Arnel Pineda gives back

MANILA, Philippines - Success can fill some people with illusions of grandeur. The hallelujahs can be deafening, humble beginnings and humbler friends become things of the past.

Not for Journey member Arnel Pineda, who Oprah Winfrey herself interviewed in her popular show after the top American band chose him to replace one of its vocalists. Instead of squandering his hard-earned money in useless things, Pineda wants to spend some of it on streetchildren.

“It’s payback time,” he says at the recent opening of Empire Superclub and Taboo Room at the Ortigas Home Depot Complex, Julia Vargas St., Pasig. “I want to create a street school for kids.”

Pineda is in Manila for a short vacation before he returns to the US for a grueling four months of 72 shows one after the other. He will also join Journey in a new album to be released in May 2010.

Quietly and sans fanfare, he put up the Arnel Pineda Foundation to give street kids what he sorely missed while growing up in Sampaloc: Continuous education. Pineda envisions a school that will help the poor the way CNN modern-day hero Efren Penaflorida’s pushcart is uplifting lives. Armed with books and a blackboard loaded on a pushcart, Penaflorida has been teaching street kids how to read for more than 10 years now.

“We were doing fine until my mom (a tailor who loved to sing like his dad) got sick. She passed away when I was 13,” recalls Arnel. As we know by now, the hard times drove Arnel and his family to live under the bridge and the future toast of Filipino music to wander in the streets. He also resorted to drugs and sowed his wild oats.

Now that singing enabled him to leave all of that behind, buy a house of his own in Commonwealth, Quezon City and put all his children to school, Arnel doesn’t mind dealing with the hazards of fame.

“My life is now an open book,” he sighs. Arnel doesn’t hide the fact that his children — aged 13 to 20 — are products of two failed relationships and marriage to his present wife. He has remained on friendly terms with his former loves and continues to provide for the children.

Success, he adds, has also multiplied his relatives. Arnel is not complaining, though. He just shrugs this urge to latch on to someone else’s success as part of human nature.

Besides, if you’ve traveled the world — in Europe, the Middle East, the US and Asia — doing what you love best, these perils of fame become secondary. Sharing your talent with others — adoring Americans and hard-to-please Pinoys alike — matters more.

Hadn’t Journey come along, Arnel says he’ll still do what he’s doing now: Living in a suitcase and performing wherever and whenever he can. That’s his advice to aspiring singers who dream of following in his footsteps: “Hold on to your dream, no matter what it takes.”

He might as well give another piece of advice: Remain humble once you’re already up there.

“I don’t even entertain the thought that I’m already that well-known,” he admits.

Arnel just keeps on doing what he does best, and reaping the rewards in the process.

And oh, it won’t hurt if he adds another item on his wish list: A bar like Empire Superclub where his fellow musicians can jam for all they’re worth.

Who knows? Now that things are falling into place for him, a business that would complement his passion for music can’t be far behind.