Journey weren’t always the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. Before they rocked the earth on its axis with such absolutely essential MOR smasheroos as “Wheel in the Sky,” “Lights” (an even greater salute to San Francisco than Starship’s “We Built This City”!), “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and “Hustler” (okay, so that one’s not so great) the MOR giants from Rice-a-Roni City were that best of all possible things, a progressive rock/jazz fusion band. Right up there with such titans as Kansas, Return to Forever, and Spock’s Beard even!
Surprised? I sure am! Why, it’s like finding out the Sex Pistols began their career with a triple album (played solely on Moog synthesizers and tubular bells) called Moonbeams Refracted by the Gleaming Enamel of Parachuting Molars released under the name of Odysseus’ Merkin! Or that the New Dolls started as a jazz fusion band called, I don’t know, Bent Oxygen! But if it’s news it’s wonderful news, because as everybody knows Journey can do no wrong, even if the Journey that put out their 1975 debut Journey had yet to include the super-dynamic Steve Perry, whose magic flying tonsils wouldn’t arrive on the scene until October 10, 1977, a day that will live infamy!
Later guitarist extra ordinaire Neal Schon would say, “I still think some of the stuff we did then was great. Some of it was self-indulgent, just jamming for ourselves, but I also think a lot of other things hurt us in the early days. It took a while for the politics to sort of shape up.” Self-indulgent? Why, I’ve never heard that one used in conjunction with progressive rock before! And politics? Does Journey have its own form of government? A constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature perhaps? But I digress.
You’re probably not familiar with Journey’s debut unless you’re a hardcore Journey fan (smartest rock fans in the world) or just plain unlucky, as it seems I am. But please allow me to extract tongue from cheek and turn to an honest discussion of the songs on Journey. And the good news—relatively speaking—is that while I’m no fan of either progressive rock or jazz fusion, Journey approach them from a hard rock angle.
It doesn’t change things all that much—they’re still playing progressive rock and jazz fusion—but you get no nine-Roman numeral sci-fi epics that go on for like seventeen minutes and include literally dozens of whiplash-inducing time changes. Or variations on a theme by Brahms. Or lame jazz-lite workout where (for example) the guys pretend to be a Zen garden with one guy striking a single note on a triangle (Ping!) after which another guy hits a gong (gong!) after which yet another guy plays some sub-Django Reinhardt turning Japanese nonsense on guitar.
No, Journey’s selling a muscular fusion with real get up and go, thanks in large part to the really quite impressive guitarsmanship of Neal Schon and the anything-but-staid keyboard workouts of then lead singer Gregg Rolie, both of whom want nothing more than to run manic circles around one another going as fast as they can. This is high-energy music, not the kind of limpid and enervated excitement-free dreck that so many prog-rock and fusion bands were playing it safe with at the time. For the most part, anyway. Sometimes Journey just sound like wimps.
Seven songs, that’s what you get, and opener “Of a Lifetime” isn’t really a song at all but a forty-nine-second intro featuring some big power chords by Schon. “In the Morning Day” (huh?) opens like the lamest Boston song ever, with Ross Valory’s laid-back piano and Rolie’s organ. The latter sounds real soulful as he croons in ballad mode until you get this slurry slice of guitar sizzle and Schon and Rolie commence to jam up a storm in triple tome. Great Schon guitar solo, the rhythm section (which includes ace journeyman Aynsley Dunbar on drums) really bashes it out. Life-changing it’s not, but it’s less likely to give you dysentery than get your blood up. And that’s no small thing.
“Kohautek” is straight up jazz fusion and opens with some classy piano before Schon begins to play exploding power chords, after which things come to an abrupt halt and the whole thing starts all over again. Which is a problem because I hate the start-stop shtick, and to make matters worse Schon’s guitar sound reminds me of Jeff Beck’s on Wired—it has that same inhuman processed feel, and is the antithesis of the meaty hard rock guitar that Schon plays on the better parts of the LP. Meanwhile Rolie plays these crazy loop-de-loops and speed runs on synthesizer but he’s just showing off. In short the song’s rock quotient is zero and I don’t like it and you shouldn’t like it either but then you’re not me and you should feel really bad about that but don’t.
“To Play Some Music” is pure Kansas populist pop prog and the obvious single, although it tanked spectacularly. It’s my album fave for the simple reason that it’s a more rock and roll song than a progressive rock song or jazz fusion song and the boys keep it simple, never deviating from the script by going down improvisational rabbit holes that take you away from the dead melody. In short it has more REO Speedwagon (think “Roll with the Changes”) in its DNA than fusion band; Rolie’s hard-charging organ intro sets the tone and everybody follows suit. And the instrumental interlude is killer; Schon’s guitar solo is short but fierce, and Rolie’s vocals give the song a welcome pop feel. There’s nothing rarified or elitist about it, and that’s an amazing feat for this kind of music.
“Topaz” opens as atmospheric mush with spacy synthesizer and cymbals and features Schon exploring the subtleties of the electric guitar. It’s quite horrid but just as I’m about to take it off IT takes off (great!) only to slow down again (bummer!). You can always count on a prog band to hit upon a good thing only to promptly nip it in the bud, because in their diseased minds you have to switch gears every eight seconds to prove what a technical wizard you are. That said, Schon really knows how to rip it up and tear it up, but he could be Sir Jimi Hendrix himself and it wouldn’t save this one.
“In My Lonely Feeling/Converations” is a fussy AOR blues cum jazz fusion mishmash that is 100 percent devoid of deep feeling but long on technical wanksmanship. Schon shows off his chops but once again he’s playing Jeff Beck’s guitar, and you simply can’t produce rock ’n’ roll with a fussy ax. Self-indulgent this is, and annoying too, because while some people swear by the jazz blues I just swear at them.
Closer “Mystery Mountain” is Rush in jam band mode, which sounds horrible but is actually quite listenable, because Schon and Rolie are so busy racing around and making a racket to stop and fuck things up or take some horrible left turn into Jazz Town. Schon simply won’t have it, all he wants to do is play real fast and make some noise, and he’s too pre-occupied blowing through stop signs to turn into any wretched progressive rock cul de sacs. And good for him.
Bottom line? I’ll never listen to this album again. I might listen to “To Play Some Music” again, and that’s it. But as I said before, I’ll take Journey’s brand of prog/fusion over that of the competition because they never forget they’re a hard rock band—a much harder rock band than they’re given credit for and certainly more of a hard rock band than they’d become after they attained MOR superstar status.
Journey is a so-so album but a far better album than it has any right to be, because when all is said and done the guys in Journey were populists at heart and didn’t have an ounce of art rock or pretension in them. Which puts them closer to REO Speedwagon at their free-wheeling best or Kansas at their least pretentious best than to your pure-bred prog and fusion bands, the great Odysseus’ Merkin included.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
