- As a matter of fact, we've been on the road for so long, we've started hating travelling and waiting, Jon explains. - Fortunately going on stage is so much fun that it balances out. We have fun playing the hour and a half every night and goofing around. We go by the Tom Petty -school of stageshow, we have no show. I don't like coreographs and it must be boring to think, when the next smoke bomb's going to go off or when to sacrifice the naked girl. With us everything is spontaneous, in the moment. I can climb on the PA stacks and jump down to the front row to touch the fans. I think it looks stupid and the fans say it too, but I don't care, I think it's cool.

You said earlier that Bon Jovi doesn't have an image and now you said your stageshow looks stupid. Couldn't you fix those things with a good video?

- We've only done three videos so far. From the first album we did Runaway and She Don't Know Me and they're both terrible. I hate them, and I or any one of us had nothing to do with them. The record company ensured us that they would be cool. They weren't.

- When we got the okay to shoot Only Lonely for the new one, I hired a director myself, I took him to see the actual locations in NJ and to meet all the friends we wanted in the video. He said "okay, trust me".

- If you'd asked me three weeks ago what will Only Lonely be as a video, I would've jumped up and down and praised it. Now I'm depressed. The video is much too dark and it's filled with close-ups. You can't see the backgrounds, or anything at all. It's a bad video.

Oh well, maybe next time. For what sort of audience is Bon Jovi tailored for? What's an average Bon Jovi -fan like?

- According to fan-mail, our fans are 14-16 year-old girls. In Europe you see a lot of 20-something men at our shows. It's really hard to say, since Japan, Europe and the US are like three different worlds. Anyone can buy our albums, ans it's okay.

What sort of fan-mail do you guys get?

- Usually it's something like "I love you and want to **** you to death". Or "if you do'nt write back, I'll kill myself". All sorts…

And what do you want to tell your fans with your songs?

- We have songs like King Of The Mountain or To The Fire that have a message in them. I think it's awful to listen to kids who're going to be doctors or lawyers just because their parents think so. I think it's wrong, I've never had that mentality, Jon says solemnly. - You have to be who you are. If you want something bad enough, you can do it, because your brain believes it.

- I think Bon Jovi music has a positive attitude. It would be wrong if we sang about a revolution or the idiocy of the US government, because I don't have enough knowledge on those things. I'm a 23-year-old dude and a naive one. It's not worth it to try and act smart.

- When punk came along, I listened to it a lot. However, it's message was too simple and one-sided, and I didn't really get excited about it. A man can only preach when he knows something better than the people he's preaching to.

Suddenly David digs up the new 7800' album and starts showing me the pictures on the inner sleeve. Jon and Alec get excited about it as well. The guys explain how it's sort of an photo album, where their friends in NJ can see, where the band has been during the tour.

- That's Gene Simmons from KISS. He's balancing a drum stick on his nose in our dressing room. There we are at the Eiffel tower. And this is a photo of the dolls we got from the Japanese girls. That's Aldo Nova and that's Meat Loaf who came to see us backstage in London. That's a little girl that had a bad kidney disease and to whom we held a charity show for. That one was taken on Elvis' farm, where went on a tourist tour. And here's a big porn store where we went to look at some magazines…

In the evening there's a Bon Jovi show at the Helsinki Culture House. There's too few people, but luckily there are enough enthusiastic people to raise the atmosphere.

Bon Jovi is a rarity, a very low key heavy metal band, but you come to like them very quick. These guy have a lot of fun on stage and they're great players! Richie Sambora is especially fun to watch as he throws his guitars around lively and flexible: the croaks and crashes are enjoyable.