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Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

• Episode aired Mar 8, 2013

A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey. A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey. A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey.

• Ramona S. Diaz
• Jeffrey Dinsmore
• Lois Vossen
• Arnel Pineda
• Jonathan Cain
• 9 User reviews
• 26 Critic reviews
• 53 Metascore
• 1 win & 1 nomination

• Self - lead vocalist, Journey

• Self - lead guitar, Journey
• Self - keyboards and rhythm guitar, Journey

• Self - bass, Journey
• Self - drums, Journey
• Self - manager, Journey
• Self - Arnel Pineda's greatest fan
• Self - Arnel Pineda's wife

• (archive footage)

• Self - lead vocalist 1977-1998, Journey
• Self - Arnel Pineda's brother
• Self - lead vocalist 1998-2006, Journey
• Self - tour manager 1998-2010, Journey
• Self - stage manager, Journey

• Self - bass and vocals, Chicago

• Self - lead singer, Heart
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Soundtracks Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) written by Jonathan Cain & Steve Perry courtesy of Jonathan Cain (as John Friga) & Steve Perry

User reviews 9

• Jul 13, 2017
• March 8, 2013 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• ジャーニー　ドント・ストップ・ビリーヴィン
• Moises Salvador Elementary School, Manila, Philippines
• Arcady Bay Entertainment
• Defining Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes

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Arnel Pineda

Who Is Arnel Pineda?

After a series of unfortunate events in his childhood, Arnel Pineda found success in Asia as the front man for the group The Zoo. In 2007, he was discovered by Journey guitarist Neal Schon, after a series of YouTube videos were posted of him covering American songs, including the famous hit, "Dont Stop Believin'." In December 2007, Pineda became the new lead singer of Journey. His is noted for having a strikingly similar sound to former Journey front man Steve Perry.

Troubled Childhood

Arnel Pineda was born on September 5, 1967, in Sampaloc, Manila, in the Philippines. Throughout his childhood, Pineda endured grave misfortune. When he was just 13 years old, his mother, who was 35 at the time, passed away after a long battle with heart disease. Her medical costs left the family in serious debt, and Pineda's father could no longer provide for Pineda and his three younger brothers, Russmon, Roderick and Joselito.

While relatives were able to take in his brothers, Pineda was left on his own. He spent the next few years homeless, often sleeping outside in public parks and scraping for any food or water that he could afford. When possible, he would stay at a friend's house, who offered him a cot outside. Eventually, Pineda was forced to quit school and take up odd jobs collecting scrap metal and bottles at the pier and selling newspapers to support his family.

Early Career

Pineda's love of music started at a young age. He began singing at just five years old, and had entered many singing contests as a child. In 1982, when he was 15, Pineda was introduced to a local band called Ijos, and was encouraged by his friends to try out as their new lead singer. He sang the Beatles' "Help" and Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All." Although they were concerned with his lack of training, Ijos members were wowed by Pineda's powerful voice, and took him on as the new front man of the band. One of the band member's friends even offered to pay Pineda's salary, 35 pesos a night, out of his own pocket, and Pineda was offered a tiny room to sleep under the guitarist's front stairs.

In 1986, some members of Ijos joined together to form the new pop-rock band Amo. The group found success covering songs by hit groups Heart, Queen and Journey. In 1988, they turned heads when they won the Philippines' leg of the Yamaha World Band Explosion Contest. Although they were disqualified in the finals due to a technicality, the event was broadcast on TV in Asia, widening their fanbase. The band continued performing at popular clubs and arenas around the Philippines.

In 1990, the members re-grouped yet again, under the new name Intensity Five, and re-entered the contest. The band came in as runner up and Pineda won the Best Vocalist Award. After a series of unfortunate health problems in the early '90s, including the brief loss of his voice, Pineda re-emerged in 1999 with a new solo album with Warner Brothers. The self-titled album had several hits in Asia.

After brief stints with a few different bands, Pineda found success again in 2006 with The Zoo, a band that he formed with Monet Cajipe, a guitarist/songwriter who had been in all his bands during over the previous 20 years. The Zoo performed at several popular clubs in the area and, in 2007, released an album by MCA Universal titled Zoology . Soon the band began covering songs by groups such as Journey, Survivor, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and more, with more than 200 performances uploaded to YouTube.

On June 28, 2007, Neal Schon, guitarist and member of the band Journey, saw a video of Pineda on YouTube and immediately contacted him. The band had been looking for a new lead singer, and Pineda's voice sounded strikingly similar to Steve Perry, Journey's legendary former front man. After speaking with Schon on the phone, Pineda made arrangements to fly to the United States and audition with the band in San Francisco. On December 5, 2007, Pineda was welcomed as the band's new lead singer.

Right away, Pineda went on tour with the band, performing two shows in Chile and two in Las Vegas. Both were a huge success. After a series of guest show appearances and magazine features, Pineda gained popularity within the American public. On June 3, 2008, the newly organized Journey released their first album, Revelation , which came in at No. 5 on the U.S. charts. The album was their highest charting album since Trial by Fire (with Steve Perry), and reached platinum status by October 2008.

Soon after the album's release, the band continued touring around the world with Pineda. The documentary, Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey , slated to be released in 2012, will chronicle the band's "Revelation Tour," and Pineda's first years with the band.

Personal Life

When he is not on tour, Pineda resides in the Philippines with his wife, Cherry, their children, Cherub and Thea. He has two other sons—Matthew, 19, and Angelo, 13—from past relationships.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Arnel Pineda
• Birth Year: 1967
• Birth date: September 5, 1967
• Birth City: Sampaloc, Manila
• Birth Country: Philippines
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Arnel Pineda is best known as the new lead singer for the rock group Journey.
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Nacionalities

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Arnel Pineda Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/arnel-pineda
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 20, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

Don't stop believin': journey's neal schon on finding a fron.

Journey band member Neal Schon describes how he discovered their newest member, Arnel Pineda, on YouTube, in this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary, Don't Stop Believin'.

Previews + Extras

Don't Stop Believin': How a Fan Video Led to a Real Life Roc

S14 E18 - 1m 57s

Arnel Pineda tells the story of how a fan's video shot in the Philippines led to his being invited to join the band Journey, , in this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary, Don't Stop Believin'.

Don't Stop Believin': Journey's Arnel Pineda Recalls His Deb

S14 E18 - 2m 41s

Journey frontman, Arnel Pineda describes what his debut performance with the band was like. , in this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary, Don't Stop Believin'.

Don't Stop Believin' - Preview

S14 E18 - 30s

Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey follows the real life rock ‘n’ roll fairy tale of Filipino Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the front man for iconic American rock band Journey.

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Silverdocs: How Journey Found A New Lead Singer And Made Friends In Manila

Linda Holmes

Arnel Pineda became the lead singer of Journey in late 2007. Silverdocs hide caption

Arnel Pineda became the lead singer of Journey in late 2007.

One of the oddest things about the story of Arnel Pineda is that it's not actually quite as odd as it might seem.

Pineda was a bar and club singer working in Manila in 2007, doing some original material but finding an audience mostly for his covers, when he got an e-mail from Neal Schon, the guitarist from Journey. Schon had seen videos of Pineda performing on YouTube and asked him to come to San Francisco and audition to become the band's new lead singer. From Journey fan to Journey member, because of YouTube.

That's the hook of Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey , which opened Silverdocs on Monday night. Director Ramona S. Diaz followed Pineda and the band from the time shortly after he started rehearsing with them through their very successful 2008 tour and their – the word is a cliché, but it applies – triumphant show in Manila in March 2009 when they brought him back home a hero, the successful lead singer of an iconic American band.

There is a certain fairytale quality to all of it – the guy who was singing Journey covers when he suddenly got The Call – but really, it's not that weird. Schon didn't stumble on him accidentally or get an e-mail from someone that said "You've got to see this guy!!!"; he found Pineda while specifically searching YouTube for lead singers, because it's a not-unusual way to find musicians. Maybe he was even looking for lead singers doing Journey songs. Maybe even for lead singers doing Journey songs who sounded a lot like former lead singer Steve Perry – which Pineda surely does. Other than the fact that he was in the Philippines, Schon found his guy the way he set out to find him.

Pineda isn't quite as young as he sometimes seems in the film; he can seem like a kid, but he turned 41 during the 2008 tour. He's a stretch younger than guys like Schon, who's pushing 60, but he's not Justin Bieber being plucked from YouTube because he's never done anything. The story threatens at times to become a wacky internet novelty, but at its best, it's something a bit more satisfying than that. At its best, it's about a working singer – not a YouTube fluke, but a working, day-in-day-out singer who's been playing for years and years – can suddenly find himself jumped to the head of the line, playing to 22,000 people with musicians he's admired all his life. It doesn't have a lot to do with YouTube; the better story is about a band taking a huge risk on a completely unknown quantity because they need a guy and they found one they think will be a fit.

(As a side note, as tempting as the "Don't Stop Believin'" title is, I would have gone with a variation on "Journeyman." Just a suggestion, pun-wise.)

The best parts of the film focus on Pineda; he has a playful attitude toward his own sometimes overwhelming anxiety about the situation into which he's been thrust. He turns out to be a terrific fit for the band, despite his own comment that partly because he's "so Asian," he looks like they Photoshopped him in when Journey has photos taken. In fact, one of the guys in the band comments that bringing something a little more "international" to the "all-American" group is probably an advantage – a prediction that proves true when Pineda helps the band develop an impassioned following of Filipino-American fans in addition to the people back home in Manila. (The security team notes at one point that for some of Arnel's fans, he's "like Elvis.")

But at almost two hours, the film feels long. It comes to what seems like a natural ending at one point, and then it goes on for probably another 20 minutes. There are some background segments on the general history of Journey that don't seem to have been made with the love that went into the Pineda-era stuff, and a persistent subplot about Pineda getting colds and drinking tean — while care of the voice makes a nice tour detail — keeps coming back and back and back but never really goes anywhere.

Then there is also the problem of "Don't Stop Believin'" itself. I don't think it's a spoiler – I really, truly cannot imagine how it could be – to tell you that the film builds to the performance of that particular song. This tour happened after The Sopranos put "Don't Stop Believin'" in the spotlight but before Glee put it there again, and the closing titles of the film point out that it's now the most downloaded song written in the 20 th century. But at some point, waiting for it becomes a bit of a tease, and the build to the performance (and the holding out on playing much of that song after playing most of Journey's others that are well-known, sometimes more than once) turns into a game. I would have dropped the bomb a little sooner, just to avoid the sense of inevitability.

But the film is fun, and it's worth seeing, not because it's the tale of an internet sensation, but because it's the tale of a bunch of guys who really, really want to hear crowds scream – either again or for the first time ever. As much as it's about how a band lifted an unknown singer into a dreamlike world of screaming crowds and far more money than he'd ever known, it's also about how a band found just the right guy at just the right time to help capitalize on the surprise comeback of one of the band's most famous songs. Pineda says at one point that it's like hitting the lotto, what happened to him, but in truth, Schon hit the lotto, too. You can see the guys standing around him at certain moments, looking at him or watching him perform, realizing that he's incredibly grateful to them, but in fact, without him, they are out of luck .

There's an argument to be made that when you set out to find your new lead singer looking specifically for someone who can sing your existing hits and make them sound just like they did when your old lead singer sang them – rather than being primarily focused on a guy who can contribute to whatever your next identity is – you run the risk of essentially covering your own music. Under this theory, Pineda was originally recruited to be the lead singer of the most famous Journey cover band in the world – the one called Journey. But they have since released two albums of new material, and it seems to be a little more than that. It may even be a little more than Schon expected to find on YouTube.

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Inside the New Journey Documentary ‘Don’t Stop Believin': Everyman’s Journey’ With Director Ramona Diaz

The story of Journey finding their latest lead singer Arnel Pineda on YouTube is a tale that’s both well-known at this point, and hugely inspirational to others hoping that perhaps a similar type of rock star fame might someday come their way.

‘ Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey ’ is a new documentary that offers a bird’s-eye view of the Filipino-born Pineda and his eventual rise to success as the front man of one of America’s most successful rock and roll bands. The cameras were rolling as Pineda started his new life with Journey in 2008, tracking each moment as he began to win over concert audiences worldwide.

His enthusiastic passion for the legendary songs that he was singing each night, and the love that he had for a group that had inspired him so much as a vocalist -- which he was now part of -- were unmistakable.

The new film begins screening this weekend in theaters and on demand. We spoke with director Ramona S. Diaz about the experience of putting the documentary together.

Let’s start at the top. How did this project come about?

You know, I had heard of Arnel getting the gig through this email that was actually written by an immigration officer at the American Embassy in the Philippines who gave Arnel his visa to come to the U.S. That’s when it started. One thing led to another, and my manager called their manager, and there was a big back and forth of whether they had the story this year [in 2008] or was it [going to be] next year? And I said, “No, you have a story this year, because I think next year, the second year with the band, it’s a story, certainly, but it won’t be the story. I think it would be more dynamic and compelling [now].”

So they allowed me to film one day with the band, to show them and prove to them that they had the story. That’s when I met Arnel and then decided, “Wow, he’s really golden.” There’s something about Arnel that’s really compelling. So that’s when I decided that, "I’ve gotta make this film," and that I was that obsessed that, “Okay, this has got to happen.”

I filmed the band for a day as they rehearsed in Northern California, before their ‘Revelation’ tour in ‘08 and cut a 10-minute piece [from that] and sent it to management and they got back to us within 24 hours and said, “Come aboard, we’re hitting the road -- come with us!” I was like, “Great,” [because] we had no money, but I have a producer who made it happen.

You had a fairly large team of people working on this film. You mentioned the money issues -- how did it eventually come together so that you were able to do this?

It never came together. Seriously. This is an independently produced film. It would have been different if the band came to us and said, “Hey, make this fantastic film.” We were sort of going after that [which didn’t happen] and then they finally said yes, so we couldn’t say, “Oh yeah, can you pay for it?” So basically, my producer Capella [Fahoome Brogden] put it on her credit cards and then when she ran out of that, I borrowed money from my family and then we got some investors from friends and family, [who provided] small, small amounts of money.

That’s really how we’ve cobbled this whole thing [together]. And also at some point when the band then realized, “Oh okay, this might be something,” [they wanted to help out]. Because I don’t think they ever really [knew what it was going to be like], although they gave us access. They’re veteran rockers and I thought they were used to cameras backstage and on buses, but they weren’t used to it. They didn’t really understand what it meant to have us there constantly. So for a while, they didn’t really get it and now it makes sense to me. Someone explained to me that they were right at the cusp of [the arrival of] MTV, [before] MTV brought out the ubiquitous cameras backstage and stuff. So now it makes sense that they weren’t used to it.

They didn’t really get what the film would look like or how it would all come together. When they started getting an inkling [that], “Oh, this might be something,” two years into the project, by then we didn’t want to cross that line either of taking their money. Because then we were making [what becomes] a vanity project [by doing that], right? We needed to stay independent. So that’s what we’ve done this entire time.

What were the parameters that were laid down as far as what you could and couldn’t shoot and anything else like that boundary-wise?

You know, nothing really. They didn’t tell us that, “You couldn’t be here,” or “You couldn’t be there.” But the tough thing was when I requested that I film their process. I wanted to film them writing a song. They eventually gave me permission, but we were then, I think, a couple of years into the project. I just kept pushing. I said, “I’ve got to see that -- I’ve got to see how you guys do that.”

They gave me permission finally when we were in Manila, right after the concert and they wrote ‘ City of Hope ,’ which they dedicated to Arnel and the city of Manila, because they were so inspired. I said, “You’ve gotta let me film this.” By then, they knew me and they knew that I wasn’t out to get them. I think it’s just a matter of hanging out long enough that they trust you and they get used to you and [know that] you’re not [out to] get the “gotcha” moments. That wasn’t what I was after and they really fully understood that by the time that we were done.

You were following the band for two years and on paper, that looks like an extensive amount of filming. Can you talk about that part of the process?

We started in 2008, which was the summer tour and that was from June through September and even that summer, we jumped on and off. We covered the country, but we jumped on and off, because you know, we’d run out of money. So we’d jump off, make some commercials, raise some money and jump back on. So that was that whole summer, and then we followed Arnel to Manila right after the tour, because I wanted to see how he would adjust to his new life.

In 2009, we went back to Manila with the band and then after that, I actually continued filming with the guys in their homes. Which is not in the film -- I thought the film could handle that, but it couldn’t. I visited all of them in their respective homes. I wanted to see them outside of the tour. And then after that, I said, “You know, we’ve gotta keep on filming, because they’re going back into the studio.” They’re going to go back to record and I want to see that. So we did -- we waited and in 2010 that happened. So we filmed them at Fantasy [Studios] in Berkeley recording ‘ Eclipse ,’ their latest album.

Did the scope and direction of the project change at all during the course of making the film, from where you started out with outlining the project at the beginning?

Not really; you know, as a documentary filmmaker, you never know where it’s going to go. Arnel could have failed. It would still have been a film, but it would have been a very different film. I think the fact that he succeeded and [that] they gained new audiences and they gained this second life, it’s great storytelling for this Cinderella story. I thought it would be a Cinderella story, but I didn’t know if in actuality it would be that. I’d hoped for that, but you’re watching life unfold, so it’s very zen -- you just wait to see where it leads you.

It is a great story, because Journey is a band that certainly, they were already hugely popular, but it really has brought them a whole different audience in addition to their previous fan base. That’s really something after all of the years that this band has been together.

Yeah, it’s incredible, and you saw that actually happen in 2008. You saw this different audience coming on and I’m like, “Wow, this is incredible.” I think it took everyone by surprise. I think all of them took a leap of faith with Arnel, and Arnel took a leap of faith too, right? So there was this feeling of “Let’s see how it goes,” and it paid off for everyone.

The film is presented in a mixture of English and Filipino dialogue. How did that part develop?

I think that Arnel is more comfortable speaking in that manner and in the Philippines, a lot of people switch from Filipino to English. It’s just a matter of speaking. I realized that if I was going to get him to really articulate [about] say, the first time he performed in front of a crowd of 30,000 in Chile, I needed to liberate him from just speaking English and I understand the language, so that wasn’t a problem for me.

Were you a Journey fan?

Obviously, I grew up with their music, but I wasn’t a hardcore Journey fan. I mean, I’ve seen hardcore Journey fans [ laughs ]. I lived with them all throughout that summer. I thought they were a wonderful band and certainly loved their music, but I think that after this whole process, I have a newfound respect for what they’ve done. I’ve really understood what it is that they’ve done.

They created a catalog and not just one or two songs, but a catalog of music that’s timeless and works. Every night, it works. I saw it -- every night, ‘Separate Ways’ would come on and the entire [crowd of] 20,000 would [react] like it was the first time they were hearing it. And you know that they’ve heard it tens of hundreds of times. But you feel the energy, like it’s the first time. It’s amazing -- how did he do that? That’s magic. Not everyone can do that. So to me, it’s just pretty incredible what they’ve done.

As a filmmaker, had you seen the ‘ Frontiers and Beyond ’ documentary that they’d done in the ‘80s?

Yes -- I’d seen it in the process of research.

That really illustrates how that band did everything bigger than everybody else in that decade. It was shot by NFL Films and legendary NFL broadcaster John Facenda voiced it. How did that play into your psyche when you were working on this project? Did you think about that at all?

Oh, absolutely. You know, when you’re editing a film, you start out with a five-hour cut, right? So I did really want to cover the history. It was surprising to me to find out that they were the ones who started the [usage of] big monitors on stage, so that people in the nosebleeds would feel like it was still an intimate experience.

God, that’s really smart. Now of course, it’s a matter of course, right? Everyone does it. But the fact that they were the first ones, that they actually owned the company that did that, that rented it out . . . I was like, “Wow.” I wanted to at some point talk about that. It’s going to be in the DVD extras, obviously, but it just couldn’t be part of this film.The film couldn’t support it or really examine it in any kind of profound way.

But they did [pioneer that] and I had no idea. That was all new to me in that process of researching the band. It’s pretty incredible. And of course, then they got their reputation for being corporate rock, because they were so slick and got sponsors. Now everyone gets sponsors. Ross Valory actually told me a really funny story about how Mick Jagger came around and visited them in San Francisco, wanting to know how they did it and what they were doing business-wise.

There’s a moment in the film where you capture Chicago singer Jason Scheff [a replacement himself for original Chicago lead singer Peter Cetera] talking to Arnel backstage. That moment feels very spontaneous -- I don’t know how engineered that moment was or wasn’t . . .

No, it wasn’t at all!

You don’t necessarily know that is a singer from the band Chicago walking up to Arnel . . .

No, I didn’t. But someone, who I think was with Arnel, mentioned that Jason was backstage. I didn’t hear that -- we were just following Arnel. My cinematographer was on him and I said, “He’s our guy -- he’s our story -- follow him wherever,” and it just happened. That’s when the documentary is really golden, when those things happen and you don’t plan it.

You’ve acknowledged in the past your hesitation to do a project like this, because of what a bear of a task it is to clear popular music for a film. Can you talk about that part of working on this documentary?

Oh, my God. You know, I don’t know the details of it. Because you have music supervisors and it’s really all lawyers talking to lawyers. I knew it from other films, one piece of music appearing by Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer -- I knew even that piece of music was so difficult to clear. We cleared like 13 Journey songs, which is one of the most difficult catalogs to clear. But of course, they signed on to make the film, so I hate to say it was easy, but it was easier.

But it’s still very complicated, because at some point even if they want to, it’s beyond their control. It’s a whole lot of details that even I right now don’t completely understand. But I knew it would be difficult, just from making other films. Of course at the end of the day if we couldn’t clear it, it would have really been not good.

Watch the Trailer for 'Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey'

More From Ultimate Classic Rock

Interview: At home with Arnel Pineda of Journey

Roppongi Rocks’ Stefan Nilsson checked in with Journey vocalist Arnel Pineda at his home in the Philippines for a chat about getting discovered via Youtube, stepping into big shoes, creativity during the lockdown, the new band line-up and a forthcoming Journey EP. The Filipino singer joined Journey, one of the best and most successful classic American rock bands ever, in 2007 after being invited to audition for the band by its founder Neal Schon.

Are you still dividing your time between the Philippines and the US? “I was until pandemic happened. I got really lucky landing in the Philippines to join my family a week before the lockdown happened due to the pandemic.”

You had a busy career in the Philippines and Hong Kong prior to joining Journey in 2007. How did you end up auditioning for Journey and getting the job? “It’s these videos singing with my band I recorded that my friend Noel Gomez , having asked permission from me, that he took and uploaded to Youtube back in early 2007. Neal Schon found them, watched them, somehow got convinced and he reached out to offer me, if I’m interested, to audition.”

Did you feel a lot of pressure becoming the frontman of a legendary band and having to fill some very big shoes? “Of course! Terrified and fearful, but I think my own musical adventures back in the 1980s until 2005 gave me reasons enough to plunge myself into their world. I am just grateful that for the past 13 years, it’s still working.”

Is there a difference for you as a vocalist performing older Journey material originally sung by Steve Perry and Steve Augeri and performing newer Journey songs which you recorded? Which do you prefer? “It will always be nostalgic and beautiful to sing the old stuff that they’re known for because of Mr Steve Perry and Mr Steve Augeri , but I think there is a lot of pretty neat stuff from the two albums I’ve recorded with them that should be in the gig when we tour.”

Last year, Journey released the terrific “Escape & Frontiers Live in Japan” album. What do you remember from the recording of that album here in Japan in 2017? “It was all a blur to me because I was so engrossed studying the obscure ones from those albums. They’re actually amazing stuff and gave me a thought though that they should have been played together more often with the ‘dirty dozen’.”

Journey has a partly new line-up with the recent return of Randy Jackson on bass and the additions of drummer Narada Michael Walden and Jason Derlatka on keyboards. Have you had a chance to actually meet and play with your new bandmates in person yet? “Nope. I only had the chance of collaborating virtually with Narada because of this single that Journey’s working on. He’s a very, very wonderful, gifted and talented man indeed. With Randy ? Just on Whatsapp, where we have a thread. It’s all hi and hello.”

Has the forced downtime resulted in more recordings or songwriting for you when you can’t tour or perform live? “Yes, indeed. Especially with my solo stuff. I can’t really wait to record them properly and turn those into a complete song to put out there for the fans to hear.”

What’s coming up next for you and Journey? “Hopefully a new EP album and a tour with the new line up of members as soon as there’s a vaccine good and safe enough available out there.”

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A Front Man’s Journey | Arnel Pineda, After All These Years

• A.C. DE QUINA
• September 1, 2021

“It’s actually fourteen years ago this month. I consider my start (with the band Journey) from the time I was asked to audition.” Arnel Pineda recalls as two of his musician friends work on a Tagalog song they’re about to re-release. 

It’s definitely been quite a ride for Filipino musician Arnel Pineda. In his early life, Pineda was once homeless and would take on the oddest jobs for daily survival. He would shower at gas stations and go to random wakes for free coffee and snacks until eventually joining his first band at fifteen years old. He later worked in Hong Kong for a decade, and then in 2007 that one (now famous) YouTube video of his was discovered while he was singing at a bar in Manila. The same guy who would sing for free food and would ask for free water at gas stations suddenly found himself auditioning to be the lead vocalist for one of the most iconic bands in rock and roll history. He recalls, of his audition, that he brought all his Journey albums to be signed in case he didn’t get the gig. But he did! He booked the gig of a lifetime. A rock and roll fairy tale if you will, Pineda’s first TV appearance as Journey’s lead singer was on the Ellen DeGeneres show, followed by an interview with Oprah, CNN, Rolling Stones and many others. 

At 54 years old Pineda is still actively touring. Journey will be performing at the I Heart Radio festival in Las Vegas on September 18 th along with some of today’s super stars like Billy Eilish, ColdPlay, Dua Lipa and Maroon 5 among others. He also has a US tour this Fall with Filipino rocker Bamboo, followed by Journey’s residency at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas this December. And of course, Arnel’s biopic is in the works, to be directed by Crazy Rich Asians’ acclaimed director Jon M. Chu. 

I sat down with Arnel in Los Angeles a few days after Journey headlined at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago. A major performance in front of a new and younger generation with high praise coming from Rolling Stone magazine: “Arnel Pineda earned audible praise from teens in the back with his festival outfit: flashy sunglasses, bleached white jeans, and a white designer sweatshirt emblazoned with a red apple bearing the Gucci logo.” The sweatshirt was sold out on Gucci’s website a day later according to Pineda’s road manager and stylist, Yul Session. 

Take us back to that feeling when you stepped foot on stage in Chile where you played as Journey’s front man for the first time in 2008.

Definitely & understandably terrified & very nervous, to the point that I told Neal (Schon) that I can’t do it, yet in the middle of those feelings, subconsciously, I kept reminding myself this desire of mine to get this job done cause who gets to get this kind of a ”one in a million chance” to sing for one of the most iconic bands in America?

Journey songs aside, can you tell us a couple of your top favorite songs of all time?

Honestly? Too many to mention…but ok, I’ll mention a few:

Bohemian Rhapsody, Who Wants To Live Forever, Show Must Go On,

Killer Queen, by Queen & most of their other songs

Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, The End, For No One by The Beatles & most of their other hit songs

Black Dog and Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin

Without You version by Heart

Shape Of My Heart – Sting

And many, many more

You’ve shared the stage with many artists in the past but who else would you love to collaborate with in the future?

Bruno Mars, Ann Wilson, Steve Perry, Bono, Paul McCartney

You have been fortunate to meet many living legends in the music industry and beyond; aside from Steve Perry, name someone you’ve met that made you completely star struck.

Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin

Waiting / hoping for the day to meet Paul McCartney & Sting

In your earlier years as a musician, you worked in Hong Kong for almost a decade. Tell us about that time in your life.

Now that’s my decadent and wanton era…not too proud of a lot things that I did there in HK back then. I was carelessly stupid …I’ve hurt a lot of people too and some are so dear to me. The only best parts of my life there was my night after night of performing with my band mates…my beautiful world but my escape too from all the sins, guilt and anxiety I brought to myself.

What advice would you give to struggling artists who are on the verge of giving up and to those still waiting for their “big break”?

You know what? No one can really tell if it’s your time to shine or fall further…for me the most important thing is not to lose your passion, heart and desire to master your craft, getting the big break or not…

I remember me back in the late 80’s…earning only 10usd a night in Olongapo, Subic Bay…each night, my band mates and I played like we’re not gonna play the next night…and at the end of each night, since we know we gave our best, we were so happy and full.

Life has thrown you a lot of trials and obstacles, from losing your mom at an early age, being homeless and getting into drugs. What are your thoughts as you look back on your complicated past?

I wish I didn’t go through the kind of life I went through. But then again, I guess I have to live the life fate chose me to have to be who and where I am now…I’m still a work in progress… I guess I’ll stay flawed and it’s ok.

To the young lives out there though, do not take for granted your gifts, use it wisely, cause otherwise, you’ll live the rest of your life with a lot of regrets.

In your interview with Oprah, you said your mom was your biggest influence. If you could talk to her right now, what would you say to her?

I’ve told her many, many things then and now…every time that I’m feeling down especially when there’s no one who seems to understand what I’m going through, I talk to her…

The one though that I keep telling her is to stay by my side, be my light and guide me, cause like I said, I’m still a work in progress.

You seem to be a very positive guy. How do you deal with negativity and your detractors?

I just graciously learned the art of tolerance & respecting them trolls’ point of views. Where I am now, I can’t afford to get distracted, there’s too much at stake. My job / my family are more important than their negative opinions about me.

What life lessons have you learned from these past fourteen years as Journey’s lead singer?

It’s the classic “not everything and everyone you meet and feel are real”.

Yeah, call me cynical & yet it didn’t protect me from getting fooled every now & then.

The name of the magazine is “Hiraya” which means fruit of one’s hopes, dreams and aspirations: What do you still hope for, dream of, and aspire to become?

I’m hoping for an unconditional “world peace”. I’m dreaming of a peaceful and united world and I aspire to be with my family living a simple but happy life til the day our Maker claims my life.

Please tell our readers briefly about the Arnel Pineda foundation and where they can know more about it.

My foundation, with the amazing help of our generous donors, we’re able to support at least, for now, thirty five scholars and to those who want to extend their support to my foundation, called Arnel Pineda Foundation Inc please go to Facebook and just type our foundation’s name. Thank you so much in advance.

4 Responses

I applaud you for admitting your mistakes and moving on to be your best self. Acknowledging our creator, loving your family. Love your quiet music. Not a fan of having to plug your ears because the band is too loud. May God guide you and be by your side.

Awesome interview! He’s such a humble guy & a real talent & a great addition to the Journey family! Looking forward to see them again real soon!

Great interview! I’m a huge fan of Arnel! He’s such a talented, sweet and humble person. He deserves all his good fortune. He’s loved by many. Rock on po!

Great interview, brief, concise and yet entertaining. It’s a light hearted info on Arnel’s life, success and struggles. Nothing heavy, just an easy interview of an easy going guy. Loved it!

© 2022 HIRAYA MAGAZINE

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He Didn't Stop Believin'

By Alex Pappademas

Photography by Andrew Hetherington

arnel pineda, who turns 41 this year, has been performing in bands since he was a teenager, and by now he has mastered virtually every kick-ass lead-singer move known to rock. He can launch his compact body off the drum riser and land without twisting an ankle. He plays excellent microphone-cord air guitar. He knows when to do the reach-out-and-touch with the fans in the front row and when to turn the microphone stand upside down and lift it above his head, as if calling down the lightning. He knows how to do these things because he is a professional lead singer and a good one, which means he is a virtuoso whose instrument is his own charisma. He is also adept at the parts of the lead-singer job that involve singing.

Until recently, the only place you could see Pineda doing any of this stuff was in Manila, where he and his band, the Zoo, appeared regularly at bars and nightclubs, or on the YouTube channel of an industrious Zoo fan named Noel Gomez, who has uploaded more than sixty video clips of the band performing live, usually on stages that resemble discarded sets from early-'90s late-night talk shows. It was thanks to those videos, in which Pineda sings the songs of Deep Purple, the Goo Goo Dolls, Heart, Stryper, Styx, Toto, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Simple Minds, Bryan Adams, Men at Work, the Beatles, and REO Speedwagon, that he wound up here at the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas on a Saturday in early March, playing his first U.S. show as the new lead singer of the legendary '80s rock band Journey.

It's a little after 8 p.m., and we've reached the point in "Any Way You Want It" where lead guitarist Neal Schon, who cofounded Journey in 1973, plays a precise yet impassioned hairspray-torch of a solo. This is Pineda's cue to sidle up to Schon and make your-guitar-playing-is-rocking-me-so-hard faces at him, prompting Schon to make equally ridiculous not-as-hard-as-it's-rocking-me-my-brother faces back. It's the kind of thing singers in arena rock bands have been doing during the guitar break since arenas were invented, and usually it's only entertaining if you know, for example, that the guitarist and the lead singer actually hate each other. But when Pineda does it, it's more than a gesture. He has performed this song live many times before, but he's still getting used to performing it with the band that made it famous, so when he does the grooving-on-the-solo thing, he appears genuinely awed,1 not only by the force of Schon's rocking but by the fact that he, Arnel Pineda, is actually being rocked by Neal Schon. When he turns to the audience—where fans have been waving the Philippine flag and their own homemade banners (arnel for president) in his general direction all night long—the look on his face is equal parts glee and disbelief.

"My life is a fairy tale," Pineda told me earlier. "But I'm awake, and I'm dreaming it."

if you're in a long-running classic-rock band and you find yourself without a lead singer, as Journey did last summer, you have several options, aside from retirement. The minute it's announced that you and your frontman have parted ways, aspirants to the position will begin sending you their CDs, whether or not you have asked for them.

But if you're Journey, at least a few of the innumerable bedroom karaoke-ists, tennis-racket axpersons, and car-dashboard drummers your music has inspired will have gone semipro, forming tribute bands that play your music in a Civil War–reenactment kind of way, which means you've also got a vast pool of ready-on-day-one understudies from which to draw. When Judas Priest made their first album without original lead singer Rob Halford in 1996, they drafted Tim "Ripper" Owens, an Akron office-supply salesman who sang Halford's parts in a Priest tribute band; thanks to the 2001 film Rock Star, in which Mark Wahlberg played an Owens manqué named Chris "Izzy" Cole, this is probably the most famous example of a band calling a singer up from the farm team.

It's a major crossroads, this frontman decision. You can bet on the future by tapping a singer who may have his own thing happening, or you can reinvest in your legacy by recruiting a singer who's been practicing your stuff for years. But when Journey parted ways with frontman Jeff Scott Soto last summer, Neal Schon began to wonder if there was another way to go.

What you need to know here is that the lead-singer slot in Journey has always been a high-turnover position, somewhere between "Mr. Pamela Anderson" and "drummer for Spinal Tap" on the volatility scale. Soto was either the third, fourth, or fifth guy to have the job, depending on whether or not you count keyboardist Gregg Rolie (responsible for some of the vocals on the band's first three albums) or Neal Schon (ditto) or Robert Fleischman (who sang live with the band and cowrote "Wheel in the Sky" but never appeared on a studio album). But as far as Journey's fans are concerned, there is but one true Journey vocalist, and his name is Steve Perry. Before Perry, Journey were a chops-flaunting jazz-rock outfit whose first three albums had sold poorly; when Columbia Records threatened to drop the band, their manager, Herbie Herbert, prevailed upon them to hire Perry, who had a supple tenor, a gawky, earnest stage presence, and one of the worst haircuts in rock. Together, he and Journey began writing new songs that showcased two of these three qualities, and by the turn of the decade they'd become one of the biggest bands on earth.

Sometimes pop songs are poetry, and sometimes they're art, and sometimes they're poetry transformed into art and written in airbrush on acid-washed denim. During the Perry years, Journey sang about dreamers on the run, about summer nights, about the lonely road. They once rhymed "walkin' a high wire" with "caught in a cross fire." They made videos so singularly ill-conceived—like "Separate Ways," which is clearly supposed to take place in the kind of gritty urban environment where one might find oneself caught in a cross fire while walking on a high wire but appears to have actually been filmed in the parking lot of an Ikea—that they now resemble_ Flight of the Conchords_ skits. Pete Townshend once said, "If you steer clear of quality, you're all right," but Journey played everything with an aerobic professionalism that suggested that quality was Job One. Most rock critics despised them; they were frequently lumped in with Styx and Foreigner and characterized as "faceless," an allegation the members of Journey say they neither appreciated nor understood.

By Oren Hartov

By Cam Wolf

By Murray Clark

They were never cool, and they were never dangerous. Cool, dangerous bands advocated the use of drugs, or at least testified to their allure; Journey signed a then groundbreaking endorsement deal with Budweiser and once arrived at a St. Louis gig in a carriage pulled by the brewer's iconic team of Clydesdales. Cool, dangerous bands lured their fans to the dark side using satanic iconography; Journey tempted their fans into arcades to pump quarters into Bally Midway's Journey video game.2 Cool, dangerous bands made parents nervous; any kid who tried to rebel by cranking the soaring and saccharine sounds of Frontiers or Escape deserved to be laughed at through his or her bedroom door (and sat down by an elder sibling for a stern talking-to about the greatness of Black Sabbath).3

But for about a decade, they could basically do no wrong in the eyes of the record-buying public, who fell hard for future classic-rock radio staples like the shamelessly inspirational "Don't Stop Believin'," the shamelessly sentimental "Faithfully," and the shamelessly self-explanatory "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'." 4 Cool, dangerous bands are rarely accessible; Journey wanted to speak to as many people as possible. It didn't matter what kind of car you drove; if you'd ever wished it were a Trans Am, Journey were singing to you. Between 1978 and 1986, every record they made went platinum.

In 1984, Perry made a solo album, _Street Talk, _which spawned the hit singles "Foolish Heart" and "Oh Sherrie"; Schon says its success put a strain on Perry's relationship with the rest of the band. Perry returned to the Journey fold to make one more record, _Raised on Radio, _before taking an indefinite hiatus in 1987, citing vocal and emotional burnout. Journey didn't play together again until 1995. They made a comeback album, Trial by Fire, and scheduled a reunion tour; then Perry injured his hip on a hike in Hawaii. He needed to replace the hip in order to play live, but put off getting the surgery; Schon says the band waited until they couldn't wait anymore. The next time Journey toured, their singer was Brooklyn-born Steve Augeri. He took flak from hard-core fans for sounding too much like Steve Perry, and then he stepped aside, citing a chronic throat infection, and handed the mike to Jeff Scott Soto, who took flak for not sounding Perryish enough. A subtext was developing: Journey's fans felt that no one other than Steve Perry was fit to sing Journey songs in the shower, let alone onstage.

In conversation, the members of Journey jokingly refer to Steve Perry as "He Who Cannot Be Named," like the evil wizard in the Harry Potter books. Later, I ask Schon about this, after reading an interview with their former manager in which it is alleged that Journey are somehow legally enjoined from speaking on the record about Perry.

"Oh, y'know," Schon says. "There's no legal issue. We just try not to. I mean, I didn't say anything inflammatory. I didn't talk about how he still gets paid like a motherfucker even though he shouldn't be. It's stuff like that I'm not allowed to talk about. He sorta just bitches and moans and whines about everything. And he just assumes that every time we bring up his name, that we're sayin' bad things."

no one in journey was excited about auditioning new singers, and none of the tribute-band Steves they looked at seemed like the answer. "I didn't think they had anything new to offer," Schon says, "other than making us a nostalgia act, and I wasn't interested in that."

Instead, Schon says, "I sat in my house for a couple days, hoping the almighty Internet would bring some relief."

He trawled YouTube, looking at all the live footage of male rock vocalists he could find. "You never know what you're getting on a CD," Schon says. "It can be all doctored in Pro Tools. You never know if somebody can sing unless you're watching something live." He found a few singers with potential—a couple of guys in England, doing "a Justin Timberlake–type thing." And then he stumbled on Noel Gomez's Zoo videos.

There are a few clips on YouTube of Pineda singing Journey songs like "Faithfully." His Steve Perry is almost eerily flawless; he nails both Perry's girlish quaver and the grit and pacing Perry borrowed from soul singers like Sam Cooke, and the fact that you can occasionally hear his accent makes the rest of the performance that much more uncanny. But Schon insists that what grabbed him about Pineda was his range. He slam-dunked Survivor. He tore up Toto. He made something out of "Makin' Love out of Nothing at All," and—spoiler alert—what he made out of it was love .

"The hair stood up on my arms," Schon says. "I got up off the computer and told my girlfriend, 'No way—this guy sounds too good. I don't believe it.' "

He went for a motorcycle ride. Thus are important rock-star decisions made. When he got back, he watched the clips again. Then he started calling his band. "I said, 'I found the singer,' " Schon says. "And they go, 'Where is he' And I'm like, 'He's in Manila!'

"And they go, 'Great—so you found a singer who can't speak English.' "

pineda's english is actually fine.

Right now he is trying to save his voice for tomorrow's show, so he speaks softly, which makes him seem as if he's in a state of perpetual awe (and maybe he is).

Pineda may have the most Dickensian backstory in rock history. His mother died when he was 13; his father took Pineda's siblings to live with relatives, and Pineda struck out on his own. He collected scrap metal, bottles, and old newspapers, usually bringing home the equivalent of thirty cents a day. Sometimes he'd sleep at a friend's house; more often than not, he'd sleep in Manila's Luneta Park, alone or with a group of other homeless kids. They drank from a fountain there and bathed in it, too; most mornings, Pineda would wake up sick from the dew. ("All clogged here," he says, pressing two fingers to his sinuses.)

His friend Monet Cajipe played guitar. Sometimes when Pineda wasn't working, he'd go over to Monet's house and they'd sing songs together. "He would bring me to his family," Pineda says, "and say, 'Come on, give some food to my friend,' because I was starving. They would make me sing, and then they would feed me. They would just bribe me with food."

At 15, Pineda tried out for a group called Ijos Band. He'd never sung with a real band before; during the audition, his voice was strong but his timing was weak. The bandleader saw something in him anyway, and when the other members of Ijos groused about having to split their nightly take with an extra man, one of the bandleader's friends came to the rescue, offering to pay Arnel's salary—thirty-five pesos a night—out of his own pocket. Perks of the job included a tiny room under the guitarist's front stairs, where Pineda could sleep.

He went on to cofound a band called Amo, which evolved into a band called New Age, featuring Cajipe on guitar. Like many Filipino bands, they played a mix of original material and covers of American and British rock and pop. While the U.S. occupation shaped Filipino musical culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Philippines truly became a cover-band nation in the '60s, when the islands served as a way station for troops en route to or from the Vietnam War and every nightclub needed bands who could entertain American servicemen with Top 40 rock 'n' roll. To this day, Pineda says, "if you only play original songs, [audiences in the Philippines] will not appreciate you 100 percent. They want to hear you singing other bands' songs that made it to number one. Like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Journey."

In the early '90s, New Age relocated to Hong Kong, a time-honored path for -Filipino musicians seeking their fortune. It didn't go so well. Playing the same cover tunes every night began to drive Pineda crazy. He was bored, so he drank, took drugs, and generally pursued any and all forms of rock 'n' roll self-destruction available to a boy from Manila adrift on the Hong Kong bar circuit. Before long, he'd wrecked his voice. When he found he could no longer hit the high notes in Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," he went to a doctor, who told him to retire. He was 27.

"He said, 'You're finished. Your vocal is just done,' " Pineda says. "I did not believe him. I told myself, I can get it back."

He returned to the Philippines, got straight, learned to sing again. He recorded a self-titled solo album in 2000; he and Cajipe started the Zoo. They recorded their first album,_ Zoology_. For a man who'd been told he'd never sing again, it was a happy enough ending. Then, last summer, the phone rang.

When Pineda went to get his visa, the guy who interviewed him at the embassy—"His name is Ben. I can't forget his name," Pineda says—was a fan who'd seen him play with the Zoo a couple of times, so Pineda took a request, and everybody in the office looked up from their desks at the guy singing "Wheel in the Sky."

He flew to San Francisco, spent a day jamming with the band at their rehearsal space. He hadn't slept much on the flight over, so his voice kept cracking, and he assumed he'd blown it, but he almost didn't care. He'd come to America and sung with a band he'd loved since he was 12 years old. He'd shot some home movies of them on his camcorder—a YouTube-able epilogue to his crazy YouTube adventure. He was ready to settle for that. But that jam session led to a long day in the studio, where Pineda sang two new songs and four or five of the Dirty Dozen—nailing most of them in one take—and by the time it was over, he'd passed the audition.

"Arnel cared about getting it right," band member Jonathan Cain says. "There wasn't this arrogance—the Lead Singer Disease that so many guys have when they have fantastic voices."

let us consider the New Guy.

In life, the New Guy gets the office that was once a closet full of printer paper, or maybe still is; the New Guy is told about bogus traditions involving the New Guy picking up the lunch tab; the New Guy spends a lot of time wondering what's so funny.

The New Guy's phone rings, but it's not for him. He disappoints people just by picking it up. _No, I'm sorry—he's not here anymore. Is there something I can help you with _

In rock, being the New Guy is the same, except harder. The jokes you don't know go back to some long, snowy between-concerts bus ride circa 1984. And you're trying to inhabit a stadium-sized myth, not a cubicle. You might win over a few late-to-the-party fans, but your presence alone will always be proof to some people that the band has outlived its awesomeness. A band with a New Guy on vocals is like a late-period Happy Days episode, one of the ones where nobody's left except Ted McGinley and a middle-aged Fonz who can barely zip the leather jacket. And because the only way for a band in this position to shake off the taint of the glue factory is to reunite with its original singer, the New Guy in a rock band is always a dead man rocking.

Tim Owens got seven years with Judas Priest before Rob Halford returned. Anyone not named David Lee Roth who agrees to sing for Van Halen is basically keeping the leather pants warm for Diamond Dave. And however comfortable Pineda's been made to feel during the past few months, he must know on some level that Steve Augeri and Jeff Soto once felt comfortable, too. Toward the end of our interview, as dusk bleaches the color from the desert outside the window, I ask him if he's thought about how long this is going to last.

"Well, of course," he says. "Of course I did. I'm a very realistic person. I like to plan. I like to see the future. If I'm lucky, if I'm still strong, I want to be with them for the next three years. And if they still like me after that, I still want to be with them. And hopefully we will create new Journey music that people will love."

And at some point, I suggest, you'll become essential. People will say Journey without Arnel, who wants that

"I just want to be a part of a band that will be able to reinvent themselves, you know" Pineda says. "And I think they will be able to help me build a future, with my family. They will help me financially. They can help me with that. Because all of us need a good future for our children, for our families."

It's true, we do. The members of Journey talk about Pineda like he's given them their youth back, the way thrice-married men talk about the young wives who've got them doing wheatgrass shots and yoga, listening to the Killers. It's never too late to feel like you're going to live forever. "I think we're reborn, right now, with Arnel," Schon says.

He talks about the band's first show with Pineda in Chile, how Arnel was all over the stage, jumping around, surprising everyone, and making Schon—who's playing a cordless guitar for the first time since the '80s—feel the need to step his game up. "I'm gonna be riding my bicycle a lot, and skating," he says, "and getting myself in tip-top shape so I can keep up with this little guy."

When Journey were off the road last year, during the gap between singers, it gave Schon time to get sober. When we talk, it's been nine months. "I believe I was a functioning alcoholic," he says—he'd stay straight for shows but kill a bottle of vodka on the tour bus afterward, and that went on for years. So this moment is also a rebirth for Schon; he's facing all of it straight for the first time. "I feel like I have 100 percent of myself here," he says, "and I'm really excited about getting out there and being completely in control."

Pineda's arrival lets them zero out the odometer. "Had I known Arnel was around fifteen years ago," Schon says, "singing even better than he is now—Goddammit, I would have called him!"

journey may not want to be thought of as a nostalgia act. But they are clearly totally fine with being an act that benefits from nostalgia. When I ask Cain why people still care about Journey in 2008, his response is basically a definition of the term:

"It's music they grew up to," he says. "Fell in love with. Had sex with. Got married to. Graduated from high school or college with. It's a moment frozen in time, and when they remember those moments, they remember those songs. Y'know, the '70s and '80s were awesome times. There was a lot less trouble in the world. And it's like people wanna go back to that simpler place and time. We see these housewives—they used to come to our shows when they were teenagers, and now it's like The Big Chill. They come back, they get a room, and they come see Journey. And I see 'em in the bars and buy 'em a drink and talk to 'em. Or there'll be a daughter that's bringing her mom to a Journey show as a birthday present, because she didn't get to see us back then. And you're like, 'Oh my God—I'm part of this.' "

How Journey's fan base will respond to the band's new incarnation is another question. Journey's new album, Revelation, will be available in June, exclusively at Wal-Mart. In this regard, they're following in the footsteps of the Eagles, who've sold 2.9 million copies of their album Long Road out of Eden through the big-box retailer since last October.

The album package will consist of a CD featuring eleven new Journey songs with Pineda on vocals, a DVD of the Planet Hollywood show, and a third disc featuring Pineda-sung rerecordings of eleven Journey classics whose original iterations featured you-know-who. Depending on how you look at it, this rewrite of the band's history is either a huge vote of confidence for Pineda or the rock 'n' roll equivalent of trying to prove to yourself that you're over your ex-girlfriend by dating a woman who looks exactly like her. And it's a move guaranteed to piss off more than a few Journey fans—even the album's producer, Kevin Shirley, compares it to "roxing the Holy Grail."5

I get a hint of the backlash that may be on the way when, a week or so before the Vegas show, I post a thread on the Journey message board at Melodicrock.com, an Internet forum for people with strong opinions about power balladry and Night Ranger side projects. I ask people to tell me their Journey stories; I ask people what they think of Pineda. I give out my e-mail address. Within minutes, my in-box fills up with e-mails—angry, passionate e-mails.

I hear from a few thick-and-thin super-fans, from plenty of reasonable people ready to give Arnel a fair shake, and even a few early Pineda converts. But I also hear from people frustrated by the band's -inability to hold on to a lead singer and from people who resent the band for continuing on at all. But mostly, I hear from people who have not stopped believing in Steve Perry. They compare him to Elvis, John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, and God. They describe the post-Perry band as "a second-class rendition of Journey." They send me all-caps e-mails—Steve Perry really brings out the caps-lock in people—that begin "IT HAD BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT YOU ARE LOOKING TO WRIGHT AN ARTICLE ABOUT WHY JOURNEY IS NO LONGER JOURNEY BUT NOTHING MORE THEN A TRIBUTE BAND TO THE BEST SOFT ROCK BAND EVER." They send me photomosaics of Steve Perry created out of many, many tiny little pictures of Steve Perry.

"You want to know why the 'fascination' with Journey all of a sudden" writes Thomas Cordea of Fort Wayne, Indiana. "With the hiring of a blatant 'sound-alike' singer, the world is 're-awakening' to the fact that THEY MISS STEVE PERRY LIKE MAD.… That is the real 'hidden' storyline of your article, not this latest frontman hire."

Maybe. But this latest frontman hire still seems like the first smart move Journey have made in years. They've got a guy who can sing the Perry material on tour. They're excited about making new music with him. And the fact that they discovered Pineda on YouTube has given them a ready-made PR hook. In a clicky, viral, cell-phone-delivered media moment where even the twice-weekly cult-of-the-amateur hour that is _American Idol _seems like a rusty piece of star-making machinery and Simon Cowell like a snooty gatekeeper, Journey—Journey!—seem like innovators, in touch with the forces shaping the culture. For a band prominently featured in people's memories of the Carter administration, this is pretty impressive.

This doesn't change the fact that they're Journey —emblematic of the way '70s rock betrayed the '60s in the '80s, part of the problem that punk's loogie-hawking historical rebuke supposedly solved. The middleman-eliminating YouTube story line can't make them cool; neither can the existence of a Journey-branded "Virtual Island" in the online nerdiverse Second Life. But coolness accrues in unexpected ways; once-verboten things slip out of cultural jail under cover of irony.

five signs the journey revival is imminent or possibly already here, in descending order of cultural impact:

1. David Chase uses "Don't Stop Believin'" in the last scene of the last episode of The Sopranos. It either is or isn't the last song Tony Soprano ever hears. (A week after the episode airs, Hillary and la famiglia Clinton parody this scene, right down to the onion rings, in a viral-video campaign ad.)

2. Drolly doleful indie rockers—Badly Drawn Boy, Of Montreal—begin slipping ironic-but-maybe-sincere "Don't Stop Believin'" covers into their live sets. Kanye West does, too—at the shows he played in Europe shortly after his mother's death, it often followed "Hey Mama," the one he couldn't get through without crying.

3. Literate classic-rock obsessive Craig Finn and his Brooklyn-via-Minnesota meta–bar band, the Hold Steady, reference Journey in song: My name is Steve Perry, but people call me Circuit City.… My name's Neal Schon, but people call me Nina Simone.

4. Petra Haden, formerly of the late, lamented three-girls-and-a-guy alt-rock band that dog., records an a cappella cover of "Don't Stop Believin'." Haden: "My favorite part is singing that guitar solo. I always end up laughing at the end. I shouldn't, because it's supposed to be so serious. But I always do."

5. Some aspiring George Romero with access to a camcorder and a backyard uploads a no-budget horror short called "Journey of the Dead" to YouTube. Synopsis: "Steve Perry (former lead singer of Journey) saves a Rock and Roll loving couple from an attack by Rock Star Drummer Zombies. After a violent and bloody battle with the zombies, Steve Perry emerges victorious (as always) and then finds himself engaged in a karate showdown with the ultimate evil lead singer mastermind, Freddie Mercury!" Best quote: "Hey, zombie-breath—you picked the wrong day to not be dead! Now you're going to have to face Steve Perry!"

tapping somebody who can do Perry as well as Pineda can may indicate that the band want that uncomplicated approval they got from their audience during the Perry years, as opposed to the problematic tough love they're getting now. Or maybe Neal Schon—who started Journey, spent years building an audience through tireless touring (traveling, in the early days, in four-door station wagons, rolling into the venue just in time to jump onstage and play—who says Journey weren't punk) before having Perry foisted upon him in 1977 for reasons of commercial expediency, and has spent the post-Perry years being accused of sacrilege for daring to continue playing in the band he founded in the first place—wants to prove that it is he and his bandmates who make it Journey.

But when I ask Schon if he's at all tired of Journey being defined by Perry's presence or absence, he answers, "Um, no. I think he contributed so much to the sound of the band. Those songs are gonna be embedded in everybody's heads and hearts forever."

I get a slightly different take from Steve Perry, who calls from his home near San -Diego. Perry, who's finally started working on his first album of new material since leaving Journey, doesn't want to talk about the vocalists who've followed in his footsteps, Pineda included. "I only know that they've been through three guys," he says, "and I've never heard any of them. I stay away from it, because it's really none of my business now. We have children together, which are the songs we wrote, but that's about all."

But he will talk about what it was like when he joined a Journey already in progress in 1977, shedding a little light on what it might feel like to be Pineda now. "You've got to remember, they didn't want to make it with a lead singer," he says. "They wanted to make it without one."

I ask him about the scene in VH1's Journey_ Behind the Music _episode in which Perry declares that he "never really felt like part of the band." Was that because Schon resented having to hire a frontman

"What that meant," Perry says, "was that there was a period of time where I always felt that I had to prove myself. But along with that, you have to print that I can't blame them. It was [Neal's] band. Herbie Herbert built that band around Neal because he's a star on his own, from a guitar standpoint. There's nobody who plays like Neal Schon, to this day. I still miss his playing. We don't get along, but I love his playing.

"They wanted to make it on their own goalposts that they had in mind. There's nothing wrong with that. And I hope you print that, because it's important that people know that. I'm not bitchin'. I'm not whining. I completely understand how they felt and why."

the security people at the Planet Hollywood show—even the women—have the hired-muscle intimidation factor of pit bosses. For all I know, they are pit bosses. But at the end of the Planet Hollywood show, when Journey come back out to redo a couple of songs for the DVD—"We have to do one of the new ones again," Schon says cheerfully, "because we fucked it up!"6—the crowd-control policy is relad and people are allowed to come down the floor-seat aisles and up to the stage to scream and clutch at Pineda, presumably because this will make the show look more exciting on-camera. Someone hands him up a tiny Philippine flag on a wooden stand, the kind a diplomat keeps on his desk, and he stares at it for what counts, in rock-show time, as a long moment, before handing it back.

The do-overs end the night with a sort of anticlimactic thud, but overall it's been a good show, particularly for Pineda. Almost half the crowd—and this is an unscientific estimate based on what the nonwhite people looked like when I turned around—appeared to be Filipino, and from the first note he sang, they were his. And while none of the new Journey songs will make anybody forget "Don't Stop Believin'"—as always, the words "Here's another one from the new album" are the classic-rock-show audience's cue for a bathroom break—some of them are pretty affecting.

Kevin Shirley described "After All These Years" to me as "like 'Faithfully: Part 2'—it's a gem," and it kind of is. Like "Faithfully" (Journey's greatest gift to wedding DJs), it's a soaring, soulful ballad, readable as both a pledge of eternal fealty and a love letter to the fans. But the "all these years" theme adds the weight of long-term commitment to the mix; a song like this is how you tell your audience you'd marry them all over again. And while it's not anywhere near as good as "Faithfully," you can imagine it someday becoming part of the canon. Someday it will be performed by a singer in a smoky room—some Hong Kong piano bar, maybe—and traveling salesmen far from hearth and home will shed a tear or two, and maybe that's all that matters.

Afterward, there's a bottleneck in the lobby of the theater. As everyone shuffles slowly toward the doors that lead to the mezzanine above the casino, someone in the crowd starts singing the Nah nah, na nah nah / Na na na nah nah refrain from "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'," the last song of the night. (It's the one song in Journey's catalog where you can most clearly hear the Sam Cooke mannerisms in Steve Perry's delivery, and Pineda nailed it—an Asian guy imitating a white Californian imitating a black guy from Chicago, on a stage in a Las Vegas hotel with "Hollywood" in the name. The mind reels.)

Then, as if the air-conditioning has started pumping karaoke spores, other people join in and start singing Nah nah, na nah nah / Na na na nah nah, too. It only lasts for a few seconds, but those seconds are maybe the most sincere moment of community I've experienced at a rock show in a long, long time—and they feel like proof that the Pineda-fronted version of Journey has succeeded in giving people the kind of life-affirming Journey experience they were looking for.

Later there's a VIP meet-and-greet in a high-ceilinged Planet Hollywood banquet room. Trickling in like they've timed their entrances, the band pose for pictures and sign T-shirts, albums, ticket stubs. The energy is a little flat until Arnel appears, wearing a shiny long-sleeve T-shirt, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. People immediately crowd around him, waving digital cameras; somebody shouts, "Move back, move back!" He makes it to the other side of the room, still swarmed by fans—many of them Filipino, many of them girls. I try to ask Arnel a couple of questions about the show, which yields a brief interview, reproduced here in its entirety:

Q. How's it going, Arnel A. Hey, man!

Then someone else gets his attention and he's off, posing for another photo. Instead, I interview Patty Zaragoza, who's a flight attendant "representing the Cathay Pacific cabin crew." She doesn't know much about Journey, but she's a fan of Pineda's—she used to see him perform in Hong Kong, at a bar called Grammy's. She gives me a blue Cathay Pacific lanyard, in case the one that came with my Journey backstage pass ceases to function. I turn around to try to get another word or two with Pineda, but he's mobbed. The crowd swallows him. He is, at least for now, a rock star.

the day before the show, I ask Kevin Shirley if he feels Pineda has fully processed everything that's happened to him during the past few months.

"No," Shirley says. "No, I don't think he has. I think the record needs to come out. I think he needs to go on tour. I think he still has a lot of fear about whether he can play this set every night. But he can. I feel very confident. But yeah—once all that settles in, and maybe once he gets his first royalty check. In the meantime, it's like, 'Can you buy me a sandwich I'm the lead singer of Journey!' "

alex pappademas is a GQ staff writer.

Journey's YouTube Lead Singer

Arnel Pineda, new lead singer of Journey, poses with other members of the band

Ever since lead singer Steve Perry injured his hip in 1996, legendary '80s rock band Journey hasn't been the same. Singers Steve Augeri and Jeff Scott Soto tried filling Perry's big shoes (and tight jeans), but the band's success never reached its previous heights and Journey was relegated to a feel-good nostalgia act.

Thirty-three years after its birth, Journey is getting a second wind from an unexpected place. In December, the band signed on new lead vocalist Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer who they found leading a Manila cover band on YouTube. Six months later, the band has kicked off a tour of Europe and the U.S. and released Revelation , a new album featuring original songs and re-recorded classics that has already shot up to the fifth highest-selling album in the U.S. since its debut two weeks ago.

How Journey found Pineda is a Cinderella tale of the Internet era. After the band dismissed Soto last June for unspecified reasons, guitarist Neal Schon turned to the Web in search of talent. After two days of surfing on YouTube, he came upon clips of Pineda singing with his band, The Zoo, and nailing all the right notes in the toughest Survivor, Queen and Journey power ballads. "I heard his voice and my eyes got big," says Schon, who has been with Journey since its inception in 1975. "I thought, he can't be that good." Schon left his house, took a spin on his motorcycle to clear his head, and then contacted Pineda. At first, the singer thought the email was a hoax. "I didn't think the real Neal Schon would call a guy like me," says Pineda. "I'm just a guy from the Philippines." Four months later, Pineda signed on as Journey's new lead singer. "I've been waiting for this moment to come for 25 years," he says. "It's like shooting to the moon."

Born in Manila, Pineda, 40, started singing as a child, quickly learning his parents' favorite songs by The Jackson Five, Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters. His parents struggled to raise their four sons by running a corner shop and tailoring clothes. Pineda performed in local singing competitions until the age of 13, when his mother died from an extended illness. Medical bills had drained their savings, leaving the family homeless and living with relatives. Not wanting to burden his father, Pineda struck out on his own, collecting newspapers and bottles, and living on the street for nearly two years. When he was 15, a friend encouraged him to start singing again, beginning Pineda's 25-year career as a cover band singer in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

The first half of Pineda's story isn't unique — Filipino cover bands are ubiquitous in many Asian cities. It's a phenomenon Manila-based PhilMusic.com founder Jim Ayson attributes to an imbalance in supply and demand. "There are more musicians in the Philippines than there are opportunities," says Ayson, a drummer who knew Pineda in the 1980s. But Pineda's rags-to-riches story is giving new hope to Filipino singers. "A lot of singers here tried to make it in the States and they couldn't," he says. "[Pineda] made it."

Not surprisingly, Filipino media in the homeland and the U.S. have lit up with Pineda coverage. "Everyone's talking about it," says Marilyn Deleon, 44, a Filipino-American Journey fan in New York City who helped create animated videos of Pineda and other Journey members and posted them online. At Pineda's first U.S. performance with Journey in Las Vegas in March, Schon estimates Filipino Americans made up half of the audience. Some countrymen are already painting Pineda as a kind of national hero. "There's [boxer] Manny Pacquiao, [pool player] Efren Reyes and then there's Arnel," says Kookie Luib, a bass player who performed with Pineda during his years in Hong Kong. "Our country is always recognized for corruption and government malfunction. These guys are bringing up Filipino pride."

But not all of Journey's die-hard fans — and there are plenty — have embraced Pineda with open arms. When Nell, who did not want to reveal her real name, started an Arnel Pineda fan site in December, the Florida-based web developer says angry Journey fans left death threats on her answering machine. The band's traditional fanbase is mostly white and American, and some are upset that Pineda is neither. "Journey is supposed to be an all-American band," one fan wrote in an online forum.

But as more people hear Pineda's truly stunning voice, the number of critics is likely to be drowned out by a roar of support. And the number of online rock stars is sure to skyrocket. "If you want to get discovered, you don't need a demo anymore," says Ayson. "Everyone's putting their stuff on YouTube now." It's a reminder to all of us: don't stop believing.

WATCH: Arnel Pineda feels 'blessed' Journey still wants him

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Crazy town's shifty shellshock was homeless in the months before death, crazy town's shifty shellshock homeless in final months.

Seth Binzer -- the lead singer of Crazy Town -- was homeless in the months preceding his death -- according to his friend and sober coach Tim Ryan ... who tells us he was helping Binzer on his sobriety journey over the last few years.

As we reported ... the L.A. County Medical Examiner said Binzer - aka Shifty Shellshock -- died Monday at an L.A. home. According to Tim, Binzer was living in a tent in downtown L.A.'s McArthur Park, after bouncing from house to house following a recent relapse.

He tells us his wife, Jennifer Gimenez from "Celebrity Rehab" ... received a call last week informing her of Seth's whereabouts and Tim was planning to fly to L.A. to help locate Seth in the park and get him back into treatment ... but sadly, it was too late.

Seth's death came 2 and a half months after Tim last spoke to him. He says Seth was once again struggling ... something the TV star puts down to the soul-sucking, negative Hollywood influences which made it difficult for Seth to prioritize his recovery.

Tim adds the news is particularly heartbreaking, considering Seth was on fire just a year and a half ago ... before his 2023 DUI in North Carolina brought everything to a screeching halt.

Despite his challenges, Tim wants us to remember Seth for having a heart of gold and always helping others get into treatment or sober living rather than helping himself.

As we reported ... Seth manager's confirmed he died from an accidental drug overdose after mixing prescription drugs with street-purchased drugs. The medical examiner's official investigation is ongoing.

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