Filipino singer’s journey to Journey comes true

By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

UPDATE: Editor’s note: Corrected Neil Schon to Neal Schon. Thanks to reader Ana for the heads up.

WHO would have thought YouTube would make for a good audition tape?

As reported by Blabbermouth, the band Journey found a new lead singer in Arnel Pineda. Simple story, really. Arnel’s band The Zoo posts videos of them covering Journey songs on YouTube, Neal Schon (guitarist for the real Journey) sees them and boom!, somebody’s dream comes true.

Here’s the story in Neal’s own words:

“I was frustrated about not having a singer so I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody. But then I found The Zoo and I watched a bunch of different video clips that they had posted. After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true. I thought, ‘he can’t be that good.’ But he is that good, he’s the real deal and so tremendously talented.

Spicing up the story further, it was one of Arnel’s bandmates who saw Neal’s message on YouTube and immediately SMSed him about it. Who would have thought, right? But they did fire Neil an e-mail and the rest is history.

Arnel becomes the latest Journey front man after Jeff Scott Soto, Steve Augeri and of course, Steve Perry. The band is currently working on an album due ‘08. Check out this video of Arnel and his band during a local gig.

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