Journey 16: Freedom

Seemingly determined to rock till he dropped, and tout the wonders of Just For Men, Neal Schon continued to drive Journey well into a fifth decade, even without new music. Each of the post-Perry albums had been predominantly showcases for Neal, and proof that Deen Castronovo has none of the jazz chops that made the albums with Steve Smith on drums that much more interesting. That they cared about this fact was mildly apparent when, after Deen had to drop out due to legal issues over what we’ll euphemistically call various domestic dilemmas, the first replacement on the kit was Omar Hakim, shortly followed by none other than Steve Smith himself, who had previously refused to be part of any Journey project that didn’t include Steve Perry. More fun arose after Jonathan Cain’s latest wife joined the Trump administration as a spiritual adviser, which sent Neal back looking for Gregg Rolie, who also thought any Journey without Steve Perry (and to a lesser extent, himself) was stupid. Then, after Neal and Jonathan sued Ross Valory and Steve Smith for attempting to take over the band, those two were out again, to be replaced by Randy Jackson (again) and Narada Michael Walden. Those two couldn’t tour post-Covid, so Neal brought in the bass player from Hardline and, you guessed it, Deen Castronovo.

All this fun back story is offered for entertainment, of course, which we can’t say about Freedom, 2022’s one-word catalog entry. To Arnel Pineda’s credit he doesn’t try to ape Steve Perry’s phrasing on these new songs, which come across mostly as retreads of the classics. To say that the piano “Together We Run” apes that of “Don’t Stop Believin’” might be a stretch, but good luck getting through “Don’t Give Up On Us” without imagery from the “Separate Ways” video yet again clogging your head. (Too bad they didn’t do a straight cover of the David Soul tune of the same name.) If you can stomach those, the rest of the album follows as expected, throwing in the occasional piano ballad between the arena stompers, all recorded in separate places due to lockdown and whatnot, then mixed together into one boomy 73-minute mess. Pineda is a good sport, considering he only helped write one song, and thankfully, it wasn’t “United We Stand”. Deen sings lead on “After Glow”, proving he wasn’t completely on the outs, though he’s competing with Neal’s noodling for pretty much the whole track. “Don’t Go” is cheesy ‘80s in a good way, but we’d bet that wasn’t planned. And “Beautiful As You Are”, harmless as it is, does not need to be seven minutes long.

Soon after Freedom was released, Neal sued Jonathan over access to the band’s corporate American Express card. Yet they still managed to tour. To help push that along, their 2021 appearance at Lollapalooza was released at the end of 2022, and consists of nothing originally recorded after 1986.

Journey Freedom (2022)—2