How is it that two songs by the same band that appear next each other on the same album could respectively be featured in “Why It Works” and “What I Hear?” I speak of “Don’t Stop Believin‘” and “Stone In Love“, the two first cuts from Journey’s 1981 multi-platinum record “Escape.”
You just can’t win when it comes to Journey. If you like them, you’re a corporate rock shill who lines Jonathan Cain’s pockets at the expense of so many indie artists who are much more deserving of your support. On the other hand, if you refuse to wave your phone and sing along to “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin'” at karaoke or when the local band busts it out in their last set at Hennessy’s then you’re an uptight elitist. For my part, I can’t win when it comes to Journey – while there’s nothing I dislike about the band, there’s nothing I particularly like about them either. Yes, Perry’s got an insane voice and the guys can all play; yes, their songs all work, but none of it moves me emotionally.
That said, while “Stone In Love” didn’t change my life, it brings me into its world in a way that no other Journey song does. There’s nothing groundbreaking about it – yet that just might be the point. Some songs inspire the listener to want to learn more because of what they don’t say. “Stone in Love” does something that may be more difficult. It hides nothing, yet it still makes us want to learn more. Some may wonder if they missed something due to the song’s simplicity, subsequently going back and projecting their own feelings and emotions onto it. Some will be happy to leave their relationship with this song at cranking up the volume, rolling down the windows and singing along when it comes on the radio. Some will win and some will lose. (Oh wait, wrong song.)
It’s easy to retroactively infuse a song with meaning when you see how it fits into the continuum of music, so as someone who likes doing things that are easy, I’m going to do just that. “Escape” was an album that recalled a bygone era while also anticipating what was to come. Lyrically, it much of it ignored the previous 15 years of socially conscious (Dylan, Lennon), nihilistic (punk) and imaginative (Hendrix, Pink Floyd) songwriting and told relatable stories of small town girls in lonely worlds, moderated debates about who’s crying and followed bikers riding through the night before finally arriving at the open arms of their loved ones. Musically, it laid the groundwork of the powerful but polished arena rock sound of the 1980s. Its release in 1981 puts it exactly halfway between Elvis’s debut album and Muse’s “Black Holes and Revelations” (or, in presidential terms, midway between the death of FDR and the inauguration of Trump). The album also has the bittersweet feel shared by any band’s defining work – no, Journey wasn’t headed for the high-profile acrimony that the Eagles experienced after “Hotel California” or the internal turmoil that overshadowed “Gaucho”, Steely Dan’s follow-up to the the multi-platinum “Aja” but “Escape” would nevertheless prove to be the top of the mountain for Perry and company. At the risk of sounding like Chuck Klosterman, listening to “Escape” feels like attending one of the infinity (pun intended) high school graduation dances at which “Open Arms” was played. We were kids then, but we aren’t kids anymore.
If “Escape” straddles the boundary of lost innocence and an uncertain future (Jesus, listen to me) then “Stone In Love” embodies the former – at least for the most part. Sandwiched between the uncertainty of “Don’t Stop Believin'” and the regret of “Who’s Crying Now” the song harkens back to the simpler times of summer romance, blue jeans and dirt roads leading to the river. Even though it’s implied that the singer and the “golden girl” of his dreams are no longer together, he will still “keep [her] forever” (not in a stalker-y way, mind you; in his “memories [that] never fade away.”) He’d rather have loved and lost than not loved at all.
But then there’s the fadeout. After a straightforward structure of two verse/chorus sets, a guitar solo and a return to the chorus, the harmonies shift to a more remote key (E-flat, from the home key of G, if you want to be a theory nerd about it) which, while still comfortably on this side of “Metal Machine Music” provides a touch of doubt. It’s similar to how the “Where do we go now” outro of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” gives the song a different feel from had it just been the earlier section. Is the E-flat chord that begins the rideout of “Stone In Love” a metaphor for turbulent times that would await the young couple after the action of the song take place? Does it anticipate the recession of the early 1980s? The Iraq War? The Beer Summit? The rise of Q?
I leave it to better minds than mine to answer those questions. In the mean time if you need me, I’ll be singing down by the railroad tracks in the moonlight.
Positive Music Place 