Journey's Jonathan Cain on band animosity, Don't Stop Believin', and why they don't play Germany

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Considered to be a true kingpin of 1970s American hard rock, Journey need no introduction. Don’t Stop Believin’ might be more than four decades old now, but the song has brought the San Franciscan band a whole new level of fame in recent times. Below, we catch up with Jonathan Cain, who co-wrote it with guitarist Neal Schon and former singer Steve Perry.

Journey are currently on tour in the US with Def Leppard, with an 11-date arena tour lined up for the UK and Ireland later in the year. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.

Official verification is still required, but Forbes magazine recently claimed that Don’t Stop Believin’ is the most popular song of all time, so congratulations for that.

There are many, many, many great songs in our time, and that distinction is such an honour. And of course being on the road, the accolade was also pretty timely for us.

Steve Perry, one of the song’s co-writers, said he was “emotionally stunned” by the news. He’s been out of Journey since 1998. Do you or the rest of the band have much contact with him these days? 

Not really, though I know him vicariously through my son-in-law Trev Lukather [son of Toto guitarist Steve] who gives me up updates. Trev often says: “Someday I’ll get you together with Steve over a cup of coffee,” to which I reply: “Send him my love” [a reference to the song Send Her My Love from Journey’s 1983 album Frontiers]. Steve has been active singing backgrounds on people’s records, and he was on Dolly Parton’s record [Rockstar]. It’s good to see that happening.

As part of the band’s ongoing fiftieth anniversary celebrations, Journey’s upcoming UK tour is their first visit here since 2013.

That’s a long time! It’s been too long. We were caught up touring here [in the US]. We would ask our management, and they’d tell us there has to be a demand. We know full well that places like Germany are not our market. Even when we go there, nobody comes. Our true fans are in the UK, and when we looked into things it was time to bring the lads back.

It’s difficult to believe that Arnel Pineda, Journey’s current vocalist, has been in the band since 2007. 

After sixteen years Arnel is no longer the new guy. I call him The Crusher, because every time we throw him a challenge he crushes it. I still remember when we played with Def Leppard and it was the first time Joey [Elliott] had heard him. Joey looked at me, raised an eyebrow and said: “Woah, that kid can sing.” Steve Perry will always be recognised as the architect and the voice, but Arnel is the keeper of our legacy. We’re awfully proud of him.

Many of Journey’s songs are very demanding to perform, and the burnout rate of the band’s past singers speaks for itself, and yet Arnel is still doing great. 

We brought in a voice expert from LA to work with him. This guy brought in a kind of metal straw that allows the vocal cords to warm up without putting strain on them. I was sceptical, but this thing really works. It’s genius.

Special guests on the upcoming tour are the acclaimed Illinois power-pop quartet Cheap Trick, who celebrate their own fiftieth anniversary this year. How well do you know those guys? 

I toured with them a lot in my band The Babys – Cheap Trick and The Babys was a hot ticket back then [at the end of the 70s]. It was always wall-to-wall young girls. John Waite [Babys frontman] was such a huge fan, he would always want to stay on at the venue and watch Cheap Trick. They made us realise we had to step up to the next level.

There has been some well-publicised animosity within Journey [in 2022 Neal Schon filed a Cease And Desist order against Cain, whose wife, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, is the former US president Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, after the Journey man performed Don’t Stop Believin’ at the White House]. How does that manifest itself while the group is on tour?

We take all of that down a notch for the sake of the band. The music is louder [than the negativity]. No matter who has said what, or anything that’s going on in the background, it’s all about bringing the best show that you can bring.

Do the protagonists have separate dressing rooms on tour these days? 

[Side-stepping the question] It doesn’t mess with our chemistry. I have stood on stage during some difficult situations. But once you get up there and start playing those songs, all of us in the band are where we are supposed to be. It would be selfish [to let personal issues] affect the show. We owe our fans more than that. Our fans are everything.

How many songs from Journey’s current album Freedom will be on the set-list for this tour?

Right now we’re only playing one [Let It Rain], but we are working on a new, new song, and if we can get that up to speed we may be playing that one too. We’ll see.

When you say ‘new, new’ you mean completely unheard, and maybe something that could be on the next album?

Brand new, right out of the box. If it gets accepted then who knows… it might be a single.

Can you share the title?

[Slightly warily] It’s called This Town. It’s about the fans. That fifty-year relationship we’ve had with them. We wrote it about their loyalty. The hook is: ‘Tonight, it’s all about this town.’

Are you currently working on and stockpiling material for what would be a follow-up to Freedom?

I don’t know yet. It’s so tough out there. We had hoped for better results with Freedom, even though it was cut-and-paste, a bit of an experiment during covid. The covid song I wrote with Neal, The Way We Used To Be, was tongue-in-cheek all the way, and we weren’t able to release it in time, so it didn’t get much love. I heard a lot of bad covid songs – I mean some really bad ones – so we needed to do something that was really slick. That’s when I had the idea of two lovers not being about to see one another.

What do you think of the special attention that Don’t Stop Believin’ receives, especially after its connection to a brand new audience after it appeared in the US TV series Glee, ahead of all the other songs in Journey’s catalogue?

I don’t think that’s strange. It’s always been a special song to me because it gives us all permission to dream. When I first joined the band, my message to them was that we needed to write a song that spoke to the fans. Don’t Stop Believin’ was a conscious attempt for Steve and I to bring them into our song. There’s a lot of smalltown girls and boys out there wanting to get on to the midnight train to anywhere. And you know that we broke all of the rules with that song?

In what way?

Well, the chorus only happens once, and it comes right at the end. And Neal solos even before Steve sings. And yet it became the most downloaded rock song of all time.

Who was the most surprising person to tell you that they dug Don’t Stop Believin'? 

Bruce Springsteen. There was a charity gala, and Bruce, Elton John and Lady Gaga sang it on stage somewhere. It’s out there on the net somewhere, you can check it out.