Neal Schon Responds to Steve Perry’s Journey Lawsuit – ‘What a Bunch of Total Crap’
Journey guitarist Neal Schon has responded to former vocalist Steve Perry's recent lawsuit against him and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, calling the claim a "bunch of total crap."
Perry's suit claims that Schon and Cain registered 20 of Journey's most successful hits through their company Freedom JN LLC in 2020 for usage on a variety of merchandise items, which is something he didn't agree to and therefore violates an agreement that they'd made in the past, which required consent from all members of the band, including himself.
Schon has since shared a link to the lawsuit on his social media, and provided a written statement in the comments.
"What a bunch of total crap. Here's how it goes friends. Jon Cain calls a board of directors meeting out of nowhere then before I found out about the meeting Jonathan came to me and said he didn't like what they were planning," Schon wrote, citing bassist Ross Valory, Perry and former manager Herbie Herbert as being involved.
"On that meeting Steve, Ross, Smith and Herbie voted myself and Cain off the board of directors and Steve and all voted Ross in my place and Smith in Jon's. They all knew at this time I'd been investigating our trademarks for years trying to get to the bottom of all corruption as we found (my wife and I) that nothing had ever been trademarked besides our music. They all went for a takeover and it didn't work. Quite simple," the guitarist continued.
"So my wife Micheale Schon found a legitimate trademark attorney that wasn't in the corrupt musical circles and we were then successful in attaining it to protect everything we built. We had been getting ripped off since the beginning until I shut it down."
Schon questioned why none of the other members' attorneys ever helped the band in terms of trademarking their material, and called it a "giant corrupted ring" of individuals who ended up benefiting financially from their merchandise. As a result, he and Cain wanted to register all of their album and song titles.
"The more we got educated on how songwriting and copyrights have nothing to do with trademarks... You haven't heard the last of this friends. We are going to peel back the onion."
See the full statement below.
This news comes just a few months after Perry and Schon had supposedly been working on reconciling. In an interview with Vulture in July, the guitarist said that the pair had been "talking and getting to know each other again," though he clarified that the rekindling wasn't indicative of a musical reunion, and was, in fact, related to the trademark issue.
A few weeks later, he discussed Journey's 2023 plans, which involved celebrating the band's 50th anniversary, and he didn't rule out the possibility of Perry and former keyboardist Gregg Rolie participating.