Journey performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 31, 2022. Sean Liming/STAFF.

SAN FRANCISCO — With more than a hundred years of cumulative shredding between them, guitarists Steve Lukather and Neal Schon brought their legendary bands Toto and Journey to Chase Center Thursday for some frenetic fretwork. The blistering double bill’s synergistic combination of musical virtuosity and fan nostalgia resulted in more than three hours of hits played before an enthusiastic crowd.

Journey’s Neal Schon is a Bay Area legend, having dropped out of Aragon High School in San Mateo to join Santana’s band in 1971 at the age of 17. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has been the only constant member of Journey for the band’s 49 years. Now 68, Schon gets serious guitar god deference: spotlights, dedicated guitar techs, extended solos, giant video screens; even a couple of moments where he occupies the stage alone with his guitar, melting faces and tossing guitar picks into the audience. 

Journey performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 31, 2022.

During the band’s opening number, “Only the Young,” from 1983 album Frontiers, Schon and company strutted across the huge stage as a giant video display showed a computer animated spaceship flying through the cosmos. Arnel Pineda, who replaced Steve Perry, the band’s vocalist during its most successful era (1977-’87) almost 15 years ago, energized the crowd with his frenetic jumps and Van-Halen-style air walks. The Filipino singer, who started his career singing in a Shakey’s Pizza in Manila before becoming a local star and eventually catching Schon’s eye, manages to capture Perry’s iconic vocal moments with uncanny accuracy.

There was some special magic during Journey’s performance of “Lights,” a song synonymous with the Bay Area (although originally written about Los Angeles). While the band played the piano-heavy ballad, a series of images of San Francisco played on the giant video screen behind the musicians. The hometown crowd’s cellphone light singalong vigil was sweet enough to erase the recent bridge traffic and rising home prices from our minds, at least for a couple of minutes.

The band’s mega hits roused the crowd time and again. Dueling piano and synthesizer propelled the inspiring “Don’t Stop Believing” as Pineda absolutely nailed the song’s challenging vocal lines. At the song’s conclusion, the words “Don’t Stop” appeared on the giant video screen behind the band, in case anyone was a visual learner.

The low end was provided by bassist Todd Jensen, who’s been sitting in with the band since last December, a role previously occupied by Randy Jackson.

Journey performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 31, 2022.

Journey’s marathon, 19-song set was broken up by a couple of solo performances. Keyboardist Jonathan Cain delivered a classically tinged piano solo on a bright red grand piano. That segued perfectly into the piano ballad “Open Arms.” Later Schon conjured “Eruption”-like guitar wizardry before getting folky and launching into “Wheel in the Sky.”

Journey closed its set with hit “Any Way You Want It,” which had the crowd up, dancing and singing along until the very last note.

Steve Lukather of opening act Toto is a guitar player’s guitar player. While the 65-year-old is hardly a household name outside Guitar Center regulars, the fact that the guy came up with the guitar riff to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and played on albums by everyone from Aretha Franklin to Warren Zevon looks pretty good on his resume. 

And indeed, Lukather’s performance was nothing short of a guitar clinic, during which the consummate pro alternated between delivering soulful vocals during songs like “I Won’t Hold You Back,” from 1982 album Toto IV, to melting faces during a number of extended guitar solos on songs like “White Sister.”

At one point during “Home of the Brave,” Lukather could be seen on the giant video monitors casually joking with one of the keyboard players while playing a searing lead line that would have made Eddie Van Halen sweat a little bit. 

TOTO performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 31, 2022.

Lukather explained that one of the keyboardists, Dominique “Xavier” Taplin, had come up with the funky new arrangement the band played of “Georgy Porgy,” from their 1978 self-titled debut.

The final three songs of the set whipped the attendees—all of whom appeared to have either witnessed the 1980s firsthand or were at the concert with their parents who had—into a nostalgic frenzy. Lukather delivered the searing lead lines from Joe Cocker’s version of The Beatles “With a Little Help From My Friends” as many in the crowd used their arm rests to help get themselves to their feet.

Rousing versions of big hits “Rosanna” and “Africa” closed out the set. “Rosanna” was enlivened by a wicked sax solo by Warren Ham. The band’s extensive vamping during the yacht rock classic “Africa” allowed vocalist Joseph Williams to engage the crowd in call and response that had just about everyone feeling the rains.

Follow photographer Sean Liming at Instagram.com/S.Liming.