The story of Journey

A backing band called the Golden Gate Rhythm Section

Journey began in San Francisco in 1973, and it was really the idea of a manager rather than a musician. Herbie Herbert had worked as a roadie for Santana, where he got to know the teenage guitar prodigy Neal Schon and the organist and singer Gregg Rolie. When Santana fell apart, Herbert pulled them together with two players from a Bay Area psychedelic band he had managed, Frumious Bandersnatch. They were bassist Ross Valory and rhythm guitarist George Tickner. Prairie Prince of the Tubes sat in on drums. At first they were called the Golden Gate Rhythm Section, and the plan was to back established Bay Area artists. That idea did not last long. After a radio contest to name the group went nowhere, a roadie named John Villanueva suggested Journey.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Neal Schon had arrived early. He was born at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the son of a big band saxophonist and a big band singer, and he picked up the guitar at ten. He dropped out of high school in San Mateo and joined Santana at just seventeen, playing on Santana Three and Caravanserai. Gregg Rolie was already a star by then. He had co founded Santana, sang Black Magic Woman and Evil Ways, and played the Hammond organ at Woodstock in 1969. Musical differences with Carlos Santana pushed him out in 1972. So the new band started life with real pedigree. Its first show came at the Winterland Ballroom on New Year's Eve 1973, in front of ten thousand people. The very next day they flew to Hawaii and played the Diamond Head Crater.[1] [2] [3]

Prairie Prince soon went back to the Tubes, and in February 1974, after auditioning a long line of drummers, Journey hired the Englishman Aynsley Dunbar. He came with a remarkable resume, having played with John Mayall, Frank Zappa and David Bowie. Within days the new line up played for Columbia Records executives at the Great American Music Hall and won a record deal. The early records leaned toward jazz fusion and progressive rock, full of long instrumental passages. The debut album Journey came out in April 1975. Tickner then quit, worn down by constant touring, and left music to study medicine. Look into the Future followed in 1976 and Next in 1977. Each did a little better than the last, but not by much, and Columbia was close to dropping the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Enter the Voice

Columbia wanted a proper frontman, someone to share the singing with Rolie and give the band a more radio friendly sound. In 1977 Journey hired a singer named Robert Fleischman and toured with him, opening for acts like Black Sabbath and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Fleischman helped write several songs that would matter, including Wheel in the Sky, which had begun life as a poem by Ross Valory's wife Diane. But Fleischman had never signed with Herbert's company, and before the year was out he was gone. Herbert already had a replacement in mind. Producer Scott Mathews had passed him a demo by an unknown singer from California's Central Valley, and told him this was the voice Journey needed.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That singer was Steve Perry, born in 1949 in Hanford, California, to Portuguese parents from the Azores. His father was a vocalist and co owned a local radio station, KNGS. His parents split when he was eight, and he moved with his mother to his grandparents' dairy farm near Lemoore. At twelve he heard Sam Cooke's Cupid on his mother's car radio and decided he would be a singer. For years it did not work out. His band Alien Project seemed close to a break when its bassist, Richard Michaels, was killed in a car accident. Perry nearly quit music altogether. He had gone home to Lemoore when Herbie Herbert called, and it was his mother who urged him to answer.[1] [2]

Perry's arrival was handled almost like a secret operation. He joined the tour while Fleischman was still singing, and to avoid alarming him, the crew passed Perry off as a roadie's Portuguese cousin. During a soundcheck in Long Beach he quietly sang a song with the band while Fleischman was offstage. Journey officially hired him on the tenth of October 1977. His first show came on the twenty eighth of October at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco, a small club of about six hundred people. The band played its normal set first, then brought Perry on for the encore. Schon later admitted the crowd did not know what to make of him. Some of his new bandmates were not sure either.[1] [2] [3]

Herbert then hired the English producer Roy Thomas Baker, fresh from his work with Queen, to give Journey a big layered sound. Baker had the singers double every harmony line so three voices sounded like a choir. The result was Infinity, released in January 1978. It reached number twenty one in America and gave Journey its first chart singles, including Wheel in the Sky and Lights. Perry had written Lights in Los Angeles about that city, but after joining a San Francisco band he changed the line to the sun shining on the bay. Not everyone loved the new direction. Aynsley Dunbar was unhappy with the pop turn, and after the Infinity tour ended in September 1978, Herbert fired him. Steve Smith, a Berklee trained drummer, took his place.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Evolution, Departure and a handpicked successor

With Steve Smith on drums, Journey made Evolution in 1979. It gave them their first top twenty hit, Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin', which was inspired by an old Sam Cooke song and reached number sixteen. The band was now a serious touring business. After the Evolution tour it had grossed more than five million dollars, and Herbie Herbert built an in house empire around it, with its own lighting, trucking and video operations. Herbert's Nocturne Productions pioneered giant screen video at big rock shows. He also shaped the band's look, with one word album titles and cover art by the San Francisco poster artists Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley. Journey's audience was growing fast, and the group now had its own identity.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In the summer of 1979 Journey toured America with Thin Lizzy, and that tour left a mark. Perry and Schon spent time trading rhyme exercises with Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott in Miami. Perry later said Lynott's back and forth between voice and guitar inspired the call and response of Any Way You Want It, which Perry and Schon then worked up on the tour bus. The song opened the album Departure, released at the end of February 1980. Departure became Journey's first top ten album, peaking at number eight, and Any Way You Want It went on to become one of the band's signature songs, turning up in films from Caddyshack onwards. A live album, Captured, followed early in 1981.[1] [2] [3]

Gregg Rolie, though, was worn out. After the Departure tour he left to start a family and pursue his own music. It was the second time he had walked away from a hugely successful band. His exit was friendly, and he helped choose his own successor. Rolie suggested Jonathan Cain, the keyboard player in the British band the Babys. Cain was born Jonathan Friga in Chicago in 1950 and started on accordion at the age of eight. As a small boy he survived the Our Lady of the Angels school fire of 1958, which killed ninety two students and three nuns. He had spent years struggling in Los Angeles before the Babys. Now he was joining one of the biggest rising bands in America.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Cain's arrival changed Journey's sound, swapping Rolie's organ for piano and synthesizers, and it changed the songwriting too. Rehearsing in a rented warehouse in Oakland, the band shaped the songs that became Escape. Don't Stop Believin' started with a phrase Cain's father used to tell him when he phoned home broke and discouraged from Sunset Boulevard. Schon came up with the bass line, Cain the piano part, and Smith and Schon built the driving rhythm around it. Perry had a cold on the recording day, so the band cut the backing track without him, live in one take at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Perry sang his part the following week. The finished song holds back its real chorus until the very end, with less than a minute to go.[1] [2] [3]

Escape, Frontiers and the top of the world

Escape came out on the seventeenth of July 1981 and went all the way to number one in America. It produced four top twenty hits, Who's Crying Now, Don't Stop Believin', Still They Ride and Open Arms. Open Arms was a ballad Cain had begun back in the Babys, where singer John Waite dismissed it as sentimental rubbish. Schon did not like it much either, reportedly joking that it sounded like Mary Poppins. Then the band played it live on the Escape tour and the audience was stunned. Afterwards Schon told everyone the song really kicked, and Perry later said he was furious at the change of heart. Open Arms became the band's biggest hit, stuck at number two for six weeks in early 1982. Escape was eventually certified diamond, for ten million American sales.[1] [2] [3]

Journey was now everywhere. The band opened for the Rolling Stones in Philadelphia in September 1981, formed a fan club called Journey Force, and wrote two songs for the Disney film Tron. There was even an Atari video game, Journey Escape, in which players guided band members past groupies and photographers to their getaway vehicle. In the middle of the 1982 tour they went back into Fantasy Studios to make Frontiers. Released in February 1983, it reached number two, sold over six million copies in America and became their best selling album in Britain, where it reached number six. Its singles included Separate Ways, Faithfully, Send Her My Love and After the Fall.[1] [2] [3]

Faithfully was Jonathan Cain's song alone. He started it on a napkin on the tour bus heading to Saratoga Springs, New York, with the line about the highway running into the midnight sun, and finished it in about half an hour on a backstage piano. It was about the strain of being a married man on the road, written for his wife, the actress Tané McClure. The marriage did not last long after the song came out. The Faithfully video, built from road footage shot by an NFL Films crew, helped popularize the life on tour music video. Bryan Adams opened for Journey on that tour, and the ballad he wrote at the time, Heaven, was heavily influenced by Faithfully. Steve Smith even played drums on it.[1] [2] [3]

The Separate Ways video was a different story. Shot on a chilly wharf in New Orleans, it had the band miming to instruments that were not there, including Cain's famous air keyboards. Tension on set was high. Perry had brought his girlfriend Sherrie Swafford, even though partners had been banned from the shoot, and according to Cain she objected loudly to the young model in the video. Years later Beavis and Butt Head mocked the clip, and MTV named it one of the worst videos ever made. Cain said people would never let him live down those air keyboards. Swafford also inspired Perry's biggest solo hit. His 1984 album Street Talk gave him Oh Sherrie, which reached number three in America.[1] [2] [3]

Raised on Radio and the long silence

After Frontiers, the members drifted into side projects. Perry's solo record was a big success, and Schon made an album with Sammy Hagar in the short lived supergroup HSAS. Perry thought seriously about leaving Journey, but a phone call from Cain brought him back to finish some songs. When work began on the next album late in 1985, Perry was also producing, and he took much more control. A few months in, bassist Ross Valory and drummer Steve Smith were out of the band. Perry said they were not happy with the music and not keen to tour. Smith said there was pressure to do everything Perry's way. Session players filled in, including bassist Randy Jackson, later a judge on American Idol, and drummer Larrie Londin.[1] [2] [3] [4]

There was also grief behind the sessions. Perry's mother was seriously ill, and he kept leaving the studio to be with her in the San Joaquin Valley. She died while the album was being made. Perry later said he was simply exhausted. The album, Raised on Radio, came out in 1986 and reached number four, with the top ten single Be Good to Yourself. Its cover was modeled on the old KNGS radio station in Hanford that Perry's parents had owned. Perry had also changed its title. It was originally called Freedom, and the switch annoyed Herbert and some of the band. The tour that followed was a success, but the relationships inside Journey were close to breaking point.[1] [2] [3]

On the first of February 1987, Journey played the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage, Alaska, ending the night with Faithfully. Nobody knew it would be their last full concert with Steve Perry. More dates had been booked, but Perry would not do them. He met Schon and Cain by the water in Marin County and told them he could not go on. In Cain's memory, Perry said they could not get any bigger, and that if they kept going they would become a nostalgia act. Cain was crushed. His memoir recalls that within a year his band was over, his marriage had ended, and his father had died. Journey went quiet. Perry largely disappeared from public life.[1] [2] [3]

The music, though, kept selling. In November 1988 Columbia released Journey's Greatest Hits, and it never really went away. It became one of the best selling compilations in history, and in January 2024 it was certified eighteen times platinum in America. Meanwhile the musicians scattered. Schon and Cain teamed up with Cain's old Babys bandmates John Waite and Ricky Phillips, plus drummer Deen Castronovo, as Bad English. Their ballad When I See You Smile went to number one in 1989. Valory, Smith and Rolie formed a band called the Storm. On the third of November 1991, Perry, Schon and Cain reunited briefly at a free concert in Golden Gate Park honoring promoter Bill Graham, who had died in a helicopter crash. They played Faithfully and Lights.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Trial by Fire, a broken hip and a new singer

By the mid nineties Perry was missing Journey more than he expected. He agreed to a reunion on one condition. Herbie Herbert, the man who had built the band, would no longer manage it. Herbert later blamed personality conflicts with Perry, and in October 1995 the band hired Irving Azoff, long known as manager of the Eagles. The classic Escape line up of Perry, Schon, Cain, Valory and Smith got back together to write and record. Gregg Rolie later joked that he was invited and quickly uninvited. Trial by Fire came out in October 1996 and entered the Billboard chart at number three. Its single When You Love a Woman reached number twelve and earned a Grammy nomination.[1] [2] [3]

Then fate intervened. On a break in Hawaii in August 1996, Perry felt a sharp pain in his hip while hiking. Doctors found a degenerative bone condition, and he needed a hip replacement before he could tour. He was reluctant to rush into surgery, and the band waited more than a year. By 1998 Schon and Cain gave him an ultimatum, have the operation or be replaced. Perry left for good. In Cain's account, Perry asked them not to carry on under the Journey name at all. Steve Smith quit too, saying Journey would not be the same without Perry. Trial by Fire remains the only Journey album never toured. Perry did have the hip surgery later that year.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Journey auditioned several singers and picked Steve Augeri, a Brooklyn native who had sung with Tall Stories and Tyketto. When the call came, he had given up on music and was working as a maintenance manager at a Gap store, changing toilet seats and painting fitting rooms. At the end of his audition he asked to try Open Arms, and he believed that sealed it. Deen Castronovo, Schon and Cain's drummer from Bad English, replaced Smith. Augeri's first recording with the band was Remember Me, on the soundtrack of the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon. Then came tours and the album Arrival, released in 2001. It sold poorly, and afterwards Sony dropped the band from Columbia, its label since the very first album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In January 2005 Journey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Perry surprised everyone by turning up to accept it with the band. It was the first time Augeri had met him. That year's album Generations was given away free at many concerts, and it was the first Journey album on which every member sang lead. Augeri later said that was partly because his voice was tired. By 2006 his voice was failing, and on a tour with Def Leppard fans accused the band of using prerecorded vocals. Augeri played his last show on the fourth of July 2006. Jeff Scott Soto stepped in, was named the new singer that December, and was let go in June 2007.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A singer from Manila

In June 2007 the final episode of The Sopranos ended in a diner with Don't Stop Believin' playing on the jukebox, before the screen suddenly cut to black. Perry had at first refused to clear the song, worried it would be remembered as the soundtrack to a death scene. Creator David Chase persuaded him, and Perry gave final approval just three days before the broadcast. The song's sales exploded. Cain later described the period before as a dark one, with no singer and no clear future. The Sopranos gave them hope. Two years later the television show Glee used the song in its first episode, and a whole new generation of kids started singing it at school.[1] [2] [3]

Without a singer, Neal Schon went looking on YouTube. He found videos of a Filipino band called the Zoo covering Journey songs, including Faithfully, and on the twenty eighth of June 2007 he contacted the fan who had uploaded them. The singer was Arnel Pineda. His life had been hard. His mother died of heart disease when he was thirteen, leaving the family deep in debt. Pineda quit school, and for about two years he was homeless in Manila, sleeping in parks and collecting bottles and scrap metal to sell. He sang his way out, fronting bands in Manila and then in Hong Kong clubs, six nights a week. When Schon's email arrived, Pineda thought it was a hoax.[1] [2]

Pineda flew to Marin County in August 2007 for a week of auditions that he called nerve wracking. On the fifth of December he was named Journey's new lead singer. Not everyone welcomed him. Some fans posted racist comments about a Filipino fronting an American band, and Cain answered that Journey was now a world band, not about one color. Cain later admitted in his memoir that he had worried about that reaction himself. Pineda's first show came on the twenty first of February 2008, at the Viña del Mar festival in Chile, broadcast on live television. Chilean critics said his voice sounded remarkably like Steve Perry's. The Filipino director Ramona Diaz followed his first year in the band for the documentary Don't Stop Believin', Everyman's Journey.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Revelation, the first album with Pineda, came out in June 2008, sold only through Walmart in America. It paired new songs with re recorded hits and debuted at number five. By December it was certified platinum, Journey's first since Trial by Fire. The 2008 tour grossed more than thirty five million dollars, and in 2009 the band played the Super Bowl pregame show. Pineda also took them home, playing to huge crowds in Manila. Meanwhile, Don't Stop Believin' kept climbing. In 2009 it became the top selling song on iTunes released before 2000, and thanks to The X Factor it reached number six in Britain in early 2010, nearly thirty years after it first flopped there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The next album, Eclipse, came out in 2011. Schon wanted a heavier, more guitar driven record, and it clashed with producer Kevin Shirley's instincts. It reached number thirteen, but sold only a fraction of what Revelation had, and the band decided to focus on touring rather than new records. Billboard gave Journey its Legend of Live award that same year. Steve Perry, meanwhile, had found love late. In 2011 he began a relationship with Kellie Nash, a psychologist and breast cancer survivor. He stayed by her side when the cancer returned, and she died in December 2012. The following year Perry was treated for melanoma. Her loss later shaped his return to music.[1] [2] [3]

Arrests, feuds and the Hall of Fame

In June 2015 drummer Deen Castronovo was arrested at his home in Salem, Oregon, after police said he had injured a woman. A grand jury later indicted him on charges that included rape, sexual abuse and assault. Nine of the charges were dropped, and in October 2015 he pleaded guilty to six. He received a suspended sentence and four years of probation, with orders for domestic violence and drug counseling. Journey fired him. Omar Hakim finished that year's tour, and then Steve Smith returned to the drum seat once more. He has since said he recovered from addiction. In 2023 he said he was clean and sober, and that he now put God first and his family second.[1] [2] [3]

On the seventh of April 2017, Journey was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Barclays Center in New York, introduced by Pat Monahan of Train. The inductees included Perry, Schon, Cain, Rolie, Valory, Smith and Dunbar, and each gave a speech. Perry stood with his old bandmates for the first time since 2005, but when it was time to play, he stepped aside and let Arnel Pineda sing, out of respect for the current singer. Around the same time a new rift opened. Cain, Pineda and Valory visited President Donald Trump at the White House, a trip arranged by Cain's wife, the pastor Paula White, a spiritual adviser to Trump. Schon publicly criticized the visit.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The biggest fight came in March 2020. Schon and Cain announced they had fired Ross Valory and Steve Smith, and sued them for more than ten million dollars, accusing them of an attempted corporate coup. They claimed the pair wanted to take control of the company they believed held the Journey name. Valory and Smith fought back, supported by Steve Perry and Herbie Herbert, and Valory countersued over who really owned the trademark. Court papers also revealed that Perry had been paid as a band member for years without performing. In April 2021 the two sides announced an amicable settlement. Schon later said he had also split with manager Irving Azoff, whom he blamed for turning band members against each other.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Herbie Herbert, the man who had put Journey together, died at his home in Orinda, California, on the twenty fifth of October 2021, aged seventy three. He died on the thirtieth anniversary of the death of his mentor Bill Graham. Schon paid tribute to him as a manager who had fought for all of them. Meanwhile the band rebuilt again. Randy Jackson came back on bass and the producer Narada Michael Walden joined on drums, with Castronovo returning in 2021 as a second drummer. Jackson needed back surgery, so Todd Jensen, an old bandmate of Schon's from Hardline, took over on bass. The album Freedom, the title Perry had rejected back in 1986, finally appeared in July 2022.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Lawsuits, a farewell tour and a song that never dies

By 2022 even the Schon and Cain partnership was unravelling. Walden left after a minor heart attack following a show in Pennsylvania, and Jackson was gone too. In September 2022 Perry sued Schon and Cain over song trademark registrations, then dropped the case a few months later. In November Cain performed Don't Stop Believin' at a gala at Donald Trump's Mar a Lago estate in Florida. Schon's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter, saying Journey should not be political. Cain replied that if anyone was damaging the Journey brand, it was Schon. The two were also fighting in court over spending on the band's credit card, with each accusing the other, and the disputes continued into 2024.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Through it all, Journey kept filling arenas. They toured with Toto, and in 2018 and again in 2024 they crossed North America with Def Leppard. The 2018 tour topped Billboard's touring chart, grossing more than thirty million dollars in seventeen shows. Pineda faced his own pressure. After he struggled with his in ear monitors at the Rock in Rio festival in 2024, he answered critics on Facebook, offering to leave if a million fans told him to go. He stayed. Steve Perry, meanwhile, returned to music on his own terms. His album Traces came out in 2018, followed by Christmas records, and he sang with Dolly Parton on her rock album, including a duet of Open Arms.[1] [2] [3]

In November 2025 Journey announced the Final Frontier Tour, billed as a farewell to the band as a touring act. The sixty date North American run was set to open on the twenty eighth of February 2026 in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and run to early July. Schon, the only founding member left, called it a thank you to the fans and said that he was not done with music. Cain called it one last chance to feel the magic together. Pineda said every night on stage had been a dream come true. The line up for the farewell was Schon, Cain, Pineda, Castronovo, Jensen and keyboardist and singer Jason Derlatka. As of 2026, Schon has said he plans to keep making music.[1] [2] [3]

Journey's legacy rests on a remarkable run of songs, and above all on one of them. Don't Stop Believin' became the best selling digital track from the twentieth century, and it has been certified eighteen times platinum in America. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2022. Detroit Red Wings fans sing the south Detroit line themselves, and San Francisco Giants fans sing it every home game. Steve Perry, once dismissed by critics, is now widely celebrated as one of rock's great voices, nicknamed The Voice by Jon Bon Jovi. Journey was once mocked as corporate rock. Today its songs belong to weddings, ballparks and karaoke bars around the world.[1] [2] [3]

The people around Journey

Steve Perry and Neal Schon. The voice and the guitar at the heart of Journey's golden years. Schon was not sure about Perry at first, and manager Herbie Herbert said he had to push the singer on him. They wrote Lights, Any Way You Want It and more together. Tension simmered through the eighties, and Perry left twice. Schon later compared Perry's gift to Aretha Franklin's and agreed he might be the greatest male singer ever.[1] [2] [3]

Steve Perry and Herbie Herbert. Herbert discovered Perry through a demo and made him Journey's singer, but the two came to clash badly. When Perry agreed to reunite in the mid nineties, his condition was that Herbert would no longer manage the band. Herbert later mocked Perry's claim that he never felt part of the group, and in 2020 he sided with Valory and Smith in the lawsuit against Schon and Cain.[1] [2] [3]

Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain. Partners in songwriting for over forty years, from Don't Stop Believin' onwards, and at times bitter opponents. They split over Cain's White House visit in 2017, reunited against Valory and Smith in 2020, then fought again over politics and the band's credit cards. Schon once said the two of them together created something that truly sounds like Journey.[1] [2] [3]

Jonathan Cain and Paula White. Cain met the pastor Paula White on a Southwest Airlines flight when a book fell from her bag and he picked it up. They married in 2015, the third marriage for each. She became a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, and her political role, along with Cain's Christian music ministry, became a source of conflict inside Journey.[1] [2] [3]

Jonathan Cain and Tané McClure. Cain's first wife was the actress and singer Tané McClure, and she was the woman behind Faithfully, his song about staying true while touring. Many fans assumed Perry wrote it, since he sang it. The irony is that Cain and his wife divorced soon after the song was released.[1] [2]

Steve Perry and Sherrie Swafford. Perry's girlfriend in the early eighties inspired his biggest solo hit, Oh Sherrie, and appeared in its video. Inside Journey she was less popular. Cain recalled that on the Separate Ways video shoot, where partners were banned, she objected fiercely to the model in the clip and caused serious tension.[1] [2] [3]

Gregg Rolie and Jonathan Cain. When Rolie left Journey in 1980, the exit was so friendly that he chose his own replacement, recommending the Babys keyboardist Jonathan Cain. Cain's arrival reshaped the band's sound and led straight to Escape. Rolie stayed close to the Journey family, playing with Schon again in later years and joining the band onstage in Austin in 2023.[1] [2] [3]

Neal Schon and Arnel Pineda. Schon found Pineda through YouTube in 2007 and emailed him out of the blue. Pineda thought it was a hoax. Schon flew him in to audition and made him the singer, and called him the man who revived interest in the band. Pineda was still the band's singer when the farewell tour was announced in 2025.[1] [2] [3]

Jonathan Cain and John Waite. Bandmates in the Babys, where Waite turned down an early version of Open Arms as sentimental rubbish. Cain took the song to Journey, where it became their biggest hit. The two reunited in the late eighties in Bad English, whose ballad When I See You Smile went to number one.[1] [2] [3]

Neal Schon and Michaele Salahi. Schon had dated Michaele Salahi in the nineties, and they went public again in 2011. He proposed onstage at a charity concert in Baltimore in October 2012, and they married in San Francisco in December 2013 in a wedding broadcast live. It was at least his fifth marriage.[1]

Steve Perry and Kellie Nash. Perry began a relationship with psychologist Kellie Nash in 2011, knowing she was a breast cancer survivor. When her cancer returned, he stayed by her side, and she died in December 2012. Her loss shaped his emotional return to music with the album Traces in 2018.[1]

Rare facts about Journey

• Journey got its name from a roadie, John Villanueva, after a radio contest to name the band failed. The group began as the Golden Gate Rhythm Section. When listeners failed to come up with a better name, roadie John Villanueva suggested Journey, and it stuck.[1] [2]
• Journey's second ever gig was at the Diamond Head Crater in Hawaii, the day after their debut. They debuted at the Winterland Ballroom on New Year's Eve 1973 in front of ten thousand people, then flew to Hawaii and played Diamond Head the next day.[1]
• Aynsley Dunbar lost the drum job in the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Mitch Mitchell on a coin toss. Before Journey, Dunbar auditioned for Hendrix. The decision came down to a coin toss, and Mitch Mitchell won it.[1]
• Steve Perry first toured with Journey disguised as a roadie's Portuguese cousin. To avoid alarming the band's singer at the time, Robert Fleischman, Perry traveled with the crew under that cover story before sneaking in a song at a soundcheck.[1]
• Perry wears a gold eighth note pendant his mother gave him on his twelfth birthday. He treats it as a good luck charm. That same year, hearing Sam Cooke on her car radio made him want to sing.[1]
• Lights was first written about Los Angeles, not San Francisco. Perry originally sang about the sun shining on L A. After joining a San Francisco band, he switched it to the bay, and it became a Giants ballpark favorite.[1]
• Wheel in the Sky began as a poem called Wheels in My Mind, written by bassist Ross Valory's wife Diane. The poem became Journey's first single on the Billboard Hot 100, co written with Robert Fleischman and Neal Schon.[1]
• Journey's live album Captured was dedicated to AC/DC singer Bon Scott. Scott had died in February 1980. AC/DC had opened for Journey the year before, and the liner notes called him a friend from the highway.[1]
• Any Way You Want It was inspired by touring with Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott. Perry said Lynott's back and forth between vocal lines and guitar gave them the song's call and response structure.[1]
• An Atari video game, Journey Escape, starred the band members. Players steered the band past groupies and photographers to their scarab shaped escape vehicle.[1] [2]
• Journey wrote and recorded two songs for the 1982 Disney film Tron. The songs were Only Solutions and 1990s Theme. Decades later, Separate Ways turned up in Tron Legacy.[1] [2]
• Open Arms spent six weeks at number two, blocked by two different number one hits. Centerfold by the J Geils Band and I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett kept it from the top in early 1982.[1]
• Cain recorded the piano on Open Arms while sick with a bad cold, and wanted to redo it. Everyone else outvoted him, and the take he played under the weather is the one on the record.[1]
• Prince phoned Jonathan Cain worried that Purple Rain sounded too much like Faithfully. Cain reassured him that the two songs only shared the same four chords.[1]
• Bryan Adams wrote Heaven while opening for Journey, and Journey's drummer played on it. Adams was on the 1983 Frontiers tour. Heaven was heavily influenced by Faithfully, and Steve Smith played drums on the recording.[1] [2]
• Only the Young was pulled from Frontiers at the last minute, then became a hit two years later. After a late meeting with the label, two songs were dropped. Only the Young resurfaced on the Vision Quest soundtrack in 1985.[1]
• The Raised on Radio cover was modeled on the radio station Steve Perry's parents owned. The artwork, by early Journey drummer Prairie Prince, was based on KNGS in Hanford, California.[1]
• Journey's 2022 album Freedom used the title Perry had rejected in 1986. Raised on Radio was originally called Freedom. Thirty six years later, the band finally used it.[1] [2]
• Steve Augeri was maintaining a Gap store when Journey called. He changed toilet seats and painted fitting rooms as a maintenance manager. He jokingly apologized to anyone who went home with paint on their jeans.[1] [2]
• Journey gave away its 2005 album Generations free at many concerts. It was also the first Journey album where every member sang lead on at least one song.[1]
• Arnel Pineda's band was disqualified from a world contest for playing Bohemian Rhapsody. His band Amo won the Philippine leg of a Yamaha band contest with the Queen song, but at the Hong Kong finals the rules required an original.[1]
• Arnel Pineda first thought Neal Schon's invitation email was a hoax. A friend who had posted his videos persuaded him to reply. Ten minutes later, Schon phoned him.[1]
• Pineda's first ever concert with Journey was broadcast on live television in Chile. It was the Viña del Mar festival on the twenty first of February 2008. Cain later said the show was televised to millions of viewers.[1]
• The real chorus of Don't Stop Believin' does not arrive until the song has under a minute left. The title line comes only at the end. Everything before it is verses and what the writers called pre choruses.[1]
• Steve Perry gave final approval for The Sopranos to use Don't Stop Believin' three days before the finale aired. He feared it would be tied to a death scene. After the episode, the song's iTunes sales jumped by nearly five hundred percent.[1]
• Glee's version of Don't Stop Believin' earned the show its only Grammy nomination. The cast recording was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.[1]
• The Glee cast performed Don't Stop Believin' in six different episodes of the show. It closed the pilot episode in 2009 and returned in the second to last episode in 2015.[1]
• Herbie Herbert died on the thirtieth anniversary of his mentor Bill Graham's death. Herbert died on the twenty fifth of October 2021. Graham had been killed in a helicopter crash on the same date in 1991.[1]
• Herbie Herbert was an early booker of rock acts for halftime shows at San Francisco 49ers games. A devoted fan, he had a luxury box next to the team owner's.[1]
• Two songs on Journey's album Next have never been played live. Spaceman and Here We Are have never been performed onstage, and the whole album vanished from their set after 1979.[1]
• Journey's second album includes a cover of the Beatles song It's All Too Much. Look into the Future also contains the band's longest ever recorded song, its title track.[1]
• Ross Valory tuned his bass lower than normal, to B E A D. That gave him the depth of a five string bass while keeping the feel of a four string.[1]
• Former Journey singer Robert Fleischman wrote music for the pilot episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. He also composed music for the television comedy That Seventies Show, and released albums of his ambient scores.[1]
• Jonathan Cain rewrote the first chapter of his memoir eight times. He admitted that he could write a song but had to learn punctuation. Novelist Travis Thrasher helped him cut down five hundred pages.[1]
• Deen Castronovo was sixteen when a Portland band called Wild Dogs recruited him. He later drummed for Ozzy Osbourne on the album Ozzmosis before joining Journey in 1998.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.