WCSX Classic Cuts : Only the Young
WCSX Classic Cuts
Journey: “Only the Young”
The Hook: Written for Frontiers, it was rescued from a shelf in the vault by David Geffen for a film soundtrack that came out on his label.
Album: The Vision Quest soundtrack, then Journey’s Greatest Hits
Year: Vision Quest in 1985, Greatest Hits in 1988
Writers: Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon
Stats: Journey’s first Top 20 hit, it peaked at number-16 on the Billboard Hot 100
Background: “Only the Young” was written by Journey in 1982, but it wasn’t the first band to release it. Patty Smyth’s band Scandal put it on that group’s second album, Warrior, in 1984. Co-writer Jonathan Cain explains what happened to Journey’s version, which ended up becoming a top 10 hit on both the rock radio airplay and pop charts a year later.
Journey keyboardist-guitarist Jonathan Cain on how “Only the Young” ended up on the Vision Quest soundtrack. OC:…for Vision Quest. :26
“It was actually written for the Frontiers record. And some people, when we put the album together, thought it didn’t work on the album and they wanted to put some other song in place of it. And I was kinda like opposed to it and I got outvoted and it just sat on the shelf there in the vaults. And David Geffen somehow got ahold of it and called our manager and said, ‘I have this movie, Vision Quest.’ And so we ended up taking it to New York to mix for Vision Quest.”