Journey Begins the Final Leg of Its Final Frontier in Los Angeles

Calling a tour Final Frontier does not leave much ambiguity about what comes next.

Journey arrived at Crypto.com Arena on Sept. 12 for the opening night of the newly added fall leg of its farewell tour, beginning a 40-date North American run that is scheduled to end Nov. 28 with a hometown finale in San Francisco. After more than five decades as a band, it would have been easy to make the night a compact procession through the songs everyone already knew.

Instead, Journey played 29 of them.

The show opened with “Be Good to Yourself,” then quickly moved through “Stone in Love,” “Ask the Lonely” and “Only the Young.” There was no opening act and not much need for one. From the beginning, the concert operated less like a conventional package tour and more like an extended survey of Journey’s catalog, eventually running about two hours and 35 minutes.

That distinction mattered. Journey could probably build an entire arena show from the most recognizable portion of Escape and Frontiers alone. In Los Angeles, the band kept reaching further back and sideways instead.

Songs such as “Just the Same Way,” “La Do Da,” “Dead or Alive,” “Edge of the Blade” and “Keep On Runnin’” gave the middle of the set considerably more depth than a simple farewell-tour greatest-hits package. “Of a Lifetime” reached all the way back to Journey’s self-titled 1975 debut, connecting the current version of the band to music recorded before the arena-rock sound most listeners now associate with its name had fully taken shape.

The vocals were spread around as well.

Arnel Pineda remained the night’s frontman, but Journey repeatedly treated the concert as a full-band performance rather than structuring every song around a single singer. Jonathan Cain and drummer Deen Castronovo shared lead vocals on “Just the Same Way” and “Anytime,” Castronovo took “Lights,” “After the Fall” and “Keep On Runnin’,” while keyboardist Jason Derlatka handled “Of a Lifetime,” “Girl Can’t Help It” and “Suzanne.” The current touring lineup also includes founder Neal Schon on lead guitar and Todd Jensen on bass.

That rotation gave the show some useful texture, especially across a set this long. It also reinforced something easy to overlook when talking about a band whose history contains so many lineup changes: the current Journey works as an ensemble.

The stage production made sure the arena scale never disappeared. Giant video screens framed the musicians while lighting moved between deep blues, stark whites and saturated reds. Cain’s bright red keyboard rig became one of the visual anchors onstage, while Schon frequently occupied the other side of the frame with the guitar work that has remained one of Journey’s constants since the band formed in San Francisco in 1973. Journey was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, with Schon and Cain among the members honored.

But some of the strongest stretches came when the production gave way to the musicians.

“La Do Da” expanded into a roughly 10-minute jam that included a piece of Led Zeppelin’s “How Many More Times” before moving into a drum solo. “Who’s Crying Now” received an extended outro, and later Schon’s guitar solo led into “Wheel in the Sky,” where the arena-scale production returned with pyrotechnics. Even “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” was allowed to stretch into an extended blues-oriented jam.

Those moments helped justify the length of the concert. A farewell show built only around nostalgia can begin to feel like a checklist. Journey instead left enough space between the expected songs for the band to actually play.

Of course, eventually the expected songs had to arrive.

The final stretch brought “Faithfully” into “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but Journey resisted making its most recognizable song the obvious final word. “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” and “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” followed before “Any Way You Want It” closed the show under a burst of confetti.

That sequencing felt appropriate for the tour as a whole. “Don’t Stop Believin’” is now so culturally enormous that it could easily swallow everything around it, but this was a show interested in presenting Journey as more than one song, or even one era.

The Final Frontier Tour began in February and was originally set to conclude over the summer before Journey added another 40 North American dates. Los Angeles became the starting point for that extension, with the tour now scheduled to end where the band began: the San Francisco Bay Area. Journey has described the run as a thank-you to the fans who carried the music through each stage of the band’s history.

At Crypto.com Arena, the farewell did not feel particularly interested in being quiet or sentimental.

It sounded more like Journey wanted one more chance to remind an arena what these songs were built for.