iProng classic interview: Journey

[Chubby321]

iProng classic interview: Journey
Credit goes to Ambassador2

October 26, 2009

iProng Magazine talks with Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain about his legendary band and his relationship with Apple products…
Journey interview

interview by Bill Palmer

Now in its fourth decade, Journey is the stuff of legend. The band that started as a post-Santana collaboration and then evolved into a Steve Perry-fronted hit machine has fans of all ages worldwide to this day, but for the past decade they’ve been trying to find their next great lead singer. Now, thanks to the internet, they’ve finally found their man in the most unlikely of places.



I had the good fortune to speak extensively with keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who’s been part of Journey since long before the internet existed, and he shared with me everything from how they found Arnel Pineda to why he’s been a user of Apple products for fifteen years and how he’d raised his kids on Macs, iPods, and now iPhones – along with an intriguing tale of how the iPod played a direct role in the production of Journey’s new album Revelations…



Did you really find your new lead singer Arnel Pineda on YouTube?

That’s just about it man, nothing more to it. We were so amazed at his prowess. And then Neal’s whole thing was this is undoctored, this is no ProTools, this is just a guy, you know? And when he’s singing Don’t Stop Believin’ and Faithfully, you go well, that’s just hard to do. We know how hard it is to get that sound, you know? And we dug the fact that he has his own thing. It’s like he sounds like us, but he still sounds like himself.

Did Neal call you guys up and say “I found somebody on YouTube, I want to bring him in”? Did you think he was joking?

No, cause I was trolling YouTube as well. I was looking too, cause I just wanted to see who’s out there, you know? And I actually had found a kid from this tribute band who was really really nails. It was close, you know? But maybe too much like you know who. There already was a you know who. So Neal kept saying there’s got to be somebody else. He spent a few more days and then he calls me and goes “I found this kid from frickin’ Manila, man!” And I was like, how are we gonna get ahold of this guy?

So management and Neal got together, Neal spent days on all this stuff, getting Arnel situated. At first he sent Arnel an email, and Arnel didn’t believe him, you know? Like “you’re not Neal Schon! Send me your phone number, call me, let me talk to you. I ain’t gonna buy this until I talk to you.” So then Arnel finally talked to him and he said “holy shit, you are Neal Schon.”

So here’s a club singer, singing in Manlia, getting a call from Journey. And the fresh part about it is that he’s this really genuine guy, you know, and he’s as authentic as it gets. When he showed up here we were like you’ve gotta be kidding, this guy’s a prince, you know? And then when he opened his mouth we were like oh my God, we’ve gotta figure out how to do this now.

So then it was all of that. Visas and work permits, immigration and embassies, and he had a manager and we had to deal with him, and then all this stuff. It wasn’t easy. But we’re all down with it now, and thanks to technology, he’s our new boy.

So you think this is the guy?

It’s up to him, you know? I think it’s up to him. This culture is wicked, but he’s from a wicked culture. If he can take this for what it is, at face value, and go home and sleep at night, you know, he’s gonna be okay. I tease him, I tell him you know, you’re like a tropical angel fish right now, and we’re some carp that have been swimming in these rivers for years. And I said if you don’t die of frickin’ pollution poisoning, you’ll be fine.

People love him. We went to Chile and played the Vina Del Mar Festival, and by the time we left, we had Santiago, we did three concerts, people were following him in the airport.

Do you know why the climate seems to be so open in the past couple of years to where bands that have had a previous heyday seem to be successful right now?

The songs, the songs, the songs. It’s the melodies, it’s the era they represent. It was less threatening. It represents a freer time when things were just a little bit easier going, you know. It relaxes people. It’s a familiarity. You hear a song and it takes you back to that place. Ah yeah, I was in the back seat with this girl, or I was at the prom, or I was smoking a joint with these guys, and it’s that. It’s your father and mother playing those songs for you when you were a kid, and subconsciously you want those songs again because it settles you down a little bit. It grounds you. It’s where you’re from. And we’ve seen a lot of that with our new Journey fans, a lot of times their parents are Journey nuts, and they go well look at this.

How long have you been a Mac user?

I used to use PCs back in the early nineties. I want to say I switched over probably in ‘93 or ‘94. I always thought Mac was cool but I didn’t think it had enough power, and I think I bought a pretty powerful machine back in the day. ProTools was still 16-bit, kind of sounded kooky. But I got into Vision, and I became a Vision nut. I really really loved that program MIDI-wise. Being a keyboard player, the ability to scale and move stuff around in the MIDI domain was fantastic. And I was never really a big fan of the digital part, you know? I was still using the analog at the time and I had all my stuff in MIDI, and the MIDI world was all Mac.

And then when I put Journey back together in ‘98, I had a 1400 laptop, a CS Mac 1400, and I had all of the string parts and extra little various keyboard things running. I used OpCode back in those days, I ran Vision on this little Macintosh laptop. The only thing I didn’t count on was the hardware failures. It turned out that little power supplies would heat up and fry everything, cause they just weren’t meant for the heat, to stay on and stuff. And so I had to get super big brick power supplies. I was running a Journey show on a little 1400, right on my keyboard. So that was fun.

I liked the architecture of Mac. I just thought it was a friendlier way of doing things. I had dealt with a PC, my wife had her books on PCs, and the more I got into the system, the more I was seeing how beautiful the Mac was. When you have them side by side and you look at them and you go man, this is the way it should be. The way files are stored. What happens with a PC, where all the files are just shoved everywhere, and you can’t find half the shit. It’s like, what is this?

I was big resistant to go to X after 9, because 9 was so stable, I think 9 was probably the most solid of all the OS’s, I really thought 9 was it, you know? And then my kids started getting into all the Macintosh stuff, they all had laptops and stuff, and Santa was always bringing Macintosh to the house.

So I raised all my kids with iMacs and then laptops came along, and now they’re still kind of Mac kids. Let’s see, my daughter just got an iPhone. She begged me for two years. When it first came out it was like “I’ve gotta have one of those,” and i said yeah, you can wait til they get them solid. And I just broke down and got her one and she’s loving it. They’ve all got iPods, and they do the movie downloads. They’re video crazy, they love their music videos. My daughters have songs that have been downloaded to five or more computers, so you’ve got to buy them again, you know? I look at them and go “whose machines are all these songs on?”

It’s fun because, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever really had, besides having the hardware glitches, too much trouble in the Mac world. I always go to those Mac expos and try to stay up.

We haven’t gotten into podcasts yet or anything. I’m sure that’s coming. I just don’t have time, you know? I was thinking of doing an “on the road” podcast and telling the fans what kind of wine we’re drinking, and what kind of movies we’re watching, just mundane shit that fans would probably get a kick out of.

Have you got an iPhone yourself, or are you still holding out?

You know what? I went Blackberry, because I didn’t want my kids on it. My thing is like, this is my phone. You’re not gonna put games, not gonna take pictures. This is my phone. I’ve got a laptop.

Tell me you’ve at least got an iPod in there somewhere.

I do. Here’s a funny story for you. Our producer, Kevin Shirley, on this new record. We had this horrible experience on Arrival back in 2000 where we sent out our master after we had finished it and somebody from Sony downloaded it on Napster the next week, before it was even out. And I was heartbroken, you know? I was damn, and that’s the danger of having discs around. So this time around there were no discs made. Our producer would not make a disc to leave the studio, you know? So when he went to mastering in New York and mastered everything, he bought us iPods and he put the album and the artwork on the iPods and gave it to us when we got to Vegas. He was like “here’s your album.”

[Jana]

I don't remember the date of this, but it's not October 2009. I saw this a while back. But maybe it's just the same stuff I've heard in other interviews.

[Carlitto H@kk]

So he throws out the "ProTools" quip,
i.e. "He's no Augeri" and then he calls
Jeremey, I assume, "some kid from
thjis tribute band"... but he was
really, REALLY nails

These guys aren't Carps, they're freakin'
rabid Great Whites on a killing spree

[Chubby321]

I don't remember the date of this, but it's not October 2009. I saw this a while back. But maybe it's just the same stuff I've heard in other interviews.

Here's the link Jana. Sorry I forgot to post it.


http://www.iprong.com/musicianinterview ... interview/

[RocknRoll]

I don't remember the date of this, but it's not October 2009. I saw this a while back. But maybe it's just the same stuff I've heard in other interviews.

Yea, I remember this one as well. It was definitely last year. Strange that it has been reposted with a different date, but I think the original was an Apple magazine. This comment was the one that really stood out.

"This culture is wicked, but he’s from a wicked culture. If he can take this for what it is, at face value, and go home and sleep at night, you know, he’s gonna be okay. I tease him, I tell him you know, you’re like a tropical angel fish right now, and we’re some carp that have been swimming in these rivers for years. And I said if you don’t die of frickin’ pollution poisoning, you’ll be fine."