Journey's Neal Schon may be best known for timeless classics such as Don't Stop Believin’, Stone in Love, and Still They Ride.
However, the genre-hopping guitarist cut his teeth playing the blues, trading licks with Carlos Santana in Santana’s classic lineup, and becoming a keen student of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Michael Bloomfield.
“My roots were R&B and blues, and it's so crazy that I've never been in a band that did that!” Schon says in a recent interview with Rick Beato.
“I played with B.B. quite a lot,” Schon reveals. “I played with Albert even more so. He was a funny human being. Had his little wine bottle at the back of the amp.
“I played with him so many times. [One time] we were downtown in San Rafael, close to where I live in Marin County, and he was in town. He was playing Uncle Charlie's – a cool little blues club – and so I went down to see him for the soundcheck and said, ‘Hey, man, I would love to come by and jam tonight.’
“He said, ‘Sure, man. Bring your guitar and I'll bring you up in the second set.’” However, the jam didn't quite go as planned...
Schon continues, “So I go up, and I'm talking to him, and he goes off to the bar to get a drink, and I pick up his V. And he screams across from the bar, ‘What you doing, boy!’ I jump out of my shoes. He goes, ‘Put that guitar down. Nobody knows my tuning!’”
As for what he noticed about King's guitar from that very fleeting encounter, Schon remembers, “[His strings] were light but tuned [way] down, and in a weird tuning.”
It was clearly a careful setup that lent itself well to the bluesman's penchant for dramatic bends.
Earlier this year, the Journey guitar hero took his jaw-dropping, 9-string Ibanez Custom Shop model out for a spin across a series of Instagram videos.
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