SEPARATE WAYS

Journey’s Guitarist Sends Bandmate Cease-and-Desist Over Mar-a-Lago Set

Keyboardist Jonathan Cain “has no right to use Journey for politics,” Neal Schon’s cease-and-desist letter reads. “His politics should be his own personal business.”

Neal Schon, founding member of Journey, isn’t feeling the joy of rediscovering his bandmate’s political views. On Wednesday, Variety reported the guitarist had sent a cease-and-desist letter to keyboardist Jonathan Cain over a show the latter played at Donald Trump’s Florida estate last month, calling the performance “harmful” to their band’s image. The Mar-a-Lago set included a rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” with MAGA celebrities like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake captured belting out the iconic hit alongside Cain. “Mr. Cain has no right to use Journey for politics,” Schon’s letter reads, according to Variety. “His politics should be his own personal business.” Schon and Cain have long chafed at each others’ politics, with their decades-long relationship pockmarked by spats and periods of refusing to speak to one another. Infamously, Schon blasted Cain on Twitter after the latter met with Trump at the White House in August 2017, months after Cain’s wife, Paula White-Cain, had delivered the invocation at the presidential inauguration. (White-Cain also chaired the Trump administration’s evangelical advisory board.) Within a year, the duo had brokered enough of a peace to reunite for a tour.