Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

Background and writing

The song was written in 1982 during the Escape tour. It is not certain exactly when, or the first time it was performed live. Some sources will claim the 1982 Day on the Green concert, where singer Steve Perry told the crowd, "We just wrote this song about two weeks ago", as the first performance. But bootleg recordings exist of performances at least a month earlier at Chicago's Rosemont Horizon, where Perry also says the song was two weeks old.

There were some minor differences in the lyrics on this live debut compared to the final version found on Frontiers. In a 2008 interview, guitarist Neal Schon recalled the first time it was played live:

It doesn't matter where we put this song because it has always had a strong effect on the audience, all the way back to the first time we played it—before it was even recorded. It was written on tour and we threw it in the set to see how it would go down. The audience had an amazing reaction to it without even knowing what it was.

"Usually we don't write songs that far in advance of an album", says Jonathan Cain, the band's keyboardist. "But on that occasion, Steve [Perry] and I were just working an idea backstage and it all came together. He was working on a bass and I had a guitar, and we just worked out the melody that night and the lyrics the next afternoon. Sometimes you can get lucky and have a song fall together like that."

Schon says the song is, like many other songs by the band, "Motown mixed with R&B and blues ... that's pretty much where 'Separate Ways' is coming from. It's got a heavier guitar than an R&B song, but I think that's what makes it sound like Journey." Cain said the same thing in 1983:

We wanted to write something rhythmic and still have a strong and haunting melody. We needed a main rhythm to run through the synthesizer and Steve Smith designed that kind of drum beat to let everything breathe. It's really a throwback to all of our roots and the Motown sound. Steve [Perry] has always listened to a lot of Motown records, songs with a strong chorus approach. Songs that were real urgent sounding, but still had rhythm and melody."

Music video

The music video for "Separate Ways" was the first single for which the band shot a choreographed video: previous videos were performances that were taped and edited, expanded with "Faithfully" to include a montage of the band on tour shot by a crew from NFL Films. Steve Perry had been very opposed to making a choreographed video. "He'd always say 'We're performers, we're entertainers, but we're not actors,'" recalled Cain. "And we were not a very photogenic band."

In the video (which uses the shorter single version), the band performs the song while a young woman in a then-fashionable white jacket and black leather skirt walks along the wharf. At some points, Perry and the other members of the band perform right next to her, and seem to be singing to her, but she remains oblivious. In the ending, she is seen in a bed, wearing headphones. John Diaz, the producer, explains that the idea was that she had dreamed the video after falling asleep while listening to the song. "Our concepts were so insane."

The video was directed by Tom Buckholtz and featured the band playing at the Louisa Street Wharf in New Orleans.

The video is now infamous for the scenes where the band is pretending to play non-existent instruments, although they do also play their real instruments (including Cain playing his Roland Jupiter-8 "up-the-wall"). It features over 50 camera moves with choreography by Columbia Records Art and Creative Services.

It was reported that on the first day of shooting, there was a cold breeze coming off the Mississippi River next to the wharf. This made filming all the more difficult on the band and Perry, who was seen retreating to his camper to keep warm. This state of affairs was complicated by the presence of Perry's then-girlfriend, Sherrie Swafford, on the set. Not only had the band been told that they could not bring wives or girlfriends to the shoot, the other members disliked Swafford and her effect on Perry, creating considerable tension. She was reportedly extremely jealous of the model in the video, local girl Margaret Olmstead, and kept demanding she be taken out of it. "There was a big kicking and screaming session", Cain recalled later. "Sherrie was giving Steve a very bad time about that girl." Perry had also just gotten his hair cut short, which Cain found inexplicable since the singer's previous hairstyle had been "rockin'".

"Here's a band at their commercial peak," says Adam Dubin, director of many well-received videos, "and some idiot decided to film them on a wharf and—here's the worst part—instead of giving them instruments, let them mime playing imaginary instruments. The director should be shot. And the manager should be shot for allowing his band to be put in this position."

A decade later, it was heavily criticized by Beavis and Butt-Head, who opined that the video "sucks" and was "horrible," and ridiculed Perry and Schon's fashion sense. This greatly upset Cain, since he felt Journey's videos had helped make MTV. He called the band's manager repeatedly to ask how they could stop the channel from reairing the segment. In 1999 MTV chose it as 13th on its list of the 25 Worst Videos of All Time.

"I'm at a loss to explain that video," says Cain. "I will never live down those air keyboards. No matter what else I've done in my career, sooner or later people find a way to ask me about the 'Separate Ways' video."

Cover versions

Also the American Christian rock band Blessed By a Broken Heart made a cover of this song with their previous vocalist Tony Gambino.

Appearances in other media