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How are you, ma'am?
You're only visiting the school now?
- After 29 years. - What year did you graduate?
1980 or '81. Or '82.
What took you so long?
I tried to live my roller-coaster life.
- What do you mean? - I became a band singer.
- So you sing well, I suppose. - Not really.
- What's the name of your band? - Journey.
- Journey.
- It's an American band. - International band.
Here, Amy, please take a picture.
- What's your name again? - Arnel, Arnel Pineda.
I started uploading the videos on March 3, 2007.
I didn't have a computer at that time.
I'd be at the internet café until early in the morning,
uploading all night because it was so slow.
Every session was four to six hours, or eight hours, until closing time.
I uploaded around 60 videos.
If not for Noel Gomez, his persistence and his belief,
his fairy-tale belief,
his dream that one day I will be famous.
Hey, wake up, that's not real.
And then, after a few months, I got the email from Neal Schon.
I called Arnel.
"Nel, I think it's the break we've been waiting for."
But I gave in to Noel. He said,
"For our friendship's sake, answer him just this once."
"I have a feeling about this."
We were doing laundry at the time.
Then this man called, a foreigner.
Arnel said, "Are you really Neal Schon?"
"No, I am Neal Schon. Believe me, man."
Then I overheard something about an audition.
Arnel kept laughing, he didn't want to believe.
So many uncertainties were brewing in my heart.
I had so many doubts.
The fatigue and excitement got the best of me.
You can see on Neal's face
his faith in me didn't fade.
Actually, I had a very uncomfortable feeling.
So this was what they wanted, the legacy sound.
How will my real self come out?
But I thought, if that's what they want, I'll just do my job.
I was convinced I did not do well.
I was thinking, at least I was with them.
They signed the album that I treasured
so I was OK.
Neal picked me up from the hotel
and, from the lobby, he yelled it out to me, the good news.
I got the gig
But I still didn't believe. Me? A member of Journey?
How could it be?
Are you sure? Why me?
There are tons of people who are good. Why me?
...If you picture it, my God, it's like I was just edited in, you know.
I was just placed there using Adobe Photoshop. Look, I'm with Journey.
I was shocked.
There are people out there who just want me to fail,
who just want me to falter, to lose it.
So they will have justification of whatever kind of words
they accused against me.
They would call me "monkey", "garbage",
"an impersonator", "a karaoke boy".
If I will take it seriously, I'll get hurt. It's not going to end.
I will answer back and then they will answer back.
And they love it, the attention that I'm going to give to them.
They're just diehard fans who got so used with,
you know, Steve Perry's voice.
And I have no argument about that.
I'm also a very big fan of Perry.
From where they are coming from, I understand.
He's really got one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard.
I'm sticking to those people who believe in me.
I was nervous.
I was prepared. I practised a lot. I was confident.
We practised for two weeks and I didn't lose my voice.
But the evening of the performance
I started hearing 18,000 people were attending.
18,000? Wow, that's a lot.
Then I heard the people.
The thunderous applause.
How will I face them all?
I started being terrified.
I got weak.
The tips of my fingers were getting numb.
My breath became faint.
Neal kept asking if I was OK. "Are you OK?"
I'm fine. My lips were trembling.
You know that kind of fear?
You know the vertigo feeling?
I'm on the edge of the cliff.
Someone can just tap me and...
I'd fall off.
You know in the movies when suddenly everyone's silent?
Everything stops and goes into slow motion.
Even my heartbeat was like that.
Slower.
Then I told Neal Schon,
"Neal, can I just go home?"
Then I felt my face was doing this.
Then I heard, "Here they are, the band you've been waiting for
for almost 20 years! Finally, they're here!"
When the show started, it suddenly became real to me.
Then an adrenaline shot.
Three hundred miles per hour!
Then it became faster.
I was sharp here, I was flat there.
And then I was thinking of moves I had to make.
Is this right what I'm doing? Is this jump OK?
It was sheer energy, sheer happiness, and nerves.
Wow, I'm in concert with Journey.
Wow, I'm dead if I mess this up.
Before I knew it, it was over.
Fifteen songs, that's it.
I felt drunk and high.
I didn't understand that they were giving us an award.
I just kept screaming, "I love you, Chile!"
He said that I shouldn't have done that.
I should just stand in the middle and sing.
Journey is about singing
not about jumping and dancing on stage.
I took it in a professional manner.
I hadn't really proven myself to them
that I can really last,
that they can really depend on me the whole tour, I can finish it.
So I was cool. I accepted it.
But deep inside, I was down-hearted.
Life was never easy.
We came from a very poor family.
My mother and father were both simple tailors.
This is the house. Here.
The first 12 years. So many memories. Too much.
When it would rain, it would flood, and there were motor boats.
And the flood is up here.
My mother had rheumatic heart disease.
It really spun out of control.
We had sold our TV, the refrigerator,
the furniture, just to keep her alive.
Then we could no longer afford to rent our apartment.
We were six months behind on our rent.
So they literally kicked us out.
There were so many uncertainties during that time.
Hunger. Confusion.
Anger.
I was trying to understand it all at a very young age.
And then I told my father,
"OK, you can go your own way, and then I'll go my own way."
I would tag along just so I could eat.
Sometimes, we would go to a burial.
We would sing there and they'd give us biscuits and coffee.
Just to survive.
We would go to the park to sleep with the other homeless kids. You know.
We had to be distributed among our relatives.
I lived with my mom's sister.
We saw each other again after one year.
Arnel was the one who brought us back together.
I was around 12 years old
and my father arrived at my aunt's house and he said,
"Arnel asked me to fetch you because he found a place to stay."
He was singing with a band. "Oh, really?"
Finally, his singing on street corners finally paid off.
The place we lived in
was a very tiny room.
Five of us in there.
The minute you entered, that's where we slept.
In a sense, he'd scream all night
just to earn 50 pesos a night.
He'd save it and give it to us so we can eat.
Arnel was the bread winner after Mama died.
Jonathan. I'll be tenor tonight.
On the third day, I'll be baritone.
The proper way of using your vocal cords makes them last much longer.
It was the first time I learned to do it after 25 years.
I got another lease.
I could prolong my voice another 15 years.
- Since Perry, right? - Resurged Journey fans
that didn't want to know about anything else, brother.
I went a little crazy in the early years of my career.
I just had fun with friends, singing cover songs up on stage
being adored by the audience because you sang it perfectly.
Then there were the love affairs
and the drugs and just hanging out.
I just went with the flow.
I only started to have
the urge, the desire to be known as an original artist
when my relationship ended with my first live-in partner, Wendy.
I had enough experiences, enough pain,
to put on paper.
That's when I started writing.
I was sober for a while.
Then my serious relationship started falling apart.
I was married to her.
Another very depressing chapter of my life.
Then I went back to drugs. I went back to drinking.
I'd lock myself in my room, but I was writing. I wrote a lot.
But eventually, I met Cherry.
By the time I met him, he had very few gigs.
Maybe once a week, twice a week. He was also drinking a lot.
He had gone through his savings.
Hoping that one day the songs I wrote will be heard
the fruit of drugs and alcohol and tears.
We approached a lot of people to listen to my songs.
But still nothing happened.
At the time, the audience didn't think I had any talent.
They only wanted cover songs.
They couldn't appreciate my other side.
I was broken-hearted.
After 25 years, I just didn't make it.
I was on the verge of giving up my recording career.
Then, suddenly I got this call from Neal Schon, and here we are.
- Where did you see it, hon? - On Youtube.
Shoreline. What was I singing?
- "When You Love a Woman. ” - Was it good?
Arnel, I see Steve Perry every day.
No, I mean it seriously. He lives in Hollywood, where I work.
I'm the guy who replaced Peter Cetera in Chicago, Jason Scheff.
The bottom line is what will make you happy is, at the end of the day,
is your family intact, happy.
And then looking for a better day.
You know, sunshine.
You can't have it all, really.
Somehow, somewhere, there really is a compromise.
The performance is really my consolation.
The noise when they're so excited about the song
sometimes it sounds like a world war.
- It's like winning the lotto. - The lotto is pure luck.
Yours starts with talent.
It's a different persona. It's a different Arnel.
It's all very simple.
It's like everything that happened was a dream.
Those... those converted haters...
Suddenly they love Journey again.
It's like one big Earth that I held in my hands.
They just all played around in my head.
There'll be problems. Problems will arise.
When you come from our new house, these places look so small now.
I often go back and forth.
When I come here, everything looks small and nothing looks nice.
But when we used to walk around here, I used to point to one of these houses
and think as long as I have one of those, I'll be happy.
I still think that way.
I don't want to get spoiled.
It's hard to get spoiled with too much excess.
It's harder to be on top and then fall.
As opposed to coming from the bottom and rising.
It's always here.
There's more opportunity now to commit a sin.
Because it's just there.
But with drugs, I have more tolerance to resist.
It's really more the women who go around.
You have to pray hard that you don't get hit.
I tell myself, if you do it, you know...
You work so hard to have a complete family, a happy one.
Then you go back to a broken family.
There will be hatred,
anguish, regrets, blame.
We made a promise to each other
that no matter what happen, no one lets go.
We'll fight together.
It will never last with a different kind of woman.
Others don't understand his world is really different.
It's full of temptations.
- How are you doing, Arnel? - So excited.
It's heavy. It's all too heavy.
You're right.
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