Journey guitarist Neal Schon discussed the “politics” that he believed were responsible for creating a distance between himself and former singer Steve Perry.

Schon said that when his former colleague released comeback album Traces in 2018, he made a lot of encouraging comments about the partnership that made Journey a success story for 20 years.

"When he first came out and started doing the very first interviews, he had a lot to say about him and I, and it was all very positive, what he was talking about — our friendship and what we wrote together and what he cherishes in his heart,” Schon told The Eddie Trunk Podcast. “And then things dramatically changed, whether it was edited out by higher-ups or whatever, but it went from completely one way to another. I was, like, ‘Wow! That's just too bad.’”

Schon said he believed Perry was “being honest, and he was telling everybody how he felt." "And then it seemed like somebody had clamped down on him and said, ‘Don't talk about it,'" he added. "Which I've seen a lot in all the years that I’ve been in this industry … I just know what goes on behind the doors, and there’s a lot of politics.”

The guitarist argued that “things always get twisted” to make it look as if he was “trying to take advantage of somebody,” but he asserted, "I am a true friend of his, whether he knows it or not. And I get the feeling, when I'm trying to talk to him, that he thinks that I just want something. I don’t want anything. I just wanna support him, to show him respect for all the great years that we had. And that’s it — simply, that is it. I still wish him the best.”

 

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