Rock

The path to 50 has not always been easy for Journey, whose members have been celebrating the milestone on the road, including a summer stadium tour with Def Leppard.
Over the decades, there has been rancor amid the music, lineup changes and lawsuits, periods of uncertainty and open-ended hiatus.

And yet the wheel — in the sky and elsewhere — keeps on turning for the group whose first show, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, ushered in 1974.

Legacy has a lot to do with it, of course. Journey’s catalog features a dozen platinum-or-better sellers, including two albums — 1981’s Escape and 1988’s Greatest Hits — that are certified diamond by the RIAA for sales (including downloads and streams) exceeding 10 million units.

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The band has notched 18 top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and one would be hard pressed to attend a sporting event where the 1981 hit “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” (also famously played in the finale episode of The Sopranos) isn’t piped over the PA.

Given those accomplishments, Journey’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 was long overdue.

Meanwhile, since the end of the pandemic, the act’s current lineup — including co-founding guitarist Neal Schon, longtime keyboardist-guitarist Jonathan Cain and, since 2007, Filipino frontman Arnel Pineda (whom Schon discovered on YouTube) — has been headlining arenas. And its summer stadium tour, which began July 6 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, reprises its 2018 bill with Def Leppard.

“They’ve sold out every ticket everywhere we go — it’s kind of crazy, and well-deserved,” says Jeff Frasco, Journey’s agent at Creative Artists Agency. “The songs are amazing; people want to hear them. Combine that with putting on a great show, and it’s great. They give people their money’s worth.”

All of that has somewhat mitigated the rancor of the past decade, which has included legal skirmishes that led to management changes and the departure of original bassist Ross Valory and longtime drummer Steve Smith, as well as trademark disputes with Steve Perry, singer of the band’s biggest hits. Schon and Cain have gone at each other, too, in well-reported conflicts over business issues that spilled into social media, most recently in 2023.

The good news, according to drummer Deen Castronovo — who played with Schon and Cain in the late-1980s group Bad English — is that “everybody has mended fences,” he says. “They’ve made amends and we’re all on one jet again, and it’s all for one and one for all.”

Clearly, “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” seems to be not just a song title, but an ethos for the band.

Fifty years is a big milestone for any act. What has kept Journey around and active — and successful — for this long?

Neal Schon: Well, it all started with the songs themselves, and I think we got some things right a long time ago and continue to bring it live. We made our statements and continued to move forward in writing new music.

Jonathan Cain: It’s something you respect and you’re grateful for; that’s how I feel about it. For me, it’s 44 years, and I’ve always felt like it was the highest honor to join such a prestigious band and then to be able to contribute and take it to another level.

Schon: Our fans are so loyal to us, and we have young fans now whose parents were fans of ours and now they have their own kids who are coming to the concerts, too, and they love the music. Bands usually disband because they stop growing, but we keep growing and getting new fans. That keeps it alive.

Take us back to Journey day one.

Schon: I had just come out of Santana and almost formed a band with Greg Errico and Larry Graham from Sly & The Family Stone. Then Herbie Herbert approached me; he was my guitar tech [in Santana] and he said, “Look, I’m starting a management firm. I want to manage you and wrap a band around you.” I was definitely looking for something to do. Herbie and I had always gotten along and he believed in me, and it just went from there.

Journey has been through a lot of changes — 18 members, give or take — and some major shifts, like when Steve Perry joined in 1977, or Cain in 1980, or Arnel Pineda in 2007. How has the group been able to navigate those changes and remain a draw?

Schon: I think the creativity. Any new person in a band brings out a different side in the chemistry in a band. We definitely had that chemistry between the three of us — me, Jonathan and Perry — in the old band, and we’ve shown signs as well in the [current] band.

Cain: The music’s bigger than [the band members]. Journey has always connected with the audience. It really comes down to the integrity of the songs and the message. It was positive music — which [critics] loved to hate. (Laughs.) A song like “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” has a huge connection because there are a lot of small-town girls and city boys wanting to get on the midnight train to anywhere. We worked hard to write songs [for the fans] about their lives.

It’s no secret there has been a lot of drama, especially over the past few years. You two seemed to be at each other’s throats and yet managed to pull it back from the brink. How?

Cain: Just looking at the big picture: The music is louder than the noise of the grumbling and the arguments and the disagreements and stuff. The show must go on, right? It’s just the drive of knowing that there are fans out there that don’t care about our differences but care that we show up and play for them. They care that we carry on, so we’ve got to put aside our differences for them.

Schon: The one thing I can tell you is Journey is everything to me. Journey comes first, and I’m going to do anything I need to do to prevail and make sure that ship does not go down. You have to forgive and you have to move forward. We’ve chosen to do that.

The band is managing itself these days, right?

Schon: Yes. It’s like myself, my wife, Jonathan and his wife. It comes down to how much you understand what your situation is about. I would tell a young player, “Get involved in [the business]. Know what’s going down with the contracts, understand it, trademark yourself. If something shady comes by, know what question to ask.” It took a long time to learn all that, but I’m happy we have.

If you could only have one album to hand to someone as a representation of Journey — and not Greatest Hits — what would you choose?

Schon: Infinity [released in 1978]. To this day, that’s one of my favorite records. There are many bigger records, although that was no slouch of a record, and musically it’s very, very creative. We did an amazing job of turning that corner, of keeping some of the past and moving forward into the future with Steve on board and everything. It was like a new era for us.

Cain: I’d have to say Escape. That’s our biggest record, and there was no accident it was. It still sounds fresh and it connects with people. I think the chemistry between all of us at the time, we were just a good, good band. We were on fire, young dudes with a mission.

You put out Freedom in 2022, which was your first new studio album in 11 years. Will there be another?

Cain: A single here, a single there. I’ve just written a new song; hopefully we can get it out there. Albums don’t really matter much anymore. You have to accept reality and adapt to it. Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of albums under my belt. I’m just happy the catalog is continuing to cook along.

Schon: I continue to be creative; we all do. We recorded [Freedom and] we recorded way more than what ended up on the album, a lot of great stuff that wasn’t used, so there is some stuff like that. But the business now is really about live performances and about whatever you can do with merchandise.

Speaking of live, you’re out this summer again with Def Leppard, like the two bands did in 2018. What are you anticipating?

Cain: It’ll be fun. It’s a rock’n’roll show, and there’s nothing better than playing in a big, open space and a place where you don’t have to worry about the echo coming back at you. It’ll be nice just letting it blow; a full-on rock experience.

Schon: We love those guys. We’ve always had an amazing time with them. We’ve had great chemistry together going way back to the first tour we did with them, when [lead singer] Steve Augeri was in the band.

Are there any archival projects in the pipeline related to the 50th anniversary or otherwise?

Schon: There’s lots of stuff I don’t think has ever been heard, live, from the early band. But I don’t think there’s anything from the older band, the ’80s band, that hasn’t been put out.

Cain: There was an album that came out in Japan, The Ballads, that I think would be a huge seller back here. You could even have [Volumes] 1 and 2; there are enough songs.

Has a stage musical or biopic about Journey ever been considered?

Cain: We’ve been down that road. I worked with Anthony Zuiker [creator of TV’s CSI franchise]; he’s a huge Journey fan and he had these songs in mind to create a play. And Perry shot it down. He didn’t want to know about it. Then [Zuiker] came back to me again; he had this Journey-Cirque du Soleil idea, and we were supposed to get something else with Netflix, the same producers who did the ­Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary. Right now, I think that’s in the hands of Steve Perry to say yea or nay. You can’t use his songs without his permission, obviously.

So that’s another gorilla in the room. Arnel has been with the band 17 years now. Steve wouldn’t even sing with you at the Rock Hall induction. People are always asking about it, but is it time to stop and realize he’s never coming back?

Schon: I love Steve’s voice. I just wish he continued singing. If Steve wanted to be heard, he’d be heard. He came with his last solo record [2018’s Traces], and it showed hope that he was going to get out there and start doing things again. Without seeing him do it, I can’t answer something like that.

Cain: I just wish the guy well. Arnel is the longest tenured of any lead singer that we’ve ever had and he has crushed it for all those years, so you got to go, “How lucky are we to have a gentleman like that?” And [Perry] is always going to be judged on his contributions [to Journey] and the legacy he left behind. He wins more than he loses.

This story originally appeared in the July 20, 2024, issue of Billboard.