As a contributing author to the JourneyDigest.com website, I was asked to write a couple of album reviews. My first album reviews were for "Arrival" and "Escape" in 2000-2001. It would take another three years before I got around to writing another, this time for "Raised on Radio."
The year was 1986 and Journey was releasing their first album of new material in three years – a lifetime between albums at the time, particularly for a band that had released ten albums between 1975 and 1983. Raised on Radio brought a different band to the fans. Gone were founding member Ross Valory and long-time drummer Steve Smith, a move that all now agree was a huge mistake in the history of the band. Would the fans accept the new line up and new direction of the band? Steve Perry had just come off a major success with his first solo album Street Talk, and that success is reflected in the songs found on Raised on Radio and in the production credits – Steve Perry produced this project.
This is a difficult album to assess nearly 20 years later. It’s an album that evokes a lot of reaction from the fans – they either love it or loathe it with very few people taking a middle ground. Personally, I have many mixed emotions when it comes to this album. It brings back lots of memories, some of which I’d rather not recall. This album came out shortly before I graduated from high school, and I purchased it later that summer after much persuasion from my cousin. In my mind I’d “outgrown” Journey – a band I’d loved with a passion a few years before, but the timing was right. I needed a new Journey album that summer, and it helped heal some wounds from a personally trying year.
Now, listening to it in the twenty first century, my reaction is two fold. The first is that it is very dated in its sound – this is something very emblematic of the mid-1980s music scene and, unlike nearly all of their other records, just doesn’t hold up well with time. The second thing that hit me is where the heck is Neal?? Fans know that the recording of this album was very difficult (including a brief period of time when the master tapes were held by the federal government after a drug bust at the Plant Studios), and that is reflected in the songs. It is driven more by Jonathan’s keyboards than Neal’s guitar, and as much as I love Jon’s playing, Journey is a guitar driven band. Neal’s lack of presence on many of the tracks is glaring. Save for an extended solo on “Be Good to Yourself” and the crunching sounds of the title track, Neal’s playing seems almost an afterthought. A lack made all the more glaring in the wake of Valory and Smith’s departures. While Randy Jackson’s bass playing is adequate, though quite different from Ross’s, the drums on this album are seriously lacking. The saxophone on “Positive Touch” should never have been there – as much as I adore the saxophone, that solo should have been Neal’s. To take Neal out of the equation too is to change far too much of a well established band and their sound.
Does all of this make it a bad album? Not particularly. It’s not a great album in my opinion, but it’s not awful either. There are songs I still enjoy from it, despite the fact it is the least played Journey record in my collection (from the Steve Perry era.) Lyrically, the album is fairly depressing – something I found comforting back in 1986 – and reflects what was going on with Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain at the time. Both had recently ended long-term relationships.
Reviewing this album, I’m surprised I didn’t see the end of my favorite band was near at the time. For the first time, the songs are credited to individual publishing rather than Nightmare, Inc., the direction of the band was vastly different than it had been, and I had always thought Street Talk was a bad idea. That the Raised on Radio tour ended and the band faded into the night shouldn’t have taken me by surprise.
A quick review of the highlights and low-lights of this album: “Be Good to Yourself” was a long-time personal anthem for me, and while some may find it a bit pedestrian the message of the song is what always rings true to me. “I’ll Be Alright Without You” is another favorite, though perhaps a better live song with the additional vocal and bass line used in concert. “Why Can’t This Night Go on Forever” has the flavor of the familiar life-on-the-road theme that many earlier Journey songs contain. And forever burned in my memory is this song over the closing of the Raised on Radio special that aired in late 1987. On the other hand, the title track is a jumble of lyrics thrown together from song titles of the fifties and sixties – lazy song writing in my opinion. It’s a reaction to the growing power of MTV, one of the few marketing opportunities where Journey truly missed the boat (though the live-footage videos from this album are arguably the best the band ever put out in the MTV era.) “Girl Can’t Help It”, “Suzanne”, “Once You Love Somebody”, “Happy to Give”, and “It Could Have Been You” are essentially the same song lyrically (and throw in “I’ll Be Alright Without You”) if not musically. Ironically what I found so appealing about them in 1986 is what I find so annoying now – they’re just too damn depressing, even when they’re up-tempo. I want to shout get over it already!
In the end, the reason this album stays on my shelf more than any other is what it represents to me – the end of an era that is gone forever. They tried to recapture it ten years later with Trial By Fire, but it didn’t last. This album was the closing chapter of one era of this band. The new era wouldn’t begin for another 12 years.
