With the departure of Journey’s long-time front man Steve Perry and the impending dissolution of the Trial By Fire world tour, it was looking like the Journey was over for these ex-Santana rockers.

Fortunately such was not the case, as Journey’s guitarist Neal Schon had plans for the band, with or without Steve Perry. Indeed, it turned out that he already had a successor to the Journey sound chosen in former Tall Stories lead singer Steve Augeri, whose songs he had heard on the radio. By this time, a disheartened Steve Augeri had retired from music completely and was working at a Gap store when he got the call from Journey’s guitarist. He was initially hired on to replace Perry as a backup singer for the remainder of the Trial By Fire tour, so he was singing with the band in concerts as early as 1998, though he didn’t get his actual debut as the official lead singer for most fans until Journey was chosen to produce a new song for the 1998 film “Armageddon”. The song they contributed was “Remember Me,” a sweeping pop-rocker that was admittedly overshadowed by Aerosmith’s hit contribution “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.” Still, considering the album’s success and the number of people it reached because of Aerosmith’s hit, there was no reason why Journey’s full-length follow up album “Arrival” couldn’t have been more successful.

The reason why it wasn’t rests largely on the shoulders of the band’s Columbia Records label, owned by Sony Music. A large part of the problem was the fan reaction in response to the band’s decision to continue without Steve Perry.  There were a number of vocal fans at the time, Perry Purists, who believed that the band belonged to Steve Perry and that Journey should not continue with Augeri as Journey (A mistaken belief, as Journey had been initially founded around Neal Schon in 1975; Steve Perry wasn’t even a founding member of the band. Their first lead singer was actually Gregg Rollie). This belief extended, to a lesser extent, into the band’s more casual fan base, which seemed to accept this new lineup as a tribute band rather than the actual Journey. When playing in concert, the band discovered that much of the new material was going right over the audience’s heads. It appeared as though most of the older fans where coming only to hear Journey’s greatest hits. Perhaps in light of this, Sony Music decided not to market the band’s new album as well as they should have, and Arrival was released almost completely under the radar.

It first saw the light of day in Japan, where the band was still quite popular after their Trial By Fire release.
Unfortunately, the album wasn’t due in the United States for a number of months yet, and songs from Arrival wound their way onto then-file sharing site Napster. However, the band took a look at early fan reviews from these leaked songs and went back into the studio to record two new songs for the American release, “World Gone Wild” and “Nothing Comes Close,” and the decision was made to leave bubblegum ballad “I’m Not That Way” off the album as a Japanese exclusive.

Arrival is a monster of a Journey album. When it first came out, it received a lot of mixed reviews, partly because of the absence of Steve Perry and partly because the album marks a culmination of the Adult Contemporary sound that began with “Trial By Fire.” While it sounds quite different from the band’s AOR roots, it is a very elegant and solid melodic rock offering.  While Steve Augeri was and is no Steve Perry, the choice was an excellent one for the direction the band was going in at the time, and his writing added another dimension to the Journey sound. At fifteen songs, the album feels quite full and diverse; there is something here for everyone, as the album includes hard rockers, sweeping melodies, wedding ballads, uplifting pop, and even deep blues. Each track is well polished and sounds very much like an offering from a band that has been together for so long that they can quite conceivably do anything.  It is extremely unfortunate that the album was not exposed to a wider audience.  Only the single “All The Way” was picked up by radio to become a minor adult contemporary hit. This would set the stage for the relative obscurity the band would endure throughout the rest of the Augeri era.

Best songs include: "Higher Place," "All The Way," "Loved By You,"  "We Will Meet Again"

Hard Stats:

Lineup: Steve Augeri
            Neal Schon
            Jonathan Cain
            Ross Valory
            Deen Castronovo

Track List: 1) "Higher Place"
                 2) "All The Way"
                 3) "Signs Of Life"
                 4) "All The Things"
                 5) "Loved By You"
                 6) "Livin' To Do"
                 7) "World Gone Wild"
                 8) "I Got A Reason"
                 9) "With Your Love"
               10) "Lifetime Of Dreams"
               11) "Live And Breathe"
               12) "Nothin' Comes Close"
               13) "To Be Alive Again"
               14) "Kiss Me Softly"
               15) "We Will Meet Again"
Japanese Exclusive: "I'm Not That Way"

Produced by Kevin Shirley.

Trivia:

Arrival was the last album the band produced under their longtime Columbia Records label.

With the inclusion of Deen Castronovo in their lineup, Journey and Bad English became practically the same band. Only Bad English vocalist Jon Waite and guitarist Ricky Phillips have remained off the Journey roster. Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain, and Deen Castronovo were all founding members of Bad English.

The song "I'm Not That Way" is a Japanese exclusive, and the international release has different album art.

The song "World Gone Wild" is actually a cover of an unreleased Bad English song.

The song "Livin' To Do" was written in homage to Neal Schon's late father, who is said to have previously written some sections used in the song.

Journey had supposedly written over 100 songs for the Arrival project, with their manager having the final say on what went in and what got left out.

In addition to sharing the same first name with Steve Perry, Steve Augeri also shares the former lead singer's birthday.

A few of the songs on this album where co-written with Jack Blades of Night Ranger/Damn Yankees fame.

Sources: http://www.melodicrock.com/interviews/nealschon2001.html, http://www.melodicrock.com/interviews/joncain2001.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(Journey_album)