Coming up a song that has become a classic rock standard and one that started it all for one of the greatest American rock bands in history... Journey… The song? Wheel In the Sky from their 70s classic album infinity... To think it wouldn’t have happened if the road manager hadn’t insisted on pulling the tour van over to get a candy bar.. or Take a piss, depending on the story! At the time the young virtuoso Neal Schon pulled out his guitar and created a riff that would live on radio forever but it also needed a legendary vocal and 2 different singers would end up recording it. Robert Fleischman, and a young kid named Steve Perry. Find out what version got released as the iconic guitarist and founder tells us the amazing story in an exclusive interview next of professor of rock.
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The history of Journey is a long and winding road of highs and lows that is as storied as any band in the annals of rock and roll. And it’s the band’s fourth album that seemed to be perfectly titled and was a harbinger because in 1978 Journey blasted off to infinity and beyond with the release of infinity. Most of the time, no matter what the critics criticize, or the writers write, the songs tell the story better than anyone. 2 of the 3 singles from Infinity are not only classics of the rock canon, both Lights and wheel in the sky are 2 of the 15 songs on Journey’s original Greatest Hits album which has sold 15 million copies in the US alone and logged over 1000 weeks on the billboard charts. They are the Rocker and the Ballad that set the tone for everything Journey would do after and they would create the blueprint of what made Journey such a magical band in the late 70s and 80s. This is the story of the rocker: wheel in the sky.
We will cover Lights in the near future. Wheel in the Sky was the fist single and along with the album, was Produced by Roy Thomas Baker- the studio magician famous for his work on classic albums by The Who, The Rolling Stones, Queen, including Bohemian Rhapsody The Cars, Foreigner, and Cheap Trick, among others.
Roy’s production gave Journey the opportunity to try different textures and ideas, implementing his innovative practice of stacking vocal harmonies, and working with guitarist Neal Schon on what Baker called “violin guitars,” creating a more sustained, thicker sound to the guitar parts. When Journey began to work on Infinity, they were a totally different band than the lineup from the mega hits of Escape and Frontiers. Neal Schon explained the lay of the land at that time to me in an interview we did…
The words for "Wheel in the Sky" were written by Robert Fleischman (flash-mun) and Diane Valory (wife of Journey bassist Ross Valory). The story goes that the genesis of the song came from a poem that Diane wrote called “Wheels In My Mind.”
Ross Valory gave his wife’s poem to Fleischman, and Robert riffed off the poem’s theme, and wrote the verses and the b-section.
Robert recounted that he wrote the final lyrics for “Wheel in the Sky" in less than an hour The mystical melody and all of the music was composed by Neal Schon,
I’m going to show you his breakdown of the song from Neal’s interview but first I want to quickly tell you about our sponsor Zenni optical. that’s where these cool glasses came from, I like this brand because they have incredible selection and you just put in your perscription online and they