Frontiers (Journey album)



Frontiers is the eighth studio album by the American rock band Journey, released in February 1983 on the Columbia Records label. This is the last album to feature bassist Ross Valory until 1996's Trial by Fire.

The album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and would garner four top 40 singles: "After the Fall" (No. 23), "Send Her My Love" (No. 23), "Faithfully" (No. 12), and "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" (No. 8), and a rock radio hit in "Chain Reaction". The album would later achieve the RIAA certification of six times platinum.

The album had been sequenced and prepped for pressing when, in a last minute conference with Journey's A&R man Michael Dillbeck, two songs were pulled from the original lineup, "Ask the Lonely" and "Only the Young". These two tracks were replaced with "Back Talk" and "Troubled Child". "Ask the Lonely" was utilized in the soundtrack for the film Two of a Kind. "Only the Young" would find its way into the Top Ten two years later, as part of the soundtrack of the movie Vision Quest.

Frontiers was the band's highest-charting album in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart in 1983.

Album Artwork
From an exclusive interview via E-Mail with Jim Welch by Scott Sullivan of the Journey WWW Page:

''Frontiers was a subtle shift. Mouse and Kelley were not involved with that cover. My vision for Frontiers was based on "tunnels" and the relativity of time and motion. Light stays the same, but time bends. It was Einstein theories for artist interpretation. The alien in Frontiers wasn't really an alien at all, he was a connection to a higher level of listening to Journey.''

Critical reception
In 2005, Frontiers was ranked number 363 in Rock Hard magazine's book of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.

Personnel

 * Band members
 * Steve Perry - lead vocals
 * Neal Schon - lead guitar, backing vocals
 * Jonathan Cain - keyboards, rhythm guitar, backing vocals
 * Ross Valory - bass, backing vocals
 * Steve Smith - drums, percussion, backing vocals


 * Additional Musicians
 * Randy Jackson - bass on "After the Fall"


 * Production
 * Mike Stone - producer, engineer, mixing
 * Kevin Elson - producer, mixing
 * Wally Buck - assistant engineer
 * Bob Ludwig - mastering

Charts

 * Album


 * Singles