LouderSound

[FamilyMan]

I found this to be a rare (surprisingly) well-reported piece on the band’s last few years:
https://www.loudersound.com/features/th ... ys-freedom

[Final Frontiers]

I was going to post this article but you beat me to it.


There's a lot of red meat to chew on. I haven't even finished reading it. Though it's funny to hear the credit for the ROHF given to BS.

It was Bruce Springsteen who finally got Journey into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The hard-rock giants had been eligible for inclusion since the year 2000, and had the record sales (gold, platinum and diamond discs up the wazoo) and the all-pervading cultural influence (you’ve heard of Don’t Stop Believin’, right?) to back it up. But year after year the HOF gatekeepers said no. Enter The Boss.

“The rumour has it that Springsteen, who’s a big deal for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, sang Don’t Stop Believin’ at a benefit with Elton John and Lady Gaga one night,” says Journey keyboard player Jonathan Cain. “He said: ‘That’s a killer tune, yeah. Journey, we should give them a shot.’ So he started championing us with the Hall Of Fame. They put us in the ballot, and the fans who voted us number one did the rest.”

And so it was that several current and past members of Journey gathered on stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on April 7, 2017 for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Co-founding guitarist Neal Schon was there, along with second-longest tenured member Cain. So too were original keyboard player Gregg Rolie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, bassist Ross Valory, drummer Steve Smith and, most surprisingly of all, vocalist Steve Perry, who had seemingly turned his back on both Journey and the music industry in the late 90s.

Oh, and somewhere in between they ditched their longtime managers for good measure. That Journey are still here after 40-odd years of that kind of behaviour is remarkable. But not as remarkable as the fact that they’ve just delivered their first new album in 11 years, Freedom. It’s a record that draws on the Journey of the past and updates it for today. It’s no Escape or Frontiers, but it certainly doesn’t disgrace itself in their company.

“I’m always in creative mode,” says Neal Schon. “My work is never done. But I never lost hope that we’d do another Journey album. Not at all."

Alt

Even speaking separately, it’s clear that Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain have little in common other than being members of Journey. The guitarist is fast-talking and passionate, wearing his zero-tolerance approach to music industry bullshit proudly. “I said: ‘How about I wrap the fucking guitar around your neck?’” is the conclusion to one anecdote about once working with a producer who rubbed him up the wrong way. You’d imagine being in a band with him would be eventful.

By contrast, Cain is measured and calm, answering questions about the band’s turbulent recent history and his relationship with Schon thoughtfully. “There’s always going to be bumps in the road,” he says of the dynamic between them. “No forty-year relationship is ever not going to have them.”

Even before those bumps in the road appeared, Schon was putting the responsibility for the lack of a follow-up to Journey’s last album, 2011’s Eclipse, squarely at Cain’s door. He claimed Cain had no interest in recording a new album. Cain doesn’t dispute that, although he says he always intended to make another Journey record – it just had to be at the right time.

“The amount of money it takes for us to make an album in the studio is extraordinary,” Schon says. “You’re talking six or seven hundred grand. The Eclipse album had been extraordinarily expensive and I didn’t think anybody had any fun making it. It was the worst seller of everything we’ve ever done. It left a bad taste in my mouth.”

He says it was the pandemic that shifted his attitude to new Journey music. “Covid made this album happen, a hundred per cent. I wrote a thing about a guy and girl not sure why they broke up and missing each other. It had parallels with the separation so many couples had to endure.”

Those lyrics, hitched to “a bluesy, pissed-off loop” that Schon had come up with became the starting point for the new album and its first single, the soaring The Way We Used To Be.

[Gideon]

Yeah seems pretty obvious at this point that NS and JC have ended their friendship and are merely amiable coworkers.

That’s disappointing because I remember that they seemed to get over their tiff and would interact on stage with each other… but not at any shows I’ve seen in the past 6-8 months. No longer do they jam off one another during Wheel in the Sky; they avoid each other on stage.