HARDLINE TRIVIA
Trivia
The member page Axel Rudi Pell's official site keeps for Johnny Gioeli holds an unusual answer. Asked to name five favourite albums, he says he cannot. The reason he gives is that as a singer and songwriter he never wanted a particular sound or style to shape him, so he has never owned a record collection. The influences he does list run from Kiss, Journey, Dio, Van Halen and the Scorpions to Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, George Benson and Michael Franks. The same page gives his birthplace and date of birth as Brooklyn, New York, 5 October 1967.
HARDLINE grew out of BRUNETTE, the band the brothers Johnny Gioeli (vocals) and Joey Gioeli (guitar) had been running. In the band history Frontiers Records circulated with its 2009 album announcement, the group took shape when the two of them joined forces with Neal Schon of JOURNEY, and MCA signed them the moment Schon left BAD ENGLISH. Todd Jensen, whose road had run through the David Lee Roth and Alice Cooper bands, came in on bass, and Deen Castronovo — also out of BAD ENGLISH, and later a member of JOURNEY — on drums. Those five cut Double Eclipse for MCA in 1992 and took it on the road with VAN HALEN and MR. BIG.
"Hot Cherie", the best-known song on Double Eclipse, is not a HARDLINE original. In a 2026 piece on hair-metal songs that turn out to be covers, Loudwire traces it back to Danny Spanos, who recorded it in 1983, years before HARDLINE existed. The Canadian band Streetheart later cut a version of their own, and people from that band had a hand in writing it. HARDLINE's 1992 reading spread far enough to bury the song's origins: mention the title to a hard rock listener today, the magazine reckons, and Danny Spanos is not the name that comes back.
The title of the 2009 album Leaving the End Open is Johnny Gioeli describing his own position. He admitted that ordinary life had got in the way and thrown the record badly off schedule, and said he had no idea where the future would take him — which is where the title came from. He had stopped wanting to plan, he said, and would rather see where life took him. He and Josh Ramos had begun writing the new songs back in 2006.
Danger Zone, released in 2012, is the album a boy who bought Double Eclipse at thirteen brought back. After Leaving the End Open, Johnny Gioeli did not expect another HARDLINE record any time soon. Then Serafino Perugino, the head of Frontiers Records, sent him demos written by the Italian player and producer Alessandro Del Vecchio — the same person who had grown up on Double Eclipse, having bought it at the age of thirteen, and who says the two of them set out to match that debut. Gioeli, for his part, says that every time he decides to shut the door on HARDLINE the itch to carry on comes back, and admits this turn was a surprise even to him.
Leaving the End Open came out on a different date and through a different company depending on where you bought it. Europe had it on 17 April 2009 from Frontiers Records, the United States on 19 May through Frontiers/Super D, and Japan through King Records — the one territory where a separate company handled it.
Johnny Gioeli has a second post in Germany. Axel Rudi Pell's official biography records that when the former HARDLINE frontman joined in 1998 the two of them formed a creative unit that has held together ever since. The first album of that partnership was Oceans of Time, released on 21 September 1998, with Pell on guitars, Gioeli on vocals, Ferdy Doernberg on keys, Volker Krawczak on bass and Jörg Michael on drums. Through the years when HARDLINE fell silent, in other words, his voice went on being heard in Europe.
What restarted HARDLINE after the better part of a decade was a phone call from Frontiers Records. Johnny and his brother Joey decided to try again, rebuilt the line-up from scratch and made II in 2002, with Josh Ramos — known from THE STORM and TWO FIRES — taking Neal Schon's place on lead guitar. The comeback was well received, and that June the band went back on stage as headliners of the Gods Festival in Bradford, England.
The band that started in America now runs on one American and four Italians. The 2012 album Danger Zone brought in a Europe-based line-up, and two of those players — keyboardist Alessandro Del Vecchio and bassist Anna Portalupi — were still there for Shout in 2026. Guitarist Luca Princiotta and drummer Marco Di Salvia complete the four musicians behind Johnny Gioeli's voice today. When Shout was announced, Blabbermouth introduced them as American/Italian hard rock veterans.
Johnny Gioeli and Deen Castronovo, who had first played together on Double Eclipse, were brought back together in Italy twenty-five years later for Set The World On Fire, an album credited to GIOELI-CASTRONOVO. Frontiers released it on 13 July 2018, with Alessandro Del Vecchio producing, recording, mixing and mastering it himself at Ivorytears Music Works in Somma Lombardo. In the years between, Castronovo had played with Ozzy Osbourne and spent a long stretch behind the kit in JOURNEY.