Wow. Arnel, Neal and Jon.
It's behind a paywall but I was somehow to read a blurry version 1 line at a time. Arnel opens up about not wanting to tour because of his personal problems and his age, not wanting a 2 hour show with an intermission, not wanting to sing songs he hasn't sung in a long time. And not being listened to. Then the author interviews Neal and brings up Arnel's comments, then interviews Jon. Jon had his knee replaced and it's been slow healing, it's why he wasn't at the TV performances. Jon and Neal are NOT getting along. Hopefully someone here has a subscription.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... 235538787/
New Rolling Stone Interview
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New Rolling Stone Interview
by kmjrr » Wed Apr 01, 2026 9:53 am
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Wed Apr 01, 2026 10:29 am
Inside the Drama and Excitement of Journey’s Farewell Tour
To draw its wildly successful touring career to a close, the band has had to sort through decades of complicated history
By Andy Greene
It's a little over 24 hours before Journey kick off their Final Frontier farewell tour at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the venue is a beehive of activity. It’s guitarist Neal Schon‘s 72nd birthday, and he’s onstage strumming a new electric guitar gifted to him by his wife, former Real Housewives of D.C. cast member Michaele Salahi. The crew is testing out pyro effects it will unleash during big songs like “Separate Ways.” Keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who turned 76 the day before, is backstage with his wife, Paula White-Cain, a televangelist who serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s White House Faith Office; she just drove up from D.C. to be by his side as he recovers from a recent knee replacement surgery that caused him to miss nearly all the rehearsals.
There’s a lot of work to do today as the members of Journey figure out exactly which songs they’ll play on opening night, and prepare for their one and only production rehearsal with the entire band present. They’re going to hit just about every market in America over the next two years — including out-of-way towns like Laredo, Texas, and Fort Wayne, Indiana — and there’s talk of booking football stadiums before it all ends.
This may surprise some considering that Steve Perry, the voice of every single Journey hit and the face of the band throughout their late-Seventies/early-Eighties heyday, hasn’t been a part of the band in 30 years, and he last toured with them in 1987. When the alt-rock revolution began just a few years later, Journey were lumped together with REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Foreigner as fossils from a bygone corporate rock era, and that seemed unlikely to change.
But while those other acts continue to slog it out on the state fair/casino circuit, Journey has become a touring colossus that somehow seems to grow more popular with each passing year. It’s easy to simply pin the resurrection to The Sopranos, Glee, Stranger Things, and other TV shows that have shined a bright spotlight on their music, but something deeper took place. Journey hits like “Open Arms,” “Faithfully,” and, of course, “Don’t Stop Believin’” are no longer seen as dusty artifacts from the early days of MTV. They’re a part of the classic-rock canon, loved by generations of fans, and a reason why Journey endures even though Schon and Cain are the only remaining classic-era members.
The first production rehearsal begins, lead singer Arnel Pineda, who has been in the band since 2007, sits down with me in his dressing room — a sparely decorated space with little more than a tea kettle, sliced lemons, and some bananas on a table — and reveals that this tour nearly didn’t happen, at least with him.
The reason why is a sad, complex story that involves his aging body and voice, a difficult divorce, and some very public allegations of domestic abuse that made headlines in his native Philippines. As soon as we start talking, Pineda makes it clear that he wants to talk about all of it.
“Back in 2024, I said to them, ‘If you’re planning to do a farewell tour, you better tell me, because my issues and my personal problems are getting more intense, and I don’t know if I want to go with you,'” he tells me. “I said, ‘I want you to discuss the schedule with me.’ It is what it is now…. But then, I was really not happy with how they scheduled this tour. My body has changed. I can’t take the cold weather anymore.”
Without consulting him, Pineda claims, the band booked a 60-date U.S. tour for this year — with at least another 40 shows slated for 2027 — kicking off in February in cold-weather towns. He told them he was unhappy in an email. Their response? “Nothing,” Pineda says. “As they say, silence can be louder than explaining."
Frustrated with the impasse, Pineda says, he told them on two occasions he wanted to leave the band: “I said to them I wanted to retire because of my personal problems. No answer. Obviously, they don’t want to find another singer.” (According to both Schon and Pineda, it’s not that simple: They claim that the touring giant AEG’s contract with the band actually stipulates that this tour cannot go forward without Pineda. A representative for AEG did not respond to a request for comment on this.)
Pineda was 40 when he joined Journey back in 2007. He’s now 58, and the strain of belting out operatic songs like “Open Arms” and “Faithfully” nearly 800 times across two decades has taken a toll on his voice. “Jonathan was really worried about me about eight or nine years ago,” he says. “He said, ‘We should use a ghost voice so that you can relax.’ I said, ‘No.'” He emphatically denies the internet rumors that he’s been using Auto-Tune at recent shows. “I don’t,” he says. “I swear to God. If you hear me being flat out there, that’s just me being human.”
Some of the more obsessive online fans have posted videos on YouTube comparing Pineda’s voice of today to his voice from when he first joined the band, and to Perry’s voice from the early Eighties. Many of the comments aren’t kind. “I actually agree with them, to tell you honestly,” he says. “You’d be surprised. I agree with them. Steve Perry’s voice is really far superior to mine. But I’m almost 60 now. What can I do? And the band wants to move on with me, and they like the voice that I produce out there with them … They can fire me any time they want, but they’re not.”
Pineda wasn’t around for rehearsals, and he just learned the current plan is two hourlong sets, with an intermission in between. He’s not happy about it. A break, he says, “puts my voice in trouble…. It’s like a car where you go full speed, and then have to stop, and then go full speed. I also worry the fans will mellow…. It kills the momentum of the show.”
He’s also displeased that they added the 2011 super-deep cut “City of Hope” to the proposed set list. “I was expecting that they would spare me to sing those songs that I haven’t sung in years,” he says. “[‘City of Hope’] isn’t in my system anymore…. I think I really need to discuss this with them.”
As our discussion gets heavier and heavier, tears begin welling up in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to be their reaction to this [interview],” he says. “I’m just trying to be as honest as possible. As much as I don’t want to offend them, I’ve got to be honest.”
I didn’t plan on asking Pineda to talk much about the divorce, since his young children are nearby, and it’s a highly contentious issue that I figured he wouldn’t want to discuss publicly. It involves Pineda formally accusing his wife of adultery in court in 2023, and her subsequently responding with allegations filed in the Philippines under the Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) Act of “verbal assaults, manipulation, and coercive behavior,” following what she claimed was a long period of him committing adultery. (Pineda’s wife could not be reached for comment for this story.)
But Pineda brings the matter up many times, and is eager to defend himself. “It’s one of the nastiest experiences that I have ever experienced in my whole entire life,” he says, before going on to vehemently deny the allegations made against him. “I am not perfect, but I never laid a hand on her.”
MY CONVERSATION WITH Pineda was a lot to process, and five minutes later I enter Neal Schon’s dressing room a little overwhelmed, knowing I’ll have to ask him about many things his lead singer just told me. But first, I wish Schon a happy birthday, and take a look around. Great effort has been made to transform what is ordinarily a plain, beige room into a festive space. The walls are festooned with bright purple curtains, streamers are everywhere, a neon “Happy Birthday” sign is hung on the wall, there are at least 50 blue and white balloons on the floor and ceiling, and three large candles are lit. On a table rests an enormous guitar-shaped cake, Rice Krispies Treats and cupcakes with the Journey logo on them, and a second cake shaped like a Marshall amp. The amp cake looks so real that I nearly touch it to make sure they aren’t messing with me. “Happy Birthday Neal Schon,” reads a sign on the dessert table. “Journey Founder ’72 – ∞.”
We start by chatting about Journey’s early years as a struggling jazz-fusion band that formed after Schon and original lead singer Gregg Rolie left Santana, years before anyone else in the current lineup joined their ranks. “We were like one of the original jam bands,” he says. “Herbie Herbert, our original manager that I started this thing with, had us playing in front of everyone. We played in front of Kiss and Thin Lizzy when they were still in theaters. We played with anyone: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Cheech and Chong, Lynyrd Skynyrd, you name it.”
Things changed forever in 1978 when Steve Perry joined, and they started landing hits on the charts like “Lights,” “Wheel in the Sky,” and “Any Way You Want It.” By 1981, they were arguably the biggest band in America thanks to their LP Escape and the hit singles “Who’s Crying Now,” “Stone in Love,” “Open Arms,” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
But in January 1987, after a three-night stand in Hawaii followed by another three shows in Anchorage, Alaska, Perry told them he was fried from nearly a decade of solid work, and ready to move on. “We were like, ‘What? We’re not even halfway through this tour,'” says Schon. “But that was that. He was done.”
After a brief reunion with Perry in 1997, which fizzled out before they could play any shows (partly due to a hip injury that Perry suffered while hiking that year), the group moved on with vocal doppelganger Steve Augeri as their new singer. “We had some very great shows with Steve Augeri, but it took its toll on him as well,” Schon says. “And I don’t recall where we were, but we were opening up for Def Leppard and one night he came out to sing and nothing came out.”
(At the time, in 2006, rumors flew that Augeri was lip-syncing to prerecorded vocals at his final shows. “I can’t answer that question,” Augeri told me in 2022 when I asked him if the allegations were true. “I can’t legally answer it.”)
With a co-headlining run of dates with Def Leppard coming up, Schon asked former Yngwie Malmsteen vocalist Jeff Scott Soto to join them for the tour. “We went in the studio afterwards, and the chemistry was not quite there with Jonathan and Jeff,” says Schon, explaining that they ultimately felt Soto’s hard-rock sound wasn’t a match: “That wasn’t really Journey. So we went on another hiatus.”
Back in those days, Schon and Cain were largely on the same page when it came to band issues. But over the past decade or so, major schisms have emerged. From Schon’s point of view, they stem largely from Cain’s public embrace of right-wing, evangelical causes, his support for the Trump administration, and differing views of how to run the business of Journey.
“I stick by the roots of how we started and what was embedded in me from Herbie Herbert with all the original guys,” says Schon. “We were never going to affiliate politics with our music, and we’re never going to affiliate any one religion, not that we’re unreligious. Everybody has their own religion. But why attach yourself into one portion of something? Why be red? Why be blue? Why be green? Because you know what? You’re going to lose half your fans when you do that. It’s everybody’s music. I just don’t agree with it. I still don’t. And it’s probably one of the reasons that things are still a bit shaky.”
Things grew even shakier once lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters started to fly back and forth between Cain and Schon — who co-own the Journey trademark and cannot fire each other — over a number of issues, including alleged misuse of the band’s corporate credit card (both disputed each other’s claims), Cain’s desire to appoint a neutral third director to mediate disputes, and Cain’s 2022 performance of “Don’t Stop Believin'” at Mar-a-Lago with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Kari Lake.
In a situation with very few precedents in rock history, Schon and Cain continued to tour together in Journey in the middle of all their legal and personal dramas. “The music we’ve created together is amazing,” Schon says. “And so, you have to celebrate that music with the fans. The fans are incredible. When I’m onstage, I don’t think about any of that.”
That doesn’t mean he’s in a good place with Cain. “I feel like I get one [lawsuit] served every week from his camp,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Jesus Christ!’ And learned to defend myself, really…. I remember every aspect of everything that’s gone down. I’ve been sober for 18 years completely, and my memory is sharp. I know everything about every Journey contract, every LLC, every corporation. So I feel very confident about being able to stand up to anything that I need to.”
Schon held band rehearsals for the farewell tour with a slimmed-down lineup of Journey that only had drummer Deen Castronovo, bassist Todd Jensen, and keyboardist Jason Derlatka because Cain was recovering from surgery and Pineda was still in the Phillipines. Has Schon even spoken with Cain since he got here a day earlier? “I talked to him last night onstage and wished him a happy birthday,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll talk soon, but he just got out of here. And there’s been so much that’s gone on. I hate all these attorneys. It’s so nuts.”
He continues to vent: “There’s just so much ongoing noise. And I just want some fucking peace, for real. I’m just really tired of all the legal [battles]. It’s meaningless to me. I don’t have any time for it. I turn 72 today. I’m no youngster. I still have a lot of fire in my soul and energy to do things, but I also want to feel comfortable. Jon made a statement a while ago that this was his farewell. And so, I’m treating it as such.”
This seems like a good time to bring up Pineda’s concerns, beginning with his opposition to an intermission. “I’m not a lead singer, so I’ve never heard of that before,” Schon says. “But Arnel is Arnel. I think he would know his voice better than anyone else. We agreed last night that we can play for two hours straight, or we can take an intermission, a very short one. I would think if you sang all the way through the first set that you would be well opened up.”
I find myself in the odd position of telling him that Pineda doesn’t want to sing “City of Hope,” the only song from his era of the band in the proposed set list. “We don’t have to play that,” Schon says. “I just saw Arnel for the first time in a year last night. We haven’t really had a chance to sit down and discuss these things, but we’ve got lots of singers in this band. Deen is a tremendous singer. Todd is a tremendous singer. So [Pineda] doesn’t have to feel all that pressure. It’s a long show. If he wants to take a break, take a break, and one of those guys can step up to the mic and sing.”
Schon isn’t surprised when I tell him about Pineda’s uncertainty about doing the tour in the first place. “It’s been very confusing,” says Schon. “He sent a lot of messages that he was overwhelmed with his personal life and didn’t know if he could do it. But we all signed contracts, OK? So, honestly, I’m signed up for the next two years. I’m ready for it. Really, I have to be honest, whatever goes down, I’m ready to plow through it, survive, and float to the top. I hope that he feels better about things. Last night at rehearsal, I thought he sounded really good.”
He’s also aware that Pineda didn’t want to start the tour this early in the year, but says they had little choice. “He wanted to go out in the summer, and he told our agent that,” says Schon. “And they don’t like us to go out in the summer, because especially this year, everybody’s touring. So, your odds are not as good as far as selling out the arenas when there’s so much traffic.”
With more than 100 dates slated between this year and next year, I ask Schon what might happen if Pineda simply can’t handle it. Would a different singer be brought in? “I’ve thought about it,” he says. “I mean, it’s natural to think about it. It’s not something I want to think about. I love Arnel. He’s been a total martyr, like a warrior. This is his 17th year. But still, at the same token, if he said that, I have to respect it. Do I feel that we could continue? I would say that we could.” Ultimately, he says, it would be AEG’s call: “If they go, ‘No, pack it up and go home,’ then you call it a day.”
We step out into the hallway at the end of our talk, and we’re greeted by his wife and members of the crew. An impromptu rendition of “Happy Birthday” breaks out, and we sing it again for a camera guy who’s been trailing Schon all day for an upcoming documentary about his life and career. “It’s a guerilla-style doc of myself out here while we’re doing this tour,” Schon tells me. “It’s time for me to tell the stories of my life. I remember it all so vividly.”
LIKE PINEDA, CAIN has been absent from the world of Journey since they last played in April 2024. When the band performed on The Voice and halftime at a 49ers game without either of them, rumors flew that he might be out. It turns out he was merely recovering from a knee-replacement surgery he had in September. “That was a wallop,” he tells me. “It’s been five months, and it’s still a little sketchy. But it’s coming along. I needed a new knee, though. I had no cartilage left. It was bone on bone, and I had arthritis. It was very painful. I don’t have any pain in the leg right now. It’s just the leg accepting the titanium. And I’ve got a whole suitcase full of rehab equipment that I’m bringing on the tour.”
Cain is stationed in a bare-bones dressing room far from Schon’s, with Pineda’s room placed strategically between them. It’s not a new situation for the singer. “I’m always in the middle of them, and I’m always trying to be the peacemaker,” Pineda told me earlier. “It’s just hard sometimes, and it breaks my heart that it’s come to that point that they have to fight like this. When I go onstage, it’s in the back of my head that all these negativities are lingering there.”
When I enter the room, Paula White-Cain shakes my hand before running out to attend a Zoom meeting. It’s unclear if it’s related to her ministry or her work with the White House. Days earlier, she took some heat online for an event at the City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, where she urged the crowd to give her $100,000 for the ministry. “I’m telling you, there’s an anointing of release right now,” she said from the stage. “I want $100,000 to come in. There are 10 people that could give $10,000. There’s a hundred people that could give $1,000. Get a check, make it payable to Paula White Ministries…. This isn’t for me. This is about kids that will die without you being obedient.”
I plan on asking Cain about all the challenges in his relationship with Schon, along with Pineda’s delicate state. But I start by having him finish the story of the band’s resurrection, right around the time they parted ways with Jeff Scott Soto in 2007. “When we went on the road, young people would come to the front of the stage,” he says. “I was like, ‘Isn’t this interesting? What’s going on?’ They all knew the words because they’d been singing them at karaoke bars. And of course, The Sopranos just put it over the top.”
He’s referring, of course, to the last scene of the HBO drama’s series finale, where Tony Soprano plays “Don’t Stop Believin'” on a jukebox, right before the screen goes black forever, and Tony maybe, possibly, dies. “David Chase let us know a year before that this would be the closing Sopranos song,” Cain says. “I kept it a secret for a whole year. And lo and behold, it came out at the right time.” They enjoyed a couple of months of renewed attention to the band before coming across Pineda singing Journey covers on YouTube: “Neal found him, and there it was. It was a gamble, but Journey was back.”
The comeback period brought the band back into arenas and even stadiums, but it also brought a lot of intense disagreements between the two principal members that spilled out into the legal arena. “It is called the music business, and I’m very fiscal about the way I like to do things,” Cain says. “I learned from the best managers on the planet, the best accountants on the planet. All I want is to run a smooth ship. Sometimes you have to get someone’s attention and say, ‘Let’s do this the right way, and then it’ll be fine.’ I just want our business to be a good business. That’s it. It’s no power trip for me. I don’t want any drama.”
Journey were managed for many years by industry titan Irving Azoff, whom Cain still calls a “terrific” manager. But Schon and Azoff butted heads, and eventually parted ways. Right now, they don’t have an outside manager. Cain and Schon handle all business affairs themselves. It’s not an ideal situation, from the keyboardist’s perspective. “Every band needs a manager,” he says. “Neal and I talk on Zoom when we have to run our business, but I think manager-less bands are always destined for trouble. You can get a book on the music business, and in the first chapter it’ll say, ‘Every band needs a manager.’ … So I wanted one. I mean, I prayed for one. But [Neal] just wants to run the show, and I want to play music. I don’t want to manage it. I’m a music guy.”
Cain’s faith is very important to him, and he makes no apologies for sharing his religious views with the world, or his political views, even if this enrages Schon. “I don’t care,” he says, when I relay Schon’s take that he’s alienating fans. “It has nothing to do with politics or anything partisan. I believe in policy, and what I stand for, because it affects my life. It affects my taxes I pay. It affects everything we do. I was a Democrat, I voted for Bill Clinton, and now I’m a Republican. I vote for the best guy. I vote for the best policy. And I’m not in love with any party. I just like to see the country going in the right direction.”
And that video of him playing “Don’t Stop Believin'” at Mar-a-Lago with MAGA superstars? “People do that at a karaoke bar,” he says. “I can’t do it at Mar-a-Lago? And, you know, it lit the room up. It was so great to see all these dignitaries go, ‘I think I know this song,’ and start singing. And I have to tell you, when you can light up a room and have some fun with a song that you helped create, then you’re doing a good thing. Everybody had a good time. I didn’t get paid for it.”
He remains unapologetic on this. “I don’t go out and make speeches about anything onstage, but I will stand up for what I believe in,” he continues. “And if somebody asks me about Trump, I tell them what I think. My agent called me after an interview where I did that and he was like, ‘What did you do that for?’ I said, ‘Because they asked me.'”
Moving away from politics and religion, I bring up Pineda’s concerns about the tour. “I think he’s going to be OK once we get it right for him,” Cain says. “We just need to make him comfortable, shorten the show, make it work. You can make it work. We’ll do whatever we’ve got to do.”
The conversation moves to Pineda’s vocal issues, and his memory that Cain told him to simply lip-sync a few years ago. Cain seems genuinely shocked by this. “I never said that,” he says, emphatically. “No, no, no. I would never. I don’t know where he got that from. It wasn’t from me. I didn’t say it.”
But Cain does say that he no longer wants to tour once this one wraps up sometime next year. “I’m 76, and it just feels like the right time to stop,” he tells me. “I just woke up one morning and saw that John Lodge from the Moody Blues died. That kind of spooked me. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, he’s 82 and he’s dead.’ I know the road takes a lot out of you as far as your adrenal glands and your ability to fight off infection, anything like that. It is very grinding. And I’m 45 years now with Journey.” If you count his stint with the late-Seventies power-pop band the Babys, he adds, “That’s 50 years on the road. That’s kind of enough.”
AS OF NOW, nobody in Journey knows where or when the final show will be held. But their singer has a vision in his head. “This is just a child’s wish — this three-year-old in me, who adores his parents so much,” Pineda tells me. “I wish Steve Perry would make an appearance. He doesn’t even have to sing. He can just take a bow with the guys. If he doesn’t want to do it, I would respect that. But if he would do that, that would be such an amazing sight.”
Perry comes up a lot when you speak to the guys in Journey, even if the only in-person contact they’ve had with him in the past 30 years took place in 2005, when the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and again in 2017, when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The latter was the only time Pineda has met his predecessor, and it was just a few seconds in a backstage hallway, during which he actually bowed down to Perry.
Bizarrely, I’ve spent way more time with Perry lately than his ex-bandmates have, due to a 2018 Rolling Stone feature tied to Perry’s comeback LP, Traces, where I got to hang with him for a day in New York, and another in San Francisco. We’ve also spoken on Zoom several times, most recently in 2024. Pineda is stunned when I tell him this. “Oh, my God,” he says. “I want to be in your place. I want to know how he did it back in the day. He’s a rock god. And I can never even be half the man that he was during his prime…. As a fan, I wouldn’t want Journey to have another singer except for Steve Perry, to tell you honestly.”
Schon has made many attempts to reconnect with Perry over the years. But it’s resulted in little besides brief communications about business matters, and no actual meetups. Back in 2018, I asked Perry why he was so reluctant to reestablish even a friendship with Schon. “I’m not sure that’s possible without stirring up hopes of a reunion,” he told me. “Please listen to me. I left the band 31 fucking years ago, my friend. You can still love someone, but not want to work with them. And if they only love you because they want to work with you, that doesn’t feel good to me.”
Today, Schon can only shrug his shoulders when the impasse with Perry comes up. “I liked parts of his album,” he says. “And I was like, ‘Wow, I miss playing with him. I could have added to that.’ I almost took a couple of the songs and overdubbed a few guitars and I was going to send it to him, then I just didn’t.”
Days before the farewell tour rehearsal began, Cain gave an interview to Ultimate Classic Rock where he said that Schon floated the idea to Perry of a guest appearance on the farewell tour. “He says [Perry’s] thinking about it,” Cain said then. “I hope he comes out. It’s never too late. We’ve got 100 shows, so he’s welcome at any one of them…. He didn’t say no — leave it at that.”
Predictably, this led to headlines all across the internet about a possible Journey/Steve Perry reunion. Within hours, Perry put out a statement firmly denying it was even a possibility, closing the door yet again. “To all my friends, I’ve been hearing these recent rumors, and I wanted to speak to you all directly,” he wrote. “While I’m always grateful for the love people still have for Journey, the rumors about me rejoining the band are simply not true, and I want to gently put them to rest. I completely understand why people would hope for that. The music we created together means a great deal to me too. But I’m continuing to explore new creative work and really enjoy working on new music that reflects where I am today.”
Cain says that the interview he did was a deliberate act of provocation. “I just kind of planted a little seed out,” he says. “I was trying to fish a little bit, and say, ‘Well, he’s thinking about it.’ He came immediately out and said, ‘No, I’m not.’ I kind of did that on purpose, because there’s just so much fake AI stuff going on. You just look at it and go, ‘Wait a minute, no, that’s not true. None of this is true.'”
Back in 2018, I brought up Cain’s memoir, Don’t Stop Believin’, to Perry, and he interrupted me before I could even finish, making a face as if he’d just bit into a lemon. “I don’t really care to read Jonathan’s book,” he said. “And I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell me about it. I don’t need to know. It’s none of my business.”
Cain has a hard time understanding this. “He’s never even read the book,” he tells me. “He’s afraid to read it. There’s nothing but adoration in it. There’s nothing but praise. When he came out with his album, people wanted to talk to him about Journey. And he said, ‘Oh, it’s like a knife in my heart.’ No, that was some of the best times of your life, dude. It’s sad he didn’t get to enjoy a lot of it.”
Perry’s unease with fame and his defection from Journey near the peak of their popularity created a lot of heartache for Cain, but he’s come to terms with how it all played out. “[Steve] ran into some strange spirits,” he says. “When I first met him, he was so confident. I thought to myself, ‘I’d like to learn the swagger he has, because I’m not this confident.’ And it sort of rubbed off on me, and he gave me a lot of confidence. And I tried to give it back to him, and it seemed like the longer we were together, the less confident he became. But you know what? He was an architect and a genius and a terrific bandmate, a band leader. I can’t say enough about his work ethic. He taught me what it took to be great.”
They’ve had no direct contact since the Hall of Fame, but an unexpected mediator between them has emerged in the form of Trevor Lukather (son of Toto bandleader Steve Lukather), who happens to be Cain’s new son-in-law. The younger Lukather has become a close friend of Perry’s, and they worked together in 2024 on a new version of the 1986 Journey obscurity “It Could Have Been You. “I communicated some things through him, just to tell Steve that I’m thinking about him,” Cain says. “I remembered why there was no video of us working on any records or creating anything. It’s because Steve said it was sacred time that should never be filmed. Trevor said, ‘Steve said you were right. He can’t believe you remembered.'”
Despite all the battles, past and present, Cain remains immensely proud of Journey’s work. The music even feels spiritual to him at this point. “Being a Christian, I would say God has his hand on this band,” he says. “And we have pleased him. We have pleased the Lord. That’s why I’m here, because I know when I walk on that stage, I’m not going out there alone. We told the world to not stop believing. You could say, ‘Oh Lord, you stand by me, I’m forever yours faithfully.’ You know? You could say, ‘I come to you, God, with open arms … Nothing to hide, believe what I say.'”
BEFORE LONG, IT’S time to head into the arena and finally see the members of Journey come together and make some music. I walk through the empty arena and find an aisle seat on the floor, about 15 rows back, letting various family members and crew sit in front: The Schon clan is on the right, Pineda’s family in the middle, and Cain’s people to the left.
Pineda told me he wasn’t going to sing at full strength in order to save his voice for the following night. But by the third song, “Stone in Love,” he’s unable to hold back, and he starts letting it rip. Per his wishes, there’s no intermission, and “City of Hope” is dropped. Cain sings lead on “Just the Same Way,” Castronovo handles the vocals on “Lights” and “Mother/Father,” and Derlatka delivers “Suzanne,” giving Pineda time to rest. Between a few songs, he even takes some oxygen from a green canister.
Pineda sounds stellar the entire time, and he seems positively joyful. There’s no hint of the downcast fellow I spoke with just a few hours ago. The music of Journey, no matter how many times he’s performed it live, is once again giving him nourishment to carry on. “I’ve really had a bad life,” he told me earlier in the day. “I’ve been hungry and homeless, with no friends, and no place to go.” Back in 2007, he recalls, “I wasn’t even dreaming about this. Me and my wife were just doing our laundry when I got the call from Neal that he wanted me to come over to San Francisco in one week.”
That call kicked off one of the most improbable events in rock history, a completely unknown singer from the Philippines fronting one of the most popular bands on the planet. Despite everything, Pineda’s main feeling remains extreme gratitude. “I love the guys,” he said. “I respect them so much. And I will remain until the last days of my life grateful, and really feeling blessed, for what they’ve done for me.”
The production rehearsal closes with an ecstatic “Don’t Stop Believin’.” There isn’t a single interaction all show between Cain and Schon, who are stationed on opposite ends of the stage, but someone unaware of the history would never know there was any beef. “The first time I had to go on the road after he sued me, I asked my lawyer, ‘What do I do?'” Cain recalled to me earlier that day. “And he said, ‘You get onstage and play the music.’ Again, those fans came to hear the music, and not the drama. I come here to put on the best show I can do. That’s what I come here for.”
A fleet of black SUVs is waiting outside the loading dock doors to take the members of the band to their hotel for the night. Cain and his wife are the only ones headed to a tour bus. His wife is leaving the tour soon, but his two German Shepherds are coming to keep him company, which means they have to set up a series of crates on the bus and in hotel rooms.
I’m about to leave myself when I see Pineda and ask him how he feels after the rehearsal. “I was just trying to bring back that muscle memory,” he says, noting that he used oxygen “because you need to do a lot of breathing when you do these songs.” I ask if he’s ready to do that show 100 more times. He nods, starts to leave, and then doubles back to share one more thought.
“Remember when you were asking me if I was ready to retire?” he asks. “My personal problem really took a toll on me. That’s why I wanted to prioritize my family. It’s not that I hate touring with [Journey]. It’s like the same thing that happened with Steve Perry. He has a hip problem. Me, I have a personal problem that’s taking a toll on me. It’s getting in my head, emotionally. I told them that I was a wreck and needed a little more time so that I could fix my family. But I still have to do this.”
Pain returns to his eyes, and I quietly ask if he’s happy he’s here. “Sixty percent,” he says with a sigh. “The other 40 percent of me is still there in the Philippines.”
And with that, Pineda, Cain, and Schon go their separate ways for the night. Cain stays back on the bus, and Pineda and Schon get into their SUVs and drive off to their hotel — all three of them united for this final chapter of a saga that Schon started 54 years ago, but still worlds apart.
To draw its wildly successful touring career to a close, the band has had to sort through decades of complicated history
By Andy Greene
It's a little over 24 hours before Journey kick off their Final Frontier farewell tour at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the venue is a beehive of activity. It’s guitarist Neal Schon‘s 72nd birthday, and he’s onstage strumming a new electric guitar gifted to him by his wife, former Real Housewives of D.C. cast member Michaele Salahi. The crew is testing out pyro effects it will unleash during big songs like “Separate Ways.” Keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who turned 76 the day before, is backstage with his wife, Paula White-Cain, a televangelist who serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s White House Faith Office; she just drove up from D.C. to be by his side as he recovers from a recent knee replacement surgery that caused him to miss nearly all the rehearsals.
There’s a lot of work to do today as the members of Journey figure out exactly which songs they’ll play on opening night, and prepare for their one and only production rehearsal with the entire band present. They’re going to hit just about every market in America over the next two years — including out-of-way towns like Laredo, Texas, and Fort Wayne, Indiana — and there’s talk of booking football stadiums before it all ends.
This may surprise some considering that Steve Perry, the voice of every single Journey hit and the face of the band throughout their late-Seventies/early-Eighties heyday, hasn’t been a part of the band in 30 years, and he last toured with them in 1987. When the alt-rock revolution began just a few years later, Journey were lumped together with REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Foreigner as fossils from a bygone corporate rock era, and that seemed unlikely to change.
But while those other acts continue to slog it out on the state fair/casino circuit, Journey has become a touring colossus that somehow seems to grow more popular with each passing year. It’s easy to simply pin the resurrection to The Sopranos, Glee, Stranger Things, and other TV shows that have shined a bright spotlight on their music, but something deeper took place. Journey hits like “Open Arms,” “Faithfully,” and, of course, “Don’t Stop Believin’” are no longer seen as dusty artifacts from the early days of MTV. They’re a part of the classic-rock canon, loved by generations of fans, and a reason why Journey endures even though Schon and Cain are the only remaining classic-era members.
The first production rehearsal begins, lead singer Arnel Pineda, who has been in the band since 2007, sits down with me in his dressing room — a sparely decorated space with little more than a tea kettle, sliced lemons, and some bananas on a table — and reveals that this tour nearly didn’t happen, at least with him.
The reason why is a sad, complex story that involves his aging body and voice, a difficult divorce, and some very public allegations of domestic abuse that made headlines in his native Philippines. As soon as we start talking, Pineda makes it clear that he wants to talk about all of it.
“Back in 2024, I said to them, ‘If you’re planning to do a farewell tour, you better tell me, because my issues and my personal problems are getting more intense, and I don’t know if I want to go with you,'” he tells me. “I said, ‘I want you to discuss the schedule with me.’ It is what it is now…. But then, I was really not happy with how they scheduled this tour. My body has changed. I can’t take the cold weather anymore.”
Without consulting him, Pineda claims, the band booked a 60-date U.S. tour for this year — with at least another 40 shows slated for 2027 — kicking off in February in cold-weather towns. He told them he was unhappy in an email. Their response? “Nothing,” Pineda says. “As they say, silence can be louder than explaining."
Frustrated with the impasse, Pineda says, he told them on two occasions he wanted to leave the band: “I said to them I wanted to retire because of my personal problems. No answer. Obviously, they don’t want to find another singer.” (According to both Schon and Pineda, it’s not that simple: They claim that the touring giant AEG’s contract with the band actually stipulates that this tour cannot go forward without Pineda. A representative for AEG did not respond to a request for comment on this.)
Pineda was 40 when he joined Journey back in 2007. He’s now 58, and the strain of belting out operatic songs like “Open Arms” and “Faithfully” nearly 800 times across two decades has taken a toll on his voice. “Jonathan was really worried about me about eight or nine years ago,” he says. “He said, ‘We should use a ghost voice so that you can relax.’ I said, ‘No.'” He emphatically denies the internet rumors that he’s been using Auto-Tune at recent shows. “I don’t,” he says. “I swear to God. If you hear me being flat out there, that’s just me being human.”
Some of the more obsessive online fans have posted videos on YouTube comparing Pineda’s voice of today to his voice from when he first joined the band, and to Perry’s voice from the early Eighties. Many of the comments aren’t kind. “I actually agree with them, to tell you honestly,” he says. “You’d be surprised. I agree with them. Steve Perry’s voice is really far superior to mine. But I’m almost 60 now. What can I do? And the band wants to move on with me, and they like the voice that I produce out there with them … They can fire me any time they want, but they’re not.”
Pineda wasn’t around for rehearsals, and he just learned the current plan is two hourlong sets, with an intermission in between. He’s not happy about it. A break, he says, “puts my voice in trouble…. It’s like a car where you go full speed, and then have to stop, and then go full speed. I also worry the fans will mellow…. It kills the momentum of the show.”
He’s also displeased that they added the 2011 super-deep cut “City of Hope” to the proposed set list. “I was expecting that they would spare me to sing those songs that I haven’t sung in years,” he says. “[‘City of Hope’] isn’t in my system anymore…. I think I really need to discuss this with them.”
As our discussion gets heavier and heavier, tears begin welling up in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to be their reaction to this [interview],” he says. “I’m just trying to be as honest as possible. As much as I don’t want to offend them, I’ve got to be honest.”
I didn’t plan on asking Pineda to talk much about the divorce, since his young children are nearby, and it’s a highly contentious issue that I figured he wouldn’t want to discuss publicly. It involves Pineda formally accusing his wife of adultery in court in 2023, and her subsequently responding with allegations filed in the Philippines under the Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) Act of “verbal assaults, manipulation, and coercive behavior,” following what she claimed was a long period of him committing adultery. (Pineda’s wife could not be reached for comment for this story.)
But Pineda brings the matter up many times, and is eager to defend himself. “It’s one of the nastiest experiences that I have ever experienced in my whole entire life,” he says, before going on to vehemently deny the allegations made against him. “I am not perfect, but I never laid a hand on her.”
MY CONVERSATION WITH Pineda was a lot to process, and five minutes later I enter Neal Schon’s dressing room a little overwhelmed, knowing I’ll have to ask him about many things his lead singer just told me. But first, I wish Schon a happy birthday, and take a look around. Great effort has been made to transform what is ordinarily a plain, beige room into a festive space. The walls are festooned with bright purple curtains, streamers are everywhere, a neon “Happy Birthday” sign is hung on the wall, there are at least 50 blue and white balloons on the floor and ceiling, and three large candles are lit. On a table rests an enormous guitar-shaped cake, Rice Krispies Treats and cupcakes with the Journey logo on them, and a second cake shaped like a Marshall amp. The amp cake looks so real that I nearly touch it to make sure they aren’t messing with me. “Happy Birthday Neal Schon,” reads a sign on the dessert table. “Journey Founder ’72 – ∞.”
We start by chatting about Journey’s early years as a struggling jazz-fusion band that formed after Schon and original lead singer Gregg Rolie left Santana, years before anyone else in the current lineup joined their ranks. “We were like one of the original jam bands,” he says. “Herbie Herbert, our original manager that I started this thing with, had us playing in front of everyone. We played in front of Kiss and Thin Lizzy when they were still in theaters. We played with anyone: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Cheech and Chong, Lynyrd Skynyrd, you name it.”
Things changed forever in 1978 when Steve Perry joined, and they started landing hits on the charts like “Lights,” “Wheel in the Sky,” and “Any Way You Want It.” By 1981, they were arguably the biggest band in America thanks to their LP Escape and the hit singles “Who’s Crying Now,” “Stone in Love,” “Open Arms,” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
But in January 1987, after a three-night stand in Hawaii followed by another three shows in Anchorage, Alaska, Perry told them he was fried from nearly a decade of solid work, and ready to move on. “We were like, ‘What? We’re not even halfway through this tour,'” says Schon. “But that was that. He was done.”
After a brief reunion with Perry in 1997, which fizzled out before they could play any shows (partly due to a hip injury that Perry suffered while hiking that year), the group moved on with vocal doppelganger Steve Augeri as their new singer. “We had some very great shows with Steve Augeri, but it took its toll on him as well,” Schon says. “And I don’t recall where we were, but we were opening up for Def Leppard and one night he came out to sing and nothing came out.”
(At the time, in 2006, rumors flew that Augeri was lip-syncing to prerecorded vocals at his final shows. “I can’t answer that question,” Augeri told me in 2022 when I asked him if the allegations were true. “I can’t legally answer it.”)
With a co-headlining run of dates with Def Leppard coming up, Schon asked former Yngwie Malmsteen vocalist Jeff Scott Soto to join them for the tour. “We went in the studio afterwards, and the chemistry was not quite there with Jonathan and Jeff,” says Schon, explaining that they ultimately felt Soto’s hard-rock sound wasn’t a match: “That wasn’t really Journey. So we went on another hiatus.”
Back in those days, Schon and Cain were largely on the same page when it came to band issues. But over the past decade or so, major schisms have emerged. From Schon’s point of view, they stem largely from Cain’s public embrace of right-wing, evangelical causes, his support for the Trump administration, and differing views of how to run the business of Journey.
“I stick by the roots of how we started and what was embedded in me from Herbie Herbert with all the original guys,” says Schon. “We were never going to affiliate politics with our music, and we’re never going to affiliate any one religion, not that we’re unreligious. Everybody has their own religion. But why attach yourself into one portion of something? Why be red? Why be blue? Why be green? Because you know what? You’re going to lose half your fans when you do that. It’s everybody’s music. I just don’t agree with it. I still don’t. And it’s probably one of the reasons that things are still a bit shaky.”
Things grew even shakier once lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters started to fly back and forth between Cain and Schon — who co-own the Journey trademark and cannot fire each other — over a number of issues, including alleged misuse of the band’s corporate credit card (both disputed each other’s claims), Cain’s desire to appoint a neutral third director to mediate disputes, and Cain’s 2022 performance of “Don’t Stop Believin'” at Mar-a-Lago with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Kari Lake.
In a situation with very few precedents in rock history, Schon and Cain continued to tour together in Journey in the middle of all their legal and personal dramas. “The music we’ve created together is amazing,” Schon says. “And so, you have to celebrate that music with the fans. The fans are incredible. When I’m onstage, I don’t think about any of that.”
That doesn’t mean he’s in a good place with Cain. “I feel like I get one [lawsuit] served every week from his camp,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Jesus Christ!’ And learned to defend myself, really…. I remember every aspect of everything that’s gone down. I’ve been sober for 18 years completely, and my memory is sharp. I know everything about every Journey contract, every LLC, every corporation. So I feel very confident about being able to stand up to anything that I need to.”
Schon held band rehearsals for the farewell tour with a slimmed-down lineup of Journey that only had drummer Deen Castronovo, bassist Todd Jensen, and keyboardist Jason Derlatka because Cain was recovering from surgery and Pineda was still in the Phillipines. Has Schon even spoken with Cain since he got here a day earlier? “I talked to him last night onstage and wished him a happy birthday,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll talk soon, but he just got out of here. And there’s been so much that’s gone on. I hate all these attorneys. It’s so nuts.”
He continues to vent: “There’s just so much ongoing noise. And I just want some fucking peace, for real. I’m just really tired of all the legal [battles]. It’s meaningless to me. I don’t have any time for it. I turn 72 today. I’m no youngster. I still have a lot of fire in my soul and energy to do things, but I also want to feel comfortable. Jon made a statement a while ago that this was his farewell. And so, I’m treating it as such.”
This seems like a good time to bring up Pineda’s concerns, beginning with his opposition to an intermission. “I’m not a lead singer, so I’ve never heard of that before,” Schon says. “But Arnel is Arnel. I think he would know his voice better than anyone else. We agreed last night that we can play for two hours straight, or we can take an intermission, a very short one. I would think if you sang all the way through the first set that you would be well opened up.”
I find myself in the odd position of telling him that Pineda doesn’t want to sing “City of Hope,” the only song from his era of the band in the proposed set list. “We don’t have to play that,” Schon says. “I just saw Arnel for the first time in a year last night. We haven’t really had a chance to sit down and discuss these things, but we’ve got lots of singers in this band. Deen is a tremendous singer. Todd is a tremendous singer. So [Pineda] doesn’t have to feel all that pressure. It’s a long show. If he wants to take a break, take a break, and one of those guys can step up to the mic and sing.”
Schon isn’t surprised when I tell him about Pineda’s uncertainty about doing the tour in the first place. “It’s been very confusing,” says Schon. “He sent a lot of messages that he was overwhelmed with his personal life and didn’t know if he could do it. But we all signed contracts, OK? So, honestly, I’m signed up for the next two years. I’m ready for it. Really, I have to be honest, whatever goes down, I’m ready to plow through it, survive, and float to the top. I hope that he feels better about things. Last night at rehearsal, I thought he sounded really good.”
He’s also aware that Pineda didn’t want to start the tour this early in the year, but says they had little choice. “He wanted to go out in the summer, and he told our agent that,” says Schon. “And they don’t like us to go out in the summer, because especially this year, everybody’s touring. So, your odds are not as good as far as selling out the arenas when there’s so much traffic.”
With more than 100 dates slated between this year and next year, I ask Schon what might happen if Pineda simply can’t handle it. Would a different singer be brought in? “I’ve thought about it,” he says. “I mean, it’s natural to think about it. It’s not something I want to think about. I love Arnel. He’s been a total martyr, like a warrior. This is his 17th year. But still, at the same token, if he said that, I have to respect it. Do I feel that we could continue? I would say that we could.” Ultimately, he says, it would be AEG’s call: “If they go, ‘No, pack it up and go home,’ then you call it a day.”
We step out into the hallway at the end of our talk, and we’re greeted by his wife and members of the crew. An impromptu rendition of “Happy Birthday” breaks out, and we sing it again for a camera guy who’s been trailing Schon all day for an upcoming documentary about his life and career. “It’s a guerilla-style doc of myself out here while we’re doing this tour,” Schon tells me. “It’s time for me to tell the stories of my life. I remember it all so vividly.”
LIKE PINEDA, CAIN has been absent from the world of Journey since they last played in April 2024. When the band performed on The Voice and halftime at a 49ers game without either of them, rumors flew that he might be out. It turns out he was merely recovering from a knee-replacement surgery he had in September. “That was a wallop,” he tells me. “It’s been five months, and it’s still a little sketchy. But it’s coming along. I needed a new knee, though. I had no cartilage left. It was bone on bone, and I had arthritis. It was very painful. I don’t have any pain in the leg right now. It’s just the leg accepting the titanium. And I’ve got a whole suitcase full of rehab equipment that I’m bringing on the tour.”
Cain is stationed in a bare-bones dressing room far from Schon’s, with Pineda’s room placed strategically between them. It’s not a new situation for the singer. “I’m always in the middle of them, and I’m always trying to be the peacemaker,” Pineda told me earlier. “It’s just hard sometimes, and it breaks my heart that it’s come to that point that they have to fight like this. When I go onstage, it’s in the back of my head that all these negativities are lingering there.”
When I enter the room, Paula White-Cain shakes my hand before running out to attend a Zoom meeting. It’s unclear if it’s related to her ministry or her work with the White House. Days earlier, she took some heat online for an event at the City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, where she urged the crowd to give her $100,000 for the ministry. “I’m telling you, there’s an anointing of release right now,” she said from the stage. “I want $100,000 to come in. There are 10 people that could give $10,000. There’s a hundred people that could give $1,000. Get a check, make it payable to Paula White Ministries…. This isn’t for me. This is about kids that will die without you being obedient.”
I plan on asking Cain about all the challenges in his relationship with Schon, along with Pineda’s delicate state. But I start by having him finish the story of the band’s resurrection, right around the time they parted ways with Jeff Scott Soto in 2007. “When we went on the road, young people would come to the front of the stage,” he says. “I was like, ‘Isn’t this interesting? What’s going on?’ They all knew the words because they’d been singing them at karaoke bars. And of course, The Sopranos just put it over the top.”
He’s referring, of course, to the last scene of the HBO drama’s series finale, where Tony Soprano plays “Don’t Stop Believin'” on a jukebox, right before the screen goes black forever, and Tony maybe, possibly, dies. “David Chase let us know a year before that this would be the closing Sopranos song,” Cain says. “I kept it a secret for a whole year. And lo and behold, it came out at the right time.” They enjoyed a couple of months of renewed attention to the band before coming across Pineda singing Journey covers on YouTube: “Neal found him, and there it was. It was a gamble, but Journey was back.”
The comeback period brought the band back into arenas and even stadiums, but it also brought a lot of intense disagreements between the two principal members that spilled out into the legal arena. “It is called the music business, and I’m very fiscal about the way I like to do things,” Cain says. “I learned from the best managers on the planet, the best accountants on the planet. All I want is to run a smooth ship. Sometimes you have to get someone’s attention and say, ‘Let’s do this the right way, and then it’ll be fine.’ I just want our business to be a good business. That’s it. It’s no power trip for me. I don’t want any drama.”
Journey were managed for many years by industry titan Irving Azoff, whom Cain still calls a “terrific” manager. But Schon and Azoff butted heads, and eventually parted ways. Right now, they don’t have an outside manager. Cain and Schon handle all business affairs themselves. It’s not an ideal situation, from the keyboardist’s perspective. “Every band needs a manager,” he says. “Neal and I talk on Zoom when we have to run our business, but I think manager-less bands are always destined for trouble. You can get a book on the music business, and in the first chapter it’ll say, ‘Every band needs a manager.’ … So I wanted one. I mean, I prayed for one. But [Neal] just wants to run the show, and I want to play music. I don’t want to manage it. I’m a music guy.”
Cain’s faith is very important to him, and he makes no apologies for sharing his religious views with the world, or his political views, even if this enrages Schon. “I don’t care,” he says, when I relay Schon’s take that he’s alienating fans. “It has nothing to do with politics or anything partisan. I believe in policy, and what I stand for, because it affects my life. It affects my taxes I pay. It affects everything we do. I was a Democrat, I voted for Bill Clinton, and now I’m a Republican. I vote for the best guy. I vote for the best policy. And I’m not in love with any party. I just like to see the country going in the right direction.”
And that video of him playing “Don’t Stop Believin'” at Mar-a-Lago with MAGA superstars? “People do that at a karaoke bar,” he says. “I can’t do it at Mar-a-Lago? And, you know, it lit the room up. It was so great to see all these dignitaries go, ‘I think I know this song,’ and start singing. And I have to tell you, when you can light up a room and have some fun with a song that you helped create, then you’re doing a good thing. Everybody had a good time. I didn’t get paid for it.”
He remains unapologetic on this. “I don’t go out and make speeches about anything onstage, but I will stand up for what I believe in,” he continues. “And if somebody asks me about Trump, I tell them what I think. My agent called me after an interview where I did that and he was like, ‘What did you do that for?’ I said, ‘Because they asked me.'”
Moving away from politics and religion, I bring up Pineda’s concerns about the tour. “I think he’s going to be OK once we get it right for him,” Cain says. “We just need to make him comfortable, shorten the show, make it work. You can make it work. We’ll do whatever we’ve got to do.”
The conversation moves to Pineda’s vocal issues, and his memory that Cain told him to simply lip-sync a few years ago. Cain seems genuinely shocked by this. “I never said that,” he says, emphatically. “No, no, no. I would never. I don’t know where he got that from. It wasn’t from me. I didn’t say it.”
But Cain does say that he no longer wants to tour once this one wraps up sometime next year. “I’m 76, and it just feels like the right time to stop,” he tells me. “I just woke up one morning and saw that John Lodge from the Moody Blues died. That kind of spooked me. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, he’s 82 and he’s dead.’ I know the road takes a lot out of you as far as your adrenal glands and your ability to fight off infection, anything like that. It is very grinding. And I’m 45 years now with Journey.” If you count his stint with the late-Seventies power-pop band the Babys, he adds, “That’s 50 years on the road. That’s kind of enough.”
AS OF NOW, nobody in Journey knows where or when the final show will be held. But their singer has a vision in his head. “This is just a child’s wish — this three-year-old in me, who adores his parents so much,” Pineda tells me. “I wish Steve Perry would make an appearance. He doesn’t even have to sing. He can just take a bow with the guys. If he doesn’t want to do it, I would respect that. But if he would do that, that would be such an amazing sight.”
Perry comes up a lot when you speak to the guys in Journey, even if the only in-person contact they’ve had with him in the past 30 years took place in 2005, when the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and again in 2017, when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The latter was the only time Pineda has met his predecessor, and it was just a few seconds in a backstage hallway, during which he actually bowed down to Perry.
Bizarrely, I’ve spent way more time with Perry lately than his ex-bandmates have, due to a 2018 Rolling Stone feature tied to Perry’s comeback LP, Traces, where I got to hang with him for a day in New York, and another in San Francisco. We’ve also spoken on Zoom several times, most recently in 2024. Pineda is stunned when I tell him this. “Oh, my God,” he says. “I want to be in your place. I want to know how he did it back in the day. He’s a rock god. And I can never even be half the man that he was during his prime…. As a fan, I wouldn’t want Journey to have another singer except for Steve Perry, to tell you honestly.”
Schon has made many attempts to reconnect with Perry over the years. But it’s resulted in little besides brief communications about business matters, and no actual meetups. Back in 2018, I asked Perry why he was so reluctant to reestablish even a friendship with Schon. “I’m not sure that’s possible without stirring up hopes of a reunion,” he told me. “Please listen to me. I left the band 31 fucking years ago, my friend. You can still love someone, but not want to work with them. And if they only love you because they want to work with you, that doesn’t feel good to me.”
Today, Schon can only shrug his shoulders when the impasse with Perry comes up. “I liked parts of his album,” he says. “And I was like, ‘Wow, I miss playing with him. I could have added to that.’ I almost took a couple of the songs and overdubbed a few guitars and I was going to send it to him, then I just didn’t.”
Days before the farewell tour rehearsal began, Cain gave an interview to Ultimate Classic Rock where he said that Schon floated the idea to Perry of a guest appearance on the farewell tour. “He says [Perry’s] thinking about it,” Cain said then. “I hope he comes out. It’s never too late. We’ve got 100 shows, so he’s welcome at any one of them…. He didn’t say no — leave it at that.”
Predictably, this led to headlines all across the internet about a possible Journey/Steve Perry reunion. Within hours, Perry put out a statement firmly denying it was even a possibility, closing the door yet again. “To all my friends, I’ve been hearing these recent rumors, and I wanted to speak to you all directly,” he wrote. “While I’m always grateful for the love people still have for Journey, the rumors about me rejoining the band are simply not true, and I want to gently put them to rest. I completely understand why people would hope for that. The music we created together means a great deal to me too. But I’m continuing to explore new creative work and really enjoy working on new music that reflects where I am today.”
Cain says that the interview he did was a deliberate act of provocation. “I just kind of planted a little seed out,” he says. “I was trying to fish a little bit, and say, ‘Well, he’s thinking about it.’ He came immediately out and said, ‘No, I’m not.’ I kind of did that on purpose, because there’s just so much fake AI stuff going on. You just look at it and go, ‘Wait a minute, no, that’s not true. None of this is true.'”
Back in 2018, I brought up Cain’s memoir, Don’t Stop Believin’, to Perry, and he interrupted me before I could even finish, making a face as if he’d just bit into a lemon. “I don’t really care to read Jonathan’s book,” he said. “And I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell me about it. I don’t need to know. It’s none of my business.”
Cain has a hard time understanding this. “He’s never even read the book,” he tells me. “He’s afraid to read it. There’s nothing but adoration in it. There’s nothing but praise. When he came out with his album, people wanted to talk to him about Journey. And he said, ‘Oh, it’s like a knife in my heart.’ No, that was some of the best times of your life, dude. It’s sad he didn’t get to enjoy a lot of it.”
Perry’s unease with fame and his defection from Journey near the peak of their popularity created a lot of heartache for Cain, but he’s come to terms with how it all played out. “[Steve] ran into some strange spirits,” he says. “When I first met him, he was so confident. I thought to myself, ‘I’d like to learn the swagger he has, because I’m not this confident.’ And it sort of rubbed off on me, and he gave me a lot of confidence. And I tried to give it back to him, and it seemed like the longer we were together, the less confident he became. But you know what? He was an architect and a genius and a terrific bandmate, a band leader. I can’t say enough about his work ethic. He taught me what it took to be great.”
They’ve had no direct contact since the Hall of Fame, but an unexpected mediator between them has emerged in the form of Trevor Lukather (son of Toto bandleader Steve Lukather), who happens to be Cain’s new son-in-law. The younger Lukather has become a close friend of Perry’s, and they worked together in 2024 on a new version of the 1986 Journey obscurity “It Could Have Been You. “I communicated some things through him, just to tell Steve that I’m thinking about him,” Cain says. “I remembered why there was no video of us working on any records or creating anything. It’s because Steve said it was sacred time that should never be filmed. Trevor said, ‘Steve said you were right. He can’t believe you remembered.'”
Despite all the battles, past and present, Cain remains immensely proud of Journey’s work. The music even feels spiritual to him at this point. “Being a Christian, I would say God has his hand on this band,” he says. “And we have pleased him. We have pleased the Lord. That’s why I’m here, because I know when I walk on that stage, I’m not going out there alone. We told the world to not stop believing. You could say, ‘Oh Lord, you stand by me, I’m forever yours faithfully.’ You know? You could say, ‘I come to you, God, with open arms … Nothing to hide, believe what I say.'”
BEFORE LONG, IT’S time to head into the arena and finally see the members of Journey come together and make some music. I walk through the empty arena and find an aisle seat on the floor, about 15 rows back, letting various family members and crew sit in front: The Schon clan is on the right, Pineda’s family in the middle, and Cain’s people to the left.
Pineda told me he wasn’t going to sing at full strength in order to save his voice for the following night. But by the third song, “Stone in Love,” he’s unable to hold back, and he starts letting it rip. Per his wishes, there’s no intermission, and “City of Hope” is dropped. Cain sings lead on “Just the Same Way,” Castronovo handles the vocals on “Lights” and “Mother/Father,” and Derlatka delivers “Suzanne,” giving Pineda time to rest. Between a few songs, he even takes some oxygen from a green canister.
Pineda sounds stellar the entire time, and he seems positively joyful. There’s no hint of the downcast fellow I spoke with just a few hours ago. The music of Journey, no matter how many times he’s performed it live, is once again giving him nourishment to carry on. “I’ve really had a bad life,” he told me earlier in the day. “I’ve been hungry and homeless, with no friends, and no place to go.” Back in 2007, he recalls, “I wasn’t even dreaming about this. Me and my wife were just doing our laundry when I got the call from Neal that he wanted me to come over to San Francisco in one week.”
That call kicked off one of the most improbable events in rock history, a completely unknown singer from the Philippines fronting one of the most popular bands on the planet. Despite everything, Pineda’s main feeling remains extreme gratitude. “I love the guys,” he said. “I respect them so much. And I will remain until the last days of my life grateful, and really feeling blessed, for what they’ve done for me.”
The production rehearsal closes with an ecstatic “Don’t Stop Believin’.” There isn’t a single interaction all show between Cain and Schon, who are stationed on opposite ends of the stage, but someone unaware of the history would never know there was any beef. “The first time I had to go on the road after he sued me, I asked my lawyer, ‘What do I do?'” Cain recalled to me earlier that day. “And he said, ‘You get onstage and play the music.’ Again, those fans came to hear the music, and not the drama. I come here to put on the best show I can do. That’s what I come here for.”
A fleet of black SUVs is waiting outside the loading dock doors to take the members of the band to their hotel for the night. Cain and his wife are the only ones headed to a tour bus. His wife is leaving the tour soon, but his two German Shepherds are coming to keep him company, which means they have to set up a series of crates on the bus and in hotel rooms.
I’m about to leave myself when I see Pineda and ask him how he feels after the rehearsal. “I was just trying to bring back that muscle memory,” he says, noting that he used oxygen “because you need to do a lot of breathing when you do these songs.” I ask if he’s ready to do that show 100 more times. He nods, starts to leave, and then doubles back to share one more thought.
“Remember when you were asking me if I was ready to retire?” he asks. “My personal problem really took a toll on me. That’s why I wanted to prioritize my family. It’s not that I hate touring with [Journey]. It’s like the same thing that happened with Steve Perry. He has a hip problem. Me, I have a personal problem that’s taking a toll on me. It’s getting in my head, emotionally. I told them that I was a wreck and needed a little more time so that I could fix my family. But I still have to do this.”
Pain returns to his eyes, and I quietly ask if he’s happy he’s here. “Sixty percent,” he says with a sigh. “The other 40 percent of me is still there in the Philippines.”
And with that, Pineda, Cain, and Schon go their separate ways for the night. Cain stays back on the bus, and Pineda and Schon get into their SUVs and drive off to their hotel — all three of them united for this final chapter of a saga that Schon started 54 years ago, but still worlds apart.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Wed Apr 01, 2026 11:36 am
Ultimately, this article really just confirmed that things are as bad as we all feared - in fact, they may be far far worse. These guys don't talk to each other at all.
Arnel was posting stuff on social media today like #godhelpme #togetthroughthis. To me, he sounds like a liability. What if he harms himself? This circus needs to really stop.
A few quick call outs....
-Arnel needs a better lawyer. He says the 2-year tour was booked without his consultation? Doesn't make any sense to me.
-In addition to a lawyer, Pineda needs a better publicist / manager. Why would he tell Rolling Stone that Jonathan suggested he use a "ghost vocal." Saying something like that puts the band in a bad light - especially given the way things ended with Augeri.
-Pretty wild that Jon admits that he made up the whole 'Perry has been thinking of joining us' story. Doesn't he know that lying is a sin!?! The good book says so! Enjoy eternal damnation, Jon!
-Neal being followed by a film crew for a documentary is pretty off-putting. Even if it is just Iron Mike with an iphone, the focus should really be on the band's last tour - not a Neal vanity project.
-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
-It is insightful to read how Cain desperately wanted/wants an actual manager, but Neal just wants to run the show.
-Had to laugh and SMH when Neal said "Todd is a tremendous singer" - as if anyone is paying 2026 exorbitant ticket prices to see Todd Jensen belt out Journey? C'mon.
-Why does Neal keep insisting that Soto was canned because there was no chemistry in the studio between JSS and Jon? JSS put vocals on one pre-written demo (Winds of Freedom) and Cain emailed JSS complimenting his Perryish vocals. I don't think they ever went in the studio or spent any time collaborating. It's just BS.
Arnel was posting stuff on social media today like #godhelpme #togetthroughthis. To me, he sounds like a liability. What if he harms himself? This circus needs to really stop.
A few quick call outs....
-Arnel needs a better lawyer. He says the 2-year tour was booked without his consultation? Doesn't make any sense to me.
-In addition to a lawyer, Pineda needs a better publicist / manager. Why would he tell Rolling Stone that Jonathan suggested he use a "ghost vocal." Saying something like that puts the band in a bad light - especially given the way things ended with Augeri.
-Pretty wild that Jon admits that he made up the whole 'Perry has been thinking of joining us' story. Doesn't he know that lying is a sin!?! The good book says so! Enjoy eternal damnation, Jon!
-Neal being followed by a film crew for a documentary is pretty off-putting. Even if it is just Iron Mike with an iphone, the focus should really be on the band's last tour - not a Neal vanity project.
-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
-It is insightful to read how Cain desperately wanted/wants an actual manager, but Neal just wants to run the show.
-Had to laugh and SMH when Neal said "Todd is a tremendous singer" - as if anyone is paying 2026 exorbitant ticket prices to see Todd Jensen belt out Journey? C'mon.
-Why does Neal keep insisting that Soto was canned because there was no chemistry in the studio between JSS and Jon? JSS put vocals on one pre-written demo (Winds of Freedom) and Cain emailed JSS complimenting his Perryish vocals. I don't think they ever went in the studio or spent any time collaborating. It's just BS.
"I think we should all sue this women for depriving us of our God given right to go down with a clear mind, and good thoughts." - Stu, Consumate Pussy Eater
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Gideon » Wed Apr 01, 2026 12:50 pm
Insanely raw, revealing, and compelling interview. Heartbreaking in so many respects.
TNC, I never doubt you, but can you confirm/source this? I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
TNC, I never doubt you, but can you confirm/source this? I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
'Nothing was bigger for Journey than 1981’s “Escape” album. “I have to attribute that to Jonathan coming in and joining the writing team,” Steve Perry (Feb 2012).'
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Wed Apr 01, 2026 12:57 pm
Gideon wrote:Insanely raw, revealing, and compelling interview. Heartbreaking in so many respects.-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
TNC, I never doubt you, but can you confirm/source this? I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
Trev posted about his new girlfriend on social media in September 2025. Her name is Dorothy. He was on tour with her. It was on his Instagram story. He mentioned "a year after an unexpected divorce..."
Madison also changed her profile back from Cain-Lukather to just Cain. I have receipts, if you wanna DM me.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Andrew » Wed Apr 01, 2026 5:31 pm
Gideon wrote:Insanely raw, revealing, and compelling interview. Heartbreaking in so many respects.-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
TNC, I never doubt you, but can you confirm/source this? I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
She did a real number on him. But it won't be talked about.
Glad he's happy. Great guy.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by jestor92 » Wed Apr 01, 2026 9:55 pm
What I found interesting is that Augeri was asked about the lip syncing and he said he legally can’t discuss it. Cain apparently suggested that Arnel use it. Arnel said he currently doesn’t use any help.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by efrasjourney » Thu Apr 02, 2026 4:31 am
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Inside the Drama and Excitement of Journey’s Farewell Tour
To draw its wildly successful touring career to a close, the band has had to sort through decades of complicated history
By Andy Greene
Thank you!
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Monker » Thu Apr 02, 2026 7:54 am
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Gideon wrote:Insanely raw, revealing, and compelling interview. Heartbreaking in so many respects.-Someone should tell RS that Trev Lukather is no longer Cain's son-in-law. They divorced pretty quickly.
TNC, I never doubt you, but can you confirm/source this? I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
Trev posted about his new girlfriend on social media in September 2025. Her name is Dorothy. He was on tour with her. It was on his Instagram story. He mentioned "a year after an unexpected divorce..."
Madison also changed her profile back from Cain-Lukather to just Cain. I have receipts, if you wanna DM me.
Whoah, Dorothy as in Dorothy Martin and the band Dorothy? I just discovered her a few months ago and wow she has an incredible voice. She reminds me of Adele and sometimes Grace Slick. Dorothy does a lot of hard rock but I think she really shines when they go into heavily blues influenced rock. I think she's incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd0GEy5nl3A
And something Jonathan would like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-oVdHKr4uY
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Fri Apr 03, 2026 12:22 am
Monker wrote:
Whoah, Dorothy as in Dorothy Martin and the band Dorothy? I just discovered her a few months ago and wow she has an incredible voice. She reminds me of Adele and sometimes Grace Slick. Dorothy does a lot of hard rock but I think she really shines when they go into heavily blues influenced rock. I think she's incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd0GEy5nl3A
And something Jonathan would like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-oVdHKr4uY
Yep. I believe so!
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by danielb » Fri Apr 03, 2026 3:24 am
What a well written and atmospheric piece. The uncensored nature of it almost makes you wonder if Schon and Cain direct this soap opera intentionally with the aim of getting publicity. Or maybe they really are this dysfunctional as a band.
In any case, TNC's claims about Arnel using autotune can finally be put to rest
In any case, TNC's claims about Arnel using autotune can finally be put to rest
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Fri Apr 03, 2026 4:18 am
danielb wrote:
In any case, TNC's claims about Arnel using autotune can finally be put to rest
Suuuuuure.
In this article, Arnel says his wishes/requests are ignored by Jon and Neal. So what would makes you think the FOH engineer honors them? Autotune is/was being applied. They probably just don't even tell him. He's in a cone of silence.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by danielb » Fri Apr 03, 2026 4:27 am
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Autotune is/was being applied.
Time to present some cold evidence
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Fri Apr 03, 2026 7:02 am
danielb wrote:The_Noble_Cause wrote:Autotune is/was being applied.
Time to present some cold evidence
Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe. There are still die-hards who solemnly believe that Augeri sang completely live on the Generations tour too. It's called being in denial.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Loneman1 » Fri Apr 03, 2026 9:57 am
Finally got a chance to sit and read it and......wow. Like TNC said, things are a bit worse sounding than we even thought. Yikes. Well I hope they all survive the tour, especially Arnel. The dude has been amazing in Journey for all these years, but it really sounds like he is long overdue for calling it a career and going to sort out his life. Neal will be doing his own thing after this tour and I had my doubts Arnel is going to be a part of it for awhile, but this interview pretty much confirmed it IMO.
Rock on,
Eric
Eric
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Monker » Fri Apr 03, 2026 1:23 pm
The_Noble_Cause wrote:danielb wrote:The_Noble_Cause wrote:Autotune is/was being applied.
Time to present some cold evidence
Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe. There are still die-hards who solemnly believe that Augeri sang completely live on the Generations tour too. It's called being in denial.
Well, IMO, I doubt that it is up to Arnel. I recall Augeri saying a couple years ago that all he could say is he sang every song. I don't think it was up to Augeri either. IMO, all Neal has to do is tell whoever is handling the sound mix to start autotuning or to use the prerecorded vocal and they will do it...without Arnel's permission, or even knowledge. And, he will sing the song but it will not be the vocal the audience hears. He's on contract and has no real choice...same as Augeri.
And, yes, Fil has already proven autotune was used a few years ago and at the playoff game a couple months ago. If people complain enough about another more recent performance, I'm sure he would analyze that too.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Monker » Fri Apr 03, 2026 1:30 pm
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Monker wrote:
Whoah, Dorothy as in Dorothy Martin and the band Dorothy? I just discovered her a few months ago and wow she has an incredible voice. She reminds me of Adele and sometimes Grace Slick. Dorothy does a lot of hard rock but I think she really shines when they go into heavily blues influenced rock. I think she's incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd0GEy5nl3A
And something Jonathan would like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-oVdHKr4uY
Yep. I believe so!
No offense to Maddison...but if it is true that they split up and he is now with Dorothy, Trev traded up. I've been so impressed with Dorothy...she is so talented. If I were Trev, I'd leave The Affect and attempt to join Dorothy full time.
BTW, the "Jonathan" song I posted above...Trev had a hand is writing and playing it, and was a major contributor on the album it is on. That was in 2022.
This sounds so much like Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick...it just blows me away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8_EEqhwjk
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by kmjrr » Sat Apr 04, 2026 12:13 am
Monker wrote:Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe.
And, yes, Fil has already proven autotune was used a few years ago and at the playoff game a couple months ago. If people complain enough about another more recent performance, I'm sure he would analyze that too.
Phil has proven that Deen lipped the halftime show, and that auto tune was being used at a show, so it it likely that auto tune has been used in shows. But Arnel does not lip as he does not stick to the exact performance each time as other lipping performers do. I have not seen a video or been to a performance yet where there is any suggestion of him lipping. Also, auto tune likely is and has been used, but not consistently. Too many out of key performances that auto tune would easily correct. Phil has not demonstrated Arnel lipping.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Arkansas » Sat Apr 04, 2026 12:55 am
Monker wrote:This sounds so much like Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick...it just blows me away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8_EEqhwjk
Definitely channeling Jefferson Airplane. I'd love to see/read Grace Slick's take on this.
Thanks for the vid. Love it!
later~
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Sat Apr 04, 2026 1:18 am
kmjrr wrote:Monker wrote:Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe.
And, yes, Fil has already proven autotune was used a few years ago and at the playoff game a couple months ago. If people complain enough about another more recent performance, I'm sure he would analyze that too.
Phil has proven that Deen lipped the halftime show, and that auto tune was being used at a show, so it it likely that auto tune has been used in shows. But Arnel does not lip as he does not stick to the exact performance each time as other lipping performers do. I have not seen a video or been to a performance yet where there is any suggestion of him lipping. Also, auto tune likely is and has been used, but not consistently. Too many out of key performances that auto tune would easily correct. Phil has not demonstrated Arnel lipping.
None of us said he was.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by kmjrr » Sat Apr 04, 2026 7:10 am
The_Noble_Cause wrote:None of us said he was.
Monker wrote:IMO, all Neal has to do is tell whoever is handling the sound mix to start autotuning or to use the prerecorded vocal and they will do it...without Arnel's permission, or even knowledge. And, he will sing the song but it will not be the vocal the audience hears. He's on contract and has no real choice...same as Augeri.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Journey/Survivor » Sat Apr 04, 2026 9:15 am
The_Noble_Cause wrote:danielb wrote:The_Noble_Cause wrote:Autotune is/was being applied.
Time to present some cold evidence
Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe. There are still die-hards who solemnly believe that Augeri sang completely live on the Generations tour too. It's called being in denial.
I'm not saying that they haven't used it. Maybe they have? But no, Fil did not PROVE it. He's not God. Just because he may have come up with something that makes it appear that they have used autotune, does not mean that he PROVED anything.
You have made up your mind, and you're gonna stick with it, just the same way as you are saying that people are doing the other way around. There are a couple of people who post in this forum that I don't know why they even bother? Seeing as it seems to be their mission to shit all over Journey. It gets really fucking old after a while! But, I suppose that I just answered my own question about why they still post on here? It appears to be so they can shit all over the band.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by Journey/Survivor » Sat Apr 04, 2026 9:20 am
kmjrr wrote:Monker wrote:Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe.
And, yes, Fil has already proven autotune was used a few years ago and at the playoff game a couple months ago. If people complain enough about another more recent performance, I'm sure he would analyze that too.
Phil has proven that Deen lipped the halftime show, and that auto tune was being used at a show, so it it likely that auto tune has been used in shows. But Arnel does not lip as he does not stick to the exact performance each time as other lipping performers do. I have not seen a video or been to a performance yet where there is any suggestion of him lipping. Also, auto tune likely is and has been used, but not consistently. Too many out of key performances that auto tune would easily correct. Phil has not demonstrated Arnel lipping.
For the record, my previous post about people shitting all over Journey was in no way directed at you. But, you should keep in mind that it is a well known fact that TV appearances are quite often required to be lip synched. It wouldn't matter which bands we're talking about. They have to lip synch to their songs on certain TV shows.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Sat Apr 04, 2026 9:52 am
Journey/Survivor wrote:You have made up your mind, and you're gonna stick with it, just the same way as you are saying that people are doing the other way around. There are a couple of people who post in this forum that I don't know why they even bother? Seeing as it seems to be their mission to shit all over Journey. It gets really fucking old after a while! But, I suppose that I just answered my own question about why they still post on here? It appears to be so they can shit all over the band.
Fil uses facts and analysis. You're going personal and emotional because of the opposite - you don't have any.
I'm not sure how "my mind is made up" when I just said how the band recently stopped using autotune at Arnel's personal request. Why would I say that If I was pushing an agenda? My only objective is the truth. We had types like you during the 2005 lipping scandal accusing fans of all sorts of pernicious motives.
As for those who allegedly "shit all over Journey".... did you actually read the RS article? The band is doing a fine job of that themselves. Arnel, in particular, sounds like he's in a waking nightmare.
The majority of posters in this forum are very respectful - ESPECIALLY in comparison to the days of Perryloons vs. Wigglers, Tapegate, etc. But if you have a problem, you could certainly always run to the moderator.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by kmjrr » Sat Apr 04, 2026 10:25 am
Journey/Survivor wrote:kmjrr wrote:Monker wrote:Fil proved that it was used by the band multiple times already. I did present evidence on this tour. You denied and feigned ignorance. From what I understand Arnel told the band that he wanted no assistance. Now they are w/out auto-tune but detuning. I really don't care what you believe.
And, yes, Fil has already proven autotune was used a few years ago and at the playoff game a couple months ago. If people complain enough about another more recent performance, I'm sure he would analyze that too.
Phil has proven that Deen lipped the halftime show, and that auto tune was being used at a show, so it it likely that auto tune has been used in shows. But Arnel does not lip as he does not stick to the exact performance each time as other lipping performers do. I have not seen a video or been to a performance yet where there is any suggestion of him lipping. Also, auto tune likely is and has been used, but not consistently. Too many out of key performances that auto tune would easily correct. Phil has not demonstrated Arnel lipping.
For the record, my previous post about people shitting all over Journey was in no way directed at you. But, you should keep in mind that it is a well known fact that TV appearances are quite often required to be lip synched. It wouldn't matter which bands we're talking about. They have to lip synch to their songs on certain TV shows.
Yes I agree, the lip synching at the halftime show is no indication of what happens at journey concerts. I wouldn't doubt if Journey and other acts are told to lip synch otherwise they don't perform.
I do trust Fil's analysis. But he only analyzed the halftime performance by Deen and the Journey concert where auto tune was left on while the band spoke between songs. Because of the latter, I suspect that autotune has been used during shows. But not often. I've heard too many off-key performances by Arnel the last few years to believe otherwise. I've also been to many Augeri-fronted Journey concerts where his pitch was off. And I'm not saying that "tapegate" didn't happen. By the time I attended that tour JSS was fronting the band. I'll be attending my 27th Journey show (since 2001) on April 9, main floor around the 15th row, and I'll be curious to see how it goes. I wish the best for Arnel, he seems like a good guy. I met him in 2008 and he was the same kind man you see in interviews.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by danielb » Sat Apr 04, 2026 3:32 pm
The_Noble_Cause wrote:I did present evidence on this tour.
No, you didn't. You referred to various clips and said it was obvious they're using autotune. No further elaboration made and no evidence presented. If you can present a Fil style analysis from the current tour, I am the first to listen.
So far, I haven't seen anything to support they're using autotune on this tour. If they had been, why would Arnel continuously be off pitch here and there?
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Sat Apr 04, 2026 10:42 pm
danielb wrote:No, you didn't. You referred to various clips and said it was obvious they're using autotune. No further elaboration made and no evidence presented.
Wow. You all (danielb, kmjrr, journey/survivor) sound like variations on the same pod person. It's scary.
I bet if I searched your post history, the three of you didn't even start posting here till around the time Arnel joined or, long after Steve A. left.
You act as if the band is as pure as the driven snow and somehow ABOVE engaging in vocal assistance. Those of us who have actually been around, know that is simply NOT the case.
danielb wrote:If you can present a Fil style analysis from the current tour, I am the first to listen.
I've never engaged in forensic analysis. Never claimed to. Even during Tapegate, we left that up to Jeremey H. All he did is prove my claims of lip-syncing were correct. I didn't need forensic analysis for that then (or auto-tune now). However, like I said, they have apparently stopped using it and are now detuning.
danielb wrote:So far, I haven't seen anything to support they're using autotune on this tour. If they had been, why would Arnel continuously be off pitch here and there?
This was already addressed - "autotune tunes chromatically so if Arnel is closer to the note a 1/2 step below it will auto tune him down to incorrect note rather than up to correct one."
Or, as I was told mid-March:
"Arnel doesn’t want any help or assistance. He’s getting too out of tune for auto tune and he refuses the offers for a vocal coach. He doesn’t wanna be there."
Believe what you want.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by kmjrr » Sat Apr 04, 2026 11:28 pm
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Wow. You all (danielb, kmjrr, journey/survivor) sound like variations on the same pod person. It's scary.
I bet if I searched your post history, the three of you didn't even start posting here till around the time Arnel joined or, long after Steve A. left.
You act as if the band is as pure as the driven snow and somehow ABOVE engaging in vocal assistance. Those of us who have actually been around, know that is simply NOT the case.
Oh fun, is this a game? Nice! Well, I hung around here much earlier, but if we're going by first post, that was Jan. 1, 2007. First Journey concert? July 2001, Sandstone Amphitheatre in Kansas with John Waite and Peter Frampton. Unfortunately never saw the classic lineup in the 80s. But 26 shows in all. Fortunate to meet all former and current band members except George Tickner including Steve Perry, Robert Fleischman, Ansley Dunbar, Gregg Rolie, JSS. My next and likely last show is Thursday.
First Journey album purchased? 1981, when I was 16.
And I most definitely have not acted as if the band is pure as snow and above vocal assistance.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by danielb » Sat Apr 04, 2026 11:54 pm
danielb wrote:So far, I haven't seen anything to support they're using autotune on this tour. If they had been, why would Arnel continuously be off pitch here and there?
The_Noble_Cause wrote:This was already addressed - "autotune tunes chromatically so if Arnel is closer to the note a 1/2 step below it will auto tune him down to incorrect note rather than up to correct one."
As I wrote previously, why would they use Autotune configured with a setting that adjusts Arnel's vocal to hit the wrong notes? The whole purpose of Autotune is to make a singer sound good. I trust Journey can afford sound engineers that know how to work Autotune.
When Auto-Tune is set to "Chromatic," it is instructed to treat all 12 semitones in an octave (every white and black key on a piano) as potential, valid target notes.
How it works: Auto-Tune calculates the pitch of the incoming vocal in real-time and snaps it to the mathematically closest note in the 12-tone scale.
The Problem: If the intended note is D (a whole step up) but the singer (Arnel) is flat, falling 1/2 step below and closer to C#, Chromatic Mode will "correct" the voice down to the C# rather than up to the D.
The Result: The, singer sounds perfectly in tune, but on the wrong note, which can create a jarring or "wrong" harmony depending on the melody.
How to Fix This
If you are having this issue, here are the standard ways to solve it:
Switch from Chromatic to Scale Mode: Instead of Chromatic, select the specific key (e.g., D Major) and scale (e.g., Major) of the song. This restricts the notes the software can pull to, ensuring it only chooses notes within that key.
Remove Notes (Custom Scale): In the software's advanced view, you can manually "remove" the wrong note from the scale (e.g., remove C#). If C# is removed, Auto-Tune will be forced to skip it and jump to the next closest note, which would be D.
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Re: New Rolling Stone Interview
by The_Noble_Cause » Sun Apr 05, 2026 12:41 am
danielb wrote:As I wrote previously, why would they use Autotune configured with a setting that adjusts Arnel's vocal to hit the wrong notes? The whole purpose of Autotune is to make a singer sound good.
Already addressed this too.
What do you think "he's getting too out of tune for auto tune means " means?
In the clips I provided, Arnel is so off key at times that the software can't adjust automatically to the desired note. It only works if you stay close. The further off you are, the more obvious it becomes.
danielb wrote: I trust Journey can afford sound engineers that know how to work Autotune.
Well, that was your first mistake....
One would also "trust" (or assume) that Journey could afford a proper manager too. Do they have one?
One would also trust that Journey would have an updated Twitter account. Do they?
The entire autotune allegations initially came to light because it was accidentally left running during Jon and Arnel talking to the crowd.
Guess the engineer was taking a shit. Clearly the best of the best.
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