Enjoy
2002-01-1002:13:42
http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_3071339
According to rock lore, Journey got its name in an impromptu listeners' contest put on by a San Francisco radio station.
The inside story, though, is that band members didn't like anything the fans came up with and went instead with a name suggested by a friend of their manager.
In any event, after 30 years of starts and stops, arrivals and departures, trials and travails, Journey has been a more apt name than anyone could have foreseen.
Their history has been fitful enough to earn them their own episode on VH1's "Behind the Music."
Back on the road again all these years later, Journey comes to Novato on Saturday for a benefit concert for Novato public schools.
Originally, the band was built around guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist/singer Gregg Rolie, both of whom had been mainstays of Santana. Rolie, who co-founded Santana with Carlos Santana, had sung the hits "Black Magic Woman" and "Evil Ways." Schon was Santana's second guitarist looking for a showcase to shine on his own.
The architect of the group was former Santana road manager Herbie Herbert, an erstwhile hot rod enthusiast who put together the band like he would the parts of a custom car.
Herbert brought in former Steve Miller bassist Ross Valory and rhythm guitarist George Tickner, who had played in Frumious Bandersnatch, a band Herbert managed. Tubes drummer Prairie Prince rounded out the group for its first few shows, but was soon replaced by British ace Aynsley Dunbar.
Journey released three moderately successful, mostly instrumental progressive rock albums before the arrival in 1977 of lead singer Steve Perry, a dynamic front man and virtuoso high tenor who catapulted the band to mainstream pop/rock superstardom.
"Infinity," Journey's first album with Perry, propelled by the hits "Wheel in the Sky" and "Lights," rose to platinum status, selling three million copies.
"A lot of people don't even know there was a Journey before Steve Perry," said Novato's Jonathan Cain, who replaced Rolie in 1981 and has been an integral part of the band as a songwriter, keyboardist and singer ever since.
"Cain proved to be as masterfully catalytic an addition as the stellar-voiced Perry had been earlier," writes Jack McDonough in the illustrated history "San Francisco Rock."
The Journey lineup that most fans recognize featured Perry, Schon, Cain, Valory and drummer Steve Smith.
In the height of its career in the '80s, Journey pioneered stadium rock, achieving notoriety as a "corporate" band, a pejorative that referred to their sponsorship by Budweiser, an endorsement that was an industry first.
Through the decade, Journey rolled out a phenomenal string of hits - "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'," "Anyway You Want It," "Open Arms," "Don't Stop Believin,'" "Separate Ways," "Faithfully," "Only the Young," "Be Good to Yourself," "Suzanne," to name a few. Cain notes that most of their hits were written in his ho me studio in Novato.
Over their career, Journey has sold more than 75 million albums, making them the 29th best-selling musical group of all time.
Journey disbanded in 1989 after Cain and Schon left to form Bad English. In the '90s, they came back together and broke apart a couple of times, with and without Perry, whose health problems forced him to leave the group for good after the 1996 album "Trial By Fire" and the single "When You Love a Woman," which hit No. 1 on Billboard's adult contemporary chart and earned the band's first Grammy nomination.
Two years later, Schon and Cain decided to revive Journey once more. "If the Rolling Stones can keep doing it, why can't Journey?" Cain said.
Perry was less than pleased when they carried on without him, replacing him with sound-alike Steve Augeri. Augeri had sung with the East Coast band Tall Stories but was working as a handyman for the Gap when he got the call to join a reformed Journey.
He made his recording debut with the new edition of the band singing "Remember Me," Journey's contribution to the platinum-selling "Armageddon" soundtrack.
In January, tensions with Perry eased when Journey was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Perry surprised everyone, band members and fans alike, with an unexpected appearance.
"He was very gracious, nice to everybody," Cain recalled. "He made a speech, talked to everybody and that was that."
Since then, Journey has continued its journey with two original members - Schon and Valory - plus Cain, Augeri and drummer Deen Castronovo. They released a new album, "Generations," available only at their shows, and have been on a rather grueling three-month tour that began at the end of June and ends in two weeks in Los Angeles.
On Saturday, the band plays the third annual Rock'n Blues by the Lake, a benefit for Novato public schools, where Cain's three children - Madison, 12, and 9-year-old twins Weston and Liza - are students. Cain's wife, Liz, has been instrumental in organizing the show.
The concert, at Novato's Stafford Lake County Park, will feature special appearances by Schon's 16-year-old son, Miles, who is a guitar prodigy just as his father had been, and Cain's daughter, Madison, playing keyboard like her dad.
For Cain and Schon, who both live in Marin, it will be nice being home. As Cain will attest, at age 55, the road has been especially hard this time around. At the end of August, he was stricken with an appendicitis attack at the end of a concert on Long Island and had to be rushed unconscious to the hospital.
"I got through the last song and went into shock," he said, then added proudly, with a laugh, "But I made it through the show!"
After surgery, he was back on stage four days later. Only one concert had to be canceled.
"I'm feeling better," he said, "but it was rough coming back."
As the current tour comes to a close, the plan is for Journey to keep on keeping on. They'll go out again in November and a European tour is in the works for next year.
"We're still kicking," Cain said. "And how many bands our age can say that?"
Paul Liberatore can be reached at liberatore@marinij.com.
MUSIC Preview: Journey to bring '80s anthem rock to Sleep Train
Enterprise-Record - Chico,CA,USA
... Journey's initial style was progressive jazz-rock. Original singer
George Tickner bowed out on 1975 and was replaced by Steve Perry. ...
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TRADE licks with rock legends for bargain price of $8,500
KTVO - Kirksville,MO,USA
... Roger Daltrey, Cheap Trick, former Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey
Betts, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, Journey guitarist Neal Schon,
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Chico Enterprise-Record, Wed, 28 Sep 2005 1:57 PM PDT
Chico Enterprise Record - Buzz http://www.chicoer.com/buzz/ci_3069631
Journey, the power-ballad rock group that helped dominate the charts in the 1980s, will appear at Sleep Train Amphitheatre near Marys-ville Friday night.
REVIEW: Journey ventures waaaaay back at Nokia Theatre
WFAA (subscription) - Dallas,TX,USA
... Infinity and its three well-known hits, "Lights," "Feeling That Way"
and "Wheel in the Sky." That's when the piercing, vibrant tenor of Steve
Perry began to ...
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THIS Journey was a truly wild ride
Fort Worth Star Telegram - Fort Worth,TX,USA
... Singer Steve Augeri ably replicated former frontman Steve Perry's running-through-the-wheat-in-slo-mo
wail, and the band did the song justice -- though it was ...
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