Journey keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Jonathan Cain laid into Bruce Springsteen on Monday for continuing to speak out against President Donald Trump.
While appearing on the Complete Disaster Network’s “Tom Barnard Podcast” this week, Cain blasted the “Born in the U.S.A.” singer for how outspoken he has been against Trump and his administration. In fact, he thinks his fellow performer should just “shut up” and work.
“I used to be a Democrat back in the old days, but I couldn’t go there anymore, you know?” Cain said. “I’m a diehard conservative … And guys like Bruce Springsteen should shut up. You know, really, honestly, shut up, Bruce, you know? Him and … who’s the other one? Robert De Niro. I mean, who cares, guys? Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music.”
“Now, people say, ‘Well, you’re a Christian and you’re conservative,’ and I’m like, ‘So what?’ I don’t preach it on stage. I don’t spend 10 minutes talking about it… And Bruce, I mean, what the heck? I used to like him, and now he’s just annoying. He’s an annoying, bitter old man,” he continued. “I mean, stop it. Really. You were born in the USA, weren’t you, dude? So act like it. But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, I mean, it’s a kind of a diss toward our country.”
Cain’s comments came shortly after Springsteen’s PBS NewsHour special for the country’s 250 birthday celebration, where he explained why he still has hope despite everything going on in modern America.
“I think we’re in a very dangerous moment. Obviously, our democracy is threatened, the Constitution is threatened. We have an administration that, in my humble opinion, is a ship of fools. It’s a very, very, very dangerous time for America,” he shared. “I was old enough to live through the 60s, and I remember the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. So it’s not like these are the first difficult times America’s been through, we had the Civil War. America has 250 years of being grounded in democracy and I don’t think that’s going to change. I think we’re going through a very, very difficult period, but I tend to remain realistically optimistic that the country will pull out of it and something new will be born from it that is good.”
