• Writers: Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain
• Producer: Mike Stone and Kevin Elson
• Recorded: Late 1980 and early 1981 in San Francisco
• Released: August 1981
• Players:
  Steve Perry — vocals
  Neal Schon — guitar, vocals
  Jonathan Cain — keyboards, vocals
  Ross Valory — bass
  Steve Smith — drums
• Album: Escape (Columbia, 1981)
• Also On:
  Greatest Hits (Columbia, 1988)
  Time 3 (Columbia, 1992; boxed set)
  Greatest Hits Live (Columbia, 1998)
  The Essential Journey (Sony, 2001)
• The ballad “Open Arms” was Journey‘s biggest hit single, spending six weeks at Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1982.
• Keyboardist-singer Jonathan Cain brought the song with him when he joined Journey in 1980 to replace original keyboardist Gregg Rolie. John Waite, the frontman in Cain’s previous band the Babys, had rejected the song as “too syrupy.”
• Journey frontman Steve Perry warmed to the tune immediately, but the rest of the band resisted. “They were so opposed to the ballad,” Perry said. “Neal (Schon) hated the idea and Jon Cain thought maybe John Waite was right.”
• Thanks in part to the success of “Open Arms,” the album Escape became Journey’s most successful studio album, hitting Number One on the Billboard 200, staying on the chart for 146 weeks, and selling over nine million copies to date.
• During the Escape tour, Journey left their own headlining dates to open the first show of the Rolling Stones‘ 1981 North American tour on September 25th in Philadelphia.
• Another memorable show on the tour was at The Cow Palace in San Francisco in late 1981, where the entire roster of the San Francisco 49ers football team — who were on the way to their first Super Bowl title — joined Journey onstage.

FAST FORWARD:

• Journey broke up in 1987. When Journey stopped working, Schon and Cain joined with Waite to form Bad English.
• The group reunited in 1996 for the new album Trial By Fire, which was a big hit, but Perry’s chronic back problems kept them from touring.
• In 1998, the group reformed again, with new frontman Steve Augeri and new drummer Deen Castronovo. Augeri left for health reasons, and was replaced by Jeff Scott Soto from Schon’s side band Soul SirkUS.

In 2007 Soto was replaced by Arnel Pineda, a singer from the Philippines whom Schon found via YouTube.