BELIEVE IT: No end in sight for Journey

the vindicator

The MOVIE never ends for some rock bands.

Take Journey, for example, who have become one of the world’s biggest acts over the last three decades. Journey will headline a sold-out Aug. 20 concert at Youngstown’s Covelli Centre, with Heart.

The band is riding atop the classic rock resurgence and gaining new fans in middle schools throughout the land who are playing "Don't Stop Believin'" on Guitar Hero.

Journey, which formed in San Francisco in the 1970s, also cemented a place in television history a couple of years ago when “Don’t Stop Believin’” was used in the final scene of the series finale of “The Sopranos.”

On the other hand, Pittsburgh Penguins fans might have gotten their fill of the song. Playing "Don't Stop" is a ritual at Detroit Red Wings home games. During the Stanley Cup Finals this spring (which the Penguins won), viewers had to hear the Red Wings faithful shout "south Detroit" every time "Don't Stop" was played. The loudspeaker even went silent at the appropriate time — "Just a city boy, born and raised in ...." — to let the fans hear themselves scream.

Journey’s biggest years were the late ’70s and early ’80s, when a string of power ballads and rock songs dominated radio. Those songs included “Any Way You Want it,” “Open Arms,” “Separate Ways,” “Wheel in the Sky,” “Who’s Crying Now,” “Stone In Love,” “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” “Lights” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” (there it is again), which is the top-selling catalog track in iTunes history with more than two million downloads.

The band broke up in the mid-’80s but reunited in the 1990s. Along the way it sold 47 million albums in the United States and 80 million worldwide.

Lead singer Steve Perry, whose clear tenor voice had become the band’s trademark, quit the band in 1998, and a couple of replacements were brought in to sing for tours.

In December 2007, Journey hired Filipino singer Arnel Pineda after lead guitarist Neal Schon saw him on YouTube singing covers of Journey songs.

Pineda is still with the band.

Journey has been eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2000, but Gregg Rolie is the only current or former member of Journey who has been inducted — and that came as a member of his former band, Santana. Perry is eligible for induction as a solo artist as of this year.