Tag: Journey

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Only the Young”

“Only the Young” is one of those great songs whose history is so complicated that even fans can’t quite keep it straight. Originally written by  Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon of Journey, it was first released by the great pop-rock band Scandal in 1984, when the band was fronted by Patty Smyth. Journey then released their own recording of the song in 1985, which was featured on the soundtrack of the Matthew Modine movie Vision Quest. Taylor Swift has since done her own cover of the song, which is, naturally, the one most young people know today (if they know the song at all).

I have featured Journey on my Friday Night Rock-Out Series before with “Any Way You Want It.” In that post, I expressed the somewhat novel opinion that “Any Way You Want It” is Journey’s only “good” song. In retrospect, I see that that statement was unfair. “Only the Young” is, also, a very good song indeed. It somehow gets at the heart of the yearning and frustration that young people feel whenever the previous generation is doing its best to keep them down.

Such was the case in 1984, when young Gen-Xers like myself were in high school or college and doing their best to make it in the wake of the Baby Boomers. And it’s even more the case now, when Gen-Z is coming of age in a United States that has, almost literally, been looted by the old people who control it. They face young adulthood in a denuded world, bankrupt and barren of opportunity. I bet the song resonates for them, too.

My favorite version of the song is still the first one, by Scandal. Patty Smyth was one of the most underrated rock singers of her generation, and this song found her at the height of her powers. (Fun fact: Van Halen offered her the lead singer job after David Lee Roth left; she declined due to her pregnancy.) Her voice positively soars on this song, and whenever I hear it, I am transported back to that long-ago time—which, alas, is looking better by the day.

Rock-on…

Friday-Night Rock Out: “Any Way You Want It”

E.L. Doctorow once said that Edgar Allen Poe was the best bad writer in American history. I would suggest that Journey was the best bad band in rock history. Blessed with a classic rock pairing of a great singer and a great lead guitarist—Steve Perry and Neil Schon, respectively—Journey was a hit-machine all through the 1980s. In a sea of turgid, flat corporate rock, Journey’s unusual combination of Perry’s crooning lyrics and Schon’s clean-yet-virtuosic guitar licks was a winner. It stood out a mile on F.M. radio. Also, the band had a great work ethic. They played out-of-the-way venues in the midwest and the deep south that many other bands shunned, which won the band the eternal devotion of countless rural and working-class kids, to whom Journey’s sentimental and often maudlin songs appealed.

It was this sentimental and overblown quality that made Journey a bit of a drag. There was something cloying and yet self-aggrandizing about much of their work. Every other song sounded like an “anthem.” One was always tempted to flick a lighter and wave it in the air whenever one of them came on the radio.

Still, when Journey was on its game and at its most pure, they could create a really great, down-and-dirty rock song. My favorite of theirs—the only one that truly feels like a rock song, to me—is their unapologetic ode to sex, “Any Way You Want It”.

Rock on…