Jonathan Cain had barely tickled out the first three notes when the crowd packed tight into the AVA at Casino del Sol Tuesday night erupted into a chorus of screams.
By the time Journey frontman Arnel Pineda sang the intro — "Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world" — the audience was in full backup vocal mode, singing harmony to Pineda's lead on Journey's monster anthem "Don't Stop Believin'."
More than a few strummed air guitars as Neal Schon went on that little solo spurt at the end. And as drummer Steve Smith hit the two-beat bump-dump at the song's end, a rush of fists pumped the air and the audience's screams drowned out Smith's final percussive burst.
For 90 minutes Tuesday night, the audience of 5,000 was transported back to the 1980s and the AVA wasn't an open-air venue in the middle of the desert; it was that big city arena where we saw Journey when we were a third of the age we are today and those words ushered us from the awkwardness of high school to the real world of college or our first job.
The audience, filling the lawn and reserved seats and wrapped four, five people deep through the patio areas near the rest rooms and beer and t-shirt vendors, bolted to its feet when the lights went down and we heard the piano intro to the rocking break-up apology of "Separate Ways." As soon as Pineda sang those first words, we heard for ourselves the vocal similarities between him and Steve Perry, who made that song one of our favorites in the early 1980s. It was a reassurance that the songs would sound almost exactly like they did when Perry stood behind that mic center stage.
But as Pineda bounded around the stage with the energy of a man years younger than his 49, we saw that his vocal attributes were just part of the package. His exuberance was infectious; you had the feeling from his big smile that never seemed to wane and the way he jumped and sprinted through almost every song, that he was having the time of his life. He did not merely channel Perry; he added a dimension to the music that in many ways made "Ask the Lonely," "Stone In Love," "Open Arms," "Who's Crying Now" and "Any Way You Want It" his own.
Pineda joined Journey in 2007 after founding member Neal Schon discovered him on YouTube. In the decade since, the band has reclaimed some of its touring glory, becoming one of the hottest tickets of the summer in Tucson and in every city where its played.
But lest we forget, Journey is Neal Schon's baby, and on Tuesday night the spotlight was trained squarely on him and his soaring guitar chops that have gotten sharper and more adventurous with age.
Several times throughout the evening, Schon found himself alone on stage, wailing away on impressive guitar runs that lasted a few minutes at first, then five, then 10. Pineda would finish a song then give Schon a quick fist bump before disappearing back stage to give the guitarist an extended solo turn.
Cain also got a moment of his own, tickling away at the keyboards for several minutes before telling the story of how he penned one of the band's most enduring ballads, "Faithfully." As he played the lush opening chords, hundreds in the audience turned on their cell phone flashlights — call it the 21st century take on the Bic lighter — creating a sea of flickering white lights that dotted the dark, near cloudless night. For an instance it felt like the 1980s all over again.
Fellow '80s pop-rock powerhouse Asia opened the show with former Yes bassist Billy Sherwood as lead singer. Sherwood replaced Asia's longtime frontman John Wetton after Wetton died of cancer in January.
Sherwood did an admirable job, but his voice was a bit thinner than Wetton's and at times seemed to fall flat for Asia's hits like "Heat of the Moment," "Don't Cry" and "Video Killed the Radio Star," penned by Asia member and prog-rock veteran Geoff Downes (Yes, The Buggles). Sherwood, though, seemed more vocally confident throughout a moving tribute to Wetton with the band's 1983 single "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes."
