I’m gonna be honest. I can’t really tell you how many times I’ve seen Styx, Journey, and Foreigner, unless I dive into the scrapbook to count ticket stubs, and I’m just too lazy for that today. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
My attendance at all those gigs was not because I’m some rabid fanboy of any of those bands, though I grew up in the 80s and know all their radio single songs top to bottom, same as any other Gen Xer worth their salt. It’s because they’re often part of a multi-band package on the same ticket, or sometimes they’re simply trading off co-bills with one another, year after year, tour after tour. I’ve caught no less than three of these multi-bills, and have seen each band open for some bigger band at least once.
It often seems like Journey, Foreigner, and Styx might as well have united and become a supergroup, what with the amount of nostalgic parallels they all uniformly receive from most any red-blooded American who grew up in the seventies or eighties. They provided a triumverate of coming-of-age records to our repo-nepo-baby generation, in Journey’s Escape, Foreigner 4, and Styx’s The Grand Illusion. Dissing any one of these seminal albums is tantamount to turning in your Gen X card outright.
This despite the fact that many a poor Gen X man’s insult about some hard rock group or another selling out (ahem, Van Halen, anyone?) often involves comparing said entity to “fuckin’ Journey”, a slag implying a once blazin’ hard rock flashpoint had turned to the cursed soft side of synths, keyboards, and ballads, like Bon Jovi or Poison, or later stage glam Motley Crue, or really many of those late 80s hair metal outfits. In other words, Van Halen ‘became’ Journey once Sammy joined, KISS ‘became’ Journey once they’d washed off the makeup, and Aerosmith ‘became’ Journey once they’d dropped that Armageddon soundtrack song. Why did ‘being’ Journey become the hard rock go-to insult? I don’t know. What I do know, every single one of those headbangin’ metal purists knew every goddamned word to Anyway You Want It, Separate Ways, and most especially Don’t Stop Believin’. I don’t wanna hear your excuses, metalheads. You know the words. STFU and own it.
You loyalist Show readers don’t have to stretch too far to wonder why a big boom bah arena rock kinda dude like me bothers with the B list fellas. First of all, once upon a time, they weren’t B list, they were A list. Remember, this is the tier of the underplay shows, where any number of reasons might be the case for former arena level outfits to downsize their outings. Secondly, you guessed it - I attended these nostalgia shows primarily to witness the prowess of their respective gunslingers.
That would be, in no particular order, Neil Schon of Journey, Mick Jones of Foreigner, and Tommy Shaw of Styx, who added near as much substance to my childhood as my tent pole bands of yore, what with SoCal’s local radio stations KLOS and KMET playing their shit nonstop throughout the first three decades of my life.
My live experiences with all three of these bands, alas, have all been after their zenith 80s heyday, all of them suffering the absence of a key original player. In Journey’s case, that was Steve Perry, replaced by Filipino wunderkind Arnel Pineda (Schon found him on YouTube covering Journey songs in bars in Manila). In Styx, Lawrence Gowan and Jimmy Young took over all lead vocals from departed OG singer Dennis DeYoung. Foreigner hired Kelly Hansen to replace Lou Graham. So diehard fans of these Version 2.0 editions might see my witnessing of all three of these bands as lesser lemonade, and okay, sure, but again, I’m almost always there to see the axe man over the lead singer, plus those culturally immortal songs.
I can pinpoint a couple of Journey shows locally at the Santa Barbara Bowl from memory solely because my wifey, a Filipina, was max stoked about seeing her countryman bellow out the hits, and every-fucking-body knows Journey hits. They are the most karaoke’d band on earth, second perhaps only to Queen. Did we sing all those Journey tunes along with Pineda? Yes, we did. Did I dig Neal Schon’s licks and prowess? Yes, I did. Good enough. Would I have liked to have seen Journey with Perry? Of course.
We met much of the band backstage once. Unfortunately, the two players we most wanted to meet, Pineda and Schon, were conspicuously absent from the meet and greets. While we were prepping to snap a photo, we heard bassist Ross Vallory mumbling about some argument between the singer and the guitarist who’d passed on meeting fans that night. Journey is a sewing circle kinda band, always infighting and suing each other. What can ya do. When you’re a pop cultural touchstone known from the Congo to Siberia, royalty conflicts and spotlight hogging are probably gonna happen from time to time.
Foreigner likely has as many radio memories in all of our collective Gen X minds as Journey, perhaps more so because of their unique, earworm cadence. Am I right, Gen Xers? Nothing will get your mind rolling more redundant than a goddamned Foreigner staple. Here, I’ll unload a few on you right here, right now. Feels Like the Very First Time? Jukebox Hero? Cold as Ice? Double Vision? Urgent? I know, I’m a punk bastard. Good luck with one of those the rest of your day.
Hansen did a remarkable job of emulating Graham’s octaves, I’ll give him that. Yet my Foreigner sphere, fashioned from early 80s FM radio, was entirely constructed on Jones, who not only provided all those flashpoint riffs of yesteryear but produced plenty of other records, including your webbie’s favorite band and their first album with Sammy Hagar, 5150.
Funny thing. I mentioned my first Cheap Trick gig happened at my local, redneck county fair, and so too did my first Foreigner show occur on that very same free stage in Santa Maria. That one-off was densely populated by Santa Marian seventies folk who were singing their fool asses off to Waiting for a Girl Like You when we rolled up from the midway. Know what’s funnier? Jones wasn’t even there! He was bedridden from dealing with health issues, and a substitute guitarist was hired for several dates on that tour. My first “Foreigner” experience was sans Graham AND Jones. Not sure if that counts. If it does, heck, my pool hall gang of childhood reprobates wingin’ some garage version of Hot Blooded might as well count, too.
But I did catch Mick Jones live at last during a triple bill with Styx and Don Felder at the Santa Barbara Bowl in 2014. Did I enjoy seeing the man who’d penned all those Gen X anthems? Most def, though as with many long-in-the-tooth old school guitarists, he was looking pretty old and playing a lot slower.
Yet of the three underplays in question this segment, by far Styx has been the most enjoyable over the years, largely in part due to Tommy Shaw, a first rate gunslinger whose technical prowess is unmatched in his particular circles. He’s wildly underrated and I have no idea why, the dude’s a machine and he’s got mad soul. I managed to catch my very first mid-air guitar pick from Tommy Shaw, actually, something I’d been desperate to achieve for the better part of twenty plus years. I’ve had ample opportunities that either I flubbed or some scrambling pit rat beat me to it. I don’t mean picking one up off the ground, either. I mean an actual grab in the air, before the sucker hits the dirt. Tommy Shaw and dumb luck made it happen.
While diehards in the crowd mumbled about the lesser version onstage without DeYoung, I didn’t much care. Lawrence and Jimmy did a fine job of rendering Styx’s biggest flashpoints, Come Sail Away, Too Much Time on My Hands, and Mr. Roboto. Like I said, I was there to watch Shaw. I was thoroughly impressed.
Nostalgia goes the distance with Gen X. No less so for me. But I’ll tell you this much. The next time you metal ‘zoids wanna tell me Van Halen went all “Journey” on America when Sammy and Eddie started jamming, I’m just gonna go ahead and quiz you on your wherewithal concerning your ability to sing along with Don’t Stop Believin’. I’m pretty empathic. There’s no point in trying to cover your tracks. You know the fucking song. If not, well, you must be a commie pinko rat. Then again, even the Russians know the friggin’ words to Don’t Stop Believin’.
My kids are Gen X-ers . My music era is Elvis, Buddy Holly, Beatles, Stones, Dave Clark 5 , Donovan, Marianne Faithful, Joan Baez, Jim Morrison, Temptations, Janis Joplin, Jimmie Hendricks, Bob Dylan, Sonny and Cher. And on and on. Lots to choose from. Something for everyone same as the 80’s. I knew the songs you mentioned cuz my kids and I sang them. I missed punk and heavy metal and garage rock and rap, hip hop and so on. Nothing has captured me quite like the music I heard from 1965 to 85.