Iconic band still filling stadiums on 50th anniversary tour

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In the opening seconds of Journey’s 50th anniversary Saddledome show on Thursday, there was a brief moment when guitarist Neal Schon stood alone in the spotlight.

It didn’t last long. Schon played a few notes of a slow-burn intro before the rest of the band joined in and singer Arnel Pineda bounced on stage to sing set opener Only the Young. But it was a fitting tribute since Schon is the only member of Journey to have been in the band for all 50 years and one of only two, the other being keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who were there for the band’s Steve Perry-fronted heyday in the 1980s.

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Not that it really mattered. On Thursday night, the band offered a jukebox set that found them faithfully banging out hit after hit, most sung by Pineda in an eerily accurate facsimile of Perry’s blaring yowl. Now 16 years into his tenure with the classic-rock outfit, the vocalist has actually been imitating Steve Perry for longer than Steve Perry sang in Journey. All of which lent a agreeable familiarity to the proceedings. Tight musicianship, minimal between-song chit-chat and relatively straight-forward stage and lighting design made for.a pleasant, old-school stadium show. The biggest, and perhaps only, surprise of the evening was that the band snuck Don’t Stop Believin’, arguably its most famous song, so early into their set.

Before long, the crowd was gently swaying to the familiar melodies of Lights, Send Her My Love and Who’s Crying Now.

Not unlike his predecessor, Pineda is at his best when offering soaring takes on weepy Perry-era ballads such as Open Arms and Faithfully. Given that Schon and Cain were the longest-serving members, both were also given time to show off their virtuosity. That included a beautifully played piano solo by Cain, although he seemed to be having much more fun when pounding out some hell-bent boogie-woogie on the outro of Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’. Schon, a busy but melodic hard-rock player, was also given two opportunities to show off his chops, including a crowd-pleasing run through our national anthem. But he really shone on two of the more obscure numbers: a scorching, riff-heavy run through 1981’s Dead or Alive and a fiery take on the surprisingly fast-and-heavy 2022 single Let It Rain.

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That was the only song the band played from its newest album, Freedom. It may be called the Freedom tour, but it’s really the “no surprises” tour.

On that note, Journey could not have found a more appropriate opener than Toto, a band of session players who found wild radio success in the early 1980s with radio hits such as Africa and Rosanna. The familiar crisp guitar lines and angelic choir-like harmonies on openers Girl Goodbye and Hold The Line set a nostalgic tone early on. As with the headliners, Toto is down to one original member as a touring unit, guitarist Steve Lukather. But the band’s harmonies were handily handled by the backup band and a tambourine-tapping Joseph Williams, who sang with the band in the mid-1980s and rejoined in the early 2000s.

The audience did have to sit through a few middling and earnest ballads and a cruise-ship cover-band version The Beatles’ I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends before being rewarded with drawn-out, sing-a-long takes on Rosanna and Africa.

It’s interesting to ponder why Journey is still filling stadiums these days rather the circling the oldies circuit with REO Speedwagon, Styx, Loverboy, Kansas and other acts that rock critics used to sniffingly dismiss as faceless corporate rockers. Journey certainly got a boost when their songs were used on the television series Glee and after Don’t Stop Believin’ was used to soundtrack Tony Soprano’s ambiguous fate in the 2007 finale of The Sopranos.

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But it may simply be due to the sheer number of hits they had over the years. Even for those of us old enough to remember the band’s dominance of rock radio, it’s easy to forget how many  radio-friendly hooks Journey created. Which is all that matters for bands trading in nostalgia, including those doing it in packed stadiums. Neither Journey nor their aforementioned “faceless” brethren had outsized personalities. While Steve Perry had a somewhat distinctive voice and his disappearing act in the 1990s  made him a bit of an enigma, he was no Freddie Mercury. Hell, he wasn’t even Meat Loaf. In fact,  both drummer Deen Castronovo and keyboardist Jason Derlatka were able to reasonably duplicate Perry’s elastic over-emoting Thursday night when they sang lead on Mother, Father and Girl Can’t Help it, respectively.  It’s the song, not the singer. Judging by the enthusiastic response and near sell-out numbers at the Saddledome, the fans will be satisfied as long as Journey keeps trotting out the hits.

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