An Injured Dog Inspired Journey’s Biggest Song of All Time?
Maybe the song reminds you of the joy of innocence, young love and hope for the future. Maybe it reminds you of the extremely ambiguous ending of The Sopranos. But whatever your relationship is to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” — which was recently crowned “the biggest song of all time” — you would probably never guess that it was inspired by an injured dog, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and a supportive dad who stood by his son’s rock ‘n’ roll dreams. But those are the exact ingredients that helped bring this monster 1981 hit into existence.
(And don’t worry … the dog ended up fine.)
Before joining Journey in 1980, keyboardist Jonathan Cain had a run of bad luck. The struggling Los Angeles musician had lost his record contract and was forced to begin working a day job, when he received another nasty surprise: his dog was hit by a car.
“And it was a $900 vet bill, and I’m barely making my rent,” he told the Tennessean in 2018. “I call my dad up and said, ‘I need a loan … Am I just dreaming? Should I just come back to Chicago?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you the loan, you gotta stay put.’ … And he said, ‘Son, don’t stop believin’.’’
Cain wrote the line down in a notebook, took the cash to pay for his dog, and slowly, his luck began to change. In 1978, he joined UK rock band the Babys, and in 1980, he was recruited to join Journey shortly before the recording of their 1981 album Escape.
As the band looked for one final song to complete the album, Cain went into his old notebooks, and rediscovered the phrase he had written down years earlier.
Coming back to the band with just the chords and words “Don’t stop believin’, hold on to that feeling,” Journey jammed on the song, developing it as they went along. The song quickly came together musically, with Steve Perry scatting and yodeling over the instrumentation in place to the still-to-be-decided lyrics.
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So how did a song inspired by a dad and a dog turn into the tale of a small town girl and a city boy making new lives for themselves?
In a 2021 interview with American Songwriter, Cain recalled that, listening back to a recording of the song’s music, “Neal had played that interlude that sounded like a train. It was these little staccato things — diggy-diggy-diggy — it sounded like a train going down the track. And I listened to it … and I said, ‘This sounds like a train, Steve.’ And I said, ‘You know that song, ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’? What about a midnight train going anywhere?’ And [Steve Perry]’s like, ‘Yeah!’ and then he looked at me and he said, ‘That Jack and Jill song about the guy and a girl, what if we plug that concept in?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea.’”
And when it came to the lonnnnnely world that the song’s characters inhabited, Cain yet again recalled his early days in L.A.“I said, ‘I’ll tell you where the location is. This sounds like Sunset Boulevard in the ’70s, where I lived, and it sounds like Friday night.’ I was explaining to them how everybody would cruise up and down the boulevard. I mean, the hustlers, the dreamers, the producers, the actors, the actresses, the wannabe starlets, the wannabe anybodies were all on Sunset, cruising, driving, looking for their hookup, their something.”
The San Francisco band then brought in a scene from another western city: Las Vegas. “We wrote about Vegas,” said Cain. “Paying anything to roll the dice one more time. That’s it and that’s dreaming. Like, I’m going to win, I’m not stuck where I am. I think we wanted to write that song to say it’s OK to dream, it’s OK to get out. You’re not stuck where you are. You can go somewhere and take that midnight train.”
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Dogs, dads, dice, Gladys Knight, Sunset Boulevard … Journey’s greatest hit has a lot of unusual inspirations. But perhaps that’s why it’s so beloved — there’s a little something there for everybody.
But remember: if you’re planning a rock ‘n’ roll road trip, make sure you don’t try to stop in South Detroit … it doesn’t technically exist (the area immediately south of Detroit is Canada). “I got a lot of flack for” the South Detroit shout-out, Cain told American Songwriter. “Because there was no South Detroit. And I said, ‘Because it’s a mystical place, it doesn’t exist!’ It’s the city of possibilities in your mind. That’s what South Detroit is. So, leave it alone.”
And just in case you’re curious … Cain remains a dog lover.
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Birth of Rock 'n' Roll
February 2024
"Long live rock," we like to say, but how did it come to life? Revisit the memorable moments, music and movies that made teens go beat crazy back in the 1950s.
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