THE YEAR IS 1981!!!
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The group started out as more of a prog-rock band with the vocals downplayed. For their first three albums, Gregg Rolie was their singer as well as their keyboard player. Their label, Columbia wasn’t happy with their poor sales numbers, and pushed the group to get tighter and more radio-friendly. Adding Steve Perry did the trick; he joined for their fourth album, Infinity, and set them on a course for stardom. Rolie left in 1981.
- Randy Jackson, who later became a judge on the US TV show American Idol, played bass for Journey in 1986 on the Raised On Radio album. He also toured with them that year and the year after.
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The line, “Strangers waiting, up and down the Boulevard” is a reference to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where dreams are made. Keyboard player Jonathan Cain got the idea for the song when he went there to pursue his career. Cain said in an interview… “The song began with the chorus. My father had coached me. I was in Hollywood, struggling with my career, kind of lost. I was asking him, ‘Should I come back to Chicago and just give up on this dream?’ And he said, ‘No, son. Stay the course. We have a vision. It’s gonna happen. Don’t stop believin’.'”
Cain’s dream came true when he joined a group called The Babys with John Waite. In 1980, he joined Journey in San Francisco, and this song took shape.
He told Steve Perry about his idea for placing the song in Sunset Boulevard, and Perry had him describe it. “I described the menagerie of people who would show up on a Friday night,” Cain said. “All the dreamers that had dreams to become actors. Producers, artists, lawyers, anything… they were all there on a Friday night.”
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In the last ever episode of the TV show The Sopranos, which aired June 10, 2007, Tony Soprano plays this song on a jukebox during the final scene. The episode abruptly ends with the lyrics “Don’t Stop” as the scene cuts to black.
Steve Perry said in People magazine June 13, 2007: “I needed to know how this song was going to be used. I didn’t want the song to be part of a blood-bath, if that was going to be the closing moment. In order for me to feel good about approving the song use, they had to tell me what happened. And they made me swear that I would not tell anybody.”
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