Journey acquires new lead singer

Guitarist Neal Schon is responsible for finding the new frontman.

By PAUL LIBERATORE

MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL

NOVATO, Calif. — The classic rock band Journey has a history of rags-to-riches lead singers.

The golden-voiced Steve Perry, the operatic tenor who sang the band’s anthemic ’80s hits, was plucked from a construction job in a Central Valley farm town.

Steve Augeri, who replaced Perry in the mid-’90s, was working in a Gap store when he got the call to join the band.

Now we have the cyberspace Cinderella story of Arnel Pineda, Journey’s brand-new frontman.

Even Pineda himself, “the Steve Perry of the Philippines,” hasn’t wrapped his head completely around what has happened to him.

“Who in their right mind would believe they would call someone like me, in the Philippines?” the boyish 40-year-old said from his Marin County, Calif., hotel room. “This is Journey. They are superstars in the music business.”

A new lead singer is especially crucial at this point in the band’s 35-year career. No longer just an ’80s nostalgia act, the group has suddenly become au courant, thanks to some mobsters from New Jersey.

When “The Sopranos”’ final episode made pop culture history in June, ending with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” the once-mighty stadium rockers found themselves back in the national consciousness, positioned for a comeback.

Not a good time to be without a frontman.

Since Perry and Journey parted ways a decade ago, it’s been a revolving door for Journey vocalists. The previous lead singer, Jeff Scott Soto, was reportedly fired last summer after a brief stint. He’d taken over from Augeri, who dropped out in 2006 with voice problems after eight years with the band.

Enter Arnel Pineda, whose hiring was announced in early December. He talked about his unlikely rock stardom one afternoon recently, hours before he was to get on a plane for the long flight back to his home in Quezon City.

“He’s got the legacy sound and then some,” said Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, speaking from his home in Novato. “He’s blessed with tons of emotion and soul, stuff you can’t teach. He’s a find.”

Journey guitarist Neal Schon, who’s trying to return to the Journey sound from the Steve Perry era, gets credit for finding Pineda in an intense Internet search.

“I was frustrated about not having a singer,” Schon said. “So I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody.”

But his tenacity paid off when he stumbled on a video of Pineda singing Journey’s hit “Faithfully” with a Filipino cover band called the Zoo.

“After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I’d heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true,” he said. “I thought, ‘He can’t be that good.”’

After getting Pineda a work visa, the band flew the singer to California in August for an audition. It didn’t take long for him to prove he really is as good as Schon had hoped. “Right off, they told me I had the gig,” he said.

Two months later, he returned to record 11 new songs he had never before sung with the band.

“I only learned them when I arrived here,” he said. “They didn’t give me an advance tape, so it was even harder. There was a lot of pressure. Sometimes I didn’t sleep. There were days I only slept two or three hours and I still had to learn the songs and record them.”

Since English is Pineda’s second language — his first is Tagalog — he worked on phrasing and diction with an accent reduction coach.

Journey will tour the United States this summer. The new album is due in the spring.