Schon speaks out about the filing
Journey co-founder and lead guitarist Neal Schon is calling the lawsuit Steve Perry has filed against him and Jonathan Cain “a bunch of total crap.” Perry is suing the pair over the filing of trademarks for 20 of the group’s songs for use on merchandising. Perry claims the filings violate an agreement the trio made in 1997 that requires each partner to be consulted before conducting any such business.
On Wednesday (Sept 21st), Schon shared on Facebook that the trademark investigation is what led to the firing and lawsuit of drummer Steve Smith and bassist Ross Valory in 2020 for the pair attempting a corporate coup d’état.
“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 (Valory, Smith, Perry and late manager Herbie Herbert) were planning,” Schon writes. “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 take over and it didn’t work. Quite simple.
“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.
“So the question is why did nobody else’s (attorneys Steve’s – who was actually ours at one time also and individual band attorneys and accountants) and other so called trademark attorneys help us do this?
“It was a giant corrupted ring of people that either management or accountants hired to work for us cashing in on all our merchandise till now.
“At this point I decided to go for all album titles as well as 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.”
Perry was a member of Journey from 1977-1987 and then again from 1995-1998. Schon is the only remaining founding member of the group, and has played at every performance since the inception of Journey in 1973. He, along with Cain and Perry, were the core of Journey and were responsible for the band’s meteoric rise to prominence in the 1980’s. Together, they wrote several of the most well-known rock songs in the world — including “Don’t Stop Believin”, the best-selling digital track from the 20th century, with over seven million copies sold in the United States, and the second most downloaded song of all time.
