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It holds that history, and it's on a lot of famous songs. "I had an endorsement with Guild at the time, and they made me that F-50. "It was my room warm-up guitar, many years before Steve Perry came into the band," Schon says. On "Infinity", Rolling Stone's Chuck Eddy wrote, JOURNEY became "an adventurous Seventies arena band, building Elton piano toward ZEPPELIN metal, finding majestic middle ground between pomp and twang." And it all started with that Guild. That guitar can be heard all over 1978's "Infinity", on which JOURNEY journeyed from its hard-prog and jazz-rock roots toward the sound that made them radio darlings - and prom-dance heroes - by that year's end. The '77 Les Paul will be joined by another iconic guitar with its own rich history that dates back to JOURNEY's earliest hit-making days: the 1974 Guild F-50R Natural Acoustic he used to write "Wheel In The Sky" and "Patiently", crafted with Perry in a Denver hotel room not so long after they first met in 1977. So the guitar solo actually came before the lyrics did." And that pushed to write the lyrics, because it reminded them of a train. I actually learned it by listening to symphonies, that triplet that speeds up. It goes verse, then into the guitar solo - the little breakdown that's more like a symphony. "Honestly, that song has the weirdest and most unique arrangement ever.
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"When I heard the final mix of 'Don't Stop Believin'', I turned around to everybody, and I go, 'Man, you know what? This song has something else,'' Schon recalls. The '77 Les Paul, Schon says with just a touch of understatement, "has quite a story." All by itself, the band's performance of "Don't Stop Believin'" from that show has been viewed more than 122 million times on YouTube. The one heard - and seen - during the "Escape" tour, whose November 1981 Houston stop was originally broadcast on MTV then turned into a best-selling DVD in 2005. The Paul heard on "Don't Stop Believin'", "Stone In Love", "Who's Crying Now". "These are guitars I've been collecting for a very long time," Schon says, "and it's time to let go of some of my collection to make room for new arrivals."Īt the heart of this auction is the 1977 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Black Solid Body that Schon used on 1981's chart-topping "Escape". Past and present collide as Schon looks to the future: JOURNEY has also just finished its 15th studio album, its first in a decade. The auction takes place the very week JOURNEY returns to the stage as one of the Lollapalooza headliners in Chicago, alongside the likes of FOO FIGHTERS, Megan Thee Stallion, Post Malone, Miley Cyrus and Tyler, The Creator. On July 31, Heritage Auctions will offer 112 guitars from the extraordinary and expansive museum-quality Neal Schon Collection, among them two of the guitars that shaped JOURNEY's sound and the soundtrack for several generations. And to commemorate that landmark anniversary, along with JOURNEY's return to studio and stage, Schon is letting others have the opportunity to own the very instruments responsible for those memories. That has been his trade, his task, his life for five decades, ever since he made his recording debut as guitarist on SANTANA's acclaimed, influential third record in 1971. "To know that you can grasp the whole audience and hold them in your hand, to see everybody moving together? That is the universal language right there," Schon says now.
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Now imagine writing those works, recording them, performing them. They're emotional shorthand, songs long used by filmmakers in need of easy triggers. With that list alone, melody and memory rush back, collide, embrace.
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And, of course, "Don't Stop Believin'", the most downloaded song of the 20th century. Merely mentioning the title of a JOURNEY song is enough to summon a half-forgotten remembrance that roars back like an old friend or a lost love. A song that climbed the charts like King Kong atop the Empire State Building a song that ruled radio like a benevolent monarch. And almost 50 years later he knows that somewhere at this very moment, someone is singing at the top of their lungs a song he played on, sang on, probably co-wrote, too. It has been nearly 50 years since Neal Schon, then not yet 20, co-founded the band that would come to be called JOURNEY.