By now, rock star Jon Bon Jovi has been the recipient of every possible critical slur. He is derivative, he is formulaic. His band, Bon Jovi, is reviled by some rock `n` roll mavens as an image-over-substance sham (Sign at a recent Metallica show: ”Kill Bon Jovi”). The band is also loved-passionately, reverently-by millions of fans.
The group`s response has been consistent: We play for the fans. The fans are our critics, and if they`re happy, we`re happy.
But there are signs that the critics are wearing Bon Jovi down. At a recent Philadelphia show, in front of yet another capacity crowd on a tour that will include a sold-out show Friday at the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, Jon Bon Jovi took advantage of a lull between songs to address his critics.
As the band played the familiar coda to Derek and the Dominos` classic-rock staple ”Layla” behind him, Jon Bon Jovi preached to the converted about his brand of rock `n` roll.
”Guess we`re not exactly the critics` favorites, huh?” he said, to massive applause. ”Well, maybe I should get a purple, green and yellow mohawk and start playing that new-wave kind of music,” he continued, positioning himself as underdog in a mighty rock struggle. ”You think you`ve got it all when you`ve been on the cover of Rolling Stone. Then some guy says something about how songs about loyalty, friendship, and (he pauses for effect) jumping in the back seat of the car for the first time are shallow and cliched. Well, I`ve got something to say. I feel sorry for that son of a b—-, `cause this is for real. . . .”
Then, from the metallic stage-a science-fiction fantasy of angles and open spaces and grillwork-comes the opening roar of ”Blood on Blood,” one of the songs from Bon Jovi`s current LP ”New Jersey.” And the fans are eating it up.
Moments of rock `n` roll vindication, which he may seek again at the Rosemont, are one of the things Jon Bon Jovi lives for. Privately, he admits the critics have been hard on him, but he`s happy to stick by his guns. In public, he needs to make a stand. Rock `n` roll tradition demands it.
Hence the speech, draped in the same tones of significance that mark Bruce Springsteen`s between-songs recollections.
Can it be that Bon Jovi, the man who made hard rock safe for pre-teens, is starting to grow up? Or, perhaps even more dangerous in a business built increasingly on fleeting images, become reflective?
In a phone conversation one day before his recent 27th birthday, Jon Bon Jovi was inclined to show this reflective side, talking about his treatment in the press, the rock star as role model, and-gasp!-the regret he feels about calling his album ”New Jersey.”
”I went to hell for calling the album `New Jersey,` ” he said from his home in Sayerville, N.J., acknowledging that the title was perceived as a swipe at Springsteen (also a New Jersey boy) but wasn`t intended that way.
”For a while there, we were gonna call it `Sons of Beaches,` but I didn`t wanna play off the last album title (`Slippery When Wet`). As I was looking around for a title, I remembered this biker patch I`ve always worn on my jacket. It just says `Bon Jovi/New Jersey.` So I brought it up and no one said no.”
But as Bon Jovi discovered, Springsteen`s claim to New Jersey runs deep.
”Springsteen owns the state. Somewhere along the line, when nobody was looking, he bought it. People think we`re big, I tell `em go down the street. The guy owns the state. Next time, I`m calling it Bon Jovi Five.”
It`s something of a risk, in the rock `n` roll world, to admit a mistake like that, and Bon Jovi knows it. Having doubts-any doubts, even about the title of the album-is like putting large chinks in your own armor. But Bon Jovi can afford it: His five-man band has carved out a big piece of rock `n`
roll turf for itself.
Vocalist Jon, guitarist Richie Sambora, bassist Alec John Such, drummer Tic Torres, and keyboardist David Fryan helped invent the rock subgenre best described as pop-metal or Metal Lite. With competition from Def Leppard and, more recently, Poison, Bon Jovi reigns over this hit hybrid, which has the stance and the guitar crunch of heavy metal, but glows underneath with the sweetness and light of pure pop. Think of a middle ground between recent Steve Winwood and the Scorpions. Think of a sub-genre that has exploded on radio, on MTV, everywhere. And, ahem, think of Bon Jovi as a patriarch figure. If pop metal is big today, that`s because Bon Jovi`s 1986 ”Slippery When Wet”
whetted the appetite for it.
One single after another-four from the 13-million-selling ”Slippery When Wet”, two thus far from ”New Jersey,” with a third, ”I`ll Be There For You,” on the way-have stormed up the charts, each cresting in the upper realm of the Top 10 (”Living On A Prayer,” Bon Jovi`s most direct anthem, was No. 1 for four consecutive weeks), each creating a new catch-phrase, a new way to view the rock anthem.
This power impacts the two camps Bon Jovi`s sound is drawn from: The rockers wish they had Jon Bon Jovi`s knack for finessing a hook (including even Guns `N` Roses, whose recent ”Paradise City” borrows from the Bon Jovi sourcebook), and maybe the phone number of his hair stylist. And every aspiring pop star envies the success of the singles.
It`s powerful, this balance of rock `n` roll pose and the grabbiest, most repetitive pop hooks imaginable. It went over big in Russia, where the band was the first rock outfit Moscow deemed acceptable for a tour of the Soviet Union.
It has sold big in the United States: In 23 weeks on the charts, ”New Jersey” has sold more than 4 million copies. Even those who trade in sappy dance hits can respect that.
And the touring show provides more clues about the pull of Bon Jovi. Unlike many in the mousse-and-nail-polish set, Bon Jovi still appears scrappy, and this striving quality is something that obviously appeals to fans, the majority of them high school age.
From the moment the recorded introduction to ”Lay Your Hands On Me”
opened the show, this band looked like it came to work: Jon ran in wide circles around the stage`s perimeter, while Sambora and Torres pumped an expansive rock pulse. Lumbering melodies such as ”Runaway,” the band`s first hit, were reinforced with precisely timed lighting, and versions of subsequent smashes were delivered with an attention to detail certain to dazzle those making mental comparisons with the recorded versions.
The songs most closely associated with Bon Jovi-”Living On A Prayer,”
the anthem about love overcoming the economic woes of young coupledom, and
”Bad Medicine”-received special treatment in visual pyrotechnics, fireworks, assorted special effects. And twice during the show, Bon Jovi and his bandmates left the stage to run around an elaborate catwalk-like track suspended about 10 feet over the floor of the arena. This gave virtually everyone in the house a chance to see Bon Jovi, clad in spandex-like stretch jeans and a number of different shirts, up close.
Concessions to Hollywood rock aside, Bon Jovi often attempted to let the songs be his mouthpiece. Aiming for the gut, Bon Jovi`s lyrics talk in the vaguest possible political terms, using little vignettes to ram home the flimsy themes that have dominated the decade: We`ll get by. Love will prevail. Do your best. Believe in brotherhood.
Bon Jovi really connects with this stuff. While some critics and rock performers detect a sappiness in ”New Jersey,” in live performance the ready-made working man anthems kept coming, one after the next, a powerful processional.
Jon Bon Jovi isn`t perceived in some circles as one of rock`s most sincere personalities, but this year, he`s offering a more realistic tone as he explains the band`s attempt to be taken seriously. ”I like the people like Elvis Costello or John Hiatt who always went out there the way they were and stuck with it. It might have taken us awhile, but now I think the band is like that. People are getting the message that we`re real people, we`re not hiding behind this facade. Once you get that across, once you`re real, people will give you a lot of room.”
Bon Jovi says he learned that lesson in the wake of the sudden success of ”Slippery When Wet” in 1986, when, it seemed, the band was being pulled like puppets in many directions. He had to look at rock `n` roll ”for what it is” in order to understand life beyond the fantasy world he dreamed about while growing up. He had to go out for his own gallon of milk-”how else could I write songs?”
He also had to discover what he isn`t-namely, a role model. ”Rock `n`
roll was meant to be entertainment. I don`t go around thinking that I have to be better `cause little Joey`s watching. I`ve never been vain enough for that. It`s a lot of responsibility. I don`t walk on water, and I don`t want to be wearing makeup and putting people on in five years, either.”
He does want to be making rock `n` roll in five years, and that`s why he`s on a loyalty kick. Bon Jovi considers the band ”the same old dudes in new shoes,” and says that the notion of loyalty is something he has begun to take seriously.
Maybe it was the flurry of reports about legal squabbles between the singer and longtime girlfriend Dorothea Hurley that did it. (He calls the rumors, which one rock magazine alleged were spread by his record company,
”viciously false”.)
This theme found its way into a number of ”New Jersey” songs, particularly ”Blood On Blood,” a song about friendship. ”I got off the
`Slippery` tour and realized the connection I had with the people around me. How important these people were, and how much it was like those characters in (the film) `Stand by Me.` It`s hard to get inside this organization, but when you`re in, you`re in forever. You never forget the people who were around you when you were first discovering women, and beer, and rock `n` roll. I wanted to sing about that, try to examine friendship in some way. I mean, I`ve never been hip-loyalty and stuff like that was always the most important thing.”
Jon Bon Jovi cultivated that loyalty, not with large checks and glamour, but through the raw sweat of playing nightly. Though ”Runaway” was a regional hit single before the band ever had a record contract, success was not an overnight thing. After the release of the ”Bon Jovi” album in 1983, the band began its practice of ”station-wagon tours,” playing anywhere they were welcome. They called themselves ”the hardest-working band in the world,” and latched onto high-visibility opening-act slots with ZZ Top, Scorpions, and Kiss.
After lukewarm critical response to their second album, 1985`s ”7800 Fahrehheit”, the group opted for a ”more live” feel when recording
”Slippery When Wet.” They wrote more than 30 tunes, and decided which would appear on the album based on audience reaction.
One by one, the singles generated big sales-first, ”You Give Love A Bad Name,” then ”Livin` On A Prayer,” then ”Wanted Dead or Alive”-and the band began appearing everywhere live.
First, they opened for Judas Priest in Canada. Then headlined in Japan, then Europe, then part of Germany`s Monsters of Rock tour, anywhere the record was on the radio. The tour lasted more than a year-there were 135 sold-out shows in the United States-and is now viewed as a trial by fire.
”I definitely remember shows on the `Slippery` tour when I was exhausted physically and emotionally. That schedule really burned us,” Jon Bon Jovi said. Again, the Bon Jovi band learned from its mistakes: On the current tour, there`s no highway travel-the band flies everywhere. Rather than four shows followed by one day off, the tour averages a day off between each show. Says Bon Jovi: ”This way makes it fun-you`re really ready to play when you`ve had a day or two away from it.”
This didn`t keep Bon Jovi from performing on his birthday. He`s done it just about every year in recent memory, and he wouldn`t miss it. ”It`s really cool, 20,000 people singing you Happy Birthday. I`m not the kind of person who cares what they get. I always go `Wow, I made it to another one,` but hearing a whole arena, it lets you know you`ve got lots of friends.”
