The most successful bands are always looking for ways to improve, even if it means borrowing ideas and strategies from their peers. Journey did just that with their 1980 smash “Any Way You Want It” and scored one of their biggest hits to that point in their career.
What is the song about? What other band’s style inspired it? And what classic comedy film gave the song a major boost? Let’s get all the details on “Any Way You Want It,” Journey’s first big hit of the ’80s, a decade that would prove to be very good to them.
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A Singer Transforms the Band
Like many of their arena-rock peers, Journey was given the time to experiment with different styles and switch their lineups until everything gelled for them. It was a unique luxury afforded to bands who formed and developed in the ’70s, when record companies could afford to be patient because the rock music business was booming.
Still, Journey, who formed in San Francisco in 1973, might have come close to exhausting the patience of their employers if not for a key catalyst for change. That catalyst was vocalist Steve Perry. When he joined the band in 1978, they took a more song-oriented approach to capitalize on the incredible chops he brought to the table.
Infinity, Journey’s first album with Perry, blew away their previous three LPs in units sold. In 1979, they scored their first Top-20 single with the soulful “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” and that catapulted them into tours with bigger acts. And that, in turn, indirectly led to the creation of “Any Way You Want It.”
Lizzy Spell
One of Journey’s tours in 1979 connected them with Thin Lizzy, the Irish hard rockers fronted by bassist Phil Lynott. Guitarist Neal Schon and singer Perry, who wrote most of the material for the Journey’s 1980 album Departure, liked the way Thin Lizzy’s songs could trade off between heavy guitars and spaces where the guitars back off so the vocals were front and center. That was the template they used when composing “Any Way You Want It.”
“Any Way You Want It” was released as the lead single from Departure in February 1980. It hit No. 23 on the Billboard pop charts, continuing the band’s momentum. That momentum received another jolt when the song appeared in the slob-comedy classic Caddyshack in the summer of 1980 in a scene where Rodney Dangerfield’s character blasts it on the golf course.
Interestingly enough, the Journey formula was about to change once again. Departure marked the final album for keyboardist Gregg Rolie, who was one of the band’s original members and also a lead vocalist on many of the band’s tracks in earlier years. Rolie was replaced by Jonathan Cain, whose songwriting skills helped launch the band into an even higher stratosphere of popularity.
What is the Meaning of “Any Way You Want It”?
We’re not going to kid you and say the lyrics of “Any Way You Want It” rise to the level of poetry on the page. But they sure do sound profound when they’re surrounded by those blazing guitars. Even the a cappella open makes a kind of cosmic sense: Any way you want it / That’s the way you need it / Any way you want it.
It’s probably foolhardy to try a piece together a story from the lyrics, but if you did, you’d likely come away with a tale of a somewhat lonely guy whose life is transformed after meeting someone special: I was alone / I never knew / What good love could do. One other distinguishing characteristic of the song is Perry referencing, on a couple of occasions, the lovin’ things, over which the girl seems to have complete dominion.
The hits Journey began piling up in the wake of Cain’s arrival tended to take on a slightly more serious, urgent tone. That’s why “Any Way You Want It” stands out so prominently in their catalog, as an energizing heap of good-time rock the band played to the absolute hilt. Absolutely perfect for disrupting a golfer in their backswing.
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