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M: "Higher Place."
H: "Higher Place" - much more than you can normally. I know (that) is there much more than the average fan listening. So I hear it in the live context all the time, (but) there it finally appeared in a mix where you can see the strength and the viability of those two guys singing together. I happen to like that. I think they should go forward doing that more.
There's a whole audience out there of people that - unlike yourself - really never did see the original band, or anything close to it. You saw kind of a post-Gregg Rolie last gig of that version, before we went into the Raised on Radio era, and everything went south from there.
M: You've been out of management for a good long time. But, as somebody with that kind of experience, is there something that you could touch on - something maybe they could do to improve their chances going forward, or do you think it's pretty much a lost cause at this point?
H: It is never a lost cause. If it were my desire to go forward and break Journey right now, do I believe I would be able to do it? Yeah, I would have to answer yes. Absolutely. With the same profound sense and secure sense of certainty that I always had. If I decided to take on that I would do that, just as I had to do in the first place. But this time, I might have been wrong.
People want to rewrite history all the time, and most historians would tell you that the fathers of corporate rock, and the mavens of the genre, was Journey. I can show you - "Nickel and Dime" from the Journey third album Next was brutally ripped off by Rush to create the song "Tom Sawyer," that launched their career. I can show you, from the second album, the song "I'm Gonna Leave You" was totally ripped off by Kansas' "Carry on Wayward Son," from Leftoverture. The song that broke them was a rip-off of Journey. All these bands - REO, Boston, Foreigner - all of them had come and ran their course and gone. Everybody had come and happened before us - and was over with! Heart - everybody from Ted Nugent to Styx had broken years before.
Here it is, it's 1977, and I'm in a studio making a record with Journey that we called Infinity. It's a levitation to get the label to keep Journey on the label. They're releasing the record in February of '78, when the number one record is Saturday Night Fever, the number two record is Grease, and everything else is Donna Summer and "Disco Inferno." There's just no prayer, no chance, no way, Jose. I can't get nothing. With three records that were nothing really to write home about - why should we all of a sudden become a headliner? I put together this package that was so cheap with Journey, Montrose, and Van Halen - five grand for all three bands. And I made it work. They (the record company) said 'that ain't gonna do it.' I had my record company tell me there's not a chance in hell I'm gonna get on the radio with this record. And so, when faced with the impossible specter of breaking the band in those conditions - how in the fuck did we sell three million albums under the radar on an album that never made it into the top 50 on the Billboard album charts? With single tracks that had never been in the top 50 on any chart? Whether it's "Lights" or "Feeling that Way/Anytime", "Wheel in the Sky" - everybody remembers these songs as hits, but boy, if they were only there for the sad truth. It was such a struggle, and everything was below the radar and off the charts. We hooked up with companies that were the pioneers of 'foreground' music. These guys had every retail outlet, every shopping mall, every restaurant. We got airplay as foreground music, which makes gross impressions just like radio.
The real breakthrough was the realization that, for us to be successful, to get to that target demographic when they're at the record stores - that's the place to go. That's where we had a captive target demographic - the point of purchase. It's so hard to have an original idea, and the fact is that I had a lot of them over the years. The video screens were one of them, going in to the foreground music arena to get more and more airplay was definitely a stroke of brilliance. And, being the very first to realize the importance and the significance of pounding the point of purchase. People had done it. As a natural part of marketing and merchandising and retailing, nobody had taken the bull by the horns and waged a national campaign that dominated point of purchase. (That) included video play, in store airplay, the free goods and the t-shirts and all the things to create a gross impression. If you walk up to the cash register, and the person selling you a record is wearing a Journey t-shirt, it works. It has an effect on you. We hired a marketing company out of Los Angeles. These two girls that were former employees of the Billboard and Cashbox charts - they worked these charts for us, and they worked point of purchase and called every retailer in America. They sent the point of purchase materials, and it cost us a lot of money, but the interest came back in spades. We continued that theme throughout.
(With) Evolution there were some real Maalox moments there. I was afraid that we would not even hit gold. When we finally ended the world tour and that whole campaign, and we got back home, the album was at a million and a half. It was not at the level of Infinity. And it was then that I started really, really putting the full court press on the song "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin.'" We got that song to the top 25. It was with helium, mirrors, and levitation.
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