Journey formed in San Francisco in 1973, and the song that would outlast almost everything else about it started as three words in the back of Jonathan Cain's lyric book. Cain, who had replaced Gregg Rolie on keyboards, wrote down "don't stop believin'" after his father told him to keep going when he was ready to quit, then forgot about it until Steve Perry asked him at the end of a rehearsal to look for something usable. Cain wrote the chorus at home, and the band worked out their parts the next afternoon, with Perry insisting the chorus wait until the final 50 seconds. It came out in October 1981 on Escape, their seventh album, got little radio play at first by Perry's own account, and is now certified 18 times platinum by the RIAA. David Chase chose it for the last scene of The Sopranos a year before that episode was shot.
Neal Schon is the through line: founding guitarist, part of the lineup inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, and the one who found Arnel Pineda, a singer from the Philippines, through a YouTube video. Pineda has fronted the band since. The current six, Schon, Cain, Pineda, Deen Castronovo on drums, Jason Derlatka on keyboards and Todd Jensen on bass, opened the Final Frontier Tour, billed as a farewell, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on February 28, 2026. Cain has said he'll leave after the 2026-27 shows to focus on ministry. Schon has said he's "not done."