Steve Perry - Time 3

FEELING THAT WAY

S. Perry-G. Rolie-A. Dunbar
From "Infinity"

Journey often reworked ideas in recordings until the band was satisfied with the results before committing them to vinyl. "Velvet Curtain" was an early instrumental that stayed on the shelf until Rolie took it down and sculpted the track into a song entitled "Let Me Stay," which was almost included on the "Next" album and only pulled off at the last moment. When Perry came onboard, he rewrote the track again, adding a fresh chorus, and shared lead vocals with Rolie on the version that finally made it to record and the concert stage repertoire.

ANYTIME

G. Rolie-R. Silver-R. Fleischman-N. Schon-R. Valory
From "Infinity"

Neal Schon wrote the chorus lyrics: "Gregg Rolie was doing Bing Crosby - you know, 'ooh, ooh.' And I'd listened to lots of Beatles records when I was a kid, so I just went 'Anytime that you want me.' It came out real easy in rehearsal." Rolie supplied the lead vocals. The second single from "Infinity" rose to #83 on the charts.

PATIENTLY

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Infinity"

The first song with the band he put together in less than an hour in a hotel room in Denver, with Schon playing acoustic guitar. "It was really about the determination of me wanting to get next to those players," said Perry.

GOOD TIMES

(Sam Cooke)
Previously Unreleased

Steve Perry's vocal style always reflected a deep respect for the late, great Sam Cooke, whose 1964 hit title "Good Times" Perry chose to sing on a 1978 "King Biscuit Flower Hour." With the Tower of Power horn section fattening up the sound and vocalists Annie Sampson and Jo Baker of Stoneground enriching the vocal blend, Journey never sounded like this on any other occasion.

MAJESTIC

N. Schon-S. Perry
From "Evolution"

Never played by the band live, this instrumental track featuring Schon on overdubbed guitars was used as a tape to open concerts. "I was fooling around with classical chords," said Schon. "It was a big, theme-ish sound thing I always thought would end up being a vocal song."

TOO LATE

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Evolution"

Perry wrote this song about a friend from his hometown, a drug addict he wanted to warn to leave town before he ran out of options. "The drugs were setting up housekeeping," said Perry. The friend eventually heard the tune and Perry told him what it was about.

SWEET AND SIMPLE

S. Perry
From "Evolution"

Perry wrote this song five years before joining Journey while contemplating the beauty of Lake Tahoe.

JUST THE SAME WAY

G. Rolie-N. Schon-R. Valory
From "Evolution"

That was just a piano riff that developed," said Rolie. The leadoff single from the "Evolution" album reached #58 on the charts.

LITTLE GIRL

N. Schon-S. Perry-G. Rolie
From "Dream After Dream"

A vocal number from the Japanese sessions that produced the 1980 soundtrack album for "Dream After Dream." "It was the most Journeyesque number on the album," said Rolie. "I almost wish we had saved it for one of our albums." Originally only available in the U.S. as a Japanese import, "Dream After Dream" was later released in the States.

ANY WAY YOU WANT IT

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Departure"

Perry and Schon unveiled this number on the band bus, Schon strumming on acoustic and Perry singing. "It was pretty obvious it could be done real quick," said Rolie. In the studio, Rolie tried a mellotron on the number and the instrument proved defective. Co-producer Geoff Workman managed to correct the sound somewhat and, once doubled with Rolie's regular organ, the combination created a unique sound which, coupled with the stacked background vocals, gave the song a kind of celestial ring. A concert favorite, the song ended up playing behind Rodney Dangerfield on the golf course in "Caddyshack."

SOMEDAY SOON

S. Perry-G. Rolie-N. Schon
From "Departure"

"We got a letter from some college saying they used this song in a music composition class as an example of good writing structure," said Rolie. "I was amazed."

GOOD MORNING GIRL

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Departure"

With some arranging help from Neal's father, Schon and Perry built this short little piece from playing around with Jazz and classical chords.

WHERE WERE YOU

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Departure"

Perry remembered the song evolving from a jam at the Oakland rehearsal hall around a Steve Smith drum figure. The band had recently returned from touring with AC/DC as an opening act. "You can't help being influenced by a band like that," Schon said. The song served as the opening number to many Journey concerts.

LINE OF FIRE

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Departure"

Inspired by the sound effect that opened the Junior Walker hit, Steve Perry wanted to include a shotgun blast on top of this Schon-driven rocker, an incidental touch that consumed considerable studio time to accomplish in the end.

HOMEMADE LOVE

S. Perry-N. Schon-S. Smith
From "Departure"

A throwback to the early Journey, this demanding piece employed an unusual kind of shuffle rhythm for Journey. Schon fashioned the music along classic hard rock lines and a dense sound protruded somewhat from the overall sleeker tone of "Departure." "It was more of a musician's tune," allowed Rolie, "fun to play because musically it was so intriguing."

NATURAL THING

S. Perry-R. Valory
The B-side of the single "Don't Stop Believin'"

Perry wrote this ode to the girl in blue jeans for the "Departure" album. Schon thinks of the number as an example of the "cool r&b roots of Perry," who rides producer Roy Thomas Baker's wall of vocal harmonies with supple grace.

LIGHTS

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Captured"

Perry brought this song into the group with him. He originally wrote the chorus while he was living in Los Angeles and trying to get signed to a major record label. Schon finished it up with him downstairs at Rolie's house on acoustic guitar and the original single off the "Infinity" album rose to #68 in Billboard.

STAY AWHILE

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Captured"

Perry called this song originally recorded on "Departure," a "testimony for simple r&b," although the piece really showcased his rapidly developing vocal style.

WALKS LIKE A LADY

S. Perry
From "Captured"

Originally recorded on "Departure," this Perry idea Schon pumped full of big guitar with a small amp on one take, a crisp, clean Stratocaster sound he thinks of as blues. Smith added the brush touch on drums. Rolie heard the drummer goofing around on the Hammond B-3 and used some of his ideas when laying down this, one of his favorite organ parts.

LOVIN', TOUCHIN', SQUEEZIN'

S. Perry
From "Captured"

The studio version, recorded for "Evolution," became the breakthrough single that landed Journey in the Top 20 for the first time, although the band long before had established itself as a concert headliner. "A true story," said Perry. He watched through the window as his girlfriend at the time got out of a Corvette and gave the driver a long, loving kiss goodbye. He calls this song "love justice."

DIXIE HIGHWAY

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Captured"

Written on the band bus on the way to Detroit via the famous Dixie Highway, Perry liked the sound of the words and bluesman Schon liked the shuffle groove. Rolie used a Prophet keyboard with a descending twist and the song slowly emerged from jams on the road.

WHEEL IN THE SKY

N. Schon-R. Fleischman-D. Valory
From "Captured"

The track from "Infinity" put Journey on the radio for the first time and justified the band's gamble going out as headliners of the "Infinity" tour. Originally a poem by Diane Valory, wife of bassist Ross Valory, to which Robert Fleischman, the band's first vocalist, wrote new lyrics, her initial title to the song was "Wheels In My Mind." Schon wrote the melody on acoustic guitar in the backseat of a station wagon while the band was driving between shows. Perry was given the song when he joined the band.

THE PARTY'S OVER (HOPELESSLY IN LOVE)

S. Perry
From "Captured"

The only studio recording included in the double-record live album, this song was written backstage at Detroit's Cobo Hall by Perry on an electric bass and the band played the number at sound check. Keyboardist Tim Gorman subbed in the studio on keyboards for Rolie, who left the band at the end of the tour. The single version made #34 in Billboard.

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Escape"

At the band's Oakland warehouse, this song bubbled out of a rehearsal. Schon developed the bass riff, the chugging guitar line and the sweeping chords on the chorus. Steve Smith built the song around a pattern featuring a lot of tom-toms, anchoring the number to a rich drum figure. Perry and Cain drew from their experiences with the Sunset Strip street scene for the lyrics, "streetlight people." A Journey songbook cornerstone, the second single from "Escape" hit #9 on the charts.

STONE IN LOVE

S. Perry-N. Schon-J. Cain
From "Escape"

During a party at his San Rafael house, Neal Schon started fooling around with his guitar and a tape recorder. When he listened back the next day, he found the beginning of a song which he titled, "Stone In Love." Perry and Cain polished it into this gem. "Jonathan Cain is such a great lyricist," said Perry, "he helped me go to another place as a writer."

KEEP ON RUNNIN'

S. Perry-N. Schon-J. Cain
From "Escape"

"Neal wanted to rock," Perry said. "So we did."

WHO'S CRYIN' NOW

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Escape"

The first taste of "Escape" most people heard eventually sailed all the way to #4 on the Billboard charts. Perry wrote the chorus of the song driving from Bakersfield to San Francisco, singing into a cassette recorder. He went to Cain's house, rain pouring down in sheets outside, with the whole song in his head. He hummed the song to Cain and guided him through the piano part. Cain suggested the tune sounded like "a somebody done somebody wrong song" and said "Who's crying now?" The pair finished the song that afternoon.

STILL THEY RIDE

S. Perry-N. Schon
From "Escape"

A vignette from Perry's youth, the same Central Valley scene that inspired another San Joaquin Valley escapee, George Lucas, to make the film "American Graffiti," the Journey version eventually turned into the fourth "Escape" single, released almost a year after the album first came out, and went to #19.

OPEN ARMS

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Escape"

Jonathan Cain came to Journey with this melody already written. It could have been a song for the Babys, his previous band, except that Babys vocalist John Waite rejected the melody as "too syrupy." He sheepishly showed the tune to Perry on his portable Wurlitzer keyboard and Perry immediately wanted to do it. The rest of the band wasn't so sure. "They were opposed to the ballad," said Perry. "Neal hated the idea and Jon Cain thought maybe John Waite was right." The third single from "Escape" not only went on to become the band's highest charting single, reaching #2, and sent album sales into orbit, but pioneered the entire concept of the power ballad. "Now everybody's got to have one," said Perry.

MOTHER, FATHER

N. Schon-S. Perry-J. Cain-M. Schon
From "Escape"

A Composite of two tapes, one by Neal Schon and one by Steve Perry, this dramatic piece, with the first interlude written by Neal Schon's father, was later completed by Cain and Perry.

LA RAZA DEL SOL

S. Perry-J. Cain
B-side of the single "Still They Ride"
(Previously unreleased Alternate Version)

Cain took the title from a book about farm-workers he was reading and offered his own thoughts on the contributions of Hispanics to the building of California, a subject Perry knew intimately from growing up in Central Valley. Schon found no problem wrapping this piece in appropriate sonics by simply dipping into his own background with Santana on a number that slipped by unnoticed on the back of the fourth single from the "Escape" album.

ONLY SOLUTIONS

J. Cain-N. Schon-S. Perry
From "Tron" soundtrack
Cain and Schon began work on this piece for the 1982 Walt Disney movie "Tron" in Los Angeles at Goodnight L.A. Studios and later moved to Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Perry rewrote the verse and Steve Smith overdubbed his drums after the song was finished. Cain supervised the production. "If it sounds like something we made up on the spot in the studio," said Schon, "that's because it is." The song ended up almost inaudible underneath video game noise on the film's final mix. The track received some regional radio airplay in Florida and other isolated areas, but has largely remained unknown.

LIBERTY

N. Schon-S. Perry-J. Cain
Previously Unreleased

Jonathan Cain made a habit of running a tape recorder during rehearsals, even breaks, and would listen to the tapes on his way home -- "just to make sure we weren't missing something." During pre-production sessions for "Frontiers," he caught Neal Schon during one of those breaks in a rock countryside vein. Perry & Cain contributed the patriotically themed lyrics and Perry cut the vocal live in the studio, although the results somehow never managed to wind up on the album.

SEPARATE WAYS (WORLDS APART)

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Frontiers"

The road took it's toll on the band member's home lives. With Neal Schon and Ross Valory going through painful -- and expensive - divorces, Perry and Cain thought there should be some way to dredge something positive out of such circumstances. "There's got to be a more soulful way of looking at this," Perry told his collaborator, Cain. The pair worked out the tune in a hotel room using Cain's little Casio keyboard and the entire band worked up the fresh song the next afternoon at sound check inserting the party-finished song into the program that night. "I think he mumbled his way through half the lyrics," said Cain, "but the audience just came unglued." The song was sitting in the band's pocket long before the beginning of sessions for the next album. The first single off "Frontiers" zoomed up the charts to #8 immediately on release in February 1983.

SEND HER MY LOVE

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Frontiers"

During the band's three-month vacation following the "Escape" tours, Cain listened to a lot of Beatles records. He played the chords for this song on the piano in his front room one afternoon for Perry. "He could magically weave a melody over anything I could play," Cain said. Eventually released as the fourth single off "Frontiers," this Perry personal favorite made #23 on Billboard.

FAITHFULLY

J. Cain
From "Frontiers"

Cain wrote this ballad on the road. A portrait of his life on tour, he paid tribute to road manager Pat Morrow and stage manager Benny Collins when he wrote "we all need the clowns to make us smile." He told me he got the melody out of a dream," said Neal Schon. "I wish something like that would happen to me." "Basically it's a road song," Cain said. "You know I'm being a good dog out here -- don't worry about it." The trademark power ballad and second single from "Frontiers" climbed to #12 on the charts.

AFTER THE FALL

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Frontiers"

Steve Perry wrote this love song with the sweeping Journeyesque chorus on the bass, the instrument he most commonly used in composing. The band hardly ever played the song live, , but the track did wind up in the background of a party scene in the film "Risky Business."

ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS

N. Schon-J. Cain
Previously Unreleased

With Jon Cain on lead vocals, this "Frontiers" outtake barely sounded like Journey, so strongly is the Perry vocal style associated with the band. Recording the song gave Cain an opportunity to express some of the turmoil he was experiencing in his personal life at the time. "Neal helped a lot," Cain said, "he and Steve Smith. They gave me a couple of days in the studio. It's kind of edgy. It could have been a Babys song."

THE EYES OF A WOMAN

S. Perry-J. Cain-N. Schon
From "Raised On Radio"

A song that emerged from a jam in the recording studio, the finished instrumental track was recorded within a half-hour. "the song sort of wrote itself," said Cain. Starting off with a guitar line Schon played simultaneously through his amplifier and a keyboard synthesizer, the tune merely followed Schon's opening statement, according to Perry, who called the song his favorite "Raised On Radio."

WHY CAN'T THIS NIGHT GO ON FOREVER

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Raised On Radio"

Cain intended this piece to represent the fans at a Journey concert, always one of his favorite subjects. "Just me, being sentimental," he said. The final single released by Journey in April 1987 could only manage to eke its way up the charts to #60, a year after the release of the album.

ONCE YOU LOVE SOMEBODY

S. Perry-J. Cain-N. Schon
From "Raised On Radio"

With Perry splitting up with his longtime love and Cain going through a divorce of his own, the subject of loss seemed bound to appear in their songs at the time. "This was kind of self-therapy," admitted Cain, when referring to the song's bluesy mood. "It had those haunting minor chords that allowed Steve to do his thing," he said.

HAPPY TO GIVE

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Raised On Radio"

Perry cut this number three times. "He was obsessed by that song," remembered Cain. "It was his pet song." Cain also the song his finest vocal performance. The track came from a "soundtrack-type" composition Cain had been working on during the influence of Vangelis that Perry nailed with a melody almost immediately on Cain playing it for him. "Of course, it was our lives we were writing about," said Cain. Never played live by the band, the track turned up years later on the soundtrack to the film "North Shore."

BE GOOD TO YOURSELF

S. Perry-J. Cain-N. Schon
From "Raised On Radio"

With his own domestic situation in disarray and his mother slowly dying, Perry needed life affirming messages. "That's a Perry-ism," said Cain, "something he'd always say. I circled it in my notes." But the song didn't come easy. Cain labored over the lyrics for five months. "Steve never had time," Cain said. "He'd just say 'Work on it.'" Finally it came down to the day when the song was to be mixed in New York with engineer Bob Clearmountain. While Cain took a shower, the melody formed in his head. He burst into the studio, his hair still wet, and Perry knocked off the final vocal in less than an hour. Released a month prior to the album as a leadoff single, "Be Good To Yourself," probably sounded more like a traditional Journey song than anything else on the "Raised On Radio" album and it managed to nick the bottom of the Top Ten at #9.

ONLY THE YOUNG

S. Perry-J. Friga-N. Schon
From "Vision Quest" soundtrack

Originally recorded for the "Frontiers" album and pulled off at the last minute, this song finally reached the Top Ten in 1985, hitting #9 when released as a single off the Geffen Records soundtrack album. The experience of playing the song to 16-year old Kenny Sykaluk the night before he died left Perry deeply affected ("As soon as I stepped out of that hospital room I lost it," said Perry. "Nurses had to take me to a room by myself.") and he used it as the concert opener throughout the "Raised On Radio" tour.

ASK THE LONELY

S. Perry-J. Cain
From "Two Of A Kind" soundtrack

The other track pulled off "Frontiers" after the album had already been sequenced, this song received a fair amount of radio airplay once it was released on the soundtrack album. "It's just a love song," said Perry. "The guy can write love songs in his sleep," said Cain.

WITH A TEAR

N. Schon-S. Perry-J. Cain
Previously Unreleased

This Journey song was never finished. In August 1992, Cain and Schon returned to the studio with this "Raised On Radio" reject and polished the track into a completed instrumental.

INTO YOUR ARMS

N. Schon-S. Perry-J. Cain
Previously Unreleased

The "Raised On Radio" sessions left a lot of tape on the cutting room floor. "We'd write a bunch of things," said Cain, "and then find our way. It took awhile to get our songwriting muscle back." The track was left unfinished until August 1992, when Neal Schon and Jon Cain took the tape back to the studio and completed this version as an instrumental.

GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (LIVE)

S. Perry-J. Cain-N. Schon
Previously Unreleased

With the band committed not to release any conceptual videos to accompany singles from "Raised On Radio" -- not to mention too busy to take the time while breaking in a new rhythm section before a rapidly looming tour -- the best the label and band management could negotiate was a live concert segment of the album's third single. On August 23, 1986, with drummer Mike Baird taking the stage after a brief three-week rehearsal, Journey unveiled the ninth and final edition of the band's onstage roster at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds, where the group opened the "Escape" tour and introduced new member Jonathan Cain five years earlier. The cameras and the recording truck captured the documentary video at the first opportunity, undoubtedly only adding to the tension of the occasion of the band's first performance in more than three years.

I'LL BE ALRIGHT WITHOUT YOU (LIVE)

S. Perry-J. Cain-N. Schon

With another concert video caught further along the "Raised On Radio" route in Atlanta, Georgia, "I'll Be Alright Without You" became the fourth single from the album. Cain admitted the song was born out of his and Perry's ongoing personal traumas. "It's really the other half of 'Once You Love Somebody,'" he said.