. "They were opposed to the ballad," said Perry. "Neal hated the idea and Jon Cain thought maybe John Waite was right." The third single from Escape not only went on to become the band's highest charting single and sent album sales into orbit, but pioneered the entire concept of the power ballad. "Now everybody's got to have one," said Perry. Waite came around as well: his big hit as a solo artist was the ballad " Missing You ."
• " Don't Stop Believin' " has become Journey's most popular song, but it only charted at #9 in America; "Open Arms" was the group's biggest hit on the Hot 100, reaching #2, where it stayed for six weeks, first behind " Centerfold " and then " I Love Rock And Roll ."
• Mariah Carey recorded this for her 1996 album Daydream . Her version hit #4 in the UK.
• This was used in the 1981 animated movie Heavy Metal . It also appears in these films: Daddy's Home 2 (2017) I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) Date Movie (2006) The Last American Virgin (1982)
• More songs from Journey
• More songs about reconciliation or forgiveness
• More songs from 1981
• Lyrics to Open Arms
• Journey Artistfacts

Comments: 13

• Luna Loud from Royal Woods, Michigan Armin from Fort Worth/Dallas: It's not in a minor key, dude. It's in D major. But, yeah, I wouldn't classify it a "monster ballad" or "power ballad", because there's really no, well, "power CHORDS" being played. IDK I guess that's how I've always defined the word "power ballad", though there is definitely power in the melody, lyrics, and emotion, so I guess you could call it that. And Frank from Canada: real men cry. Don't be afraid to let it out, bro.
• Armin from Dallas/fort Worth I have trouble thinking of this song as a power ballad but after reading the cooments, I think I understand. It doesn't seem to fit the mold of a typical power ballad: sensitive passages driven home by a power-rock section---a light-to-heavy transition. Think Stairway to Heaven or Aerosmith's Dream On. Separate Ways seems all power, no ballad. They lyrics are deeply sentimental, especially as delivered by Steve Perry's crooning, but the constant charge in the music sounds more like power pop. I understand now that it's really the intense emotions in the lyrics and the minor key that set the prevailing mood and this song is just a little too unique to classify so conveniently.
• Mckinzie from United States I love this song so very much! I want to dance to this song with my future husband at my future wedding.
• Barry from Sauquoit, Ny On October 28th 1977, Journey appeared in concert at Bill Graham's Old Waldorf in San Francisco, California... It marked Steve Perry's first concert appearance as the lead singer of the West Coast-Bay Area group... Just over five months later on April 2nd, 1978 the group's first charted record, "Wheel in the Sky", would enter Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #89, five weeks later on May 7th it peaked at #57 {for 1 week} and it stayed on the chart for 8 weeks... Between 1978 and 1985 the group had twenty seven Top 100 records; six made the Top 10 with "Open Arms"* being their biggest hit, it peaked at #2... {See next post below}.
• Barry from Sauquoit, Ny On January 10th 1982, "Open Arms" by Journey entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; and on February 21st it peaked at #2 (for 6 weeks) and spent 18 weeks on the Top 100 (and 10 of those 18 weeks were on the Top 10)... It also reached #2 on the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart... The first three weeks it was at #2, the #1 record was "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band and the last three weeks it was "I Love Rock 'N Roll" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts was at #1... Was track 5 on side 2 of the group's seventh studio album, 'Escape', and on September 6th, 1981 peaked at #1 (for 1 week) on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart... Three other tracks off the album also made the Top 100; "Who's Crying Now" (#4), "Don't Stop Believin'" (#9) and "Still The Ride" (#19)...
• Hannah from Ottawa, On Steve Perry has such a beautiful voice. This song is definitely one of the greatest songs of all time!
• Gina from Springfield, Mo This song came out just before my husband & I was married in March of 1982; always been a very special song to me!
• Aimee from Plant City, Fl One of the most special songs ever written!
• Megan from Stevenson, Al This song is so sweet! Beautiful...<3 Makes me cry everytime!
• Joe O from Schenectady, Ny an absolutely gorgeous song, I am learning to play this one on my keyboards. Surprisingly enough, it's not that difficult. I've become a bigger fan of Journey thru this and also from knowing about the history of Journey. Thanks to Jonathan Cain and Steve Perry for this song and the entire Journey catalog of great hits.
• Richard from Houston, Tx It's easy for a song to do that. Think about it - the singer and/or writer has poured their heart into the song, and there's obviously emotion behind it. Just a matter of finding it.
• Stu from Philly, Pa It's not stupid for a song to make you cry. Sometimes a song just hits you in the exact right spot. Something so beautiful. Frank, that's one of my favorite songs, and if you think it hits you when you hear it, try playing it. whoo! what a powerful experience it is to play that song.
• Frank from Brampton, Ontario, Canada As with any other sad song I hear, this one makes me cry alot. Hey... I know that may seem really stupid on my part, but you know.... heartfelt songs like this one really do make ppl cry. Trust me, if such powerful ballads like this make you cry, then you know it really is a good song.

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Steve Perry Walked Away From Journey. A Promise Finally Ended His Silence.

By Alex Pappademas

• Sept. 5, 2018

MALIBU, Calif. — On the back patio of a Greek restaurant, a white-haired man making his way to the exit paused for a second look at one of his fellow diners, a man with a prominent nose who wore his dark hair in a modest pompadour.

“You look a lot like Steve Perry,” the white-haired man said.

“I used to be Steve Perry,” Steve Perry said.

This is how it goes when you are Steve Perry. Everyone is excited to see you, and no one can quite believe it. Everyone wants to know where you’ve been.

In 1977, an ambitious but middlingly successful San Francisco jazz-rock band called Journey went looking for a new lead singer and found Mr. Perry, then a 28-year-old veteran of many unsigned bands. Mr. Perry and the band’s lead guitarist and co-founder, Neal Schon, began writing concise, uplifting hard rock songs that showcased Mr. Perry’s clean, powerful alto, as operatic an instrument as pop has ever seen. This new incarnation of Journey produced a string of hit singles, released eight multiplatinum albums and toured relentlessly — so relentlessly that in 1987, a road-worn Mr. Perry took a hiatus, effectively dissolving the band he’d helped make famous.

He did not disappear completely — there was a solo album in 1994, followed in 1996 by a Journey reunion album, “Trial by Fire.” But it wasn’t long before Mr. Perry walked away again, from Journey and from the spotlight. With his forthcoming album, “Traces,” due in early October, he’s breaking 20 years of radio silence.

Over the course of a long midafternoon lunch — well-done souvlaki, hold all the starches — Mr. Perry, now 69, explained why he left, and why he’s returned. He spoke of loving, and losing and opening himself to being loved again, including by people he’s never met, who know him only as a voice from the Top 40 past.

And when he detailed the personal tragedy that moved him to make music again, he talked about it in language as earnest and emotional as any Journey song:

“I thought I had a pretty good heart,” he said, “but a heart isn’t really complete until it’s completely broken.”

IN ITS ’80S heyday, Journey was a commercial powerhouse and a critical piñata. With Mr. Perry up front, slinging high notes like Frisbees into the stratosphere, Journey quickly became not just big but huge . When few public figures aside from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong had their own video game, Journey had two. The offices of the group’s management company received 600 pieces of Journey fan mail per day.

The group toured hard for nine years. Gradually, that punishing schedule began to take a toll on Journey’s lead singer.

“I never had any nodules or anything, and I never had polyps,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the state of his vocal cords. He looked around for some wood to knock, then settled for his own skull. The pain, he said, was more spiritual than physical.

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As a vocalist, Mr. Perry explained, “your instrument is you. It’s not just your throat, it’s you . If you’re burnt out, if you’re depressed, if you’re feeling weary and lost and paranoid, you’re a mess.”

“Frankly,” Mr. Schon said in a phone interview, “I don’t know how he lasted as long as he did without feeling burned out. He was so good, doing things that nobody else could do.”

On Feb. 1, 1987, Mr. Perry performed one last show with Journey, in Anchorage. Then he went home.

Mr. Perry was born in Hanford, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley, about 45 minutes south of Fresno. His parents, who were both Portuguese immigrants, divorced when he was 8, and Mr. Perry and his mother moved in next door to her parents’. “I became invisible, emotionally,” Mr. Perry said. “And there were places I used to hide, to feel comfortable, to protect myself.”

Sometimes he’d crawl into a corner of his grandparents’ garage with a blanket and a flashlight. But he also found refuge in music. “I could get lost in these 45s that I had,” Mr. Perry said. “It turned on a passion for music in me that saved my life.”

As a teen, Mr. Perry moved to Lemoore, Calif., where he enjoyed an archetypally idyllic West Coast adolescence: “A lot of my writing, to this day, is based on my emotional attachment to Lemoore High School.”

There he discovered the Beatles and the Beach Boys, went on parked-car dates by the San Joaquin Valley’s many irrigation canals, and experienced a feeling of “freedom and teenage emotion and contact with the world” that he’s never forgotten. Even a song like “No Erasin’,” the buoyant lead single from his new LP has that down-by-the-old-canal spirit, Mr. Perry said.

And after he left Journey, it was Lemoore that Mr. Perry returned to, hoping to rediscover the person he’d been before subsuming his identity within an internationally famous rock band. In the beginning, he couldn’t even bear to listen to music on the radio: “A little PTSD, I think.”

Eventually, in 1994, he made that solo album, “For the Love of Strange Medicine,” and sported a windblown near-mullet and a dazed expression on the cover. The reviews were respectful, and the album wasn’t a flop. With alternative rock at its cultural peak, Mr. Perry was a man without a context — which suited him just fine.

“I was glad,” he said, “that I was just allowed to step back and go, O.K. — this is a good time to go ride my Harley.”

JOURNEY STAYED REUNITED after Mr. Perry left for the second time in 1997. Since December 2007, its frontman has been Arnel Pineda, a former cover-band vocalist from Manila, Philippines, who Mr. Schon discovered via YouTube . When Journey was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last April, Mr. Pineda sang the 1981 anthem “Don’t Stop Believin’,” not Mr. Perry. “I’m not in the band,” he said flatly, adding, “It’s Arnel’s gig — singers have to stick together.”

Around the time Mr. Pineda joined the band, something strange had happened — after being radioactively unhip for decades, Journey had crept back into the zeitgeist. David Chase used “Don’t Stop Believin’” to nerve-racking effect in the last scene of the 2007 series finale of “The Sopranos” ; when Mr. Perry refused to sign off on the show’s use of the song until he was told how it would be used, he briefly became one of the few people in America who knew in advance how the show ended.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” became a kind of pop standard, covered by everyone from the cast of “Glee” to the avant-shred guitarist Marnie Stern . Decades after they’d gone their separate ways, Journey and Mr. Perry found themselves discovering fans they never knew they had.

Mark Oliver Everett, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter who performs with his band Eels under the stage name E, was not one of them, at first.

“When I was young, living in Virginia,” Mr. Everett said, “Journey was always on the radio, and I wasn’t into it.”

So although Mr. Perry became a regular at Eels shows beginning around 2003, it took Mr. Everett five years to invite him backstage. He’d become acquainted with Patty Jenkins, the film director, who’d befriended Mr. Perry after contacting him for permission to use “Don’t Stop Believin’” in her 2003 film “Monster.” (“When he literally showed up on the mixing stage the next day and pulled up a chair next to me, saying, ‘Hey I really love your movie. How can I help you?’ it was the beginning of one of the greatest friendships of my life,” Ms. Jenkins wrote in an email.) Over lunch, Ms. Jenkins lobbied Mr. Everett to meet Mr. Perry.

They hit it off immediately. “At that time,” Mr. Everett said, “we had a very serious Eels croquet game in my backyard every Sunday.” He invited Mr. Perry to attend that week. Before long, Mr. Perry began showing up — uninvited and unannounced, but not unwelcome — at Eels rehearsals.

“They’d always bust my chops,” Mr. Perry said. “Like, ‘Well? Is this the year you come on and sing a couple songs with us?’”

At one point, the Eels guitarist Jeff Lyster managed to bait Mr. Perry into singing Journey’s “Lights” at one of these rehearsals, which Mr. Everett remembers as “this great moment — a guy who’s become like Howard Hughes, and just walked away from it all 25 years ago, and he’s finally doing it again.”

Eventually Mr. Perry decided to sing a few numbers at an Eels show, which would be his first public performance in decades. He made this decision known to the band, Mr. Everett said, not via phone or email but by showing up to tour rehearsals one day carrying his own microphone. “He moves in mysterious ways,” Mr. Everett observed.

For mysterious Steve Perry reasons, Mr. Perry chose to make his long-awaited return to the stage at a 2014 Eels show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. During a surprise encore, he sang three songs, including one of his favorite Eels tunes, whose profane title is rendered on an edited album as “It’s a Monstertrucker.”

“I walked out with no anticipation and they knew me and they responded, and it was really a thrill,” Mr. Perry said. “I missed it so much. I couldn’t believe it’d been so long.”

“It’s a Monstertrucker” is a spare song about struggling to get through a lonely Sunday in someone’s absence. For Mr. Perry, it was not an out-of-nowhere choice.

In 2011, Ms. Jenkins directed one segment of “Five,” a Lifetime anthology film about women and breast cancer. Mr. Perry visited her one day in the cutting room while she was at work on a scene featuring real cancer patients as extras. A woman named Kellie Nash caught Mr. Perry’s eye. Instantly smitten, he asked Ms. Jenkins if she would introduce them by email.

“And she says ‘O.K., I’ll send the email,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “but there’s one thing I should tell you first. She was in remission, but it came back, and it’s in her bones and her lungs. She’s fighting for her life.”

“My head said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Perry remembered, “but my heart said, ‘Send the email.’”

“That was extremely unlike Steve, as he is just not that guy,” Ms. Jenkins said. “I have never seen him hit on, or even show interest in anyone before. He was always so conservative about opening up to anyone.”

A few weeks later, Ms. Nash and Mr. Perry connected by phone and ended up talking for nearly five hours. Their friendship soon blossomed into romance. Mr. Perry described Ms. Nash as the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

“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 said. “Because she’s got better things to do than waste her time with those words.”

They were together for a year and a half. They made each other laugh and talked each other to sleep at night.

In the fall of 2012, Ms. Nash began experiencing headaches. An MRI revealed that the cancer had spread to her brain. One night not long afterward, Ms. Nash asked Mr. Perry to make her a promise.

“She said, ‘If something were to happen to me, promise me you won’t go back into isolation,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “because that would make this all for naught.”

At this point in the story, Mr. Perry asked for a moment and began to cry.

Ms. Nash died on Dec. 14, 2012, at 40. Two years later, Mr. Perry showed up to Eels rehearsal with his own microphone, ready to make good on a promise.

TIME HAS ADDED a husky edge to Mr. Perry’s angelic voice; on “Traces,” he hits some trembling high notes that bring to mind the otherworldly jazz countertenor “Little” Jimmy Scott. The tone suits the songs, which occasionally rock, but mostly feel close to their origins as solo demos Mr. Perry cut with only loops and click tracks backing him up.

The idea that the album might kick-start a comeback for Mr. Perry is one that its maker inevitably has to hem and haw about.

“I don’t even know if ‘coming back’ is a good word,” he said. “I’m in touch with the honest emotion, the love of the music I’ve just made. And all the neurosis that used to come with it, too. All the fears and joys. I had to put my arms around all of it. And walking back into it has been an experience, of all of the above.”

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Top 35 Videos by Journey, Together and Apart

Journey managed to release one of the most talked-about clips in MTV history during their brief time making videos. As you'll see below in our ranking of every Journey music video, however, there were plenty of other high and low points beyond the ubiquitous "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)."

Because of their relatively small video catalog, we've expanded the rankings to include closely related clips from Steve Perry , Bad English (which included three members of Journey's current lineup ), Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon . That serves to provide a broader overview of their career arc from the '70s through the '20s without drifting too far afield thematically.

Some feature composed storylines while others lean on lip-synced performances. Along the way, you'll find knights and motorcyclists, big hair and even bigger hooks, backstage shenanigans and long-gone girlfriends, cartoon beetles and (yes) air-keyboards.

READ MORE: Ranking All 52 Journey Songs From the '80s

Taken together with a multi-platinum discography, the Top 35 Videos by Journey complete a winding narrative from obscure jam band to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame . Additional commentary for the entries is excerpted from the new Amazon best-selling Journey biography, Journey: Worlds Apart . No. 35. Journey, "After the Fall" From: Frontiers (1983)

By the time Journey returned for 1986's Raised on Radio , they had sworn off scripted videos . This clip makes the case for that decision, reeling off a sort of greatest hits of bad choices. A set resembling an empty builder-grade apartment was lit through the blinds. There's awkward lip-syncing, awkward dancing, even awkward standing – and, sigh, band members actually falling. Even Journey looks bored, at one point reaching for a caffeine boost of coffee while singing the chorus.

No. 34. Journey, "City of Hope" From: Eclipse (2011)

Smart use of video from Arnel Pineda's homeland for one of this album's better songs, but it's all undercut by a series of remarkably cheap-looking band shots.

No. 33. Journey, "Chain Reaction" From: Frontiers (1983)

For some reason, this era saw a lot of singing into women's ears. (More on that later.) This time, they sing into a mannequin's ear! Seriously, though, that tussle between Steve Perry and Neal Schon looked a little too real. Their next project together wouldn't arrive for three years.

No. 32. Gregg Rolie, "Young Love" From: Gregg Rolie (1985)

Videos like this were so common as to be anodyne in the '80s. That's not the problem. It's that Columbia Records somehow picked "Young Love" over "I Wanna Go Back," the Gregg Rolie deep cut that would become a Top 15 hit for Eddie Money just one year later.

No. 31. Schon and Hammer, "No More Lies" From: Here to Stay (1982)

Neal Schon sings some stuff to a woman, then he and Jan Hammer get trapped in a twine box? Hey, it was the '80s.

No. 30. Bad English, "Love is a 4 Letter Word" From: Bad English (1989)

A rudimentary lip-sync video is enlivened by an actual crowd at an actual show in Atlanta.

No. 29. Neal Schon, "What You Want" From: So U (2014)

For some reason, the deeply talented Deen Castronovo shared singing duties on So U with Marco Mendoza and leader Neal Schon, as Schon continued an occasional flirtation with vocals that went back to Journey's Next in 1977. History tells us, however, that Columbia Records demanded that Journey hire a new singer for the LP which followed.

No. 28. Journey, "Wheel in the Sky" From: Infinity (1978)

An otherwise nondescript performance video is paired with the single. Best part: Neal Schon's seriously kick-ass kimono.

No. 27. Bad English, "Straight to Your Heart" From: Backlash (1991)

Arguably Bad English's best single arrived on their well-named second album: The whole AOR sound that its members from Journey and the Babys had created was about to be subsumed by the tidal wave of grunge.

No. 26. Journey, "Send Her My Love" From: Frontiers (1983)

As with "Wheel in the Sky," a performance video is paired with the single – only this time with some utterly enraptured gazes from the audience.

No. 25. Journey, "Why Can't This Night Go On Forever" From: Raised on Radio (1986)

"Why Can't This Night Go On Forever" featured an appropriately wistful clip-file video from a band that was grinding to another sudden halt .

No. 24. Journey, "Lights" From: Infinity (1978)

Unlikely controversy surrounded this clip, and not because of the dizzying visual effects during the choruses. "I went to some Billboard conference, and [founding manager] Herbie Herbert was there," Journey video producer Paul Flattery told me. "He came up to me and he was blasting me for the Journey video. His big complaint involved Aynsley Dunbar, the drummer. His stomach stuck out in one of the shots. They were lined up, in kind of a profile thing. It was like, 'He complains to me about this every day.'"

No. 23. Neal Schon, "The Calling" From: The Calling (2012)

You get a sense that Schon maybe loves motorcycles? What actually made this session so great: Steve Smith. Initial work on a few tracks eventually became an album-length collaboration, then The Calling – Schon's best solo album to date – precipitated a completely unexpected return to Journey.

No. 22. Journey, "Any Way You Want It" From: Departure (1980)

An otherwise nondescript performance video is bookended with jukebox scenes that neatly presuppose the placement of "Don't Stop Believin'" in the finale of The Sopranos .

No. 21. Steve Perry, "Missing You" From: For the Love of Strange Medicine (1994)

Typical of its time, this clip from Perry's long-awaited sophomore solo LP is more texture than actual context.

No. 20. Bad English, "Forget Me Not" From: Bad English (1989)

This band included three former members of the Babys, the doomed opening act that provided a tour-long audition for future cornerstone Jonathan Cain . Bad English would suffer a similar fate, hinted at (once again) by the way John Waite and Neal Schon push each other around in this clip for their failed debut single.

No. 19. Journey, "Just the Same Way" From: Evolution (1979)

OK, not much happens. But there was a cool juxtaposition of light and darkness when Rolie shared vocals early in Perry's tenure. Unfortunately, it was an all-too-brief moment in time. Media attention was soon focused squarely on the newcomer, and Rolie exited in 1980. "I don't think Perry really liked me singing. 'I'm the singer,'" Rolie told me. "Well, OK. But my answer to that is, you know, the Beatles did great with four singers. Four, right? Not one." In the end, Rolie felt "there was a design to all of that: 'You've got to have a frontman now,' and it was so they've got something to write about, and focus on. Now hopefully the frontman in any band is going to rally behind the guys behind them that helped them be the frontman. Bands are bands and they've got to live like that — and that's hard to do, especially when the press gets involved."

No. 18. Gregg Rolie, "The Hands of Time" From: Gringo (1987)

You may assume that Rolie couldn't pull off the sleek plasticine sound of the '80s, since his departure coincided with Journey's shift in that direction. "The Hands of Time" proves otherwise.

No. 17. Bad English, "Price of Love" From: Bad English (1989)

They whiffed on a rocker, then hit with a Diane Warren power ballad. So guess what their next single sounded like? A somehow forgotten No. 5 hit.

No. 16. Neal Schon, "Love Finds a Way" From: So U (2014)

Schon's best solo single agan showcases Castronovo and Mendoza, both of whom participated in offshoot bands and the main Journey lineup. Castronovo's ability to pull off Perry-type vocals while manning the drums is a remarkable thing to watch. A friend of Rolie's son memorably walked up to Castronovo after a performance and "and he goes, 'I'm convinced that you're only half human' — because he can do that," Rolie told me, with a laugh. "I couldn’t believe that he was singing the way he was singing and playing these complex things. It's amazing to me. He thinks 'What? Can't everybody do that?' 'No, no, not at all!'"

No. 15. Journey, "When You Love a Woman" From: Trial By Fire (1996)

A suitably staid clip for a very staid song.

No. 14. Journey, "I'll Be Alright Without You" From: Raised on Radio (1986)

Points given for the new accapella ending. Points taken away for Randy Jackson's polka-dotted bass.

No. 13. Steve Perry, "No More Cryin'" From: Traces (2018)

Notable for the unwelcome absence of organist Booker T. Jones. The Stax legend connected Traces with Perry's love of R&B, while girding it all with mirthful soul. Keyboardist Dallas Kruse mimes the part.

No. 12. Bad English, "When I See You Smile" From: Bad English (1989)

In which three past or future members of Journey are shown up by John Waite's gloriously hair-sprayed visage.

No. 11. Journey, "Feeling That Way" From: Infinity (1978)

Love the Budweiser on Gregg Rolie's keyboard. The only disappointment was learning that he wasn't simply boozing it up. The beer company was a Journey tour sponsor.

No. 10. Steve Perry, "Most of All" From: Traces (2018)

Notable for its welcome showcase of Thom Flowers, who turns in a delicately involving guitar solo after helping shepherd Perry's long-awaited comeback as co-producer of Traces . "Most of All," an emotional goodbye to Perry's late girlfriend Kellie Nash, was one of its triumphs.

No. 9. Gregg Rolie, "What About Love" From: Sonic Ranch (2019)

Rolie was inspired by Ringo Starr 's message of peace and love as a member of the longest-tenured lineup of the All-Starr Band, and "What About Love" is the result. Rolie then enlisted his son Sean Rolie to help with a music video. Its jittery blend of candid backstage footage, performance clips from the Journey Through Time offshoot band, and open-road imagery served as a canny update of Rolie's image for a new era.

No. 8. Steve Perry, "You Better Wait" From: For the Love of Strange Medicine (1994)

It's cool that he carried the patented tuxedo-jacket look into his solo career, but a run-down shack out in the desert clearly wasn't the most hospitable setting. Perry loses the shirt.

No. 7. Steve Perry, "Foolish Heart" From: Street Talk (1984)

Deceptively difficult to film, this concept came courtesy of Journey video producer Paul Flattery's director of photography. But slowly zooming in and out on Steve Perry from the balcony of this intimate theater proved to be outrageously expensive. "You didn't have a crane that could have the camera actually in the balcony and below the parapet, and then come up and go all the way down," Flattery told me. "So, the solution was to build a fake balcony, which you could then strike as soon as the camera was clear of it. Then you could get everything and everybody out of the way by the time you got down to the stage and the camera turned around. For something that looks so simple, that was a lot of hard work."

No. 6. Journey, "The Way We Used to Be" From: Freedom (2022)

They made the best of pandemic-era restrictions with a fizzy animated video that finds Neal Schon suddenly transforming into Journey's familiar scarab .

No. 5. Steve Perry, "We're Still Here" From: Traces (2018)

Perry's first scripted video since 1994's "Missing You" recalls the pitched nostalgia of Journey's "Still They Ride" – but from a much different perspective. "I think I was the first person to ask him about 'We're Still Here,' and I was taking that as, like, existential," former Rolling Stone editor David Wild told me. "Instead, it was him remembering how he went down to record some- thing in Hollywood at one of the studios and all these young people and rock 'n' roll freaks were out, sort of crawling around — 'streetlight people,' as he once coined it. He was praising and con- necting with them. There's still youth and still energy on the streets."

No. 4. Steve Perry, "Strung Out" From: Street Talk (1984)

Perry began sessions for this first solo album by tearing through an early version of "Strung Out." It was largely indistinguishable from the average Journey song in both construction and approach. Things got more interesting with the video, as Journey video producer Paul Flattery oversaw a prequel for Perry's "Oh Sherrie" promo clip. "We were trying to make pieces of art as opposed to pieces of commerce," Flattery told me. The obvious goal was to "build on the success of 'Oh Sherrie,' which was a huge, huge hit — and so we wanted to ride the coattails of that. I don't know if anybody had ever done a sequel, let alone a prequel. What happened was, it gave MTV an incentive to play both together as a kind of a suite. So they would say, here's the new Steve Perry thing — and then of course, it would lead into his biggest hit, which wasn't a bad thing to do."

No. 3. Journey, "Faithfully" From: Frontiers (1983)

A road video for song written on the road about life on the road, and the terrible strain that can put on a relationship. The funny scene with Steve Smith belies this song's underlying message: Author Cain and singer Perry were both struggling against heartbreak. The track itself came together spontaneously, before Perry asked to be alone in the studio to record his vocal. The finished take was unlike any Perry ever tried. He credited that, in part, to the fact that Cain had written "Faithfully" in his own key. "From the opening lines, he's just absolutely dripping with emotion," founding MTV VJ Martha Quinn told me. "Every time you put the needle down, you can just feel it." Perry completed the song by conjuring an ending dance between his “whoa whoa whoa” and Neal Schon's guitar out of thin air.

No. 2. Journey, "Separate Ways" From: Frontiers (1983)

The set up, featuring Journey members playing air instruments while a model marches around, has been mercilessly mocked . But "Separate Ways" was simply a product of its time – and hardly the worst example of '80s-era video excess. "It goes back to that optimism and sense of fun that people will return to, time and time again," Quinn said. "Rock aficionados may have said, 'Oh, that was cornball.' Well, ask people that are still doing send-ups today, down to every last camera angle." At the same time, the video inadvertently set the stage for future solo success. Perry brought then-girlfriend Sherrie Swafford to the set, and she reportedly became jealous. "You're going to have a slut in your video?" Jonathan Cain remembered Swafford asking Perry. That left Perry to openly wonder if he'd have to write a song for Swafford to smooth things over. " And so he did ," Cain said with a laugh.

No. 1. Steve Perry, "Oh Sherrie" From: Street Talk (1984)

Journey video producer Paul Flattery came up with a story-within-a-story approach that showed Steve Perry pushing back against a typically over-the-top shoot in order to film a more straightforward plea to namesake girlfriend Sherrie Swafford. The rejected high-concept portion originally had an Egyptian motif, but they couldn't find a suitable location, so they switched to a Shakespearean approach. ("I like to think of it as 'Richard III' — with Steve's hair," Flattery quipped.) On set, Perry's concluding interaction with Swafford may have provided some hint at what was to come: "The weird thing was at the very end, the first take we did, he goes: 'Hey, I kinda love you.' By take 6, it was 'I kinda like you,'" Flattery said with a laugh.

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After 20 Long Years Away, Steve Perry Finally Joins Journey Onstage

photo credit: rockaxis.com.co

Reunited And It Feels So, So Good

We’ve spent the last 20 years hoping, praying, pleading – even appealing to Steve Perry directly through the likes of Journey guitarist Neal Schon and even Carlos Santana to rejoin Journey, if only for a little while. As news of Journey’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came to light late last year, the possibility of a Steve Perry reunion was closer to us than it had ever been but the former Journey frontman’s famed reticence when it came to anything related to his old band forced us to be realistic and prepare for the very real possibility that he wouldn’t show for Journey’s big moment.

Against all odds, however, Steve was there for Friday night’s festivities , just as excited to reunite with his former friends and bandmates as he was gracious to the legions of fans who propelled Journey to the top of the food chain and into rock and roll legend.

While Perry ultimately decided against performing with Journey and left the honor to current singer Arnel Pineda – who got his wish and finally met his idol for the very first time Friday night – his acceptance speech reflected a lifetime’s worth of love and gratitude to his bandmates as he gushed about their respective talents and thanked them individually and by name for “all the music we’ve written and recorded together.” Lastly, for the Journey fans who stopped believing that Steve heard them and cared, he had this to offer:

“You put us here,” he said. “We would not be here had it not been for you and your tireless love and consistent devotion. You never have stopped. I’ve been gone a long time, I understand that, but I want you to know that you’ve never not been in my heart.”

What a magical night! There’s no indication that Steve will ever be involved with Journey again, but who knows? It’s been an impossible year full of impossible events, and to forget that anything is possible would be absolutely foolish. Congratulations, Journey!

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13 Things We Learned Hanging Out With Steve Perry

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

It’s a punishingly hot August day and Steve Perry is tucked into a corner table at a Lower Manhattan Italian spot taking a quick breather between a long round of radio interviews promoting Traces , his new comeback album that he spent the last five years recording in such secrecy that he made everyone on his team sign strict NDAs. He’s no more than two minutes into our conversation, barely enough time to dip a single piece of bread into olive oil and take a bite, when he stands up and announces he has to leave at once. There’s loud dance pop playing on the radio and it’s driving him crazy.

“This is very distracting,” he says, as a large, tattooed bodyguard and two publicists perched near the bar look on. “I’m hearing drums and rhythm. I have a very ADD, multi-track mind and I can’t listen to two things at once. I just hear these electronic drums. Let’s go outside even though it’s going to be a little sticky.”

With the bodyguard in tow, we head onto the street towards a park overlooking the Hudson River. It’s a complete shift from our plan for the afternoon, but Perry has never been one to stick to a script. Ignoring the desperate pleas of his bandmates, management team and fans, he walked away from Journey near the pinnacle of their success in 1987 to live a quiet life free from screaming crowds and record executives thirsty for another hit. And even when Journey-mania returned again in the mid-2000s and “Don’t Stop Believin'” became absolutely inescapable — used everywhere from the The Sopranos finale to Glee  — he refused to emerge from hiding in any way, allowing his former bandmates to reap the hefty rewards by playing about 70 shows a year with a soundalike they plucked from YouTube.

Dressed head-to-toe in black, Perry walks down the city streets, past throngs of tourists that don’t give him a second look, and attempts to explain why he turned in his rock star card over 30 years ago. “It seemed like the only thing I could do to stop some of the badness in my heart and the lack of passion for singing,” he says. “I just had to stop. I was feeling like a forced version of myself, getting into some bad habits and not connecting to my heart. I was completely deep-fried.”

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Rolling Stone published an extensive feature on Perry’s life earlier this month, but there was still a lot we learned that didn’t fit into the piece. Here are 13 of them.

1. He became interested in spiritual matters during his lost years. “I don’t attend any religious practices and I’m not religious,” he explains. “But I’ve devoted a lot of time to people like Joseph Campbell who opened the doors to all the theologists that I have opinions about now. It took a lot of open-mindedness to rewire my thinking about so many things. It needed to happen. They say that every seven years your body completely changes, that every cell in your body is no longer the same. There’s a metamorphoses. And right now, I’m more open-minded to the idea of not knowing the answers to all things.”

2. He has a crystal-clear memory of the moment they wrote “Don’t Stop Believin.'” “I know everyone has their own opinion about this,” he says. “I don’t know what Jonathan [Cain] thinks, but I remember it starting out in a warehouse in Oakland where we had a rehearsal space. I suggested we needed something with eighths on the piano because I always liked songs that began like that. It flowed from there. We were all in the room. It was me, Jonathan and Neal [Schon]. It was a true group effort. Then I went to Jonathan’s house and we wrote the lyrics together. There’s no one genius to any one moment. If you’re in a band, what you do is a group effort.”

3. Contrary to widespread rumor, he’s never suffered any vocal issues. “I have my vocal box checked all the time,” he says. “I have no nodules on it. I have a really good doctor. She sticks a camera down my nose. I call it the garden hose. It goes down to the vocal chords and then she grabs my tongue and I have to go, ‘Eeeeeee.’ She’s really able to see them well and, knock on wood, nothing wrong with my voice. The only thing is I didn’t really use if for a while, but it’s like working out when you begin using it again.”

4. His mother pushed him return to Journey in 1985 after he’d taken a long break to focus on his solo career. “I was ready to leave the group because she was so sick,” he says. “She couldn’t speak because she’d had so many strokes. She was also pretty quadriplegic at that point, but she loved my music. I asked her what she thought about it, whether I should make another solo record or go back to Journey. She said one word: ‘Journey.’ I went, ‘Are you sure? Mom, this means I won’t be around you much. Again she just said, ‘Journey.’ Then she died during the making of the record. I dedicated it to her.”

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5. The “corporate rock” label that Journey was stuck with still baffles him. “That was amazing to me,” he says. “Any band that came to America, whether it was Led Zeppelin or anybody, would incorporate in order to create a tax shelter and not leave penniless. The way to do that legally is to form a corporation. Everybody did that, but we got stuck with the label. Isn’t that fascinating?”

6. He enjoyed meeting Arnel Pineda at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2017. “He’s a sweet kid,” he says. “We talked for a while backstage. It was really fun.”

7. But he never even considered singing with Journey at the Hall of Fame. “I heard a rumor that the invitation was open,” he says. “But I’m not the singer in the band anymore. Arnel is. He’s been in the band for ten years. I just wanted to come and thank everybody for everything, including Arnel.”

8. He was the last one in Journey to give his approval for The Sopranos to use “Don’t Stop Believin.'” “I wasn’t too excited by the possibility that it might be used when someone is whacked,” he says. “Everyone else was okay with it, but I wanted to know more. So the girl who sub-licenses my music kept on asking David Chase’s people if they could tell us a little more. But since it was the last sequence in the entire show, they were a little tight with information. I told them I wouldn’t say yes unless they told me that nobody got whacked, which is how [Martin] Scorsese would have used it. So I just waited and Thursday afternoon my girl calls and says she just spoke to David Chase’s people and they told me how it ends, but I couldn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell me the screen turns to black, but they told me everything else. And I said okay that Thursday and it aired on Sunday.”

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9. Baseball gives him the same sort of satisfaction today that he used to get from music. “The electronic aspect of music just started wearing me out,” he says. “There’s not a lot of live musicians being played on the radio anymore. But when I’m watching baseball, these guys walk out there and hit, play, catch, run…I mean, they’re just killing it. There’s no auto-tune for baseball. They have to play. The musicianship of the music industry used to be that way.”

10. If he does tour, expect to hear a lot of Journey songs. “I don’t know if a tour will happen,” he says. “Right now it’s premature to even guess. But there would be no way in the world I’d go out there and not sing Journey music too. It would be solo and Journey together. But those songs are vocally challenging. They’re challenging for Arnel and everyone else. They’re not easy. They were challenging for me when I wrote the damn melodies, but back then I was young and in my olympic singer mode. [Barbra] Streisand lowers the keys when she does her old songs. There’s nothing wrong with lowering a key We’re not spring chickens.”

11. His time out of the spotlight after he left Journey in 1987 reinvigorated him . “I went back to my hometown and reconnected with old friends,” he says. “I bought a Harley Davidson and rode it around the country roads of my youth. I let the wind hit my face and my hair blowed behind me. There were no helmet laws back then. I disappeared. I went to the fair in the summer. I went to movies. I had dinner with friends. I had relationships. I lived.”

12. Money was never really an issue after he left the band. “I wrote every single song with members of the band with the exception, I think, of one,” he says. “And those songs kept selling. I don’t eat out a lot. I only drive one car a time. I live kind of small, so financially I never really had to work. There were certainly some sweet [royalty] checks as the years went by, but I’ll tell you something else: I was probably one of the only guys who saved his money. A lot of people were living very extravagant lifestyles. I was not raised that way. My grandfather said to me when I was very young, ‘It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you save.’ So I lived small and saved my money.”

13. When pushed, he refuses to make a Shermanesque statement that he’ll never, under any circumstances, return to Journey, even though it’s highly unlikely. “The only thing I’m willing to be definitive about is that at this age I am right now, I have to do things that I feel really great about, that feel life-sustaining and give me passion,” he says. “I really want to continue to move forward. I’m not too excited about going backwards. I’m more excited about moving forward to what is next. I’ve already written a lot more new material, in fact.”

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Steve Perry Set to Sing Journey Hit “Open Arms” on Dolly Parton’s Upcoming Rock Album

by Tina Benitez-Eves November 9, 2022, 9:30 am

Just days after Dolly Parton ‘s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Nov. 5, former Journey singer Steve Perry has confirmed that he will appear on the country music legend’s upcoming rock album.

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“If Dolly says it’s true, then it must be true,” wrote Perry on  social media , confirming his participation. “Her voice is amazing.”

When Parton was inducted into the Rock Hall, she mentioned several artists she would like to collaborate with on a rock album during her speech and revealed that she and Perry will be singing a cover of Journey’s 1981 hit “ Open Arms ” on the album.

Released on Journey’s seventh album Escape , “Open Arms,” written by Perry and Jonathan Cain—who had just joined the band as the keyboardist and would become one of their key songwriters—was also featured on the soundtrack to the sci-fi film Heavy Metal .

The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was a success for Mariah Carey, who recorded the song for her fifth album, Daydream .

Parton previously said she would like to record a new version of Led Zeppelin’s “ Stairway to Heaven ” with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and confirmed that Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler will also guest on her album, which is rumored to be produced by Steve Albini .

If Dolly says it’s true, then it must be true… her voice is amazing! -Steve Perry https://t.co/jei2oQzE3U — Steve Perry (@StevePerryMusic) November 8, 2022

When Parton was first nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier in 2022, she vowed to make a rock album if she was inducted.

“I’m not expecting that I’ll get in, but if I do, I’ll immediately, next year, have to put out a great rock and roll album, which I’ve wanted to do for years, like a Linda Ronstadt or Heart kind of thing,” said Parton. “So this may have been just a God-wink for me to go ahead and do that.”

Parton recently revealed that she will retire from larger-scale tours , and recently released a new holiday duet “ Almost Too Early for Christmas ” with Jimmy Fallon.

Photo: Myriam Santos / btpr

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