I'm a big fan of the generations that had the extreme misfortune of following mine. Huge fan. I'm Team Millenial and Team Gen Z all day. All. Day. But what they seem incapable of understanding (as with a distressing percentage of my own generation, and most of all those...you know...Boomers) is that Journey pretty much sucks. Arguably as a band and definitely as a corporation.
Look, I've come around on "Don't Stop Believin'," in large part because the drums are phenomenal and the structure is weird, and that's more than enough to overcome the arena rock platitudes and geographic sloppiness. Also, to be fair, it's truly hard to come up with a stadium stomper as powerful and enduring. So.
But in general Journey is the anti-Beatles. They are five insanely talented musicians who together produce significantly less than the sum of their parts.
Except...I really like some of their stuff. Which doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It just means that blind pigs and being a certain age and all that. So no matter how awful the video for "Separate Ways" is—and it is—the song's pretty kickin'.
And even as my most sneering, as only a teenager can be (or one who remains terminally teenaged into his dotage), I always liked "Faithfully." I liked the backstory about Jonathan Cain's wife asking if he was ever tempted to cheat whilst on the road, and how he wrote this lovely ballad in reply. (The fact that he did indeed subsequently cheat on her, leading to their divorce may take some of the shine off the song but, hey, trust the art and not the artist and all that, right?)
One of the delightful surprises over the past decade is watching as Miley Cyrus not only seems to have pulled herself out of what looked like a disaster spiral but has subsequently revealed herself to be one hell of an artist. I can't claim to be an expert, having heard fewer than two dozen of her songs, but every cover I've heard her do has been at least good and some have been extraordinary.
Such as this casual walk through "Faithfully." The ease with which she dips in and out of it while talking with the audience at the famed Chateau Marmont is striking. And her husky voice is a wonderful counterpart to Steve Perry's crystalline vocals on the original.
How, in this post-post-postmodern world do you make a good video for your fine song? With a shot for shot remake of the worst video ever, of course.
I have very mixed feelings about this remix culture society we find ourselves in, where memes are so prevalent and truly great works of art are often first introduced to and best known by younger viewers/readers/listeners by the snide (and often very funny) jokes made out of them and at their expense. On the one hand, I love the way the internet has granted so many artists the tools and audiences to enable them to create in a way they likely never would have a few decades earlier. On the other hand, I don't think it comes without a cost.
So I've known this song for the vast majority of my life. And I've even known the vast majority of the words for all those years. But I'd never actually thought about any of them, or seen the video, until this week, and both are so much greater than I could have expected.
First, there's the intro, which was the third longest 40 seconds of my life, behind only any 40 seconds of the day I spent deep sea fishing on really choppy seas, where every single one of the hundred or so passengers were vomiting until their stomachs were emptied, at which point they continued to dry heave for hours until finally returning to shore blessed short, and the time I had two ruptured discs in my back and felt like the bones in my hip and leg had turned to lava. And right after those comes that intro.
Then there's the first shot of the band, which has bass player Ross Valory in the EFG, with singer Steve Perry and guitar whiz Neal Schon in the middleground and poor original singer/keyboardist Gregg Rolie hidden in the background. But not quite as hidden as superdrummer Steve Smith, who's hidden by Valory's shoulder for absolutely no good reason—had they simply moved the camera about four inches to the left, he would have been visible (as would the rest of the band) and they wouldn't have had to insert the next quick shot of him in the name of fairness. A sign of how primitive early videomaking was? Of how drummers are so unjustly overlooked, despite the occasional exhortation to give the drummer some? An omen of things to come? (The thing to come most soon is the mini-jitterbug kneeshake Perry executes right before the opening verse starts.)
And what an opening verse:
She loves to laugh
She loves to sing
She does everything
She loves to move
She loves to groove
She loves the loving things
I've never really heard—certainly haven't ever paid attention—to that final line. But now I literally laugh out loud every damn time I hear it. "She loves the lovin' things." You're damn right she does. Those lovin' things? She's not just fond of them. Oh hell no. She outright loves them. Oh my great googlymoogly. Poor T.S. Eliot, never mind Smokey Robinson or Roger Waters, must be (sometimes posthumously) positively green with envy at the lyrical concision.
That may be ever so slightly unfair. After all, later we'll learn that they do indeed sing of said lovin' things—this is simply foreshadowing!
And then there's the chorus:
Any way you want it
That's the way you need it
Any way you want it
She said, any way you want it
That's the way you need it
Any way you want it
Which is a bit more ambiguous than I feel comfortable with. How does he need it? And what precisely is this it in question? I don't feel that's ever properly resolved. (And yet, somehow, looking at this gentlemen, I'm okay with that.)
Watching the video, you can see that Perry keeps wanting to make his trademark circular motions, but perhaps he hasn't quite perfected the move. It's always so instructive to be able to retroactively trace an artist's growth.
But then comes Schon's guitar solo...and it's undeniable. The guy can not only play—he's got oodles and boodles of technique—but he knows how to construct a solo that starts strong and builds, with melodies every bit as strong as the song's main melodic theme.
None of which seems to placate Rolie. Except for one blurry shot where he's smiling in the background, the poor bastard (in stark contrast to Valory, who seems to be having the time of his life) looks like he's in hell—his Paul McCartney puppy dog eyes meets Nick Drake's tortured soul making clear he wouldn't be in the band for much longer.
Also, keep an eye out for the quick shot of the board for absolutely no reason whatsoever. A nod to Buñuel, one assumes.
And then there's that last twenty seconds of the video. You're thinking that watching the record return to its resting place is the emotion capper, or perhaps that it's the early music video equivalent of Satre's No Exit...but either way, you're wrong. Because just when you think this primitive video offering can't get any more transcendent, there's that final shot of Perry doing his best Arthur Fonzarelli, which only goes to emphasize just how magical Henry Winkler was, and how difficult to pull off that level of cool really is.
Finally, why the hell is the video—from the official Journey channel—ever so slightly out of sync? What are they trying to say with such an unorthodox presentation? I know it means something, that it's just not just a sloppy oversight. It's got some much deeper meaning and I must know. (I'll even let them explain what the it is.)
I've often thought of Journey as the anti-Beatles. Not that they were against everything or anything the Fabs stood for or represented—just the opposite, in fact; even without knowing much about what the band members believe in their heart of hearts, I'm quite confident all of them grew up loving the lads. No, I think of them as the anti-Beatles because each and every member of the most popular lineup of the band (although, really, it goes for the musicians who were members before they got really popular, as well as the ones who came after their heyday) is an absolute monster on his instrument. I mean, seriously, you just don't get better, really, on a technical level, than Steve Perry, Neal Schon or Steve Smith. And yet, unlike the Beatles, none of whom were technically all that accomplished—save, perhaps Paul McCartney, on bass—Journey managed to produce nothing transcendent, and little that's really, objectively, of lasting value.
Harsh, I know. So let me temper it with this caveat: a handful of their songs remain wildly popular, and I fully admit to liking several, including "Separate Ways," despite (perhaps) its staggeringly terrible in a slow-motion-train-wreck-can't-look-away manner.
And then there's "Faithfully." Another entry in the "oh, life is so hard on the road when you're a fabulously wealthy and popular musician" category, I absolutely adore this song unreservedly and without the slightest hint of irony—no mean feat, when you consider the mustache in its accompanying video.
Now, usually on our Favorite Song Fridays, we over some sort of analysis, whether it's a close reading of the lyrics, or perhaps our ham-handed stab at delving into the chord progression in some sad pseudo-music theory attempt. Not here. I got nothin', other than to mention Smith's typically spectacular drumming, and the fact that the lyrics are straightforward, which helps them scalpel their way directly into your heart, or at least, into my heart.
One funny note, though: apparently, Prince called up "Faithfully" composer Jonathan Cain, immediately after The Purple One had recorded "Purple Rain," to see if that masterpiece was too close to the Journey song. Cain assured the lil fella that other than sharing some chords, it was not, in fact, too close. For some reason, that makes me love the song even more, as well as Prince, and who knew that was even possible?
