"Jon Bon Jovi in interview: Boy, do something with your hair!"
Where to go with all the money? Jon Bon Jovi has earned more with his band than most of the other rockstars. In this interview he talks pretty openly about expensive misinvestements, bad styling - and why his career is going to go downhill from now on.
Very expensive teeth, very tight shirt, a lot of jewelery - he's looking like his own wax figure as he sits on a sofa in the middle of the neo-classical ambience of his suite in the Hotel "Bayerischer Hof" in Munich. The day before his band "rocked" ,like you say in these circles, 62.000 people in the Munich Olympic Stadium.
Then Jon Bon Jovi, 51, notices the print "Blue Note" on the shirt of the journalist, and he becomes alive.
Bon Jovi: "For god's sakes! Do you know, what 'Blue Note' is?"
SPIEGEL: "A Jazz-label, a Jazz club. Why?"
Bon Jovi: "That's what I thought too! Can I tell a crazy story about this?"
Spiegel: "Yes, please."
Bon Jovi: "I was at a gala, it was very busy and it was very loud. Behind me stood Ralph Lauren, the fashion designer, and he was talking to the investor Ron Perelman. With half a ear I heard, that he mentioned "Blue Note", so I turned around and asked: "Did I just hear 'Blue Note'? " And he said: "Yes, I am thinking about buying into it. Are you interested in this too?" And I said: "Yes, absolutely!" And he said: "Okay, you're in!" I was very excited and my lawyers worked it out. For a while I lived with the happy knowledge of being the part-owner of a Jazz club...until I realized that Lauren had not been talking about the label or the club. He had been talking about a mexican restaurant in East Hampton that is called similiarily: "Blue Parrot." Since then it has always been bugging me when I hear this name."
Spiegel: "Did you sell your shares by now?"
Bon Jovi: "No. Terrible food, unsellable shares. But I have thrown my money out of the window for charitable purposes too. My restaurant project "Soul Kitchen" wasn't going well for a long time. There everybody is supposed to give what they can. One person pays 20 Dollars for a menu, the other 20 Cent. Or you can help washing the dishes. But by now it is working."
SPIEGEL: "If you could meet the young Jon Bon Jovi, what advice would you give him?"
Bon Jovi: "I would advice him to think about his haircut. Boy, do something with your hair! On the other hand, it was the 80s. And now I would like to see your childhood pics from that era."
SPIEGEL: "On your new record you sing about a punk rocker, who is crying after the legendary Club CBGB's, about a journalist, whose paper has closed down..."
Bon Jovi: "...and of a fabric worker, whose fabric was outsorced to Asia, yes. That is the social and cultural reality in our country."
SPIEGEL: "But what do you have to do with that? You are in a matter of speaking the CEO of one of the most successful companies in the entertainment business and for sure no poor man."
Bon Jovi: "How can a rich man sing about the problems of a poor man?"
SPIEGEL: "That's what I would like to know from you."
Bon Jovi: "Nobody would care for the worries of a rich man, particularly his worries are rather laughable compared to those of an unemployed man. That is not my task either. I tell stories, this is my job: to tell believable stories about things with which my audience can relate to. Do I need to be a punk rocker to sing about punk rock? I don't think so. My grandparents were poor people, who had to work hard, my parents have worked hard, and my brothers don't have any morey even today, they have debts! So I do know what I am talking about pretty well. And when I sing about washing the dishes that is more than a metaphor too. Because I really wash the dishes, when I am in the kitchen of my restaurant.
SPIEGEL: "And in your free time you then buy a mexican restaurant. Accidentally."
Bon Jovi: "That was one of my biggest mistakes, and I have learned from it. I have worked for my success and achieved it with humility and discipline.
SPIEGEL: "You are quoting these virtues. You stand onstage every night for three hours. You make what could be called "honest" music. You sing the songs of the so called little man. You are from New Jersey. You keep yourself extraordinarily fit. You are supposed to be grounded and support the Democrats during elections.
Bon Jovi: "What are you getting at?"
SPIEGEL: "Does it anger you sometime, that you don't get mixed up with Bruce Springsteen?"
Bon Jovi: "Well, the critics love him and they don't love me and my band so much traditionally. But we have a level of success of which he - at least periodically - could only dream of. It all balances itself out somehow. When I was young, I saw the pictures of Led Zeppelin in front of their own plane, of Kiss in all their glamour, they were standing way up high in the sky so to speak. No chance to be able go even anywhere near those spheres. At some point I realized: It was all there, right around the corner! You didn't have to be from another planet. In the studios at the harbour of New Jersey history was made as well. That was encouraging. Even though I, if I may say so, come from a completely different cultural corner. We have made glamour metal at the beginning. It's a different generation too: Springsteen is older than I am. But I do think that we have a similiar audience sometimes."
SPIEGEL: "You should play golf together sometimes."
Bon Jovi: "God forbid. I know Bruce, but we don't hang out together or something like that. For that we are I think too different after all. But when we, what does happen every now and then perform together, then we know very well where the other one is standing and what we think about each other."
SPIEGEL: "Your acting career once was pegged as promising. That's over, right?"
Bon Jovi: "I just wanted to answer with 'yes', when I remembered: No, just now it's continuing. Fox has called me and asked, if I would want to play or better dub myself in a new show. I have said yes and five episodes are already finished: "Murder Police". So my acting career is starting to move forward again."
SPIEGEL: "Do you have these spaces with Bon Jovi too? In 30 years you never changed your formula."
Bon Jovi: That is true, Bon Jovi is not about free spaces. On the contrary: It's about, like I said, consistency. We have survived Grunge, we have survived Hip Hop, we have survived Drum 'n' Bass. Why? Because we didn't let any of it into our music. I don't have anything against Hip Hop, but you will never hear me rap."
SPIEGEL: "Other artists of your generation are on reunion tour now..."
Bon Jovi: "...or dead, exactly. So far it's not supposed to go with us. But as long as the people like to hear us, why not? We are really consistent and we are true to ourselves - and to our audience as well. That's why the people are not disappointed from us, that's why our songs are their songs on the whole world, and that not only for one generation either. They are timeless."
SPIEGEL: "And how long is it supposed to go on like this? Just now your guitarist Richie Sambora has left the band."
Bon Jovi: "I believe it's not gonna last very long anymore for us either. My management doesn't like it, but I thought recently: People, we now are where artists like Elton John and Eric Clapton have been before. Not, that they still aren't great musicians still today, but I think we have reached the highest point of our journey. It might be that we are going to go downwards from now on. Not that I wouldn't like to earn more money, but at 70, like the Stones, I really don't wanna do this job anymore."
SPIEGEL: "So what's next then? "Bon Jovi - the musical"? You would have the hits for this."
Bon Jovi: "True, there even has been an offer for that not long ago already. If you meant that as an insult, I cannot take it like that. I mean, ABBA have earned more money with "Mamma Mia" than with all their records in the past. Without this musical nobody in the USA would know anymore who ABBA were. So if somebody wants to write the story for it and bring our songs to Broadway - do it!"
Last edited by Beaky; 05-23-2013 at 06:17 PM..
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05-23-2013, 05:19 PM
