Neal Schon doesn’t do autopilot. After half a century leading Journey, he could coast on the nostalgia circuit, toss out a greatest hits compilation, and call it a day. Instead, he’s helming Freedom, the band’s first album in over a decade, and somehow making it sound like a band with something to prove. “I felt like we did make a classic record that holds up next to Escape, Frontiers, anything you want to compare it to,” Schon says. “But we also wanted to go somewhere new.”
Somewhere new means funk-infused rock, bluesy breakdowns, and tracks like “Come Away with Me” and “Holding On” that rank among the heaviest in Journey’s catalog. “Why make another song that sounds like what’s already in our setlist?” he says. “We wanted new stuff that we could actually use live.” And if Schon’s got it his way, that live show is going to get bigger—literally. He envisions Journey’s 50th anniversary as something on the scale of Springsteen or Rush. “Three hours, easy. We’re capable of it. And we’re not just playing the hits—we’re diving into pieces that haven’t seen the light of day in years, and using them in between songs to make people go, ‘Whoa.’”
That sense of musical adventure bleeds into Freedom, especially on tracks like “Let It Rain.” Schon describes its genesis as “off the cuff,” a jam session that became something more. “That’s the magic people are missing these days,” he says. “We didn’t overthink it. What’s on the record is the first take.” He compares the process to the old-school, seat-of-the-pants recording approach of Hendrix and Zeppelin, where spontaneity mattered more than precision. “If you start with a computer, you’re already chopping off the legs of the baby,” he laughs. “The music needs to live first before you sterilize it.”
Journey’s history has been anything but sterile. Schon recalls his early days jamming with Sly Stone’s bassist Larry Graham, getting his guitar ripped out of his hands by Freddie Stone—“‘Punk, it doesn’t go like that, it goes like this’”—and bringing that funk-infused energy into Journey’s DNA. “That’s where a lot of this heavier funk-rock on Freedom is coming from,” he says.
As for the future, Schon’s thinking big: arenas, stadiums, and that sprawling, career-spanning live show. “What I learned from Zeppelin, Hendrix, and The Who is that you don’t play everything exactly like the record. You play what people know, but you also take them on a journey—no pun intended.”
Fifty years in, and Schon’s still pushing forward. “The only thing stopping you is yourself,” he says. “So why stop?”
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