![]() ![]() “One of the worst things I read on a fan message board said that Journey is an all-American band and it should stay like that. “When there were rumors about me joining Journey, there was a lot of that,” Pineda said. When he was hired over a singer from a Journey cover band, he also had to learn to deal with an undercurrent of racism among some Journey fans. Since English is Pineda’s second language – his first is Tagalog – he worked on phrasing and diction with an accent reduction coach. There were days I only slept two or three hours and I still had to learn the songs and record them.” “They didn’t give me an advance tape, so it was even harder. “I only learned them when I arrived here,” he said. ![]() Two months later, he returned to record 11 new songs he had never before sung with the band. “Right off, they told me I had the gig,” he said. It didn’t take long for him to prove he really is as good as Schon had hoped. It took two minutes for him to convince me.”Īfter getting Pineda a work visa, the band flew the singer to California in August for an audition. “I told him, ‘I don’t think you’re Neal,’ ” Pineda recalled, amused. If he was really Neal Schon, I would know.” Ask him if he really is Neal Schon.’ Since he’s my friend, I said, ‘OK, OK.’ I sent a short e-mail and left my cell phone number. He said, ‘What would it hurt to give it a shot? Send him one e-mail back. “My friend Noel picked up the e-mail and told me it was from Neal Schon,” he recalled. Schon fired off an e-mail to Pineda, but the singer dismissed it out of hand, thinking it was a prank. “After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I’d heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true,” he said. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody.”īut his tenacity paid off when he stumbled on a video of Pineda singing Journey’s hit “Faithfully” with a Filipino cover band called the Zoo. “So I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. “I was frustrated about not having a singer,” Schon said. Journey guitarist Neal Schon, who’s trying to return to the Journey sound from the Steve Perry era, gets credit for finding Pineda in an intense Internet search. “He’s blessed with tons of emotion and soul, stuff you can’t teach. “He’s got the legacy sound and then some,” said Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, speaking from his home in Novato. He was hoarse from a cold he said he hadn’t been able to shake, but insisted it hadn’t affected his singing voice. He had been in the Bay Area for seven weeks, singing nearly every day, learning an album’s worth of new songs and reworking the old hits, which the band facetiously calls “the dirty dozen.” He talked about his unlikely rock stardom one afternoon recently, hours before he was to get on a plane for the long flight back to his home in Quezon City. ![]() He’d taken over from Augeri, who dropped out in 2006 with voice problems after eight years with the band.Įnter Arnel Pineda, whose hiring was announced in early December. The previous lead singer, Jeff Scott Soto, was reportedly fired last summer after a brief stint. Since Perry and Journey parted ways a decade ago, it’s been a revolving door for Journey vocalists. Not a good time to be without a frontman. When “The Sopranos”‘ final episode made pop culture history in June, ending with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” the once-mighty stadium rockers found themselves back in the national consciousness, positioned for a comeback. No longer just an ’80s nostalgia act, the group has suddenly become au courant, thanks to some mobsters from New Jersey. They are superstars in the music business.”Ī new lead singer is especially crucial at this point in the band’s 35-year career. ![]() “Who in their right mind would believe they would call someone like me, in the Philippines?” the boyish 40-year-old said from his Marin County hotel room. Now we have the cyberspace Cinderella story of Arnel Pineda, Journey’s brand-new frontman.Įven Pineda himself, “the Steve Perry of the Philippines,” hasn’t wrapped his head completely around what has happened to him. Steve Augeri, who replaced Perry in the mid-’90s, was working in a Gap store when he got the call to join the band. The golden-voiced Steve Perry, the operatic tenor who sang the band’s anthemic ’80s hits, was plucked from a construction job in a Central Valley farm town. The classic rock band Journey has a history of rags-to-riches lead singers. ![]()
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