Journey Lead Singer Replaced Again, 2006-Present
 With the mediocre sales of the album Next, the band was pressured by the studio to change direction and find a lead singer who could also, unlike the keyboard-bound Gregg Rolie, serve as a frontman. As a result, Journey enlisted Robert Fleischman. A southern California native, Fleischman had been playing with a Chicago-based touring band when his manager, Barry Fey, brought him to Denver in early 1977 for a showcase with studio executives. It was completely snowing and we didn’t know if people were gonna’ make it, and then all the people from the west coast and the east coast made it, Fleischman recalls . He was discovered by a CBS executive at the showcase, and within two weeks was flown out to San Francisco for an audition with Journey.
Told that the band was transitioning to a more popular style, akin to that of Foreigner and Boston, Fleischman knew that his Led Zeppelin-inspired vocal style would be an asset. But he was taken aback by the sheer power of the band he was hooking up with. In their first studio session, Fleishman recalls, It was like...having rockets on the back of your pockets. And they’d been together so long and they were so tight that it was great to play with people that way. The sessions that winter ultimately produced For You, which later appeared on the Time? box set, and Wheel in the Sky, later recorded--without Fleischman--for the Infinity album.
Fleischman went out on the road with Journey that spring, but his tenure in the band was short-lived. He kept his own manager, Barry Fey, which proved a constant affront to the authority of Journey's manager, Herbie Herbert. Additionally, Herbert seemed unwilling to let the band's new direction play out immediately, and Fleischman often found himself relegated to shaking a tambourine while the band played its classic numbers to its diehard core of jazz-fusion fans. Fleischman also apparently clashed with other band members when he failed to finish new songs promptly .
Manager Herbie Herbert had heard of singer Steve Perry, who had recently seen the demise of his own band, Alien Project. After hearing the singer's demo tape (put in his hands by band-naming roadie Jack Villanueva), Herbie knew he needed to make a change. After an interesting interlude in which Perry was covertly introduced to the band (with Fleischman being told Perry was Villanueva's Portuguese cousin), Fleischman was fired. Perry made his public debut with Journey at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco on October 28, 1977.
In Perry's first meeting with Schon, the pair quickly penned their first song together, Patiently, which would appear on the new album Infinity in 1978. Perry added his clean, crisp, powerful tenor to now-classic tracks such as Lights, Wheel in the Sky, and Anytime. In addition, Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker (who had originally been brought in by Fleischman) helped provide a more layered sound. The changes worked, and Journey was launched into stardom. Infinity reached No. 21 on the album charts and gave Journey their first R.I.A.A.-certified Platinum album.
But not all members of the band were entirely comfortable with the new musical direction. In September 1978, drummer Aynsley Dunbar was fired (he later joined Jefferson Starship). His replacement was Berklee-trained jazz drummer Steve Smith. The band's subsequent album Evolution produced their first Billboard Hot 100 Top 20 single, Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin.'
1980's Departure continued the band's upward climb, reaching No. 8 on the album charts. Any Way You Want It was a Top 25 single and received solid FM radio airplay. The band then flew to Japan to record the soundtrack Dream After Dream to the film of the same name at the invitation of the movie's director.
At this point, the live shows were overwhelmingly attended by those who favored the new musical direction, with some swooning over singer Steve Perry the way an earlier generation had over Elvis Presley (although the band reverted to its earlier songs during the singer's offstage breaks). Journey was poised for large-scale success, and in early 1981 released a live album, Captured, recorded during a series of shows on the 1980 Departure tour. The first five songs on the album were taken from an August 8th show at the Forum in Montreal, Quebec. Two others were from one of the October dates in Tokyo and the rest came from a series of shows at Detroit's Cobo Hall.
Exhausted from extensive touring, Rolie departed, leaving a successful band for the second time in his career. He recommended Jonathan Cain of The Babys as his replacement. As if predicting the musical mood of the 1980s, Cain favored the synthesizer over Rolie's Hammond B-3 organ. The band knew it was getting an incredible keyboardist, but they had no idea just how powerful Cain's songwriting skills were.
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