What Caused The Change In Journey's Sound

[somethingtohide]

the best lineup....

steve perry
neal schon
ross valory
gregg rollie
steve smith

You are so right there.

My favorite too.

[AeroZach]

the best lineup....

steve perry
neal schon
ross valory
gregg rollie
steve smith

You are so right there.

My favorite too.

Same here!

[mikemarrs]

it would be very interesting to see gregg rollie tackle the escape,frontiers,raised on radio material.i could see him doing a fantastic version of chain reaction.

[annie89509]

However, I disagree wholeheartedly that ROR is another SP solo album--just because he happened to have produced it (and yes, he instigated the firing of Ross and Smitty during the recording of it, too).

Listen to the CD and compare it to Street Talk. It's more than "just" producing it,It was Perry's vision. But he got a lot of help from Cain who shared his vision.

I hope I'm doing this right, lol, I don't post very much. Dave, I am quite familiar with the 2 cds, listen to it all the time. After all, it is my favorite 2 SP/Journey records. To my ears, they do not sound the same. ST is funky, motown/soul, R&B flavor (with the exception of OhSherrie, which definitely is pop). ROR is pop and ballads (with the exception of Positive Touch, don't know what you would call this song, lol). I will say that the relentless drum machine beats is kind of distracting, took a lot of getting used to, and wonder what all the songs would have sounded like with Smitty. The word was all the songs (except 3) were scrapped and re-recorded with new musicians until Steve was happy with them. But, to me, if you can hear Neal's influence and Jon's influence, then they're Journey songs. I really like Neal's guitar playing on IBAWY, more so than the solo on BGTY.

If you go back in history, the fact is Jon/Neal had already started writing for the new album while Steve was still in LA.

That would be the album that got shelved. There was plenty of talk about Journey (Neal and Jon) scrapping everything they had done when Perry 'came back'.

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Huh, what album that got shelved? It was SP that shelved his 2nd solo album to go back to Journey. I have read all the interview articles and have listened to all the promotional stuff around that time. The fact is Journey dangled the producer role to get him to come back, and Jon said he liked ST and started writing for the new Journey album with that in mind. Perhaps Neal didn't have that much input on ROR, but whose fault is that? If he had creative ideas, he should have made them known. It never stopped him before.

At any rate, I really like ROR, and TBF, and I don't care what everyone says, Arrival is NOT better

They're talking about the album that would have been titled "Liberty."

Liberty? You mean Freedom? the title HH wanted for after Frontiers? Anyway, there's been not 1 corroboration from any of the Journeymen that they were working on an album called Freedom while SP was in LA, only the bitter rants of the ex-manager who lost his power grip on the band. And don't bring up about a gag order. Gag or not, SP stayed above the fray while all of them (with the exception of Smitty) were running him down left and right. The bashing subsided in recent years, I'm only referring to the immediate years after TBF while they were trying to promote themselves with SA.