Steve Perry: Billboard 1980

  The single most noteworthy success story to emerge from the San Francisco music scene within the last three years is that of Journey.
  Right now the band is on the top of the world. "Departure", Journey's sixth album (and the third featuring lead singer Steve Perry) crested within the top 20 of the national album charts and has recently joined "Infinity" and "Evolution" in the halls of platinum.
  The initial single from the album, "Any Way You Want It", topped off at number 23 on the pop charts and the follow-up single, "Walks Like A Lady", broke into the Hot 100 in mid-May and immediately began climbing. These tunes follow in the footsteps of "Lovin', Touchin' Squeezin'", which hit number 18 on the Hot 100 last October. And the band just became the first act to be featured three consecutive years on "Innerview", hosted by KMET's Jim Ladd.
  Meanwhile, the always hard-working band is in the middle of an international tour that will bring it to more fans than ever before, while showing off the carefully developed muscle of the various staging and merchandising entities that are integral subsidiaries of the overall Journey corporate organization, headed up by manager Walter "Herbie" Herbert.
  The tour is important, illustrating as it does the core of the Journey success - a success that has been built

carefully and painstakingly, with absolute steadiness and absolutely uniform expansion. Nothing has been done precipitously, yet all the right moves have been made at exactly the right times, and each record the band puts out has done better - in terms of aesthetics, airplay and sales - than the one before it.
  Journey achieved this success the hard way. Some bands, blessed overnight by rock's fairy godmother, get to do it the easy way: a debut single makes it onto the AM airways and presto, instant demand. But frequently the bands that do it this way lack a solid base and die quickly when they cannot come back with a single as catchy as the first one or with an entire album as strong as the single.
  Journey, however, spent its first three years on the road building the solid base - a base which in fact made the band one of the most dependable coliseum acts in the country long before the singles started breaking on the air last year.
  As San Francisco Chronicle rock reporter Joel Selvin puts it, "Working on the road was the key to Journey's success. Building a following strictly through live performances is a tortuous, uncertain and unglamorous way to go for it, but it was the way Herbie knew, and it worked."
  Or as road manager Pat Morrow explains, "We go to St. Louis, or Minneapolis, or anywhere, and the same people who were at the concerts five years ago come out to see us. They never get disappointed because the band is so consistent. They really deliver to the fans. It took a long time, it

took an awful lot of tickets, but it's paid off, because that loyalty out there is very, very deep."
  The details of the Journey success story show off a nice symmetry; there is an almost perfectly equal balance between development of the music and the development of the business.
  Musically, the Journey story breaks perfectly into two cycles of three albums each; and since each of the six albums has been released in the first month of every year since 1975, the symmetry becomes even more uncanny.
  It was in fact in January of the previous year - New Year's Day, 1974 - when the original Journey made its bow to the world at the Crater Festival in Hawaii, following up a New Year's Eve San Francisco debut at Winterland.
  The original band, featuring guitarist Neal Schon, organist Gregg Rolie and bassist Ross Valory (who remain as the core of the band today) was put together by hand by Herbert, who had done extensive road and management work with the original Santana band and who wanted to keep the heavy rock side of the Santana sound alive with Schon and Rolie after those two young players left the band in displeasure at Carlos Santana's turn to jazz/spiritual rock. There was no question that Herbert had the materials to work with: Schon had joined Santana at age 16 after declining an invitation to work with Eric Clapton's band, and Rolie had sung lead on the early Santana hits. Valory he knew well from several local bands he had managed,

and then ace English drummer Aynsley Dunbar was added on drums.
  The first three albums, "Journey", "Look Into The Future" and "Next" all did respectably well, selling steadily in the 150,000 to 200,000 range; but by 1977 it was clear that the band needed to refine and update its heavily instrumental style with a strong lead singer and tighter, more love-oriented songs. The right singer turned out to be Steve Perry, a native of California's San Joaquin Valley, who in fact had made previous inquiries to CBS about Journey. Herbert, who describes Perry as having "a flawless voice, a combination of Marty Balin and Jesse Colin Young", made an instantaneous decision to go with him as soon as he heard a tape.
  It was exactly the right decision. The latent songwriting talents of the band began to coalesce around Perry, whose stage energy and presence gave the band much-needed flair and whose voice matched up exceedingly well with Rolie's on doubles and choruses. The icing on the cake came via an alliance with producer Roy Thomas Baker, who provided the new lineup with a fine sonic sheen on "Infinity", an album which Herbert says has sold 1.8 million copies so far without a hit single - although "Wheels In The Sky", "Feeling That Way" and "Lights" got good airplay, especially around San Francisco where "Lights" became a local hit.
  Thus the new album is the third in the new cycle which has included "Infinity", "Evolution" and now "Departure" - an order of names which some people have pointed out might make more sense if reversed. In the meantime there have been only two other musical changes, with Steve Smith replacing drummer Dunbar (now with Jefferson Starship) and producers Geoff Workman and Kevin Elson replacing Baker.

  Musically, the meshing and refinement of these forces has given Journey an enviable across-the-board rock appeal to both heavy-metal fans and to the new hordes of followers of more atmospheric and artful musicians like Kansas, Supertramp and even Pink Floyd.
  As for the business end of things, there seems precious little that Herbert has not covered. In fact, in a time when most managers give at least lip service to the concept of a small client roster that insures personal attention to each client, Herbert practices the concept with a vengeance. He has built an entire mini-empire upon total devotion to just one band.
  The umbrella corporation for the principal Journey activities is Nightmare, Inc., through which Journey is contracted to Columbia. The corporation - which includes two publishing companies, a real estate investing partnership and a merchandising company - is owned in equal shares by the five band members and the manager, thus making Herbert to some extent a sixth member of the group.
  The merchandising operation - which operates via an in-house partnership with Jim Welch/ Artists & Friends and a licensing agreement with Winterland Productions - is the most visible of these subsidiaries. Herbert recognized early on how lucrative rock merchandising was to become, and the band generates phenomenal amounts of money with sales of shirts, posters, belt buckles and other items to the large, free-spending crowds at the arenas and stadiums it plays. The use on the last three albums of symbolically powerful and highly consistent cover designs executed by famous San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse has been crucial to the huge success of these merchandising efforts.
  Journey also maintains an in-house publicity operation, headed up by Sandy Einstein.
  Right alongside Nightmare, Inc., is Nocturne, Inc., which oversees the three subsidiary companies that provide trucks, sound and lights to the band. The most well-developed of these entities so far is the trucking company, with five state-of-the-art semis.
  Also, Night Lights has a 300-instrument system that includes expertly engineered trussing, dimming, control and staging. The stage permits 360-degree unobstructed visual access, increasing Journey's concert gross potential by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  Setting up these companies, as Herbert points out, means that "instead of making a lot of their parties rich, the money recycles within the organization and gives us great control over our own staging and cash flow."
  In addition to these separate companies, there are innumerable odds and ends - significant enough that for another band they might be major factors, but for Journey are simply smaller components of a much larger picture. These include an endorsement contract with Peavey, whereby Peavey researches and develops equipment for Journey and then makes it available to the public, such as the Peavey T-40 bass which Ross Valory plays.
  Steve Perry is the "Voice of Electro-Voice" through another endorsement agreement, while Steve Smith is with Zildjian cymbals and Sonor Drums, and Neal Schon uses Fender and Ovation guitars.
  Thus the journey of Journey continues, with seemingly no end in sight. "We feel so strong now," says Schon, "we could go another ten years easy." Herbert confirms, "There is absolutely no underestimating the viability of Nightmare, Inc., as a vehicle for Journey's creativity."