Neal Schon recently spoke with host Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation. During the interview, he teases the potential for a Journey biopic and tells the story of how he first met Steve Perry. He also talks about Journey’s final shows coming up.
SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, hosted by Eddie Trunk, airs daily at 3 PM, ET on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk. Audio clips and transcription below, courtesy of SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation.
Neal Schon On A Potential Journey Biopic:
Neal Schon: “Absolutely. There’s a lot of talk about that right now.”
Eddie Trunk: “Which one? The doc or a biopic?”
Neal Schon: “Biopic. And, you know, I think it’s an incredible story if it’s told really correctly. Like I was just sharing some stories with my wife and some friends about the first time I ever met Perry. Okay, this is really crazy. I wasn’t going to tell you about it, but it’s such a cool story and I think I see the movie starting like this. Okay, so I’m in San Francisco and I’m playing—I’m sitting in with a band called Azteca that I played on the record. And it was a band that Coke Escovedo and Peter’s father put together. It was sort of a spin-off of Santana and they wanted me to come play a live show. So, I’m playing at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco and a good friend of mine that was in the Santana road crew, Jackie Villanueva, was there. And I got done playing and he goes, ‘Hey, bro.’ He says, ‘Can you do me a favor? I got my cousin here and he has a friend and he needs a ride to his car. Will you give him a ride to his car?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ And I was, like, being my own roadie that night. I grabbed my Twin Reverb and I grabbed my Strat and I stuck it in the car and I took this guy to his car and it was Steve Perry.”
Eddie Trunk: “Was he there just checking out the band? Was he just in the audience?”
Neal Schon: “Apparently he was, like, following me as a guitar player, you know, and what I was doing. And so I didn’t know that he was a singer, right? We barely talked. I gave him a ride to the car and said, ‘Nice meeting you.’ You know, dropped him off. Okay. So, about a month or two later, we’re playing down in LA and I believe we’re playing a Roxy or one of those clubs on Hollywood Boulevard. I can’t remember if it was a Starwood or Roxy, one of those clubs. And, the guy, he comes up to the backstage door and he knocks on it and I open it and it’s Perry. And he says, ‘Hey, you remember me? You gave me a ride in the car.’ He says, ‘Are you guys, you know, are you looking for a singer?’ He was like following the early Journey, right? And I said, ‘I don’t think we’re looking for a singer right now. We have Gregg Rolie, you know, that’s doing all the lead vocals.’ But you know, nobody knows that part of the story. And it’s absolutely true. And you know it, the story that’s out there—that’s been out there for years—is later Herbie Herbert got a cassette recording of his original band that was about to be signed to CBS at the time. And, you know he played it for us and Gregg and I were like, kind of like, ‘I don’t know,’ you know, we didn’t know quite what to think. And Herbie’s like, ‘Well, this is going to be your singer. He’s it, man.’ And we went, ‘Okay,’ and just, you know, went with the flow. And you know, Steve and I got together and we started writing. We realized we had great chemistry. But you know, I think that a biopic on Journey—massive, massive, massive, massive. And you know, I could see it being, uh, a Netflix series even, you know, that could be whittled down into a shorter version for a movie. But there’s, there’s so much there, Eddie, that’s happened and so many great stories. And even, you know, the way I see it is like, you, you start it like that, but then way later in the movie you go to my beginning that happened with Santana. There was incredible stories in Santana. It doesn’t have to start at the beginning though, you know, like some movies, they pull it in at the very end. But you know, there is a lot of talks I’m having with some, you know, very heavyweight people that I’ve made some amends with and you know, I’m really hopeful that something could be happening in the near future, maybe even in ’27.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLVxjoPE7s0?feature=oembed]
Neal Schon On San Francisco Being Journey’s Farewell:
Eddie Trunk: “The last show is in San Francisco where, of course, the band was founded and you are based. Is that, as far as you know, as it stands November 28th, San Francisco, is that as of now the final Journey show? Do you look at that as a farewell show?”
Neal Schon: “It is as far as I know so far. You know, as you know, farewell tours can go on and on and on. We have nothing planned after that. We do have three shows in Hawaii that are not up yet, and we’re playing in Japan, that’s not up yet. I think it’s maybe been advertised a bit in Fukuoka. But that’s about it right now. You know, that’s all I know. We haven’t discussed anything else beyond that. But you know what? I’m gonna say anything’s possible.”
