Long Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain believes rockers should keep their politics off stage, but in interviews he remains proud to criticize their conservative beliefs. He used a podcast interview to criticize fellow 76-year-old Bruce Springsteen, calling him an “annoying, bitter old man,” saying that anyone who speaks out should just “shut up.”

Cain’s issues with Springsteen aren’t just with the Chief’s recent onstage comment about the state of the U.S. The Journey co-founder called Springsteen’s 1980s classic “Born in the USA” a “diss” song against America.

“I was a Democrat in the old days, but I couldn’t be a Democrat anymore, you know?” Cain said in an appearance on the “Complete Disaster Network” podcast. “I’m a staunch 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 DeNiro. I mean, who cares, guys? Make your art. I try to keep politics out of my music.”

Cain, who is married to evangelist Paula White-Cain, an adviser to President Donald J. Trump, further said: “Now, people say, ‘Well, you’re a Christian and you’re a conservative,’ and I say, ‘So what?’ I don’t preach it on stage. I don’t spend 10 minutes talking about it… And Bruce, I mean, what the hell? I used to like it and now it just bothers me. He is an annoying and bitter old man. I mean, stop it. Really. You were born in the United States, right, friend? So act like it. But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, I mean, it’s kind of an insult to our country.”

Cain then mentioned “Winds of Freedom,” his new solo single, from the “Only a Prayer Away” EP, which he says was inspired by right-wing evangelical influencer Eric Metaxas, and which includes lines like “With our fate uncertain / Across boundless seas / To distant shores / We would fight to defend ourselves.” But lest anyone consider this to be incorporating political commentary into the music, Cain preemptively insisted that, in pushing his brand of patriotism, this did not count.

“I’m releasing this patriotic song because I’m a die-hard patriot,” Cain said, “like Ted Nugent, who’s my friend. We’re a couple of patriots…we love our flag and we love our nation, and we grew up that way.” He also mentioned another sympathetic rocker, after the presenters suggested he might be a “unicorn” as a conservative in rock. “Kid Rock and I are probably on an island,” he acknowledged. “There are a few of us, and I’m proud to be there with my flag on that island. And if anyone has a problem with me, America, and Jesus, bring it up.”

Cain talked about the band that survived years of being “uncool” in Journey’s more than half a century. When the hosts insisted that no one ever hated Journey, he provided evidence to the contrary. “Back then, it was cool to hate us, and those were dark days. I thought this would change eventually because, again, the music speaks louder than the noise and the haters… Rolling Stone hated us. For 20 years, they dissed us in their magazine, they dissed our shows, they dissed our records, they gave us one star. It was cool to hate Journey because we were so successful… When grunge came along, it was like, ‘Okay, now it’s grunge.’ time,’ and Pearl Jam and all that, and we kind of took a back seat.”

He mentioned a positive stock market as something fans associate Journey with. “We are the certainty in times of uncertainty. And especially after 9/11, I felt like people were really leaning toward what was safe, what was good. In the Ronnie Reagan days, we were all making a lot of money in the stock market. Those were the Journey days, you know, the ’80s, what we represented.”

He also took credit for Journey being one of the first bands to book a tour during COVID times, when “everyone was telling us we were going to fail and we were crazy (we’re all going to die, you know?) and we said, ‘Nonsense, it’s time to go back out and celebrate rock ‘n’ roll again,’ and we were right, and we sold out every stadium we played in.”