Time Passages has announced Journey: Worlds Apart, the definitive accounting of the “Don’t Stop Believin’” hitmakers by award-winning journalist Nick DeRiso. A multiple columnist of the year award-winner with the USA Today network, DeRiso conducted dozens of interviews to compile a book that’s not just a biography of Journey – it’s a backstage pass.
Journey started as a dream for former Santana road manager Herbie Herbert, who thought he could build a blockbuster band out of the remnants of post-Woodstock Santana with Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon. Turns out, he could – but it would take a few albums, and the arrival of frontman Steve Perry. By the time Rolie exited at the turn of the ‘80s, Journey was already a multi-platinum band – and they would only get bigger with the addition of Jonathan Cain from Journey’s former opening act, The Babys.
Solo projects and long periods apart slowed their momentum until Perry finally left for good in the late ‘90s. Then Journey was faced with one of its biggest challenges: Whether and how to move forward without the singer who had redefined their sound forever on songs like “Open Arms,” “Only the Young” and “When You Love a Woman.”
The story is guided from their earliest roots by conversations with co-founding members Schon, Rolie and Prairie Prince, along with long-time Herbert confidant Pat Morrow. DeRiso then follows Journey toward pop-culture superstardom through additional talks with later-era collaborators Cain, Steve Smith, Deen Castronovo, Steve Augeri and scores of producers, sidemen, label representatives and acknowledged experts like former Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild, original MTV VJ Martha Quinn, and longtime San Francisco Chronicle music writer Joel Selvin, the latter of whom covered Journey almost from the beginning.
Along the way, Journey: Worlds Apart emerges as the definitive look back at Journey, with deep explorations of every era, every album and every song. Pathway collaborations and key side projects complete this detailed analysis, as DeRiso speaks with John Waite, Jan Hammer, Marco Mendoza, Ron Wikso and others.
Nick DeRiso is assistant managing editor with Townsquare Media. Time Passages most recently published Eagles: Up Ahead In The Distance, the second in a three-book series.
Time Passages, LLC is an independent publishing based near Annapolis, Maryland.
