Cumartesi 23 Haz 2007, 14:37
Journey / "Of A Lifetime" / Journey (1) / Apr 1975
Artist: Journey
Original Album: Journey
Track: Of A Lifetime
This is my all-time favorite Journey song – the first track from the first album.
Journey was quite different in the pre-Steve Perry days. A very progressive bluesy jazz-rock fusion outfit, and very much centered on Neal Schon’s guitar work.
This is the only album with Georger Tickner on vocals; Gregg does lead vocals on the next two before Steve Perry joined.
Journey is a great band to use when you want to explore “degrees of separation” in rock family trees. Neal joined Carlos Santana’s band when he was only 15, and he and original keyboardist Gregg Rolie formed Journey after departing Santana.
Bass is handled by Ross Valory, who had previously worked with Steve Miller on the album Rock Love.
Original drummer Aynsley Dunbar (first four Journey albums) probably has the most connections. Dunbar first led the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, who wrote the song Warning – which for many years I always thought was an original Black Sabbath song (debut album). He then played for Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, then after Journey did one album with Sammy Hagar and moved on to Jefferson Starship for three albums, including my favroite of theirs, Freedom At Point Zero ("Jane").
Aynsley then moved on to Whitesnake, playing on the 1987 multi-platinum Whitesnake album, but nobody ever remembers that because David Coverdale (earlier of Deep Purple) fired everyone who played on the album except Adrian Vandenberg after it was done. (Tommy Aldridge was just in the videos and on the tour.)
Betcha wouldn’t have thought this entry would have connections to both Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, two of the three founders of heavy metal?
And of course, now that Jeff Scott Soto has joined Journey as their latest vocalist, there's now all kinds of connections to the metal world since Jeff formerly worked with Yngwie Malmsteen on his first two Rising Force albums.
So though they may be best known for their pop rock ballads of the 80s, I still fly the horns for 'em!
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