Steve Perry - Teenbeat July 1982

    Their name was tagged on them by chance. When a "Name The Group" competition on a local San Francisco radio station didn't come up with anything worth using, the band's office manager tried the name "Journey" out on them. It turned out to be a journey that just kept on going!
    Once, Journey was invited by a San Francisco record store to do an in-person appearance to sign autographs. No-one showed! "Well, five people turned up," Neal Schon recalls, "but we had to talk them into taking our autographs!" Nowadays they get mobbed! "You can't walk into a supermarket without people going 'hey man, aren't you…?' "

    The band that made Milwaukee famous? Journey was the first of many rock and roll bands to do special jingles for beer. Bud is the beer for this bunch, who have it supplied backstage at all of their shows. They've been involved in other promotional items for Budweiser too, including give-away concert programs featuring the guys clutching cans of their favorite brew!

    The entire band loves Mexican food.

    Journey had a special new "modular" stage set for its tours. "We've been working on it for two years," Ross Valory explains to us. "You can arrange it in different ways and it has semi-circular ramps that go from the lower level to the upper level and all the amps and most of the speakers are hidden underneath the stage. It's more visibly accessible, there's more room for the band to be seen in all directions. And Perry does like to run around a lot!"

    Whenever they go out on the road, Journey takes a massive crew of between 35 and 4 people with them. It takes four semi-trucks, three buses and "one bodyguard" to get the band from one city to the next.

    Just after Jonathan Cain left the Babys to join Journey, two other members of the band were recruited into Rod Stewart's touring band. "I think it's a tremendous opportunity for Wally and Tony", he said of his former colleagues," and I think they'll finally get all that disco stuff out of Rod's

system! They play rock and roll the way it's meant to be played, with a rough edge to it. But I'm really happy in Journey and I have no aspirations to play with Rod Stewart.

    It takes most of the band members until "six in the morning" to wind down after Journey comes offstage. Otherwise the only member who likes that time of day is Neal. "I don't get up at six - I sit up till it comes," he tells us. "I'm a night person."

    Journey has finished working on the soundtrack to a fantasy film - but the reord will never be released in the States! They did the music while on a Japanese tour, where they were approached by a famous Japanese designer who was looking for an American band to score a movie called "Dream After Dream."
    "It was great," said Steve Smith, "something that we all loved doing because it was a totally free situation, something that doesn't really fit into that 'Journey sound.' It's an old Japanese story about two sisters that fall in love with the same guy, then go through all kinds of trips and weird things that happen - like they turn into birds, things that Western civilization wouldn't really relate to, but to the Japanese it makes a lot of sense. We

stayed an extra month in Tokyo after the tour to do the album. We had string players from the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and horn players. Neal's father, Matt Schon, directed and conducted all the string and horn players." Neal's dad used to be a saxophone player himself, and has probably played live as often as his famous son!

    Neal Schon is a Californian who looks Italian, who loves Mexican food, but was inspired by English musicians! Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page were his biggest influences!

    All of Journey are native Californians - except for Steve Smith, who's from Boston.

    Steve Smith studied at the notd Berklee College of Music in Massachussets, and has worked with music from pop to jazz, including Jean-Luc Ponty and heavy rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose.

    Steve Perry recently added his distinctive vocal chords to a song by heavy metal star Sammy Hagar. These San Francisco musicians stick together!

    How did they get to be so successful? According to Neal, "If the song is good and intelligently thought-out, it's going to be successful. If there's negative stuff in the music that's just going to bring people down, it's not going to be accepted. I think everybody needs that escape in rock and roll, and the hope to go with it - because we all need it. I do, don't you?"