In the credits to Journey’s 1979 album Evolution, the band stated, gratefully: “Columbia Records stands alone in the field of developing new artists.” The company’s ‘tough love’ approach certainly worked for Journey, who couldn’t buy a hit record until Columbia ordered them to find a proper singer and write some tunes. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. And when he quit again two years later, he was gone for good. But the pressures of fame led Perry to quit the band in 1987, leaving Journey on hiatus until his return in 1995. Perry also had a huge hit in 1984 with his first solo album, Street Talk. In the 80s, Journey became one of the biggest bands in America, with the Holy Trinity of AOR albums: Escape, Frontiers and Raised On Radio. The album promptly went platinum, and from there, the only way was up. His first album with the band, 1978’s Infinity, reinvented Journey as a mainstream rock act. With a richly expressive voice, Perry could hit high notes that other singers could only dream of. Guitarist Neal Schon and vocalist/keyboard player Gregg Rolie had previously played in Santana, but Journey’s early music, mixing Santana-style jazz fusion and progressive rock, was a hard sell, and Rolie’s voice wasn’t the strongest.Įverything changed when Steve Perry joined the band after they’d tried out another singer, Robert Fleischman. Interesting.At that time, the San Francisco-based band had made three albums for Columbia Records, and all three had stiffed. Some species also insert their eggs into the dung ball and when they are ready, they Escape by bursting forth from the ball to begin their own Journey in search of their own dung piles. They gather and eat dung, rolling the dung into a ball and then rolling it around with them so it won’t be stolen by another beetle. I am sure that the imagery is meant to suggest outer space or some other planet, but I can’t help but remember the unique characteristics of the scarab beetle. The warm reds and yellows in the beetle and core contrast nicely with the cool blues and greens of the sphere and the background. I wonder how much their work influenced the band to adopt the scarab beetle as their logo, but I wasn’t able to find out anything about that.Īs far as the image itself, the super-saturated beetle/ship exploding from the molten cored sphere is beautifully composed and rendered. Hendrix died before it was completed, so Mouse and Kelly later co-opted it for Journey. The artwork for Escape and for Journey albums Infinity and Captured actually came from work they were creating for a Jimi Hendrix cover. I learned that the artist for this cover is by Mouse Stanley, who, with his long-time collaborator Alton Kelley, also created the iconic skeleton and roses image for the Grateful Dead. Apparently they weren’t confident enough in the audience’s ability to figure this out however, so they made sure to include an easily readable “Journey” in the top left corner. They have also slipped in a “3” instead of an “E” just to throw you another loop. In regard to the band name, the designer took the foreign atmosphere even further by turning the letters on the side and making them very wide and thin, so at first glance they are unrecognizable as the English alphabet. The thin lettering is also consistent with the digital, future-forward feel. At the time that this came out, it would have been really cool, not old or hackneyed, to spell the title this way. Escape was released in 1981, at the very beginnings of “Leet” speak, when substituting numbers for letters was becoming synonymous with futuristic, technologically advanced communication. Let’s put aside our weird hipster desires to denigrate anything not made by hand, or made on the computer to appear as though it were made by hand, and revel for a moment in the air-brushed, other-worldly beauty of this cover. It was also the second time that the scarab beetle appeared in their artwork, as it would many other times as well. I don’t know what the truth is, but in any case, they have cranked out a lot of great music, and along with that some pretty amazing album covers.Įscape was their 8th, and best-selling, studio album. You might then dismiss this band as shallow and focused on the money instead of the music. They had a very bumpy start, and were even asked by Columbia to change their musical style to be more appealing to a greater audience. Although they are successful now, the pop band Journey did not start out that way.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |