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Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" reached No. 9 on the Billboard charts in 1981, not as high as what band members had hoped, but still respectable enough to later make it a staple on classic rock radio.

During the past five years, however, the song has helped propel something of a comeback for the pop rock quintet.

In 2005 Chicago White Sox fans made the song an anthem as the team made its way to a World Series win. Two years later it capped off "The Sopranos'" six-season run and topped the iTunes charts.

And high school kids on the new Fox series "Glee" have taken up the tune. Earlier this year their version hit No. 4 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

"At the time we recorded the song, we thought it would be a bigger single than it was. And it did turn out to be a big hit just like we thought it would be, but years later," guitarist Neal Schon said in a telephone interview. "It just has to do with the quality of the music. It's an uplifting song. It's feel good music, as opposed to the heavy dark stuff you hear today."

Coming off of a world tour, Journey takes the stage Friday at Greensboro Coliseum, headlining a show featuring another '80s rock favorite Night Ranger.

New lead singer Arnel Pineda is at the helm, with original members Gillis and bassist Ross Valory along with longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain and drummer Deen Castronovo rounding out the line-up.

The group in the early 1980s achieved international stardom with power ballads like "Open Arms," "Faithfully" and "Separate Ways."

Schon, a former guitarist for Santana, helped found the band in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1973. The group charted its first top 40 hit "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" in 1979, and scored again the following year with what would become another classic rock favorite "Any Way You Want It."

Their 1981 album, "Escape," hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, producing five top 40 singles. Among them was the group's biggest hit "Open Arms," which reached No. 2, and "Don't Stop Believin.' "

The band, Schon said, came up with the song while rehearsing at a studio warehouse in Oakland, Calif.

"Jonathan Cain came into the band and had a lot of songwriting ideas," the 55-year-old Schon recalled. "And he started with the piano figure, which is the bulk of the song.

"And he just started playing that and started humming some melodies and (then lead singer) Steve Perry jumped in and I came up with the next section, 'Strangers, waiting... da da da.' And then we just came up with little bits here and there. It wasn't a long process."

The song has an unusual arrangement in that the chorus isn't heard until almost the very end. But even as the band's hitmaking status waned in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ballad got steady rotation. In 2003 it was used in the Oscar-winning film "Monster" and throughout this decade has also been heard on "Family Guy," "Laguna Beach" and "South Park."

On the heels of "The Sopranos" finale, it became the top selling catalog song in iTunes history. Altogether it sold more than 2 million digital downloads according to SoundScan.

In the now famous (or infamous) last scene of the series, Tony Soprano puts a quarter in a jukebox at a diner and the song starts playing as he waits for his family to come in. His daughter is shown walking up to the door and right as he looks up to see her the show fades to black. The lyrics "don't stop" are the last words heard.

Schon said he had heard beforehand that the song might be used on "The Sopranos," but didn't think much about it until after the show aired.

"The night that it happened, my phone was ringing off the hook," he said. "And I was like, 'What's going on?' I hadn't seen it yet. And everybody was saying, 'The last thing you hear is a Journey song.' I went back and watched and I thought, 'Wow, that's huge.' It was pretty cool."

The song remained at No. 71 last week on the iTunes charts.

Journey will head back into the studio after the tour wraps up in October to record what Schon says will be a conceptual album. Their last album, 2008's "Revelation," reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200, their highest charting record in 12 years.

"Things have really turned around for us," Schon said. "We played Darien Lake (N.Y.) the other night, by ourselves, and we had over 10,000 people. It's pretty amazing. Times are tough, and I look around and hear about other tours with very big name bands that aren't getting half of what we're getting. And you look into the audience and you see we've kept a lot of our older fans, but we're also entertaining a lot of very, very young fans."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com.