Jana wrote:Enigma869 wrote:RocknRoll wrote: I think Schon just really enjoys creating msuic and playing to crowds from the stage.

That's what he does.
I don't disagree that Neal doesn't enjoy playing to crowds. The guy is an attention whore. That said, he's going to be one of these guys who will never know when to quit. When Arnel runs out of voice (and he will), Schon will be perusing Youtube for the next 25 year old Perry wanna be!
Neal said last year he could retire financially if he wanted to. I don't call it an attention whore. He has a love of performing. He said he wanted to be like B.B. King playing into his '80s. That doesn't mean Journey, but he will always be involved in projects in some form or another I'm sure, even if it's just on a smaller scale as he gets older. He is more like Tom Jones and Tony Bennett, who just truly have a love of performing and do it as long as they are able. I don't see Neal retired and just hanging out, golfing when he hits' 60. He's a musician and that's his life. Nothing wrong with that.
And why wouldn't you want to do it? Performing is like a high... as long as you can do it, you'll want to do it, provided you can handle all the not-so-fun things that go into it (traveling, lack of sleep, crummy hotels, bad food, etc)
Athletics is the same thing... those that can handle all the toils of the road and pressure of competition have a hard time giving it up at the end of the day. Just so happens that the window of opportunity there is obviously a lot slimmer than a musician's, especially an instrumentalist.