Journey‘s guitarist Neal Schon addressed why his band was the opening act for Toto in Europe during a recent episode of the podcast ‘Talk Is Jericho.’
Sometimes talent isn’t the sole factor in achieving recognition and success. As commercial success is quite important for bands to reach out to a wider audience, management and promoters also play an important role. While a band may be commercially successful in its homeland, it is not granted that it will achieve international recognition.
Toto, for instance, has managed to attract an international audience and enter both American and European music charts. However, Neal Schon recently revealed that the case was different for Journey since they struggled to reach an international audience.
As the two bands are currently touring together and have joint upcoming plans for the foreseeable future; Schon revealed the discussion he had with Toto’s Steve ‘Luke’ Lukather. The guitarist disclosed that he told Lukather that if the two bands have started touring in the States, they have to tour Europe as well.
Schon further explained that Toto has a strong footing overseas since the band had worked toward the international audience. The guitarist stated that the lack of promotion by Journey’s management negatively impacted the band’s worldwide recognition. Since the band’s management team wanted Journey to mostly focus on the American market, they weren’t able to properly reach out to Europe.
Neal Schon revealed:
”I said, ‘Lukather if we do this in America and we agree to do this together, you’ll have to do the same thing with us in Europe.’ So, we’ll be opening up for them over there. Toto has done extremely well abroad, because they worked that market forever. And we never really did, because management never wanted us to go there and they never promoted us correctly over there.”
Even though Journey had less recognition overseas, Schon explained that he was quite excited to perform in Europe and meet new fans. The guitarist stated that when they played in Europe in the past years, nobody knew they were performing. Now with better promotion and the tour’s commercial success, however, Neal believes that they will be greeting fans all over the world.
The guitarist explained:
”I have a feeling when we go this next year with Toto, we’re gonna find all our fans that we never saw before. ‘Cause nobody knew we were there when we played there in the past. And we’ve got fans all over the world.”
With the band’s almost five decades long career, Journey still continues to actively participate in composing and producing new projects. The band’s fifteenth studio album ‘Freedom’ was recently released on July 8, 2022. As aforementioned, the band is currently on the ‘Freedom 2022’ tour with many surprise guests. Their next show is scheduled to take place in Puerto Rico.
