hennemusic

Journey were featured on CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend, as they promote their new album, “Eclipse,” and current North American tour with Foreigner and Night Ranger.

The piece opened with the focus on the band’s classic, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” a song the band has played every show since it was recorded for 1981’s “Escape.”

From baseball to Broadway, the tune has become a national anthem of sorts - and with digital sales at almost four and a half million, it is officially the most downloaded song ever recorded in the 20th century.

"You know, we did something right in the studio," says keyboardist Jonathan Cain. "We did something right when we wrote the song. You know, we hit a chord."

It began as the brainchild of Cain, who had been laboring in obscurity in 1980 with a band called The Babys, when he got the chance to join Journey. It was a dream shot nobody could have predicted. Well, almost nobody.

"I was starving before I hit Journey," Cain remembers. "Very, very rough times...I didn't know where the next pay check was gonna come. I sold stereos. I quit the business. I was so lost, you know? And I was borrowing money from my father, who wouldn't let me come back to Chicago. He said, 'You stay there. Something good is gonna happen. Don't stop believing.' And he would always say that to me. 'Don't stop believing, Jon.'"

Armed with his father's advice and the seeds of a song, Cain sat down with guitarist Neal Schon and then-lead-singer Steve Perry. Within an afternoon, Cain's catchy chorus was transformed into a rock'n'roll classic.

Most of the CBS story then follows the life story and career path of singer Arnel Pineda, who Schon found on youtube singing covers in a Filipino band.

"I heard his voice and I went, whoa. I go, 'who is that?'" remembers Schon. "And I was just completely taken back by his voice. I just went, this guy's incredible. We gotta find him."

But what the band didn't know was that Arnel was singing to survive: his mother died when he was just 13, after a long illness that left the family bankrupt; he ended up homeless, sleeping in a park in Manila, collecting scrap metal to scrape up enough money to eat.

"Even before I discovered 'Don't Stop Believin', it has been my motto, you know, to never stop believing in myself," Pineda says, choking back tears. "The life that I've gone through. You know, all those hardships-- that I-- you see, I never-- I never stopped believing that someday there is something magical that will happen in my life."

"Never in my, like, entire life here on earth, that I would ever, ever stumble upon this kind of magic," Pineda continues. "Playing to all of these people around the world... What a ride. You know?"

Journey – “A Summer Song” feature
CBS Sunday Morning – July 24, 2011