Any Hope Left?

Ahaha, I sound like the voice of Backstage all of a sudden? I’m not a member there, but used to hang out at the other official message board, where also everything slightly controversial got deleted.
Let’s talk about the CEO thing. Jon is negotiating with investors and has to convince them that he has what it takes to do business together. He says he has been running a successful brand for years.
I don’t know what you do, but let’s say you are at a job interview. How do you convince the person interviewing you to hire you? You have to say you have the skills and experience that qualify you as the best person for this job. What else can you say? Are you going to talk about other things you do in life, which are not relevant to the subject?
Jon being arrogant? Yes, he is arrogant, but he has accomplished so much to back it up. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer people, who are successful and don’t show it off and are humble about it.
Seb here, I find arrogant many times, but he has so much knowledge and knows every detail, and he can get away with it.

For anyone who says the band isn't about makng money, I went on the official website today in a longtime and I had to wait for the McDonald's advertisements to upload

Says it all really...

That's utter bullshit. Jon should be in the position because of his skill as a vocalist and songwriter, not because he's a good businessman. I never hear Jon and Richie talk about the music in interviews. It's all "you know we've sold 100,000,000 records?" and "Our tour's taking us all around the globe. We think we owe it to our fans." Calculated, mechanical bullshit that doesn't make him sound like a musician at all. He obviously doesn't enjoy it anymore and just enjoys reaping in the dollars.

Aloha !

Well I'm not starting my job interview to become an arts teacher with "I've been incredibly succesful ever since my career started, I got better with time, look at how much I earned, look how many children I tought how to paint, I was the most important person of my former job but am looking for you to help me" which is really what Jon is saying there. "Let's not forget that I am important, you've got to do what I say, but please please please please help me out." which I find appaling and which is why people laugh at him.

If you need to repeat on how succesful you are you're not really that succesful at all and need to work on your succes (the music) instead of the rest (The business). It's the constant talk of having sold over 100.000.000 albums while Bon Jovi haven't delivered a multi-million seller since Crush. But let's not forget that they sold so many albums, so this one's gotta be good as well! We've played to over x-million people, so this tour's gotta be good as well, come see us! Yet none of their shows sell out anymore, and the Jon is charging more and more in order to get to that tour gross he wants to brag about by the end of the year when Billboard publishes their list.

Jon always needs to go on and on on how he's the major CEO of a brand that has been running for 25 years (load of rubbish) and people should respect him for what he is. Yet as soon as fans start wondering what it's about he's all of a sudden not the major CEO but the innocent rock star who fell victim of those evil bastards out there. "Jon your ticket prices are appearantly very high... - "Are they? (does a cheesy attempt at looking surprised) Yeah, right.

The only reason why Jon is arrogant is because he feels he falls short of respect for the things he has done and no one pays any attention to him being the CEO as he's the CEO of a brand most people laugh about. It's only his own insecurity that causes him to act like this and his arrogance is based upon the achievements of other people. Compare this to the arrogance of the infamous brothers Gallagher. "We're the biggest band in the world!" Then an interviewer asks them about this and says "You're no longer the biggest band in the world now, are you?. And then picture one of the brothers saying "Aren't we (and doing an attempt at looking confused). They're called one of the most arrogant rock stars in music yet with them it's mostly an act. With Jon it's not an act, his arrogance isn't played.

It's Doc McGhee that made them big and made it possible for them to break through so many markets, and Jon has never been as involved into the touring business as he has been the last 10 years. Yet he claims to be running it for 25 years? No Jon, it's the band that's been going on for 25 years, not your major corporation.

Why do you consider me arrogant? I'm never ever saying "I'm the major CEO of the biggest Bon Jovi file sharing community on the entire internet and have been for 5 years now, so be careful to who you're talking to now, I want respect dammit!" And whenever some newbie goes on like "Who do you think you are here on Jovitalk, you think the board is all about you!" I'm not going like "Ooh you better watch you're talking to. I've got one of the biggest Bon Jovi fansites out there, have yeard almost every recording out there and have got a lot of CD's." Again, that's what Jon's doing, yet when Jon's doing it people find excuses for it because he's achieved so much while if I'd be doing it I'd be bragging for no appearant reason and people would laugh at me for saying those things (and rightly so).

Bon Jovi being arrogant and wanting to close the Moscow Peace Fest in 1989 was righteous as they were the biggest band on the bill. They had every right to demand it, they worked hard for it and earned it. Yet nowadays Jon is less and less involved with the music, doesn't tour on such a scale that it really is hard work but thinks he earns the respect based upon achievements of over 10 years ago.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

[QUOTE=Suojelusperkele;964580]It's unreal how much slack people cut to Jon, even though you have to go to pretty great lengths in trying to justify some of his greedy shit. Time and time again Jon has shown how he (and thus the whole band) these days cares solely about making money, music doesn't mean anything to him. I have to say I agree with Seb about most of this stuff. It's simply amazing, for example, how the guy refuses to play in a venue/country if he doesn't get at least a million dollars for it. The man is a multimillionaire who basically wouldn't need one more cent ever again in his life, and yet he has the nerve to outrageously milk money from his biggest fans through the fan club; ticket prices for shows are astronomical and yet this self-confessed "CEO of a major corporation" claims to be on the side of the ordinary man with pathetic songs like Work for the Working Man. However, people like Ang1e are somehow able to find beautiful excuses for everything. (I don't even want to know what the crazy women in Backstage think of all this stuff.)

[QUOTE]


I have to say that I agree. Especially with the part I highlighted. I have a friend who organizes charity events for homeless shelters. He reached out to Jon's people (because Jon is supposed to be this great philanthropist) and basically even for ths type of event, he will not walk in the door for less than a million.

So true....

Wrong - but as this is from days b4 you became a fan it can be forgiven. At the MPF 1989 Ozzy acted like a dick and wanted to play after Scorps or Mötley - and Jon said that he had no problems playing in the afternoon and let Ozzy close the show. This was in the days when JBJ was not that adamant playing for soandsomuch $$.
BTW: I only consider a person arrogant when I get to know him/her personally and not based on documentaries or interviews. I remember some guy here who was in an unknown band that played before BJ at an UK gig and he had an hour long talk withJBJ about the music biz and this sounded like JBJ was a pretty humble guy and not arrgoant at all. I guess it has become kinda clichee calling JBJ arrogant. He might be a prick in some ways but there a way more arrogant dicks in the music biz who have achieved pretty much nothing and are arrogant nonetheless.

The Madd sq garden Dvd got 3/10 in classic rock with the reviewer saying the band kooky totally bored and that he felt the same. He said only good thing was that the DVD had loads of old stuff and not a lot of new stuff.

[QUOTE=JoviJovi;964659][QUOTE=Suojelusperkele;964580]It's unreal how much slack people cut to Jon, even though you have to go to pretty great lengths in trying to justify some of his greedy shit. Time and time again Jon has shown how he (and thus the whole band) these days cares solely about making money, music doesn't mean anything to him. I have to say I agree with Seb about most of this stuff. It's simply amazing, for example, how the guy refuses to play in a venue/country if he doesn't get at least a million dollars for it. The man is a multimillionaire who basically wouldn't need one more cent ever again in his life, and yet he has the nerve to outrageously milk money from his biggest fans through the fan club; ticket prices for shows are astronomical and yet this self-confessed "CEO of a major corporation" claims to be on the side of the ordinary man with pathetic songs like Work for the Working Man. However, people like Ang1e are somehow able to find beautiful excuses for everything. (I don't even want to know what the crazy women in Backstage think of all this stuff.)


To be fair, and not to want to start a flame war, but there are charities out there that blatantly try it on and they probably get hundreds of such requests a day. You play one charity gig and I guarantee half a dozen others come out of the woodwork expecting you to do the same for them - even we've experienced that.

Now, I'm not saying that your friend's charity is anything like that but how do you differentiate between legitimate requests for charity gigs and those that are jumping on the bandwagon because you've already played a free gig for charity X.

It doesn't mean a thing to me how good or successful he is as a businessman because I listen to music made by musicians, not by businessmen. And Jon obviously has no longer interest in being a musician, he is only interested in $$$. He's more like a musical prostitute and there is something inherently wrong and perverted in the extreme commercialism of this band... and it takes away all credibility from the music that they still release. You might as well spend your time listening to commercials of Coca-Cola or Microsoft.