Bruce and Journey are feuding — I’ve loved both for 40+ years

Two of the most recognizable voices in classic rock spent this week taking shots at each other, and I have spent almost 50 years loving both of them.

Bruce Springsteen and Journey have been staples of my life since the 1970s. Some of the best concerts I have ever attended, across four decades of going to shows, were Bruce nights and Journey nights. Both bands are permanent fixtures of New Jersey 101.5's weekend rotation, the music that comes out to play every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You will hear both of them plenty this weekend, same as always. And when one of those songs pops up on the radio, politics is the furthest thing from my mind. The first thing I think about is a warm summer weekend, family and friends, the radio blasting in the background.

This week, that got a little more complicated.

What Cain actually said

Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, appearing on the Complete Disaster Network podcast, went after Springsteen directly, calling him an "annoying, bitter old man" and telling him to shut up about politics. Cain, a self-described diehard conservative whose wife serves as an advisor to President Trump, argued that celebrities using their platform for political commentary is bad form, saying he tries to keep his own beliefs off the stage even as he lives them personally. He went further, questioning the sincerity of Springsteen's 1984 anthem "Born in the USA," suggesting the lyrics amount to something closer to a critique of the country than a celebration of it — a reading of that song people have debated since the album came out, since the verses are considerably more complicated than the chorus everyone remembers.

Cain and Springsteen are both 76 years old, which makes "old man" less an insult than a simple fact about both of them.

SEE ALSO: Bruce has every right to go political — and I have every right to skip this tour 

Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Where I already landed on this

I wrote back in March about Springsteen's decision to make his most recent tour explicitly political, and I said then that I respected his right to say whatever he wants from that stage completely — free speech does not come with an asterisk for musicians — while also choosing, for myself, to sit that particular tour out. Not out of anger. Just because I already knew what kind of night I wanted, and a political rally was not it.

Cain is making a different argument now, a more personal one, aimed less at the policy content of Springsteen's shows and more at Springsteen himself. That is a fair thing for one artist to say about another, the same way it was fair for Springsteen to say whatever he wanted from his own stage. I am not going to referee which of two 76-year-old rock legends is being the bigger baby about this. I genuinely do not need to pick a side.

Why the music still wins

Here is what I know for certain. Decades from now, I am not going to remember this week's podcast quotes. I am going to remember Mary's Place at Giants Stadium, when the sky opened up right on cue during "let it rain" and nobody in that stadium moved an inch. I am going to remember Journey shows that felt like a shared secret between everyone in the building who grew up on that sound.

That is what fifty years of loving this music actually gets you. The songs outlast the feuds. They always have. Whatever Cain and Springsteen think of each other this month, "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Born to Run" are both getting played on 101.5 this weekend, back to back if the mood strikes, and I will be right there for both of them.