Arnel Pineda... The Journey from Philippines to Igor's to Oprah

several months ago the young kids on american idol sang "don't stop believing" - a great song by JOURNEY.

on that same show, the kids spoke of how being on AI is "the chance of a lifetime".

in some senses, they are right. it is a shot at stardom. but in many cases, it is not a life and death situation. america, God bless it, has a social system and public housing. taxes help many, not just the celebs hired with taxpayer money to sing at AIG bashes.

hearing that song did remind me of a neat "chance of a lifetime" story.

in the late 1990's, friends of mine i knew through the journo world came up with IGOR's, hong kong's first dinner dance theatre. you dressed up, ate, and danced to amazing music provided by a Filipino band, "the rolling bones". skulls and crosses were the order of the day. (this is me outside igor's after they closed their doors for the last time in hong kong.)

we loved igors, and loved vicky and chris, who owned the place. and jeannette, their pr person. IGORS was a great concept and they did it so well. and the band was amazing.

eventually, IGOR's moved on to singapore and closed up their hong kong locations.

two summers ago, i was in canada and at the cottage with no access to television and only the provincial papers. and i heard about journey reuniting, with a new lead singer they found over you tube. huh..good for them. unlike my husband (that would be charles caldwell) i have always LOVED journey.

apparently the new singer's voice was similar but not identical to steve perry's. good, very good, i thought. and sort of forgot about it until a few months later when i realised that that new lead singer, who was getting rave reviews, and performing around the globe, was no other than the erstwhile lead singer of the rolling bones. arnel pineda.

talk about don't stop believing. here, is his story of how he got to be the lead singer of JOURNEY and what his life was like before JOURNEY. From TIME MAGAZINE.....

How Journey found Pineda is a Cinderella tale of the Internet era. After the band dismissed Soto last June for unspecified reasons, guitarist Neal Schon turned to the Web in search of talent. After two days of surfing on YouTube, he came upon clips of Pineda singing with his band, The Zoo, and nailing all the right notes in the toughest Survivor, Queen and Journey power ballads. "I heard his voice and my eyes got big," says Schon, who has been with Journey since its inception in 1975. "I thought, he can't be that good." Schon left his house, took a spin on his motorcycle to clear his head, and then contacted Pineda. At first, the singer thought the email was a hoax. "I didn't think the real Neal Schon would call a guy like me," says Pineda. "I'm just a guy from the Philippines." Four months later, Pineda signed on as Journey's new lead singer. "I've been waiting for this moment to come for 25 years," he says. "It's like shooting to the moon."

Born in Manila, Pineda, 40, started singing as a child, quickly learning his parents' favorite songs by The Jackson Five, Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters. His parents struggled to raise their four sons by running a corner shop and tailoring clothes. Pineda performed in local singing competitions until the age of 13, when his mother died from an extended illness. Medical bills had drained their savings, leaving the family homeless and living with relatives. Not wanting to burden his father, Pineda struck out on his own, collecting newspapers and bottles, and living on the street for nearly two years. When he was 15, a friend encouraged him to start singing again, beginning Pineda's 25-year career as a cover band singer in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

Arnel was back in the Philippines when they found him. And in all likelihood, that is where he would have stayed. Maybe he would have come back to Hong Kong to sing in a bar here. Can you imagine, playing to 200 people and then going on to playing for stadiums of 12,000?

i downloaded arnel on youtube and watched his first performance in chile. you can tell that although he's focused, there are times when he's thinking "I can't believe this"...

He's a hero in the Philippines. This is a guy who as a young teenager made one packet of biscuits last two days so he could eat every day.

and look at him now. his father still works as a tailor, but THIS, to return rich to the philippines, a country with no social net and so much poverty and corruption, is the chance of a lifetime.

an amazing voice, an amazing story, who popped up on oprah again last week...

Comments

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AMAZINGLY fantastic story my dear Tess. Really great and also, it must be a cool feeling for you to know that you witnessed history on the making, no? Love and many thanks for sharing, Odila

Posted by: Odila Braga | October 13, 2009 at 12:05 PM