Neal Schon says he didn’t think Journey’s new song sounded like the band; discusses upcoming album’s release

Journey’s Jonathan Cain, Neal Schon & Arnel Pineda; Courtesy of Journey

In June, Journey released a new single called “The Way We Used to Be” that will part of the band’s forthcoming studio album, which will be the group’s first collection of new, original songs since 2011’s Eclipse.

Journey guitarist Neal Schon tells ABC Audio that “The Way We Used to Be” began as a musical idea he came up with using a keyboard loop, to which he then added guitar, bass and string sounds before sending it to the band’s longtime keyboardist, Jonathan Cain, for him to fill out with lyrics and melodies.

Schon admits that when he first sent the tune to Cain, he didn’t think it sounded like a Journey song.

“I thought it was more like…a Bad English song or something for John Waite or Rolling Stones with a little harder edge,” Neal explains. “And I’m glad that 90 percent of the people that have heard it love it. Some others are just going, ‘Wow, that doesn’t sound like Journey.’ And I go, ‘Well, it wasn’t meant to be’…but it ended up on our album.”

Speaking about the band’s studio effort, Schon says, “There’s so much great material on this album that we’ve…produced and I’ve been working on for well over a year now with everybody.”

Neal tells ABC Audio that it was “a blessing” for him to get to record a lot of his parts live in the studio with Journey’s new drummer, Narada Michael Walden, who also is producing the album, while the other band members generally laid down there parts remotely.

As for when the new album might be released, Schon reports, “It could come out at the end of this year, or, if it doesn’t, I believe that it will come out sometime after the first [of January].”

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