It was a medium-level hit and definitely hints at the future, WAY MORE poptastic version of the band as it burns off any of the San Fran Jam Band history it may have had. This song precursors the arrival of Jonathan Cain and was written by Schon and Perry. “Any Way You Want It” is from Journey’s 6th album, 1980’s Departure. This is when shit goes BALLISTIC! The song-writing team of Cain/Perry proceeded to take the band to heights even they couldn’t have imagined.

In 1980 Greg Rolie left the band and recommended Jonathan Cain, of The Babys, as his replacement in the Keyboard Department. However, we still don’t have all of the characters needed. Perry was snuck into a gig with the band under the auspices of being a fill in roadie, and while Fleischman was away from the mic at a soundcheck Steve stepped to it and sang a few notes. Robert Fleischman had been singing for Journey at this point, but it wasn’t jelling. It was his Grandmother who convinced him to take the call. That project had broken up after the death of one of its members in a car accident, and Perry had returned home to pursue other paths in life. In late ’77, a young Steve Perry was contacted by Journey’s management after hearing some demos he had recorded with his band Alien Project. It can, and has, broken the spirit of many before. The usual soap opera stylings of a band trying to work out what the hell it’s doing. Over the next few years there were a couple of other iterations, Schon on vocals, etc., and a deal with Columbia records that failed to impress anyone with its sales. They had first been in the business of providing the backup band for other artists in the scene, but abandoned that idea and decided, instead, to make their own choons. It was made up of members of a few other bands: Prairie Prince of The Tubes was the skinsman, Neal Schon, who had been poached by Carlos Santana to play in his band at the RIDICULOUS age of FIFTEEN, on guitar, Greg Rolie on keys, and Ross Valory and George Tickner from the ATROCIOUSLY named Frumious Bandersnatch, what a shock that THAT didn’t take off, rounding out the team. The original lineup of the band came out of the San Francisco scene in the early ‘70s. With a bloke who isn’t even the lead singer everyone knows. They continue to sell out arenas and fill them with the sugary, poptastic, hookiness that the crowd sings at the TOP of their lungs, night after night, years after having appeared on the charts. Their Greatest Hits has spent over 500 weeks on the album charts. They became one of the biggest Hit Machines in all of music. If you think differently, then it says more about you than it does about Journey. Arite…let’s get it out of the way, shall we? Journey is friggin’ AWESOME! That’s where we are going to start with this session of Hand Picked.

Journey any way you want it