Friday, April 11, 2003

Bon Jovi's looking even better the second time around

By GENE STOUT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER POP MUSIC CRITIC

Bon Jovi is getting a nice bounce out of its latest album.

The reinvigorated arena-rock band, which took a five-year hiatus in the late '90s before returning in 2000 with "Crush" and its hit single, "It's My Life," is building on that comeback success with its current album, "Bounce."

Led by pretty boy Jon Bon Jovi, who has enjoyed a TV, movie and modeling career and still looks terrific at 40, the band avoided the humiliating downhill slide that killed off so many rock bands of the pregrunge '80s, when big hair and big noise ruled the arenas. A new generation of kids who weren't even born when Bon Jovi scored its first hit, "Runaway," in 1983, have now discovered the group. Bon Jovi is almost like a classic-rock boy band with timeless appeal.

"These are truly the top-of-the-world years," Jon Bon Jovi told USA Weekend last fall after "Bounce" made its debut at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 album chart. The album is expected to push the band's total career album sales to more than 100 million copies.

The band's current tour includes a concert Tuesday night at KeyArena, with Goo Goo Dolls opening at 7:30 p.m. The show features such old hits as "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer," as well as a six-pack of songs from "Bounce," the band's eighth album.

One of those new songs is "Everyday," the album's debut single. The song about living life to the fullest was inspired by the emotional aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, which were visible from Bon Jovi's Middletown, N.J., estate. But the song is typically optimistic and doesn't stray from the hook-laden pop formulas of songwriters Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, who also is the guitarist.

Two generations of fans love the band's heart-melting music, but critics have been stingy with praise.

"One thing I learned many years ago is that you can't demand respect, you have to earn it," Bon Jovi said in a New York Times interview last fall. "And if it's starting to come now, I have to laugh at it, too, because I couldn't cry all those years we were getting beat on."

Bon Jovi -- a closet country fan who sang a duet of "Always on My Mind" with Willie Nelson for a USA Network concert special last year -- still shares the stage with Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres, who started a line of infant clothes under the trade name Rock Star Baby. This year, band members are celebrating two decades together.

"If you cut me in half, you could count the rings like a tree -- then you'd see how old I am," Bon Jovi told a giddy Norah Jones when the pop chanteuse interviewed him for the December/January issue of Interview.

"We've been making records for nearly 20 years, which is pretty amazing. It's been a great ride, and it certainly only gets better with time."

P-I pop music critic Gene Stout can be reached at 206-448-8383 or genestout@seattlepi.com