Journey

With fourteen albums released, 100 million disks sold and songs contributed as soundtracks nearly for everything from movies to advertisements and sport events, Journey can be called one of the most relevant rock bands. Journey's history started in 1973 when musicians who accompanied Carlos Santana decided to establish their own band and moved to San Francisco. At first they served as a backup group for established artists, but quickly abandoned this status with developing their own style, something between jazz and fusion. But their first efforts, such as Look Into The Future (1976) and Next (1977), did not gain huge success – Journey members even had to take singing lessons to improve their state. At last, Columbia Records ordered them to change music style and also hire new vocalist. That is how Steve Perry joined the band – his clean, tenor voice became a huge part of Journey's success.

Perry's appearance and transition to a more popular style resulted in Infinity album, which was released in 1978 and became platinum. From that point, the band's popularity started to grow simultaneously with their moving towards pop rock music. After Infinity followed Evolution (1979), Departure (1980) and, finally, Escape (1981), which became nine times platinum. At the same time, some people were blaming Journey for becoming pop band. Rolling Stone magazine wrote: "Journey was a dead end for San Francisco area rock". In spite of all criticism, Journey's next album Frontiers (1983) continued their commercial success. Following it, documentary about the band Frontiers And Beyond was released, which turned out to underline first period of Journey's history. The band gathered in 1986 to record Raised On Radio, but, in fact, musicians were spending more time on their solo projects than on Journey. There is no surprise the break up followed until 1995, when Steve Perry agreed to rejoin the band. Journey's comeback was marked with successful album Trial By Fire (1996).

Journey's huge success was always based on lyrical ballads such as Don't Stop Believin', Any Way You Want It, Faithfully, Open Arms, Separate Ways and Wheel In The Sky. At the same time the band was constantly criticized for adopting their music for mass audience, making it more easy for comprehension. Journey was also usually blamed for constant switching band members. Even Steve Perry was fired in 1998 when he injured his hip hiking in Hawaii, and could not perform without hip replacement surgery. Perry was replaced by Steve Augeri, who was later fired because of throat infection that temporarily took his voice. His place was taken by Jeff Soto, who in his turn was replaced by Arnel Pineda after other band's members saw Arnel on YouTube singing Journey's songs. With Pineda in line-up the band released its latest album Revelation (2008), which became Journey's best selling album since Trial By Fire.