MR

I found this interesting because Ricky says Jon and John "took over" on Backlash so he and Neal backed off. But all other mentions I have heard have Jon and John at each others throats...

http://www.netwaite.com/jwfaqbe.htm

Q. Why did Bad English break up?

A. This explanation was given by bass player Ricky Phillips in an interview with Andrew McNeice:

"Too many cooks. Nobody was willing to bend anymore. Everyone forget what the beauty of being in a band was all about, and at some point there has to be some degree of a democracy, or all the parties have to agree that one person is the dictator. It can't be both, and er, when you've got four great writers in one band, somebody's got to give. The first record we all kind of pitched in and did our job. First off I was really involved in the songwriting, then Neal came into the situation, and I pushed him forward. He would come over to my house and I would record his ideas one after another, cause they were so brilliant. But after awhile everyone forgot what the chemistry was, everyone was fighting for their ideas, instead of finding where the most natural flow was.

"And people started keeping score, and that's where the dissatisfaction started cropping up. Quite frankly Jonathan Cain and John Waite tried to take over during the second record, and run it, and that's when Neal Schon and I basically said at one point - Let's finish this record, but this is not really what I'm here for. And slowly but surely I didn't change, it got worse and we really fell apart and split up during the making of that second record. It was at that point he record company kinda lost interest in putting anything behind it. Which is a shame, because there are some really classy pieces of music on that record. You could feel that tension, which in a way is kinda cool, I mean I can really feel the tension in the recording of those songs, and I like that."

That's odd because Cain and Schon seem so thick as thieves.
I could not picture Journey without either of them.

Thank God they did break up....

Really interesting. You hear of these things happening within bands a lot. Especially when there are several creative people with strong personalities and differing visions of what they want to accomplish. It makes you wonder how some of them have made it for as long as they have.

More lead singer's disease, imo. Although Jon and John did write most of the album, I think there had to be bigger problems between the two of them than there were between them and the others. There still seems to be something going on there. Neal and Jonthan worked together again on the boxed set soon after (or was it before?)and Beyond the Thunder. So any problems between them were not huge. It was probably a case where Jon decided to work with Waite despite their differences and be miserable while finishing the album whereas Neal threw in the towel and said I'm outta here. Sounds a lot like the ROR situation, where Neal wrote relatively little, came in and did his parts and that was about it. A lot of lost potential in this band, I like Jon's voice and style, not normally a rocker but in BE it worked at times. Great musicians and writers.