Time & Perspective Quote by Neal Schon

Schon’s line reads like bandroom wisdom, but it lands because it’s really about power: who gets to define someone’s “worst moment,” and what the crowd is allowed to do with it. “Nobody’s perfect” is a familiar opener, yet he immediately makes it physical - people “slide,” they’re “up,” they’re “down.” That vocabulary comes straight from a working musician’s life, where momentum is everything: tours, breakups, relapses, bad shows, public feuds, career droughts. The point isn’t abstract forgiveness; it’s a practical ethic for a culture that loves a pile-on.

The intent is protective, almost disciplinary. Schon isn’t begging for kindness so much as drawing a boundary: when someone’s already down, piling on isn’t accountability, it’s opportunism. The subtext is that humiliation has become a spectator sport - in bands, in fandoms, in media cycles that turn personal collapse into content. He’s pushing back against the idea that being right entitles you to be cruel.

Context matters: rock culture has long romanticized self-destruction while punishing the people who actually fall apart. That contradiction creates a weird moral economy where audiences feel ownership over artists and their mistakes. Schon’s sentence rejects that ownership. It asks for basic human restraint, not because everyone deserves a pass, but because kicking someone when they’re down says more about the kicker than the fall.