Journey frontman Arnel Pineda took to social media to both thank fans and bash detractors following his brother's arrest in their home country of the Philippines. NME reported Pineda's younger brother, 51-year-old Rusmon Pineda, was arrested on October 6th during a sting outside of Manila for the alleged possession of 23 grams of crystal meth.
Arnel, who's now 53 and joined Journey in 2007, posted a message regarding his brother's arrest on Instagram, which read:
to the bashers
who chose to cowardly succumb to prejudism (sic) & unkindness while hiding conveniently in the cloak of your keyboards & computer screens, there are more helpful & useful things to do, like facing your precious mirror once in a while. who knows, you might find yourselves as imperfect as me, my family and everyone else.
to my real friends & supporters, who knows that our friendship is eternally unbounded by time & space, you know who you are.
thank you for your prayers & love… you don’t even know how much all of you have hugely blessed us by sending kind & comforting words.may God be with you all always
love & peace
Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain told us that he and the band are not only thrilled with how Arnel Pineda has clicked musically with the band — but how impressed they are with the courage and strength he's shown as a human: “Well, this guy is like right out of a Charles Dickens story. I mean, he's got an amazing tale to tell, and it's almost hard to believe he survived what he survived, y'know? So you gotta look at that and go, 'How tough is this guy?' He's as tough as they come, and I liked everything about him. (The) first week I spent with him I immediately liked him, and took him to task and told him things I thought he needed to work on, certainly. But getting him out of the club was the main deal. We had to just get him to stop singing everybody else's music, y'know?”
