It was Bruce Springsteen who finally got Journey into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The hard-rock giants had been eligible for inclusion since the year 2000, and had the record sales (gold, platinum and diamond discs up the wazoo) and the allpervading cultural influence (you’ve heard of Don’t Stop Believin’, right?) to back it up. But year after year the HOF gatekeepers said no. Enter The Boss.
“The rumour has it that Springsteen, who’s a big deal for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, sang Don’t Stop Believin’ at a benefit with Elton John and Lady Gaga one night,” says Journey keyboard player Jonathan Cain. “He said: ‘That’s a killer tune, yeah. Journey, we should give them a shot.’ So he started championing us with the Hall Of Fame. They put us in the ballot, and the fans who voted us number one did the rest.”
And so it was that several current and past members of Journey gathered on stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on April 7, 2017 for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Co-founding guitarist Neal Schon was there, along with second-longest tenured member Cain. So too were original keyboard player Gregg Rolie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, bassist Ross Valory, drummer Steve Smith and, most surprisingly of all, vocalist Steve Perry, who had seemingly turned his back on both Journey and the music industry in the late 90s. It was, as they say, emotional.
It was also Journey, a band whose graceful power and perfectly poised music is in inverse proportion to their capacity for squabbling, in-fighting and shit-talking. The HOF induction marked the beginning of an almost comically turbulent
