Journey: Into the Past

Rediscovering the Band Beneath the Hits

I wasn't a Journey fan growing up. Sure I knew some of the hits. Everyone did. But I didn't go deep. Not into Journey, not into any band, really.

My parents hated "Rock & Roll". So I grew up on Broadway show tunes and classical music. My mom would quiz me: Is this Beethoven? Mozart? Tchaikovsky? I could sing the score of Cats or Evita before I had an idea who Led Zeppelin was.

But then came MTV. I started catching up the only way a kid without older siblings could, immersing myself in music videos. Golden Earring's "Twilight Zone" blew my mind. Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf"? Simon LeBon was hot, and I was hooked.

But when Journey's "Separate Ways" came on, when those unmistakable few bars on the synthesizer hit? I would launch myself across the room like a heat-seeking missile in search of the remote. I couldn't turn that video off fast enough. It was so awkward, so aggressively uncool, and sooo overplayed.

That one video single-handedly delayed my interest in Journey for decades. (Don't even get me started on "Chain Reaction". mannequins...)

So what changed?

Somewhere along the way, years later, I'm starting to listening to the '70s and '80s with fresh ears, and a renewed interest. Fleetwood Mac. The Eagles. The Bee Gees (yes, even the Bee Gees). And somehow, somewhere, I found my way back to Journey.

I stumbled across a TV performance when Steve Perry had just joined the band. His voice was fresh. The stage presence polite, restrained. You could feel the band was shifting, evolving, turning into something new. And I was fascinated.

I started walking back through the old songs and albums. Watching the early performances. There's something about that click when a song hits—not because it's new, but because it's new to me. And this time, I'm ready.

This isn't nostalgia. This is personal discovery.