Journey's Steve Perry reveals how he nearly ruined The Sopranos ending

Journey’s 1981 anthem ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ famously soundtracked the very final scene of the acclaimed HBO series, which sees Tony Soprano (the late-great James Gandolfini), his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and children Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) and Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) arrive separately at a diner for a meal before it ends very abruptly.

In an interview with the BBC to promote his solo album ‘Traces’, Steve Perry said he refused to let ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ be used unless producers told him what happened at the finale - a headache for the TV network considering the final scene was sequenced with the song.

Perry explained that he only gave the green light when HBO relented and gave him a plot synopsis three days before the final episode was due to air.

He explained: "The Sopranos wanted Don't Stop Believin' for the last sequence of the whole series - but I said, 'I won't approve it until I know how it's used.'

"What I didn't want to see was the family getting whacked. Scorsese would do that. He would play something beautiful while people were getting gunned down. So I held out.

"I was still holding out on the Thursday - and it aired on the Sunday. Finally, they called and said, 'OK, we'll tell you the ending under one condition - that you can't tell anybody else.'

"You can see that they wrote the whole end sequence to the song. When I sing, 'Just a city boy,' the son comes in; and on the line, 'Street lights, people,' the daughter's trying to park underneath a street light. So they're really correlating the visuals to the moments of the song.

"If I hadn't given approval they'd have been screwed!"

You can watch The Sopranos ending right here (obviously it contains a big spoiler):