Written By Cary Barnhard

From child prodigy to founding father of arena rock, Neal Schon has crossed paths with many of the greatest musicians of our time and has made a huge addition to the vocabulary of popular music. Reaching a new generation of fans with Journey, Neal was kind enough to speak in-depth with Heat Beat. HB: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in music and started playing the guitar?

NS: Initially how I started playing, my father was a jazz musician and a big band arranger and composer, and my mom was actually a singer. So as a child I was always around jazz and Big Band-type stuff like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald. I think that's where it all started. Just being surrounded by music all the time, y'know. As I got older, my dad started teaching me how to play woodwind instruments and I played a little bit of piano. By the time I was ten, I was kind of bored playing what they were teaching me at that time which was clarinet, oboe and that kind of stuff. I heard the sound of a jangley guitar on a Beatles record, and that's where it all started for me. From listening to a jangle on a record, I went "That's it!" So I got a really cheap little acoustic guitar, took a few guitar lessons just to learn how to tune the thing up and basically play three or four chords. I really grew attached to it, and the more I played it the more I liked it. And I had an older cousin that was in a band, and I went to see him play in his band and stuff like that. That was pretty much it. By the time I was twelve, that was pretty much what I wanted to do.

HB: And you played with Santana?

NS: Yeah, I ended up meeting those guys I think when I was fourteen and a half. I was playing in the Bay Area. Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve came in. I guess they liked what they heard. They stuck around and when we got done playing, they talked to the club owner after he closed the joint. After everybody was out, we jammed 'til like three or four in the morning. And shortly after that, I was hanging out with Gregg a lot. I was around the whole time they were recording the Abraxis record. Actually almost got to play on one of those tracks! Carlos was having a hard time putting a solo on…I forget what song it was, but they offered for me to go in and just have a whack at it. I laid down a pretty good solo and then that in turn kicked him in the butt to go out and kick some real ass! But they asked me to join the band shortly after that. I had just met Eric Clapton, he was a fan of Santana Band. He came by the studio while we were recording and working on some new material in San Francisco at Wally Hider's. And the next day I met him and jammed with him that night. I pretty much was dumbfounded. I didn't know what to say to the guy; he was one of my idols at the time. And the next day when I came to the studio, he asked me to play with him. He asked me to join Derrick and the Dominos that night. Even though I would have loved to play with Eric, I wasn't ready to move to London and all that, away from my family. So I did the gig with Santana. I was very glad I did. I think I made the right choice. Musically there were a lot more eye-opening experiences there. Turned me on to all kinds of Latin, Cuban, and African American rhythms. And mixing my style with that was something I never even thought of before.

HB: So how did you go from there to Journey?

NS: Well, when we disbanded, Carlos wanted to go more into a kind of jazz, John McLaughlin, type thing, and everybody in the band sort of wanted to keep on doing what they were doing. I was hanging out Ray Gurico and Larry Graham from Sly and the Family Stone, the original bass player and drummer, and we had a Power Funk trio that we put together that was really happening! That had a lot of promise. We wrote a lot of material and played together for a few months and were getting ready to record some stuff. Larry got cold feet at the last minute and wanted to do more of an R&B funk thing, which eventually became Graham Central Station.

Gregg and I played with that for a second, but I soon became bored with it, just playing chickety chick. I really was a solo guitar player back then and I needed to be able to express myself and jam and make stuff up on the spot and improvise. And so when we went on stage to play live, I started jamming and the audience would really start coming alive, But, before I knew it, Larry had cut me off and went to the next section. I was like, "Dude, I need more time!" and he was like, "No that's all the time you get in here." I was like, "Okay, I'm out of here." Soon after that I got approached by Herbie Herbert, (he did Carlos' and my guitar rigs and mixed us live) about doing a band around me as a guitar player. So I said "Well that sounds cool, let's go!" Herbie introduced me to Ross Jorstender and then at that time I had seen Prairie Prince play drums with The Tubes, and I thought he would be perfect, and he was. He came in and played with the three of us and it just sounded magical. We had some magic going on. And at that point Gregg Rolie was brought in to play keyboards and sing and that was the beginning of Journey right there. But I couldn't drag Prairie away from The Tubes, so I had to look for another drummer. I went to see Frank Zappa with Flo and Eddie at Berkley and I saw Ansley Dunbar and I was like, "This guy was happening!."

HB: It seems like I hear a lot of bands now who were influenced by Journey, but no one ever recaptured that sound…

NS: I think we set the precedent with classic, melodic…y'know, power ballads. I think we invented a lot of that. And there is a big resurgence of Journey right now. We're riding on a lot of steam right now. We've got a whole new slew of fans out there. I'm looking in the front and they're getting younger and younger and they're going off and they love it. Everything we lay on them, they go nuts. They love the early material, they like the hits, they like the new stuff. They're really open minded which is cool.

HB: So you're having a good time with that?

NS: I'm having a great time! Seeing a lot of younger kids at our concerts and having them really go off, that means everything to me!