Former Journey frontman Steve Perry has revealed that "Lights" -- the band's loving tribute to San Francisco -- was actually originally recorded about Los Angeles. Perry spoke about the track to Classic Rock magazine, recalling, "I actually had the song sketched in my brain while I was living in L.A. I was up at Griffith Park Observatory many nights looking over the lights of Los Angeles. And being a country boy, it just astonished me how it would go on forever. One morning, very early, the sun was coming up and the lights were slowly starting to go down and the original line was: 'When the lights go down in the city/and the sun shines on L.A.'"
Perry went on to explain how the song changed cities once guitarist Neal Schon was brought into the songwriting process: "I told Neal about this idea, and he liked it and wrote the bridge with me. It quickly switched to going over the Golden Gate Bridge and observing the same thing -- the lights going down, and then of course, 'the sun shines on the bay.'"
