Given the years of mud slinging, threats, power grabs, law suits and general animosity, it looked like Journey’s 2011 album Eclipse might have been their last. But while new album Freedom shows that storms don’t last for ever, with this band another one’s never far away.

Words: Dave Everley

KEVIN MAZUR/PRESS + DENISE TRUSCELLO/PRESS

It was Bruce Springsteen who finally got Journey into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The hard-rock giants had been eligible for inclusion since the year 2000, and had the record sales (gold, platinum and diamond discs up the wazoo) and the allpervading cultural influence (you’ve heard of Don’t Stop Believin’, right?) to back it up. But year after year the HOF gatekeepers said no. Enter The Boss.

“I never lost hope that we’d do another Journey album. Not at all.”

Neal Schon

“The rumour has it that Springsteen, who’s a big deal for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, sang Don’t Stop Believin’ at a benefit with Elton John and Lady Gaga one night,” says Journey keyboard player Jonathan Cain. “He said: ‘That’s a killer tune, yeah. Journey, we should give them a shot.’ So he started championing us with the Hall Of Fame. They put us in the ballot, and the fans who voted us number one did the rest.”

And so it was that several current and past members of Journey gathered on stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on April 7, 2017 for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Co-founding guitarist Neal Schon was there, along with second-longest tenured member Cain. So too were original keyboard player Gregg Rolie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, bassist Ross Valory, drummer Steve Smith and, most surprisingly of all, vocalist Steve Perry, who had seemingly turned his back on both Journey and the music industry in the late 90s. It was, as they say, emotional.

It was also Journey, a band whose graceful power and perfectly poised music is in inverse proportion to their capacity for squabbling, in-fighting and shit-talking. The HOF induction marked the beginning of an almost comically turbulent period in which Schon and Cain had a very public falling out in 2017 over a trip to the White House. They patched things up, only to fire two long-standing band members over an ill-fated ‘coup’, instigating a potentially ruinous lawsuit. Oh, and somewhere in between they ditched their longtime managers for good measure.

That Journey are still here after 40-odd years of that kind of behaviour is remarkable. But not as remarkable as the fact that they’ve just delivered their first new album in 11 years, Freedom. It’s a record that draws on the Journey of the past and updates it for today. It’s no Escape or Frontiers, but it certainly doesn’t disgrace itself in their company.