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Journey's First Three Set the Tone
by Greg Carpenter

Journey, after a long vacation of ten years from the road, decided the vacation was over in 1997. The band hit the road with a new singer and a set-list of their biggest hits, along with a few surprises including an instrumental version of a song from their very first album. While many in the audience were simply enchanted by the instrumental duet between guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jon Cain, oblivious to the origin of the melody, a few were stunned to hear the chords to Of A Lifetime in concert for the first time in over 20 years.

This article is an attempt to help fans of Journey to appreciate fully the beginnings and early recordings of the band before the Steve Perry era. The original members of Journey had impressive backgrounds in progressive, fusion, and psychedelic rock, and it is the combination of these backgrounds that resulted in the musical melting pot of early Journey.

Most people, including fans of Journey, more often than not totally disregard the band's first three albums when discussing their legacy in the rock music community. The albums have not even seen remastered release on CD (as of 1/03/01). The common complaints concerning the first three albums, when they are discussed at all, are that Gregg Rolie's vocals sound dated, the albums are difficult to listen to as a whole, and that most of the songs, especially on the first two albums, have no clearly or easily recognized song structures. To get an idea of why the early albums sound the way the do, you must first look into the past of the band members.

Journey rose from the ashes of two San Francisco area bands: Frumious Bandersnatch and the classic, Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inducted line-up of Santana. While Santana, fronted by keyboard player Gregg Rolie and guitar wizard Carlos Santana, were garnering national exposure with their fusion of rock, blues, Latin, and jazz sounds, Frumious Bandersnatch, featuring the talents of future Journey-men George Tickner and Ross Valory, were making music in the same vein as fellow psychedelic bands Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape.

Frumious Bandersnatch, like many San Francisco bands in the late 60's, enjoyed local success and acclaim but found a major label deal illusive. They released a 3 song E.P. themselves which was limited to 1,000 copies and was later re-released as part of 1995's Berkeley E.P.'s compilation CD. In 1996, A Young Man's Song, a collection of demos and live recordings, was released on CD.

Santana, on the other hand, were enjoying a major label deal, hit singles and impressive album sales. At the height of their fame, Carlos Santana hired a teenage guitar player by the name of Neal Schon to play on Santana III. The band had already enjoyed a hit single with their cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Black Magic Woman," sang by Rolie. That success was more appealing to Schon than an invitation to join Eric Clapton's band, which he was also asked to join during the same time period (a band that would record "Layla").

As a testament to Schon's proficiency with his instrument at such an early age, the producer of Santana III, Glen Kolotkin (who also produced Journey's second album), said: "On Santana III there was a song called "Toussaint L'Overture" that became like a contest between Neal and Carlos. Carlos would come in and do a solo. Then Neal would come in the next day and hear it and he'd try to better it. But we only had 16 tracks so he would have to erase over his own solo. It went back and forth like that a bit. I'm convinced to this day that we erased the best solo that Neal ever recorded! He thinks he topped it, but I don't."

Neal stayed with Santana briefly before the band disintegrated as Carlos was interested in expanding his sound and lifestyle in a direction that didn't appeal to the rest of the band. Rolie and Schon both left Santana with Schon forming Azteca, a band that would go on to become Graham Central Station, and Rolie opening a restaurant with his father in Seattle.

After leaving Azteca, Schon was approached by Frumious Bandersnatch manager Herbie Herbert to form a band. Herbert, who was also a former Santana roadie, contacted Rolie in Seattle and asked him to come back to San Francisco to form the new band with Schon. Originally, the idea was for the band, initially named the Golden Gate Rhythm Section, to provide accompaniment for area musicians who wanted to record but didn't have a full band. Rolie and Schon were itching to record their own music however, and after George Tickner and Ross Valory were recruited away from Frumious Bandersnatch, along with The Tubes' drummer Prairie Prince, the full band began playing together and recorded a demo.

According to Gregg Rolie, the initial songwriting was done by George Tickner who "came up with chordings I have never heard." As the band started gaining momentum, Prairie Prince decided to stay with The Tubes and veteran drummer Aynsley Dunbar was asked to join the group. Dunbar brought with him credibility from playing with musicians like Frank Zappa, John Mayall, and David Bowie.

The band acquired a record deal with Columbia records and went into the studio to make their first album at CBS studios with producer Roy Halee, known for working with Simon and Garfunkel and other "soft" acts. As Halee did not have experience in recording a rock band, the sonics on Journey's first album did not sound as muscular as they would have liked.

Greg Rolie had this to say about recording the first album: "The music emphasized solo work more than vocals at this point in Journey's history. I particularly remember the guitar solo on Of A Lifetime. Neal played the extensive solo and asked Roy Halee if he could have a second track. He then proceeded to play the same solo over the original, in one take. Roy looked at me with his mouth open and said 'That's amazing!' It was."

Of A Lifetime is one of the highlights of the early output by Journey. Written by Rolie, Tickner, and Schon, the track has a sound that can only be described as majestic. Beginning with a light, melodic intro on guitar, the song progresses into a mid-tempo track with atmospheric keyboards and a smoky vocal by Gregg Rolie. Ross Valory and Aynsley Dunbar provide a very busy but complimentary rhythm track. Schon's soloing on the song is almost perfect, and the song's central guitar melody repeats throughout the track to give the song continuity. The song does deconstruct at about 5 minutes in with everybody soloing simultaneously. Then, magically, at 6:23, the band recovers and rides out the song on the song's central melody. Schon and Cain used this same melody in their instrumental duet during the Vacation's Over tour.

After the release of the first album, Journey went on what Rolie describes as "The Never Ending Tour." The band would break only for the recording of two more albums with the first line-up minus Tickner who decided to leave the band after recording the first album. Tickner compositions would pop up on the next couple of Journey albums however.

It was the never ending tour that kept that band together because, as Rolie described it, "we were getting critical acclaim and were selling more tickets than recordings." The first three albums did chart on the Billboard album chart with Journey charting at #138, Look Into The Future cracking the top 100 at #100, and Next charting at #85. Respectable numbers for a 3 year-old rock band, but with the bigger success of Santana looming over Schon and Rolie's heads, the band found themselves at a crossroads after recording their third album, Next.

With a harder edge and more concise songwriting, the band gave progressive rock one more last try. Where Look Into The Future was in some ways merely Journey part 2, Next was more aggressive and the band decided to produce the album themselves, a decision that might not have been in their best interests as Next still lacked the focus needed for mass consumption.

The band, before recording Next, were well aware that they needed more vocal hooks in the songs, an element that had been missing in previous songwriting efforts. The guys took vocal lessons, and Schon contributes his first lead vocal on the album. Still, no hit single was forthcoming.

Though Rolie had sung on a couple of Santana hits, the vocals in Santana were always secondary to the music. The style that Journey chose in the beginning also placed the emphasis on the instrumentation.

The style that the band chose on the early albums was made because, Rolie says, "Fusion music was very popular at the time." Unfortunately, the record label was not interested in sales of 100,000 progressive rock albums when the resources could be spent on finding a band that would sell a million mainstream rock albums, so instead of sticking with fusion, the band made a decision to find a new singer while Rolie would concentrate on keyboards.

Aynsley Dunbar, in an interview in support of Journey's breakthrough album Infinity, explained the band's decision this way: "You either want to play for a couple of hundred thousand people or you want to play for millions. And my idea is to play for the crowd. Although I have enough to progress a crowd, if they're not interested in listening, then there's no point in me progressing them, because I'm just progressing myself to the grave."

That Journey is not a critical favorite is an understatement, but one only has to look at their influence on the rock music landscape, both past and present, to see that in every phase of their existence, Journey has been a viable member of the rock community. They are also in good company with "super groups" such as Asia whose members were former progressive rock stars and groups like Genesis and Yes who have sacrificed critical acclaim in order to make their music more accessible to the masses.

This mixing of progressive rock skill with pop hooks was giving the name "arena rock" by critics (melodic rock by fans) because of the massive appeal the music had, and Journey has been an influence on most of the bands in this genre. For example, as pointed out in the Time3 box set, I'm Gonna Leave You more than likely influenced Kansas in their composition of "Carry On Wayward Son," and Nickel And Dime predates Rush's hit "Tom Sawyer" which shares a central melody with the Journey tune.

Journey has not totally abandoned their progressive roots however. Just listen to post-Next songs like La Do Da, Patiently, Majestic, People And Places, the entire Dream After Dream album and even 80's songs like Escape, Mother Father, Rubicon, and Back Talk to hear some music outside of the basic verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-bridge-chorus structure.

In the present, exploring the back catalog during the pre-Arrival tours must have inspired the guys to explore their roots with the progressive rocker Higher Place and the six-minute plus Livin' To Do with its virtuoso soloing by Schon and organ outtro by Cain. Just like the best of commercial Yes and Genesis, Journey continues to make accessible rock music with style and skill, and as Trial By Fire went platinum and earned the band a Grammy nomination, it looks like people are still craving the Journey sound, call it what you will.

TRIVIA:
The producer of Look Into The Future also produced the Joan Jett track "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," the song that kept "Open Arms" from being a #1 single. He also did production on the Santana "comeback" album Supernatural.

"I had produced Journey's second album, Look Into the Future, and I was supposed to do their next album, but Roy Thomas Baker ended up doing it after Journey got their new singer, Steve Perry. I knew that album would be a hit, but he ended up doing it. So when I heard Roy Thomas Baker's name mentioned again with Joan Jett and this song, I immediately went in and got the band to play the song one morning in the studio. And they really played it! That was 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll.'"

Journey's 70's Bammie Awards:
Bay Area Music Awards (Bammies)

1979	Outstanding Album	Evolution
1979	Outstanding Male Vocalist	Steve Perry
1979	Outstanding Drummer	Aynsley Dunbar
1978	Outstanding Bassist	Ross Valory
1978	Outstanding Guitarist	Neal Schon
1977	Outstanding Drummer	Aynsley Dunbar