Journey bring the Steve Perry tribute singer Hugo Valenti onstage in Japan

Hugo Valenti has spent 21 years singing Journey songs in front of Journey tribute bands, first with Voyage and now with Hugo - The Ultimate Journey Tribute. Last Saturday the actual band brought him onstage in Fukuoka, Japan, to sing "Faithfully" with them.

Keyboardist Jonathan Cain set it up from the stage. He introduced the song by saying he wrote it in 1982 about the road life the band lived and the loyalty it takes, then told the crowd there was a special treat coming and that a dear friend had travelled from New Jersey to Japan. Valenti walked out and sang it.

The reason this reads as an ending rather than a novelty is what happened in 1998. When Steve Perry left the band, Valenti was briefly a candidate to replace him. "I had gotten a phone call from John Kalodner at Sony saying that Perry was out of the band," he told Melodic Net in 2007, describing a plan to fly to Los Angeles after the holidays and rehearse.

It did not happen, and the reason was the resemblance itself. People in the Journey organisation decided too many similarities might be a detriment to the band's continuation. Valenti said it was hard to swallow, but that hearing how well Steve Augeri fitted made it the right call. Guitarist Neal Schon told Melodicrock.com in 2003 that he had seen Valenti in a video, thought he looked exactly like Perry, and found the idea a little too weird.

Valenti started the tribute band Voyage in 2005, which continues with Pedro Espada singing. His current outfit plays Sinatra Park in Hoboken, New Jersey on September 11. Journey, meanwhile, begin what is billed as the final leg of their Final Frontier farewell tour this Saturday in Honolulu, wrapping on September 28 in their home city of San Francisco.

Cain has stoked the obvious speculation. He recently told the Associated Press that ending in San Francisco would be fitting, said he does not know who might show up, and hoped there might be a reunion of sorts. Perry has already answered that question. When Cain hinted at it earlier in the year, Perry wrote that the rumours about him rejoining were not true and that he wanted to gently put them to rest, while saying the music the band made together still means a great deal to him.

He has not performed with Journey since the Bill Graham tribute show in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1991, and by his own account is more interested in new work that reflects where he is now. Which leaves Fukuoka as the closest thing the farewell tour has produced to a Perry appearance, delivered by a man who has been waiting 21 years for the call.

Journey's remaining rock dates are on the tour guide. It is a stranger farewell than most: a band saying goodbye with its original singer declining in public and his lifelong impersonator taking the microphone instead. Elsewhere in tribute-act territory, Ash recently took the Kendal Calling stage as a tribute band and collected gold discs for it, and Billie Joe Armstrong and Travis Barker led a Ramones 50th anniversary show.