Any Way You Want It by Journey Song Info
Any Way You Want It is a popular song performed by Journey released on the album Departure as the opening track, as a single in 1980 and was rerecorded with Arnel Pineda and Deen Castronovo for their 2008 album Revelation. The song was written by frontman Steve Perry and guitarist Neal Schon. It peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The band often plays it to close their concerts. It appears on all four of the band's live albums (Captured, Greatest Hits Live, Live in Houston 1981: The Escape Tour, and Revelation on DVD). The song was named the 80th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. Since its release, the song has continued to infiltrate public consciousness due to its use in television advertisements by popular brands such as Heinz, McDonald's, Ford and Samsung. It has been used in films such as Caddyshack and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and was covered in the episode "Journey" of the musical TV series Glee in a mash-up with another Journey song, Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'. Song information According to cowriter Steve Perry, the song was heavily influenced by Irish rock band Thin Lizzy and more particularly by bassist leader Phil Lynott. In July 1979, Journey was touring with Thin Lizzy across the United States when Lynott, Perry and Schon decided to share rhyme scheme exercises during a hanging out in Miami. The "basic" work on "the guitar-vocal-guitar-vocal interchange thing that happened between Phil and his lyrics and the guitarist and his arrangements, inspired the Any Way You Want It sorta give and take thing. It’s guitar-voice, guitar-voice, more guitar-guitar-guitar-voice. It be voice-voice and back and forth and that’s something that Neal and I think just instinctually picked up by hanging out with him" commented Perry. Schon and Perry would then rework on the song in the band bus, with Schon on acoustic guitar and Perry for vocals. Lynott's contribution later influenced other songs built on the same scheme such as Stone In Love. For the studio version, keyboardist Gregg Rolie originally used a mellotron but since it was defective, co-producer Geoff Workman decided to fix the sound by doubling it with Rolie's regular organ in the final mixing, creating the unique sounding background support for the song.
