‘Part of culture’
Journey guitarist says legendary band ‘never set out’ to make hits
Neal Schon sleeps five hours a night — and he’s learned to function on that amount of sleep.
“I have one of those active, relentless minds,” he says in a recent interview. “I can’t shut it off. It’s part of who I am.”
Schon is the guitarist for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Journey. The band is on a co-headlining tour with Def Leppard.
“The tour is doing amazingly well,” he says. “It feels great to be able to be into my fourth decade of music and the popularity continues to grow. People are loving ours and Def Leppard’s music. It’s kind of like it’s been etched in stone in people’s minds. It’s a great feeling.”
Journey formed in 1973 in San Francisco and has undergone several phases over the years.
It found commercial success from 1978 to 1987 with such megahits as “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Open Arms,” “Faithfully,” “Separate Ways,” “Wheel in the Sky” and “Any Way You Want It.”
Rounding out the band’s current lineup with Schon are Ross Valory, Jonathan Cain, Steve Smith and Arnel Pineda.
Although the band hasn’t released new music since 2011’s “Eclipse,” the 64-year-old says each time out on the road is like a greatest hits tour.
“It’s great to not have to think about playing new songs,” he says. “I get on stage and have fun performing these songs. They have a place in people’s lives, and that’s all we could hope for. It’s humbling because we never set out or wrote songs specifically to be hits. People connected with them, and they became a part of culture.”
Schon has been a member of the band since its inception in 1973.
To be able to play guitar for a living still excites him.
“(Steve) Perry used to call me ‘fingers of joy’ when I played guitar,” he says of the band’s original singer. “I fell in love with playing guitar and wanted to always create an environment where I wasn’t dictated to within music. I wanted to have freedom and have created that life for me. I play every day to get better as a musician. There’s nothing else I could ever see myself doing.”
Schon enjoys the tours with the other band members and says there’s a camaraderie that’s unmatched.
He does also like the opportunities to work on his solo material.
“I did a solo project with covers of big ballads set with a 100-piece orchestra behind me,” he says. “I worked with Narada Walden, who has worked with Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey and Jeff Beck. I never had an opportunity like this, and I jumped on it. It has a lot of elements in it and should be out next year.”