Has This Year (40 years) Been A Letdown?

Why Whitesnake/Coverdale can release each year a box set of each album and Bon Jovi would have to do it via website or download?

Exactly. The notion that there in no money in physical product from the band and label is nonsense. Labels make a good chunk of their money from re-issues and box sets and archive releases these days. You don't have to sell millions to make money on these kind of products you just have to be clever about the formats and the marketing. Universal do this all the time for bands with a much smaller fan base!

Ah, fair enough! I really think there's some good stuff on there that go beyond the clips but if it's not for you, it's not for you.

I think 2024 was the best Jovi year since 2011, by far. It gave some hope, some solid material, some excitement and a really good documentary.

Could it have been better? Absolutely. A bit bitter taste, cause Jon has not recovered still and album is a commercial flop? Sure. But still, it's a band with 40+ years of longevity, this may be best we get and I'm satisfied to be honest. I regained my love for the band, I became more forgiving and also got reminded why they were so f*cking great and legendary (pun not intended) to begin with.

Personally I never got the anniversary obligations to be met, I don't care for 20, 30, 40, 50 years of band. I am looking forward to the boxset, but don't mind if it takes some more time. Hopefully it gets done, they have so much material that would basically make people turn their heads if some of retro unreleased songs get published as singles. Paradoxically, some general audience would say "Jovi si back", but why not, just release some good stuff.

I think major lack of enthusiasm for future is Jon's voice. Band is not that old by today's rock standards. But voice problems are making me not optimistic for future unfortunately.

Guess I'm in the minority but I've really enjoyed the anniversary stuff. I hadn't really followed the hype on the build up to it so maybe I didn't have as high expectations, but the first 6 months there seemed to be loads going on (I definitely wasn't expecting a full 12 months of party like some people seemed to ).

- New album was pretty great, I still listen to some of the songs regularly
- Love the archive! Pretty sure it was deliberately designed to make you work for the content a bit so that doesn't bother me. Also Jon had been going on about it for about 3 years so I had pretty much given up hope of it ever materialising so was a nice surprise when it did!
- I was lucky I got to go to one of the listening parties in London so at least got to see JBJ in real life even if not performing. Appreciate that if you didn't live in one of the few places they were doing these then might have felt a bit left out.
- The doc was great, sure it could have been more open and honest about stuff and/or more about the music, but 5 hours of Jovi material will always keep me happy! And generally seeing Jon all over the tv and various interviews etc was nice and made it feel like the band had come back to life a bit.

The only real let down for me was the lack of tour but I imagine noone is more gutted about that than Jon. I know from experience how traumatic even a minor surgery can be, so I can imagine going through all that and desperately hoping it helps then realising you're no better (and possibly worse) must be absolutely soul destroying.

So no, not a let down for me. Just a little bit heartbroken that it seems more likely to be the final chapter than it was intended to be.

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I’ve always been a Bon Jovi fan since I was a kid in the late 80s, but I’m relatively new to being a serious Bon Jovi fan. And I do feel pretty disappointed with the 40th, because it felt like yet another opportunity Jon just used this anniversary thing to sell forever.

The social media output by this group is truly embarrassing. When they are sitting on the amount of photos, video archives, and other snippets, the fact that they are putting out the most lazy social media questions is ridiculous.

They don’t have any good 40th anniversary merchandise. They should be re-issuing tour T-shirts, they should be re-issuing old merchandise from the past. I’d love to buy a Wembley 95 T-shirt, for example. I am the consumer that has disposable income that I’d love to spend on Bon Jovi stuff, but there’s literally nothing to purchase that isn’t duplicative of what I already own. I was at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago perusing the music book section, and there’s not one Bon Jovi book on the shelves. There’s not one Bon Jovi special edition 40th anniversary magazine on the shelf, when I saw anniversary editions of magazines for other groups.

Instead, they’re putting on the backstage website all of this old merchandise for us to look at, but that we cannot buy. I understand the market for putting out albums may not be great right now, but physical media is huge right now. If they put out any new ‘old’ product, if there any more demos out there, even if they’re of terrible quality, any old acoustic recordings, anything else they could put in an extended edition or box set, I think there would be interest in it. Record store day is huge right now, why isn’t there a Bon Jovi record store day edition being released in November? Instead reissuing SWW, which is available very cheaply all over eBay right now for anyone who wants a copy of it. And a greatest hits which most of us already have.

I don’t want to belabor the Sambora stuff, but if Jon and Richie/BJ recorded anything together right now, there would be a lot of interest. From a business person standpoint, I just don’t get it.

It’s such a shame of the group’s legacy is being protected better by random fans on Instagram and Twitter than it is by the actual group.

I don’t know if it’s because Jon and the guys are of the generation that they truly don’t understand the ways that they could use social media, or if there’s just disinterest.


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They don’t have any good 40th anniversary merchandise. They should be re-issuing tour T-shirts, they should be re-issuing old merchandise from the past. I’d love to buy a Wembley 95 T-shirt, for example.

I REALLY wish this would happen, especially reissuing the t-shirts. I’d go broke buying reissued old tour stuff. I’d buy several Jersey Syndicate Tour shirts cause I’ve been wanting one for a long time and would stock up.

I wish someone would point out to Jon the money he’s leaving on the table by no re-issuing old tour merch. There’s lots of us fans who were too young to see them on earlier tours or ones who went & had a blast who’d love some of that merch.
If they did this I’d be like “TAKE MY MONEY!”

Yes, it has.

I'm absolutely out of the loop because I rarely have time to check this forum, so I'm essentially a casual fan now and I haven't heard anything related to their 40th anniversary except for a Japan-exclusive album (I think?)

If it wasn't for a couple people from here that I follow on Twitter I'd know nothing about what the band is doing nowadays outside of their half-assed attempts at promoting new music. I can imagine real casual fans are not even aware of the anniversary

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So they're current Xmas merch promo video is tagged with rounding out #BonJovi40.
It's Christmas, the celebration year is over and no sign of a Box Set or a proper continuation of the backstage site. Maybe for the 50th, stay tuned

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My future prediction: Provided that they are both still with us, they will roll JBJ and RS on stage at the Grammys in 10 years to present an award, they’ll get a standing ovation, and we’ll have to pretend like there haven’t been all these wasted years, and we’ll still have no good merch.

Crazy for what a ‘good’ businessman JBJ supposedly is, that he won’t put anything on the website that some of us would actually buy.


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