http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... STATE_FAIR
Journey's anthem goes on and on
By KYLE MUNSON • kmunson@dmreg.com • August 22, 2009
Chances are you've heard the unmistakable keyboard riff that will signal the close of the 2009 Iowa State Fair.
Even if you can't name the tune, you've probably heard it.
Fireworks aside, Sunday night's climax will be delivered at the Grandstand by a 28-year-old rock anthem that began life in 1981 as a modest top 10 single but has evolved into one of the unstoppable monster hits of our digital music era.
Rock band Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" opens with "a small-town girl, livin' in a lonely world," evokes "the smell of wine and cheap perfume" and gradually builds toward a final epic chorus, punctuated by a searing Neal Schon guitar solo.
"First of all, the beginning of it is unmistakable," Tony Bohnenkamp said of the song.
He should know. As one half of local piano lounge duo Pianopalooza, Bohnenkamp fields on average three audience requests for "Don't Stop Believin'" at each of his gigs — and still somehow loves the tune.
"You listen to the beginning of a Jack Johnson song, and besides his style of playing, it could sound like 15 other songs," Bohnenkamp explained. "('Don't Stop Believin') is sort of like the culmination of ten '80s rock factors. ... It's kind of like every song that's ever been in a 'Rocky' movie."
Speaking of movies, Journey's signature hit has won over fresh waves of fans in recent years thanks to its regular use in film, TV and other media — perhaps most famously in the June 2007 series finale of HBO's mafia drama "The Sopranos." "Don't Stop Believin'" played over the final minutes of the cliffhanger episode after lead character Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) selected the tune on a diner jukebox.
"Good songs, they're like cats," said Nancy Wilson, lead guitarist in Heart that will open Sunday's concert for Journey. "They have nine lives if they're good songs, especially if somebody can use them appropriately in some movie. It's just good for the song, it's good for the movie."
This continuous "Don't Stop Believin'" exposure seems to have translated into concert ticket sales.
Journey and Heart's fair-capping show so far is this year's only sold-out Grandstand event — about 10,500 reserved seats snapped up
, with another 700 or so standing-room-only tickets scheduled to go on sale at 9 a.m. Sunday at the Administration Building.
As recently as 2006, Journey was drawing only about 6,000 fans to its central Iowa concerts, even when packaged with the likes of Def Leppard or Styx or REO Speedwagon.
This renewed enthusiasm for Journey at the State Fair is yet another sign of how its signature song is arguably more powerful than the band that spawned it. Original "Don't Stop ..." vocalist Steve Perry hasn't toured with Journey in more than a decade. The band now performs and records with its third replacement singer, Arnel Pineda, a Filipino rocker discovered by the other band members on YouTube.
And last year Journey grossed more than $44 million on the road according to Billboard as one of the top 20 earning acts.
Sunday's Journey show won't mark the first live performance of "Don't Stop Believin'" at this year's fair.
Bohnenkamp pounded out those signature piano chords shortly before 10 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 14, at the Anderson Erickson Dairy Stage. He sat in with his friends and former bandmates in the Nadas and was allowed a star turn while the lead singers and guitarists took a mid-set break in the wings.
"I sing nowhere nearly as high as Steve Perry, so we do it down a few steps," he admitted.
Jessica Bloomberg and Sylvona Lang were among a throng of fans that stood directly in front of the stage — bouncing atop the amphitheater bleachers, raising their fists, singing along to every lyric of "Don't Stop Believin.'"
"It's a pump-you-up type of song," Lang, 26, of Cedar Rapids, gushed after the show. "I don't think you go anywhere where you don't hear it."
She and her friend Bloomberg, 28, of West Des Moines, have belted out "Don't Stop Believin'" in karaoke bars and danced to the song at friends' weddings.
In 2005, "Don't Stop Believin'" served as the unofficial theme song for the Chicago White Sox during the baseball team's World Series Championship season.
In November 2008, the song became the first catalog track (not a new hit) to sell more than 2 million digital downloads.
Earlier this week the Journey tune was still lodged at No. 86 on iTunes — by far the oldest song on the chart, rubbing elbows with recent hit singles.
As much as the first bars of "Don't Stop Believin'" help define the power of the piano in pop music, Heart's hit song "Barracuda" from its 1977 sophomore album rates one of the landmark opening riffs in guitar rock.
Also much like Journey, Heart has seen its song catalog reborn this century — with "Barracuda" in the video game "Guitar Hero," with its 1980s power ballad "Alone" performed on "American Idol."
Wilson, 55, who doles out the "Barracuda" riff alongside her powerhouse vocalist sister, Ann, said that she has noticed a trend in the last few years: More younger fans attending Heart concerts, pressing close to the stage.
"It's just the ultimate, coolest thing in the world to feel that somehow the fashion of pop culture didn't just move off without you and leave you in some pile of rubble," she said earlier this month while on her tour bus rolling out of Los Angeles. "There's still something about these songs that connects into the next generation."
It also doesn't hurt the band's bank account.
"When you have 'Barracuda' in a Nissan commercial or something that's a good thing," Wilson said. "That'll pay the rent for a while."
The longevity of well-crafted classic rock songs is nothing new as the Beatles' custom version of the "Rock Band" video game is due in September.
Death spurs record sales. In the two weeks after Michael Jackson died at 50, more than 6.2 million copies of his songs (with and without the Jackson 5) were downloaded around the globe — and he occupied all top 10 spots on Billboard's Catalog Album Chart.
But the members of Journey have been continually prodded about the unique uplifting spirit that infuses "Don't Stop Believin.'"
"The lyric is a strong lyric about not giving up, but it's also about being young, it's also about hanging out ... and looking for that emotion hiding somewhere in the dark that we're all looking for," Steve Perry told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation earlier this summer. "It's about having hope and not quitting when things get tough, because I'm telling you, things get tough for everybody."
Journey keyboardist and "Don't Stop Believin'" co-songwriter Jonathan Cain told Mix magazine a couple years ago that the influx of young people to Hollywood in the early 1980s provided a setting for the song.
"We felt that every young person has a dream, and sometimes where you grow up isn't where you're destined to be," Cain said. "We really felt that we had nailed something fun, and Steve had fun singing it."
Sunday, Arnel Pineda will attempt to electrify the sold-out Grandstand with a voice eerily similar to Perry's.
"(Journey has) managed to successfully bring Arnel into the foreground very carefully," Nancy Wilson said. "Everybody comes to that show and they've got their arms crossed and they've got their little scorecards out. And then as soon as Arnel starts singing ... he beams out this wonderful trustworthy humanity."
Meanwhile, "Don't Stop Believin' " remains a staple in the Pianopalooza repertoire.
"Even if there are seven people in the bar, they will still all go crazy if we play that song," Bohnenkamp said.
To paraphrase Journey, the movie never ends.
It goes on and on and on and on.
A timeline of “Don’t Stop Believin’ ”
1973 — Former Santana guitarist Neal Schon founds Journey.
1981 — Journey’s seventh studio album, “Escape,” is released. “Don’t Stop Believin’” is the second single and peaks at No. 9 on the Billboard chart.
April 28, 2003 — “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” is made available on iTunes.
2004 — The song provides a soundtrack to a romantic roller rink scene with Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci in the film “Monster.”
2005 — “Don’t Stop Believin’” hits iTunes’ top 10 following TV exposure in the same week on both Fox’s “Family Guy” and MTV’s “Laguna Beach.”
Fall 2005 — The song becomes an unofficial theme for the Chicago White Sox, World Series Champions. Journey frontman Steve Perry sings the tune at the celebration in Chicago.
June 10, 2007 — The final episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” concludes to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Sales of the song skyrocket 482 percent in the several days that follow.
November 2008 — The song becomes the first catalog track (not a new hit) to sell more than 2 million digital downloads.
May 5, 2009 — “Rock of Ages,” the campy Broadway musical partly founded on the “Don’t Stop Believin’” lyrics and featuring the song amid a slew of 1980s hits, is nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Musical. (It didn’t win.)
May 19, 2009 — An early spring preview of the new Fox series “Glee” is marketed with a cast recording of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and the new choir cover version promptly hits the top of the iTunes chart.
Dec. 1, 2009 — A new film about Journey’s 30-year history and the introduction of singer Arnel Pineda, “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey,” is due to be released.
