Sound like JSS is really making his mark?!?! Almost 10 years later and all roads still lead to Perry. Neal and Jon should have left Journey ALONE and moved forward with something else. JOURNEY will always be indentified with SP, like it or not. Neal can stick his head in the sand 'til hell freezes over and the answer will still be the same. Even the Eagles sucked up their pride and egos and realized they had lightening in a bottle together, not apart.
Read on...............
Journey and Def Leppard Still Rockin
Review
By BRANDON GRIGGS
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
Posted: 2:34 AM- WEST VALLEY CITY -- It felt like the '80s again Wednesday night at the Usana Amphitheatre, where Journey and Def Leppard evoked that big-hair and spandex era with almost three hours of bombastic ballads and deafening power chords.
But it's a fair guess that when Def Leppard played their monster hit "Photograph" back in 1983, fans weren't holding up cell-phone cameras to snap pictures of the band.
Technically, Journey and Def Leppard are billed as co-headliners of their joint 2006 tour. But there was no question Wednesday about who was the bigger and better live act: If it had been a battle of the bands, the British pop-glam-metal rockers would have blown Journey off the stage.
Nearly two decades after their commercial peak, Def Leppard still pack an impressive energy for a bunch of blokes in their forties. The band sounded focused and well rehearsed while managing to make their choreographed ed 80-minute set feel loose and playful.
Although Def Leppard just released "Yeah!," a new album of covers of '70s power pop, they played only two songs from it: Badfinger's "No Matter What" and a theatrical version of David Essex's "Rock On." Instead, the band devoted the majority of its show to 1983's "Pyromania" and 1987's "Hysteria," two massively popular albums from its MTV heyday.
Singer Joe Elliott and bassist Rick Savage dashed about the stage with abandon while guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell traded fiery solos and one-armed drummer Rick Allen maintained a furious groove. Elliott chatted little between songs, leaving more time for the band to crank out one radio hit after another: "Foolin'," "Rocket" and a rousing "Rock of Ages" that had the sold-out crowd pumping its fists.
By the encores, everyone knew what was coming: power ballad "Love Bites" and the inescapable stomp-along, "Pour Some Sugar On Me." Journey also filled its set with faithful renditions of its biggest hits, but something was missing. Because famous ex-frontman Steve Perry is long gone, the lead-vocal duties were split between newcomer Jeff Scott Soto on rockers like "Don't Stop Believin'" and drummer Deen Castronovo, who handled ballads like "Open Arms" and "Faithfully." While both singers did credible impressions of Perry's distinctive tenor, Soto's incessant mugging soon grew tiresome. Longtime guitarist Neal Schon redeemed some songs with soaring solos (and opened the evening with a Hendrix-like solo rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner").
But other tunes were overwhelmed by excessive arrangements and a sense that the band - what's left of it - is clinging to fading glories that are a quarter-century old. In another five years, we may see Journey at the state fair.
griggs@sltrib.com
