Journey's farewell tour kicked off in February in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and it'll keep going for at least the next three months, without an officially announced end in sight. Before the tour started, fans weren't even sure who would along for the trek. Founding guitarist Neal Schon and longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain famously don't get along, to the point where they were recently suing each other. Singer Arnel Pineda is facing domestic violence charges in Philippines, his homeland. Neither Cain nor Pineda joined the band for pre-tour appearances. Now that the tour is finally underway, both Cain and Pineda are on it. But based on what Pineda says in a recent interview, he's not there by choice.
Rolling Stone caught up with Journey in Hershey as the tour was just starting, and the resulting feature story is fascinating in all sorts of fucked up ways. (I knew that Cain was a religious Republican, for instance, but I did not realize that he's married to "a televangelist who serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s White House Faith Office.") In the piece, Arnel Pineda denies the domestic violence allegations against him and says that they're merely the result of a messy divorce: "I am not perfect, but I never laid a hand on her." He also claims that he told the band he didn't want to do this tour and that they made the plans without his input:
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." 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.
Pineda claims that he tried to leave the band twice: "I said to them I wanted to retire because of my personal problems. No answer. Obviously, they don’t want to find another singer." He says that Cain once told him to use a "ghost singer," and Cain denies it. Also, Pineda denies internet rumors that he uses Auto-Tune onstage.
Pineda says that he agrees with the many YouTube commenters who have unfavorably compared him to classic-era Journey singer Steve Perry: "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." (For his part, Perry denied any speculation that he might join Journey at some point on this tour.)
The Rolling Stone story also includes Schon's response to Pineda's concerns:
It’s been very confusing. 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.
In the story, both Schon and Pineda says that the band's contract with tour promoters AEG stipulated that Pineda had to be on board for the tour. AEG did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for comment. There's a lot more in the Rolling Stone piece, including stuff about the Schon/Cain lawsuits and Cain's decision to perform Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" at Mar-A-Lago. Read it all here.
Seemingly in response to the Rolling Stone piece, Neal Schon posted a Facebook statement. Without mentioning Pineda by name, Schon essentially says that the band members are contractually locked into the tour: "For clarity, no one was ever prevented by me from making their own personal decisions. At the same time, we were all advised by our representatives that there are contractual obligations tied to touring that need to be honored."
Meanwhile, the tour rolls on. Tonight, Journey are at Denny Sanford PREMIER Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I'm sure it'll be a magical night.
