ROCK SOLID – The Betrayal of Bon Jovi

Slippery When Wet Sign, Caution, Floor, 1/2015 by MikeMozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on YouTube

THE STANDARD INTRO: ROCK SOLID is my semi-regular music column. Its Mission: To re-examine acts and songs to find stuff that’s, if not critically good, at least entertaining or enjoyable. Am I going to find charitable things to say about acts that have been marginalized or maligned? Sure. Am I going to take up for acts that have just one good song? Sure again. We should always be re-examining or re-evaluating. You might find that something you shied away from is something that you actually like. (But not Imagine fucking Dragons).

This time, we’re tackling something that I like to call “The Betrayal of Bon Jovi.” Essentially, I’ll be saying good things about a segment of the catalog, but not the rest of it. And part of that ties into a couple of central problems that I have with the concept of “Bon Jovi” in total.

The first thing is that most people don’t know that the band itself is sort of a studio creation. Jon Bongiovi did work for his cousin, Tony, who rebuilt an old ConEd plant into The Power Station recording studio in 1977. Know that Tony was and is a super-legit producer and engineer, having worked on albums by The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Ozzy, and Aerosmith, among others. Tony also worked with Meco, he of the disco version of the Star Wars theme. When Meco was in the studio working on the album that would become Christmas in the Stars, Tony recommended Jon for vocals on a track; thus, Jon Bongiovi’s original big-time credit was for a Star Wars holiday album in 1980.

Outside of the studio, Jon had been playing in bands since his teens. One frequent bandmate was keyboard player David Bryan. In 1981, Jon cut a demo of a song that he’d written called “Runaway.” A proper recording was made with studio musicians the following year. Roy Bittan (yes, of The E Street Band) is the keyboardist on the version you know, as is current Bon Jovi bassist Hugh McDonald; guitars were by Tim Pierce and drums were handled by Frankie LaRocka of Scandal.

Great side-note: When they were pursuing their record deal, a nascent version of Scandal made a demo video for the song “Love’s Got a Line on You.” This demo version has Clem Burke (the immortal badass of Blondie) sitting in on drums, but also features . . . Jon Bon Jovi on rhythm guitar. According to Patty Smyth, Jon was never a band member; they just needed someone in the spot in the video. In the regular version of the video, you’ll notice that neither Jon nor Clem are present, and it’s the same band line-up as “Goodbye to You.” (Interestingly though, Jon DOES appear in some press photos for the band, like this one.)

So, in 1983, there was a contest at WAPP, a New York radio station, to find the best unsigned band. “Runaway” was entered under the name Bon Jovi . . . and won. Realizing that he needed to assemble a band to capitalize on the situation as the song started to get national airplay, Jon recruited old friend David Bryan. Bryan brought in the rhythm section of drummer Tico Torres and bassist Alec John Such. The lead guitar player was . . .Dave Sabo?! Yes, Dave “The Snake” Sabo, soon to be of Skid Row, temporarily filled the lead guitar slot as he was a friend of Jon. The open permanent slot went to Richie Sambora; Sambora had been gigging around, had auditioned for KISS, and was known to Such and Torres. “Runaway” was officially released as a single in 1984 off of the band’s self-titled debut album, and it peaked at #39 on the Hot 100.

That first album gets some decent reviews. The second album, 7800 Farenheit, did not. In interviews, Jon has written this off to the fact that they didn’t have a musical identity in a way; he himself said that they weren’t a good band yet, and wouldn’t really become one until the third album. But here’s the second big thing: their identity, whether Jon acknowledges it today or not, was Glam Metal.

If you look at the work of the great music documentarian Sam Dunn, notably the film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and the subsequent series Metal Evolution, Dunn firmly places Bon Jovi on the Glam Metal branch of his 26 subgenre Metal Family Tree. They’re listed alongside Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Cinderella, Poison, Dokken, Quiet Riot, Warrant, Winger, Europe, Twisted Sister, (presumably) Skid Row, and Guns ‘N’ Roses. This is also interesting because Bon Jovi’s manager from 1984 until 1991 was Doc McGhee; during this period, McGhee would also manage . . . Mötley Crüe (1982-1989), Skid Row (1988 to present), and The Scorpions. McGhee has managed Kiss since 1995.

Moreover, Bon Jovi played alongside metal bands for years, opening for the likes of Judas Priest, The Scorpions, and Ratt. They played 1985’s Monsters of Rock with Metallica and Ratt, and again in 1987 with Dio, Metallica, Anthrax, W.A.S.P., and Cinderella. When they started headlining, openers that they took out included Cinderella, Queensryche, Kingdom Come, Britny Fox, Lita Ford, Skid Row, and . . .oh my God, fuck this. METAL METAL METAL. Jon also found time to show up in Sam Kinison’s “Wild Thing” video alongside members of Ratt, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Billy Idol, Mötley Crüe, and Poison. Hell, there’s even a long-form version where Jon has a speaking part alongside Sam and Rodney Dangerfield. DUDE, YOU WERE METAL.

See, here’s the thing. The band had epic success with Slippery When Wet and New Jersey. But by the time that the New Jersey tour ended and Jon had done the solo album soundtrack for Young Guns 2 and Richie had done his solo album, they knew the writing was on the wall. The group got together for a strategy conference and basically stayed out of the way while the Alternative Explosion happened. When they came back in November of 1992 with Keep the Faith, they had reconfigured their look and sound. They’d cut their hair, dropped the metal fashion, deemphasized the outsized rock elements, and went hard on more pop-oriented ballads. Don’t worry; I’ll get to that. So, yeah. Bon Jovi could have stuck around and took their lumps, but they ran screaming into what they thought was safe territory. Some bands that tried that, like Warrant, got beat up hard. But Bon Jovi pulled the trick that the Stones partially pulled in the ‘70s, which is that they became a ballad band on the radio (go back and look; I’ll wait. They didn’t reemphasize the big rock sound until ”Start Me Up”).

In my view, Bon Jovi betrayed the metal scene that brought them up by basically pretending that they were never a part of it. Whereas GNR and Metallica survived the initial wave by being huge, and Aerosmith also leaned into balladry, Bon Jovi totally excused themselves from other bands that they were friends with, came up with, and toured with got steamrolled. I want to clarify an additional point: yes, bands can grow and change in their sound (The Beatles, The Beach Boys, etc. etc. etc.), but there’s a difference between doing it organically over time (Rubber Soul to Revolver to etc. etc. etc.) and doing it by vote to save your own asses. Feel free to argue with me. I can always turn off comments. But yeah, for a band that was assembled after a song was a hit and catered to a look and pursued a demographic and became entrenched with those bands . . . I just feel like the way the split kinda sucks.

NOW, MUSIC.

I’m going to look at the four singles from Slippery When Wet and the five singles from New Jersey. On Slippery, the band recruited successful songwriter Desmond Child as a co-writer, and he helped turn out some significant hits for the group. So then . . .

“You Give Love a Bad Name”
Let’s get something clear. The name of this fucking song is NOT “Shot Through the Heart.” In fact, someone else has a song named “Shot Through the Heart, and that someone else is BON FUCKING JOVI. That’s a song on the debut album by Tony Bongiovi and Lance Quinn, and it is NOT THIS SONG. At any rate, “You Give Love a Bad Name” actually began as a Bonnie Tyler song. Seriously. Child wrote “If You Were a Woman (And I Were a Man)” for Tyler and was bummed out that it wasn’t a bigger hit. So he re-wrote it with Jon and Richie. Here’s the thing. It’s actually a good rock tune. Yeah, a lot of metal fans hated the band because Jon and Richie were pretty and girls loved them, but this is a good, straight-forward rock song. It’s kind of hilarious that Bonnie Tyler did the primordial version, but the track REALLY lets you know how valuable Richie was. He guitar just explodes off of this song. (To further beat the dead “they were a metal band” horse, the video for this tune has pyro, leather pants, huge hairs, and repeated cuts to hot chicks in the audience. None more metal.) It went to #1.

“Livin’ on a Prayer”
In of itself, this is another fine rock tune. It’s actually VERY New Jersey, as it lyrically resembles what Springsteen might have done had he gone glam metal, what with its talk of hard times at work, striking unions, and the struggle to get by. There are two versions of the tune; the common one is the second version. Jon hated how the first attempt turned out, but Richie talked him into saving it with new takes on drums, bass, and the addition of Richie’s talk box (a signature piece of the song). This is regarded as the tune that’s most emblematic of the band. Frankly, I think I’d like it more if I hadn’t heard it approximately a billion times since 1986. It was also a #1 song.

“Wanted Dead or Alive”
Honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of this tune. It feels like it goes on forever. And I’ve always found the line “I’ve seen a million faces/And I’ve rocked them all” a little hilarious, especially with all of the times I’ve heard people replace “rocked” with various vulgarities. But it is an amazingly popular song; hell, the SINGLE sold four million copies.

“Never Say Goodbye”
I believe that this is an authentically good power ballad. Like “Prayer,” it leans in hard on New Jersey and a particular brand of high school nostalgia. For some reason, it just put me in mind of a dude that was one year older than me that was inexplicably beloved by a number of the junior high girls in my grade. There were literal fights over this cat. I seem to remember one of those tableaus playing out at a dance in the junior high gym as this song played. If it didn’t happen exactly like that, it should have.

The band toured on that album forever, and then recorded 1988’s New Jersey. I feel like I need to specifically point out how huge this record was. It put FIVE singles in the Top Ten of the Hot 100 (no other album touching glam metal did that). It sold 7 million copies in the U.S. It was the first American album to get an official release in the Soviet Union (where metal was HUGE). The band was touring on this album when they played the Moscow Music Peace Festival with other metal bands in 1989 (including, yes, Skid Row, Cinderella, Mötley Crüe, The Scorpions, and Ozzy). In terms of the writing, Desmond Child was involved again, co-writing two of the hits (“Bad Medicine” and “Born to Be My Baby”). And so, the songs . . .

“Bad Medicine”
This one’s a big of lift from the Joe Bob Briggs school of thought regarding sequels: “If you’re gonna remake a movie, remake the movie.” The sonic elements are very similar to the big Slippery rockers right down to structure and Richie’s talkbox. And it’s a banger; it’s basically genetically engineered to fill an arena with sound. The drum production is really on-point; every hit sounds like cannon fire. The guitar solo doesn’t last long, but it reminds you that Sambora was really really good in 1988.

“Born to Be My Baby”
Another rocker, eschewing the frequent hair band single release pattern of party-rocker/ballad/harder-rocker, but this one steps in a decidedly poppier direction. First hint? The “Na Nas.” However, it is totally a spiritual sequel to “Livin’ on a Prayer,” mentioning jobs and bills and dreams before the first verse is half-over. It is a perfectly fine rock song, with another solid entry in the Sambora solo canon.

“I’ll Be There for You”
Ah-ha! HERE is the power ballad. It’s all right as a whole, but the execution is just majestic. Honestly, I find the verses to be a little sleepy. But the bridge is pretty good and the choruses are pyramid-sized.

“Lay Your Hands on Me”
Say what you will, but this is a great arena rock song. It’s funny to see lists of “best metal albums” or “singles” of 1988/1989 written in the last few years, like the ones compiled by, say, Loudwire in 2018. There’s a lot of retroactive history going on in terms of elevating thrash and dark metal bands that weren’t well-known while reducing the glam metals acts that were huge. There’s always been this metal purist disdain for, to put in bluntly, pretty boy bands that girls like too (despite a whole of those motherfucking purists buying records, concert tickets, and T-shirts for the same bands, but whatever). Nevertheless, expansive tune with a shout-along chorus (hell, the title are the only words in the chorus aside from Jon’s occasional “All you’ve got to do is…” This song was built for stadium sing-alongs.

“Living in Sin”
Single #5, Power Ballad #2, Top Ten Entry at #9. This was an instance of a song powered mainly by the video, which generated a ton of controversy and was briefly banned by MTV. (Maybe Brandon should do an episode on it!) The video was directed by Wayne Isham, a huge figure in music videos; he also directed videos by the likes of, sigh, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Dokken, Ozzy, Skid Row, and Whitesnake (also Whitney, Janet, Michael Bolton, Pink Floyd, and The Stones). The storyline of the clip deals with a girl’s Catholic parents objecting to her living with her boyfriend, and it was the sex scenes (some juxtaposed with communion) that freaked out the objectors. The song in itself isn’t bad, but it’s the least of the five singles from the album.

And that’s that. At the end of the New Jersey tour cycle in February of 1990, the band scattered. Reports suggest that they were sick of the road and each other. Jon recorded the Blaze of Glory (Young Guns 2) soundtrack album as a solo artist; the title song went #1 and earned Oscar and Grammy nominations and won a Golden Globe and an AMA. During the 1990-1991 sabbatical, Jon instigated a bloodbath in the organization. He fired McGhee and the rest of the band’s agents and advisers. He founded Bon Jovi Management to run things. Then, the group got together in October of 1991 on St. Thomas to figure things out.

That date is significant. The shift toward what would become the “alternative explosion” was already in progress. R.E.M., already significantly popular and with mainstream hits under its belt (“The One I Love,” “Stand”), released “Losing My Religion” in February of 1991. Instantly popular, the song led a surge in popularity early that year among other alternative acts like Divinyls, EMF, The Rembrandts (pre-Friends), Concrete Blonde, and more. Late that spring, Metallica released “Enter Sandman” and by summer, GNR had dropped “You Could Be Mine.” By July, the Seattle wave was rising, with Soundgarden’s “Outshined,” Alice in Chains’s “Man in the Box,” and Pearl Jam’s “Alive” all out to radio and MTV. In August, Gish by Smashing Pumpkins was getting rave reviews. September saw the release of “Give It Away” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and, yes, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It’s possible that Jon sensed something. Nevermind, Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and Badmotorfinger all came out on September 24. A few weeks later, the band met. In January of 1992, the same month that Nirvana knocked Michael Jackson out of #1 on the album charts, the band started recording Keep the Faith with producer Bob Rock (you can look up other acts he produced; you won’t be fucking shocked).

When the group emerged with their new album in 1992, they’d changed their clothes, their sound, their video style and, yes, their hair. They still make rock songs and ballads, yes, but they were, well, painfully mainstream. In the effort to survive a paradigm shift in tastes, they’d gone, well, super-bland. As the bands that they’d toured with and hung with plummeted from popularity, Bon Jovi repositioned themselves for lighter rockers and ballads. The success of the boring “Bed of Roses” primed the pump for the equally boring “Always.” I really feel the band had the chance to hang in and come back in 1992 with a major hard rock effort, but instead . . . they ran. Sometimes it seems like there’s some regret, like “It’s My Life;” it’s not good, but it does hilariously position itself as a sequel to “Livin’ on a Prayer” (“Remember that song you loved? Here’s the sequel! Love it, too!”)

So yeah, I feel like Bon Jovi betrayed who they were. It’s possible for acts to evolve. Look at Pink Floyd from Piper to The Wall. Look at The Beatles or Prince or Bowie or Eminem. But Bon Jovi’s big turn was a conscious slamming of the brakes, complete with an image and sound change, calculated to keep them alive, rather than a natural evolution of their sound. Metallica and GNR rode out the wave by being resolutely themselves, and the other metal acts that did well or survived (Pantera, Anthrax, Slayer, etc.) never wavered from what they were. Yes, in large part they were heavier, but Metallica was obviously more radio friendly on Metallica, and GNR had big, sweeping ballads on the Illusion twins. And that’s why I feel like it’s the Betrayal of Bon Jovi. They fucking ran. You’re free to disagree with me, but I have it on good authority that, y’know, it’s my life.