With Journey having announced their Final Frontier tour, co-founder and guitarist Neal Schon tried to explain in an interview with Rolling Stone if it’s just a farewell for keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who has said he’s leaving the band after the two-year tour, or if the band is also going to pack it in.
Schon says, “The legacy and the heart of the band I have within myself… I’ve been here since day one, and wherever I go, the heart and soul of the band is going to go with me. Journey goes on…
“Jonathan is the one that made the statement that he wants to say farewell. It doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to stop.”
Asked if it will still be called Journey he said, “It could have a different lean on it, and I’m fine with that, too. I’m kind of ready for a change…
“I don’t want to do a nostalgia show after this [tour] is over. I want to be creative. I want to bring something completely fresh that is a new version of what Journey was…
“I really do believe it is [the final Journey tour] because I need to musically move on. I have too many creative juices, and I don’t like sitting in the same spot forever. I can always play our songs. I know every single one of our songs like the back of my hand, and I can play any of them at any time. That’s just a blessing to have all the great, creative work that we did together, but I also need to move forward with new music.”
And then later in the interview he said, “We will continue, and I will continue, but I’m just not putting a tag on it right now. But it will have a new flair to it.”
The tour, on which they’ll play roughly 60 shows next year and another 60 in 2027, starts on February 28th in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time at JourneyMusic.com.
