Jon Bon Jovi — long-serving rock god, philanthropist, aging yet viable pin-up — has truly stupendous teeth. They are white and they are straight and there are lots and lots and lots of them. They are semi-threatening when bared, but blindingly, staggeringly glamorous otherwise. They work brilliantly onstage. Jon Bon Jovi deploys them (quite knowingly, I am sure) to amazing effect. He’s got superstar teeth, no question.
This is lucky, because from where I’m standing, the rest of him looks a bit like a crumpled middle-aged man in a lumberjack shirt.
I meet him in a Sao Paulo hotel. It’s early October, the night before Bon Jovi — the band Jon named, fronts and owns in any meaningful sense — will perform a sell-out stadium gig for 60,000 Brazilian fans. I have been ushered into the long, anonymous, overly air-conditioned room, past swathes of security guards dressed in seven shades of stern; it’s all quite portentous. I’d expected to be confronted by oodles of barely suppressed tension and leather-clad, pouty-mouthed, large-haired sexiness; the visual shorthand of rock gods in general, and Jon Bon Jovi in particular. But once inside, I can see nothing but a nondescript man in a chair. It’s not until the nondescript man in the chair tells the stern security guards that they should leave, turns around and unleashes the full power of his teeth upon me that I recognize him as Jon Bon Jovi at all.
Photo: EPA
His band is two weeks into the South American leg of a lengthy world tour. The Circle tour began in May last year and has rolled on ever since, through North America and into Europe, back to North America again before this South American section (the band’s first visit in 15 years).
It’s scheduled to carry on long into next year, via Japan, Taiwan and Australia and back to North America with a few more dates in Europe, possibly.
Jon Bon Jovi has been a rock god for more than half his life. He was born John Francis Bongiovi in 1962 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey; his father was a Marine turned hairdresser, his mother a Marine turned florist. His childhood was all very blue-collar and secure, and Bongiovi grew up safe in the conviction that he would inevitably be a rock god.
You never thought it wouldn’t happen to you?
“Never for a minute did I doubt that it wasn’t going to.” Why were you so sure?
“Naivete of youth.”
When he was 21 he formed Bon Jovi with guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboard player David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres; in 1986, their third album, Slippery When Wet, featuring the career-defining single Livin’ on a Prayer, turned Jon Bon Jovi into
a superstar.
In the intervening 24 years, the group has never faltered, never split up; never stopped writing, recording or touring.
The group has released 11 studio albums together, albums which have sold somewhere in the region of 120 million copies worldwide. Bon Jovi has performed more than 2,700 concerts in 50-something countries for the delectation of some 35 million fans; it was the number-one best-selling touring act of 2008. At this point in time, only U2 and the Rolling Stones are capable of outselling Bon Jovi on tour.
Jon Bon Jovi is giving this interview in the interest of promoting a forthcoming Greatest Hits album, the second the band has produced in their lifetime.
Why now for a Greatest Hits, I ask.
“A commitment,” he says dryly. “Nothing more than a commitment.” Two and a half years ago he cut a deal with Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal, his record company. Grainge allowed him to go and make a somewhat self-indulgent country album in Nashville. “I rang him and said: ‘I want to do this.’ There was silence on the phone, and then: ‘I guess at this point you can do whatever you please, but ... would you do me a favor when you lose all my money and give me a Greatest Hits?’ I said: ‘You got it — that’s a deal.’” The country album, 2007’s Lost Highway, ended up selling more than either Bon Jovi or Grainge had anticipated; but still, Bon Jovi had agreed to the Greatest Hits album, and so it was released on Monday, and will undoubtedly sell and sell and sell.
You have an endless capacity for commercial success, I say.
He pauses; he’s not sure whether or not I intend the comment as a dig. His band has come to define a certain kind of rock: soft and girlish and people-pleasing; lacking in rawness, edge, credibility. Critics don’t like them, on principle.
“Weeeeeell ... If that’s how you see it. Thanks ...” he says eventually.
It’s not just how I see it — there are numbers to back it up.
“There are numbers. Big numbers. But you know what the big numbers are, actually? They are the sum of a lot of little numbers. And the truth is, this is our first tour of South America in 15 years, and we didn’t come for 15 years because the records didn’t do as well here as they did in America. It’s not that we have this planetary appeal, that when every record comes out, you are that big, everywhere. Europe turns its back on you for certain records and then embraces others, as does America.”
Is commercial success important to you?
“No. But it allows you to continue to do it. And it also becomes a platform for so many other things that have become a part of my life. I don’t know that I would have had the same entree to presidential politics had I not been as successful in my day job.”
Was I surprised to learn that Jon Bon Jovi is a political activist? Kind of. Deep-held political conviction and unapologetic party bias do seem to contrast with his inoffensive, edge-free variant of rock.
But he is deeply politicized, a card-carrying Democrat. In 2004 he toured extensively on behalf of John Kerry, performing duets with Sambora at rallies. Last year he campaigned hard on behalf of US President Barack Obama; he held a fund-raiser for the then-candidate at his own home. After Obama was elected, Jon Bon Jovi performed live at his inauguration ceremony.
Jon Bon Jovi would make a natural politician — not least because he is a very bossy man. He is certainly the boss of Bon Jovi. His bandmates describe him in those terms in the course of interviews for last year’s film When We Were Beautiful, a documentary that follows Bon Jovi as the group toured.
You make it happen, don’t you, I say. You make the phone calls and compile the set lists and break the balls.
“Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!”
Does it grate on you that the others — Sambora, Bryan and Torres — are less involved, less responsible, more passive? According to several sequences in When We Were Beautiful, they spend significant time lounging on yachts and rolling round golf courses while you graft. Isn’t that annoying?
“No. And you know why? There’s a number of reasons why. When you look up at the marquee: Whose name is on it? And I was willing to accept that reward, with that payment.
“I was that kid with the report card that said: ‘Doesn’t play well with others ...’” He laughs. “I couldn’t be in a situation where someone else was controlling my destiny. I’m probably not really a candidate to be in the army. Or working at the factory. Or ... I have to sink or swim on my own merits.”
Are you a control freak?
“I love Team! I’m a big proponent of Team! And I share the wealth and all the accolades. But ...”
You have to be team leader?
“Yeah.”
I wonder if he’s team leader of his domestic situation, too. Jon Bon Jovi has been married to his wife Dorothea since 1989; they met while they were still at school. They live in Manhattan with their four children: Stephanie Rose, 17, Jesse James, 15, Jacob, 8, and Romeo, 6.
So is he the boss at home?
“I am wise enough to realize that women are
much smarter than any man, and that women control the world.”
You really believe that?
“I know that.”
Are you a feminist?
“Yeah! Yeah! And ... this idea that the pay scale is unequal is beyond my comprehension. Every man knows ... and if he doesn’t say it, he’s a liar ... that they get their wisdom from their mother, their wife and their daughters.”
He’s made oblique references to marital meanderings in the past. He has said: “I’ve not been a saint. I have had my lapses.” Now, when I ask him what sort of a husband he is, he says: “One that runs away a lot more often than not. Ha ha! Not the perfect one! Trust me! Not on any level!”
As crumpled as Jon Bon Jovi looked when I first met him, through the course of our interview he has woken up and sort of re-engaged with his own face. He still has significant cheekbones, handsome features, those teeth ...
He giggles.
“Well. I think your eyesight’s going.”
Did you enjoy being a pin-up in your youth?
“Now I can say: ‘Thank you — that’s a wonderful compliment.’ At 26, 27, I was pissed off about it. Because I thought: Goddammit! I’m working so hard! I’m trying so hard! I’m trying to do what I want to do, while I’m trying to please you!”
And all we could talk about was how handsome you were?
“Right.”
Are you a vain man?
“I’m vain inasmuch as I think I’m terribly out of shape right now. If you want to be perfectly honest, I’m 10 pounds (4.5kg) overweight and I’m drinking too much and I’m bored to tears.”
You look OK, I say again.
“You’re very kind. OK. I’m not the fat Elvis. At 48, I look OK. But you know ... I’m coming to real good terms with getting older.”
What are the advantages of age?
“You become that thing that you looked at your parents and the older people in your life, and said: ‘No! I don’t want to live to be that old! I don’t want to!’ But it’s actually ... much better than dying. And there are too many people that are my age, that are dying. God, I didn’t want to be that! That would be awful! You can see why people get fat, grow old, give up! Because every day is: Get up, do the same mundane shit. When you don’t know anything more, and you don’t see anything more, and you’re not willing to open up your eyes and take a step in another direction ... that treadmill would make any young man old.”
It sounds a bit like he’s quoting his own lyrics.
We wrap up with a return to politics.
How does he feel Obama’s doing?
“Not great. Not great. I want the guy that made the great speeches! I think he’s in there. I want the guy to come out now.”
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