Hello there! This week our blog feature an iconic ‘stadium-rock’ anthem, Don’t Stop Believin’. We will first review the original tune by Journey. Next we will discuss a cover of that song by Hayseed Dixie. Finally, we will show the song as it appeared in the final episode of the TV series The Sopranos.
Journey and Don’t Stop Believin’:
Journey is an American rock band from San Francisco that first formed in 1973. The original members had previously played with Santana or with a band called Frumious Bandersnatch (I must admit, never heard of that one).
The band was initially called the Golden Gate Rhythm Section, and their intention was to play as studio musicians for Bay Area groups. The band then changed its name to Journey; the original lineup released a couple of albums in a jazz-fusion style, but they had little commercial success.
Journey began their climb to the top in 1977, when they brought in Steve Perry as their lead singer. After a couple more personnel changes, in 1980 the group settled on their “golden years” lineup – lead vocalist Steve Perry, lead guitarist Neil Schon, drummer Steve Smith, bassist Ross Valory, and Jonathan Cain on keyboards.
Below is the band Journey circa 1980.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe group added former Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, and changed their style from jazz fusion to mainstream pop music. They then scored a couple of promising singles before they broke through in a big way with their 1981 album Escape.
Don’t Stop Believin’ was the second single released from the Escape album. The song reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was co-written by Jonathan Cain, Neil Schon and Steve Perry. For those interested in the history of the tune, Cain has written an article that provides great detail on how the song evolved.
Despite the fact that the song reached the Top 10, its ranking is unusually low because, as we will discuss, the tune has become a rock anthem and a staple on classic-rock radio stations. For example, Don’t Stop Believin’ was the best selling digital track of the 20th century, with over 9 million copies sold in the U.S. alone.
The lyrics of Don’t Stop Believin’ describe young people who are “living just to find emotion.” The song ends with a plea to maintain one’s beliefs and retain feelings of love.
Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere
A singer in a smokey room
The smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching
In the night
Streetlight people
Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’ somewhere in the night
Here is Journey in a live performance of Don’t Stop Believin’.
This took place in Houston in 1981. At the time, Journey was on a tour for their current album Escape. The concert took place at The Summit in Houston, which was then the venue for the Houston Rockets NBA basketball team. The concert was filmed by the MTV channel, which had just launched a few months earlier.
At this point, Journey were arguably at the apex of their popularity. As this was the era of mammoth concerts, Journey would typically fill up a large athletic arena or outdoor stadium. Here, The Summit held 18,000 people.
This rock anthem begins with the iconic keyboard solo by Jonathan Cain, at which point the crowd goes wild. Then Steve Perry joins in with his clear and piercing vocals. At the end of Perry’s first verse, Neil Schon begins a virtuoso run on electric guitar.
An unusual feature of Don’t Stop Believin’ is that the actual chorus (which contains the title of the tune) does not appear until the final minute of the song. Before then, the song contains three verses, two “pre-choruses” (that anticipate the final chorus but don’t contain the title), and a few instrumental phrases.
Steve Perry had the ability to blast out his taxing vocals in live performances. And the big Journey hits made great use of his brilliant voice. No wonder the band was the biggest thing since sliced bread during the late 70s and early 80s.
Not surprisingly, for a song that urges people to maintain their beliefs, Don’t Stop Believin’ became a favorite at sporting events. In 2005, catcher Steve Pierzynski of the Chicago White Sox heard the song in a bar, and the team adopted the tune as their unofficial theme song. The Sox persuaded Steve Perry to sing the song with the team after they won the World Series that year.
Since Perry is a big San Francisco Giants baseball fan, and when the Giants won the World Series in 2010, Fox Sports played the song at the end of their World Series coverage. Don’t Stop Believin’ is also played at Detroit Red Wings games, especially because of the line “born and raised in south Detroit.” When the song is played in Detroit, the sound is turned down at that line, and the crowd sings the phrase.
Well, once they reached the top, Journey enjoyed a few years of extensive touring and issued several best-selling singles. The 1981 Escape album was the band’s biggest seller (with three top-10 hits), followed by the 1983 album Frontiers which spawned another four top-40 singles.
In their heyday, Journey was one of the biggest-grossing acts in rock music. However, the nearly non-stop touring took its toll, and at the end of the Frontiers stadium tour, the members of Journey began to work on individual projects.
The band released another multi-platinum album in 1986, but by this time Steve Perry was unable to complete a tour, so Journey went on an extended hiatus. In 1996, Journey released another album; however, Perry injured himself while hiking in Hawaii, and he decided against having hip surgery. This meant that the band would be unable to tour; so at this point Journey dissolved.
What followed was lingering bad feeling between former members of Journey. All I know is that I saw an interview with some musicians from the band, where they implied that Steve Perry was never ‘really’ a member of Journey, implying that he was more of a temporary replacement singer.
I was offended. I thought: “You jerks, Steve Perry is the lead vocalist on every big Journey hit that I have ever heard.” Anyway, I am sure there are hard feelings on all sides.
In 2017, the members of Journey from their glory days were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to Perry, Schon, Cain, Valory and Smith, drummer Aynsley Dunbar was also inducted.
Various members of Journey expressed their hope that Steve Perry would perform with the band at their induction, but although Perry turned up for the ceremony, he did not sing with the group. Oh well – Journey has sold over 75 million records, so they can console themselves by counting their royalties.
Hayseed Dixie and Don’t Stop Believin’:
Hayseed Dixie is a bluegrass band that features redneck versions of heavy-metal songs. The group hails from Appalachia, near the North Carolina – Tennessee border. They particularly focus on covers of songs from the Australian band AC/DC. In an earlier blog post, we reviewed their cover of the AC/DC tune Highway To Hell.
Initially, the group’s name was “AC/Dixie.” However, after a threat of legal action from the management of AC/DC, the group settled on the name Hayseed Dixie (“AC/DC,” “Hayseed Dixie” – get it?)
Below is a photo of Hayseed Dixie performing at an HMV store in London, England in 2005.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe group formed in 2001, when they released their first album A Hippy Tribute to AC/DC. The group featured John Wheeler on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Don Wayne Reno on banjo, and Dale Reno on mandolin. I don’t know the name of the original bassist, as the group has gone through a few people on that instrument.
I would have guessed that there would be a limited appeal for a band that played country versions of heavy-metal rock, but I would be wrong. Apparently at one time 3 of the top 15 albums in the Bluegrass playlists were by Hayseed Dixie.
I was even more surprised to find that Hayseed Dixie has achieved their greatest success in Europe! The group has appeared in European festivals for both hard rock and folk music.
Hayseed Dixie even founded a festival called Loopallu in the Scottish town of Ullapool (hint: spell “Ullapool” backwards). The group recorded an entire album of songs in Norwegian, and they have also issued single records in Finnish, German and Spanish.
So here is Hayseed Dixie in a live performance of Don’t Stop Believin’.
This is listed as being performed on “NRW.” I have not been able to discover what that program is, although it is certainly not in the U.S. The language sounds like German to me (?)
I have been surprised at how many songs Hayseed Dixie can shoe-horn into a bluegrass format. The group races through the Journey anthem in their typical energetic fashion. Don Wayne Reno starts the song off by playing the initial keyboard solo on banjo, and Dale Reno manages to transcribe some of Neil Schon’s guitar solos to mandolin, while mugging shamelessly to the camera. The lead singer can’t match Steve Perry’s vocals, but then nobody else can.
One thing I remember from my bluegrass days was a penchant for embarrassingly bad puns. Sure enough, in this vein Hayseed Dixie released an album in 2015 titled Hair Down to My Grass. Believe it or not, the album spent 3 weeks at #1 on the U.K. Country charts.
A songwriter and comedian named Tim Wilson once wrote a song called Acid Country, that described an eclectic upbringing where he listened to both hard-rock and country music.
In that song, Mr. Wilson claimed “You can’t play Hendrix on a banjo.” This band seems to show that Tim Wilson was wrong! So, Hayseed Dixie, I hope you unearth a never-ending series of hard-rock tunes that can be metamorphosed into bluegrass.
Don’t Stop Believin’ in the TV series The Sopranos:
The Sopranos was a TV series that ran on HBO from 1999 to 2007 and garnered great acclaim. The show was the brainchild of David Chase, who conceived the series and wrote many of its episodes.
In 2013, the Writers Guild of America called The Sopranos the best-written series of all time. The Sopranos won 21 Primetime Emmy awards and five Golden Globe awards.
The show provided complex insights into the life of a New Jersey criminal family. It followed a sprawling group of family and business associates, providing riveting details of relatively normal family life in suburban New Jersey. This was combined with Machiavellian power struggles and scenes of shocking brutality.
Below is a photo of some of the Sopranos crime family. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is at center.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe music used in The Sopranos was carefully chosen by Chase, in consultation with Steven Van Zandt. Van Zandt, a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band (and who had never before acted), played Tony Soprano’s partner and best friend in the series.
The song Don’t Stop Believin’ appeared in the final episode of The Sopranos. That episode, titled Made In America, aired on June 10, 2007. In this episode, Tony Soprano enters a diner. He puts a quarter into the jukebox and the song begins to play.
Tony’s wife Carmelo joins him, and then their son A.J. enters the diner and the three of them have a discussion. Here is the scene.
This episode is one of the most controversial scenes in television history. While the other Sopranos are talking in the diner, Tony’s daughter Meadow drives up and parks her car with great difficulty. During their conversation, a man seated on a stool is seen repeatedly glancing at the family.
At some point the man leaves his seat and enters the men’s room. Meadow enters the diner and begins to walk toward her family. The camera zooms in to provide a close-up of Tony’s face. Just as the Journey lyrics get to “Don’t stop,” the screen cuts to black. It remains there for several seconds before the final credits roll, and the series has ended.
When the screen suddenly turned black, many viewers believed that their cable had temporarily failed. They were left trying to comprehend the meaning of this abrupt and unexpected ending, which is still the subject of discussion today.
Many critics maintain that the ending signified that Tony had been shot to death in the diner. To bolster this line of reasoning, they point out that in an earlier episode, one of the characters mentions that if you were killed, you would never see it coming and everything would just go black.
They also emphasize the repeated views of the man in the diner turning to look at the Soprano family. The man is apparently wearing a “Members Only” jacket. On several other occasions, hit men in this series wore the same style jacket.
They argue that when the man came out of the men’s room of the diner, Tony would be directly in his line of sight. In addition, Tony mentions to his family that he is about to be indicted because one of his associates is cooperating with the feds.
However, don’t look to David Chase or any of the other writers on The Sopranos for confirmation of this hypothesis. No one except Chase has ever confirmed or denied this rumor. In response to repeated questions about the ending, Chase claimed that Tony was dead; he later stated that Tony was alive; and finally, he said ‘Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point.’
So, we hope Chase’s statement finally clears it up for you (fade to black)!
Source Material:
Wikipedia, Don’t Stop Believin’
Wikipedia, Journey (band)
Wikipedia, Hayseed Dixie
Wikipedia, The Sopranos
Wikipedia, Made In America (The Sopranos)
Tim's Cover Story 