Journey and the Pretenders have canceled their 2020 tour. The massive 60-date trek was set to kick off on May 15th at Ridgefield, Washington's Sunlight Supply Amphitheater and run through September 12th when the tour wrapped at Bethel, New York's Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
Journey issued a statement on its official website Journeymusic.com, in which that band posted: “After carefully reviewing all options, the decision has been made to cancel the entire tour to make it possible for the band's legion of hardworking fans to immediately obtain access to refund options during these unforeseen and extremely challenging times.”
The band — notably only mentioning Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain, and frontman Arnel Pineda and NOT ousted members Ross Valory and Steve Smith — posted a message to fans explaining their decision to scarp the outing in the face of the ongoing pandemic:
There is no greater thrill for us than playing for our incredibly devoted audience, but their safety must come first. Having seen what the world has endured during the last 45 days, and not knowing what the rest of this year or 2021 will bring, we knew the right thing to do was to make sure our fans' health was not put in jeopardy and to provide immediate access to refund options given the unexpected events caused by this terrible virus. We would like to thank all doctors, nurses, police, other first responders and essential workers for their heroic efforts; as well as our fans for doing everything possible to stay safe. We would also like to send The Pretenders our best wishes and hope to see them in the future. We will see everyone again as soon as it is safe to tour, and we will share that news as it becomes available. In the meantime, please Don't Stop Believin' in the wonder of life and in each other.
Journey and tour promoter Live Nation are ensuring ticket holders will be emailed directly with their refund options including a full refund, or they can request a 150 percent credit and Live Nation will donate the number of tickets you originally purchased to healthcare workers on the front lines. For more info, log on: livenation.com/refund.
We recently caught up with keyboardist Jonathan Cain, and he walked us through how one of his and Steve Perry's greatest team-ups — the lead single and opening track to 1983's Frontiers album — “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” — came into being: “We took Escape on the road and we knew we needed more teeth. We knew we needed something like 'Separate Ways,' y'know? Like, what would make our set undeniably great? And we tried to fill in what we were missing musically. I think we all sensed it. And I remember writing 'Separate Ways' with Steve (Perry) on the road. We wrote that in a hotel room — Ross (Valory) was going through a divorce and boom — out comes 'Separate Ways,' and we're playin' it at the end of the Escape tour. Y'know, 'cause we needed it in the set. Now, we start fine tuning ourselves, y'know? And that's how in tune we were with our music. It was all of us, man.”
The Pretenders will release its upcoming album Hate For Sale on July 17th.
