This is a transcript of an interview that aired on television in Australia.

Becky

Molly: Well Jon, welcome to Hong Kong ...

Jon: Thank you.

Molly: Congratulations on the single 'Midnight In Chelsea', ... the album 'Destination Anywhere' well, we are anywhere at the moment - tell us about the album ...

Jon: It's a very different record, you know, I mean, production style ... the songwriting was very introspective, I though going into it ... the song title came to me 'Desperation Anywhere' - I was in London and I was doing a film there, with John Duigan called 'The Leading Man' and moved my family to London ... I was there for three months and embarking on both a solo album and a starring role in an arthouse picture was going to be a great change in my life and it was obvious that I was about to embark on a new chapter ... so when 'Destination Anywhere' came I though this was really applicable ...

I don't where I'm going but I'm on my way and I can't wait to go, you know, so I set out ... originally I thought I was going to to write a very organic record you know? I was thinking Del Amitri as I started to hear what was starting to become the Britpop scene, it was an influence, ... The things that weren't crossing over to the States - the Manic Street Preachers, (Pulp and Oasis being the only ones that really did) um, MTV is programmed differently, the music press writes differently so obviously it influences you and it influenced me in a good way, I really enjoyed it.

Molly: Was it the longest time you've actually spent in England?

Jon: Yeah, well in any place for any one extended stay, well, as someone like yourself knows, you travel the world but don't see a lot - you see the hotel, you see the stadium, you see the airport, you see the restaurants and you're gone. And to actually settle in for three months and watch the TV and read the papers and go to the pub, you get a real flavor for what the place is about ... rented a house instead of staying in a hotel ...

Molly: Now I read in one interview where you said when you first - apart from that organic thing - said, ok, I'll get a whole heap of producers to do this album, to do a couple of tracks and then on to the next one ... but tell us the story with the two producers that are richly different in their approach anyhow ...

Jon: Yeah, you know, I really did use a bevy of producers, and kept reverting back to Stephen and David ... I cut two tracks with Steve Lironi - I heard a record by Black Grape and innocently put it on in the dressing room during last summer's tour and the road crew and the band were coming in and saying, what is this? what is this? it sounds great! And then I thought, I better pay attention to this, and I got together with Lironi and said let's try two songs, and um, it was such a different approach to record-making for me ... I went in to do these two things with him at my studio at my house and I remember going upstairs and calling my offices and saying, it's a good thing we are doing it here because I don't get a word of what he's trying to say to me, this is never going to work. Eight days later two tracks were completely finished - one was 'Janie Don't Take Your Love To Town', the other was 'Learning How To Fall' ... and I thought, wow, we are creating something brand new here because he's teaching me technology is not the enemy, you know, and having had a band for 14 years and going into the studio ... and one, two, three, four, and there's your basic track, you know what the song is going to sound like.

But with this it was the drum machine and then I played all the guitars myself, sang the song and then we put down the bass and drum, far after the vocal of the song was down - completely different style of record making. I really loved what we had done ... moved on ... went to Dave Stewart ... thought if we wrote 'Midnight In Chelsea' together we should produce it together, and we did, and again same kinda strange approach ... there was a band in the room but a lot of layering technology and things that he would suggest that I do were so foreign to me, I thought, what the hell, if it doesn't work, hit the red button and it goes away.

Then I moved on, went to David Foster just to try ... I'd written a song for 'The Leading Man' and I thought, no I'm going hold this one and it was the one that the record company had heard first and thought it was me re-writing 'Always' - and it would be the big ballad and I would have the insurance policy, so I went to David Foster to see if he could change it enough, if he could give it enough of a twist so that it did not sound like 'Always' ...

Anyhow it was great ... it wasn't right, I threw it away, went to Bruce Fairburn who had heard that same song as well as 'Destination Anywhere' and he chose 'It's Just Me' ... we cut those three tracks ... sounded like the next Bon Jovi record, it wasn't right, I threw it away. I kept going back to Dave and Steve ... sometimes Steve would cut a song and it didn't work. I would take it back to Dave, Dave would do it and Steve would finish it, until I felt it was cohesive and different enough.

So I did use the four different producers to make the project, but I kept reverting back to these two guys because at the end of the day, typically as an artist, I think in all honesty you listen to a record and you go, yeah, sounds like us or it sounds like what's hot at the moment, you know, call it band X, you know, we made a Nirvana sounding record ...

The one thing about this record is that it didn't sound like anybody, you know, there is a great risk in that but I felt I've made a statement here, I took the one insurance policy song and threw it away and did not use it. I said I'm going to make this statement and have nothing to fall back on, and to me 'Midnight In Chelsea' for instance, does not certainly sound like anything that I have ever done ... I can't even say it sounds like blah blah ...

Molly: It's funny ... when I first heard the CD of that and the next day I saw the video ... and friends of mine said, did Jon write this about Chelsea in England? and I said I'm not sure ... when I saw the video I said, hold on, this is basically shot in Manhattan at Hotel Chelsea and I was a bit confused ...

Jon: The song is a narration of my time spent in England ... it describes my overview of London, and I use Chelsea as a metaphor for it ... "the kids round here/look just like sticks/they trade old licks for the beat up sixes/I smile and catch the groove" is about Oasis ... "the gothic girls all dressed in black/as serious as heart attacks" is obviously again, England, cause we don't have that in New Jersey 'when the pub empties at 11 o'clock/the old man with the whiskey stands" but from the 'Sloan Rangers' which is like a nick name for the Princess Di clique, to the big red buses, you know, the double decker buses packed so tight, it was really only my time in England ... and now the reason we did the film and the video in New York was simply convenience sake, in order for me to get Demi, Kevin Bacon, and Annabelle, Whoopie Goldberg who were all going to be in New York - we had to shot the film in New York ...

Molly: Which we will come to later cause it is quite fascinating ...

Jon: Yeah, but what we did was try to make it work in Chelsea, New York but really it was just me being in England ...

Molly: Okay, hearing it as I said, first on CD, what amazed me with this is that it was different, not only your vocals but with the backing vocals ... to me I thought, was it T Rex? It has a bit of everything in it, a bit of guitar, the wonderful acoustic guitars ... I mean it is a very full record, beautifully produced but not over-produced ...

Jon: No, it wasn't meant to be over-produced, you know, as players, both Dave and I wanted to keep it .. You know, an old story I read ... John Travolta said, whenever he takes a role in a film, he deciphers who the character is by the way he walks, and and I realised this is a song about a guy walking through London and it had to be without any kind of bravado ... He had to be observing, looking around, so when I wrote the lyrics to the chorus it said, "no-one's asking me for favors/no-one is looking for a saviour/ they're too busy saving me" - and it's meant to be a slow strut, as you're walking through, you know ...

Molly: Well you know, talking about walking, I also read of how, where you said, when you make songs with the band, it's a group effort, and it is not particularly just your story or your experiences ... with this album I can see that it is definitely your experiences ... is that hard to do?

Jon: You know, sometimes you run the risk of showing too much of yourself to your audience and perhaps if I was to say something that could turn off your audience, there is a risk involved in that ... but I didn't care ... there's things admitted in the lyric - if it's drank too much, smoked too much, (smiling) got in trouble last night - I didn't care, you know, I didn't care what anyone was going to say including my family, you know. I had to express myself throughout the record, and wanted to make a very personal-sounding record ... now when Richie and I write together, we truly do collaborate both in the lyric and in the music and you don't realise it until well after the fact that then song matter becomes broad or becomes more social, for instance 'Keep The Faith', 'These Days' as opposed to 'Midnight In Chelsea' cause even Richie would not understand what it is that I am saying, you know? "No-one is asking me for favours/no-one is looking for a saviour" - you know, cause he's not ultimately that focal point, or the boss or the guy that gives the pay checks to everybody, etcetera, etcetera, so with this record - writing this record by yourself, for yourself, you run that risk ... but it is well worth it ...

Molly: Certainly with track two - 'Janie, Don't Take That Love To Town' - it's a very personal song, you and our wife right? I won't elaborate on that but 'August 7' is almost a tragedy in a sense ... the thing that I love about the album is that you can't pigeonhole the next track on it - it all flows, but it is not all the same. In fact, none of it is the same ...

Jon: No, I spent a year making sure it wasn't gonna be the same ... when you're writing a record, you're in a certain frame of mind in those couple of weeks and you are writing those kinda songs, but when you take a year to write it, the influences are going to change over the course of that year ... different things are going to happen to you, with a song like 'Janie' or 'Every Word Was A Piece Of My Heart' - they were written on the road, with the band, you know, so now 'Janie' was obviously a bad couple of days with my wife on the road, with the band. 'Every Word's A Piece Of My Heart' is me saying, I am walking away from the band for quite a while. But who knew I was going to write 'August 7' cause the tragedy hadn't happened yet, you know, that was the most disastrous event in my adult life, to have lost somebody who was in essence, a part of my family, and you know the mysterious murder of a six-year-old for no reason and more importantly, no closure - just completely rocked my world ... was just so upsetting ...

Molly: Your world is a strange world ... you're a mate of mine and watching you over the years and with Bon Jovi, then having a taste of acting then writing for a movie, having a major success with that ... to be able to go and become a credible actor, I mean there are rock'n'roll musicians and there are actors and sometimes, most times, it does not really cross over, I mean, you seem to cross over very well into acting and into movies you know ...

Jon: Well it's comin' - I have completed now my fifth film, you know, I have three more that are coming out the rest of this year ... it's a very hard transition to make because a lot of guys have come before me and have not had luck with it ... I just claim to be simply a student of film and believe me, there are a lot of films that I don't get that I would really like to get. There's a film done in Australia called 'Thin Red Line' that I would have walked there to get, you know, the director did not even want to know about it and did not even give me a shot, and I think that the preconceived notion is that people that come from the music field are only doing it between records, or something to do to give them a new, fun outlet. But I take it very seriously, you know, I've studied now going on six years - I never thought because I was a singer in a rock band that I should be in movies, you know, I really had to learn the process ...

Molly: You don't mind with your movies, over the five, for them to be different either? They are hardly in the one category ... it's not like 'Rocky I', 'Rocky II' ...

Jon: And they're not the big action movies or the obvious choices of a rock'n'roll star ... I have been fortunate to be around good actors too, but I think I am more attracted more, as a movie fan, to 'hip' not 'hit' if that makes any sense. I would rather be in an arthouse film that I love the story than in a blockbuster where you go, boy is that outlandish, you know. I go and see those movies but I don't ever leave feeling like anything was worth it, but the popcorn ...

Molly: How did you get everyone together for the video, and how long did that take to do that?

Jon: The whole thing came together as an idea conceptually ... while I was doing the record I dreaded the fact that I was going to have to make videos ... at this point in my career ... I think all of us were glued to the TV at one time and we could see music for the first time and it was a great idea ... and 15 years on it's tired and needed a good kick in the rear end ... So I thought of this idea to develop a movie based on the album, take key lines of the lyrics, use them as dialog, develop a script around that, and at that time I was able to approach the people that were in it because of friendships, you know, Demi, by accident introduced me to Dave Stewart, so her and Bruce feel a kinship to the record ... so she was in between projects and said yeah, I'm ready to do this.


And Whoopee being in 'Moonlight & Valentino' with me and her being in New York doing a play made it convenient for her. And I asked her a favour and she said, fine, I'm in. Kevin Bacon, who I am a huge fan of, I didn't know very well, personally, but I met him a couple of times and he is crossing over to making a record, so every time I would ask him a question about acting he would ask me questions about making records, so when I approached him with it, he listened to the record and I called him the next day and he said I'm in.


And Annabelle Sciora, I wrote the song 'Always' about her character in the film 'Romeo Is Bleeding' - she felt a great kinship to that song because of her relationship with Gary Oldman, in the film both on and off-screen, and she plays my wife in an upcoming film, so again, she said, I am in. Teasingly, the producer of the project said you could could be a big film producer, you know, if you ever want to quit your day job and I said, you know they did it for us this time and everyone did it for free and worked their butts off and it was interesting, you know, if nothing else ...

Molly: Well the story is interesting as well - to take you as the husband, who has family, gambling problems, Demi playing the mother who turns to alcohol and pills, then Kevin being your mate who you go to talk with in the bar or whatever ... Annabelle being the best friend of Demi who is the mother and Whoopee playing the taxi driver but the story ... the acting is quite intense ...

Jon: It is very intense ...

Molly: Apart from Whoopee who gives it that light hearted bit ...

Jon: Yeah, she was able to lighten it up, you know, the core of the story being on August 7, was a dark subject matter and it was a difficult decision to make, not to make a fluff film, you know, we could have revolved it around midnight in Chelsea and made it a cutesie you know romantic comedy or what have you, but it did not feel like the right thing to say ... it was more of a risk to take a subject matter that was as real as it gets, and revolve it around that. It hasn't been criticized, in fact it has been applauded, because we didn't go the easy route - we did not make a fluff piece that was cutesie ...

Molly: Music videos are a necessity, aren't they?

Jon: Sure, because on a record like this were, if I'm not going to tour for instance, it is the only way the people are going to have an opportunity to see you, or if your record is not on the radio in a certain place in the world or even in the States in a certain city, they have another outlet. So I spent no time making the videos - you will notice that all the videos are gonna be from this film, where I never sing or play in this film, but on the set we would take two takes from the two or three cameras we had on the shoot, get it in 15 minutes and move on. That was the videos - all our focus was on the film, you know, to just try and push the medium and it has been applauded ...

Molly: Going back to the days of Bon Jovi - and I want you to be really honest here - if you look at how music has changed so much there's been musical fads, from grunge, to this, to heavy metal and yet Bon Jovi, the group, was able to go through that path, were stepping on stepping stones, and Jon Bon Jovi, the artist, the person, the singer, the songwriter has been able to do practically the same thing, even with acting - why?

Jon: We went everywhere in the world and worked it and and we hit people over the heads to say, we're not going away, like it or not. I think that had a lot to do with it. I think that that story travels well, so if you were to be a critic and criticise Bon Joni and say it's no good, it's fluff, it's nothing and then you know that they say it sold 75 million records, why? because we weren't afraid to go anywhere, we never pretended to be something we weren't, so when grunge came into fashion and when Kurt Cobain made such a statement and changed the face of music, especially in America, I did not jump on the Seattle band wagon and show up and try and be friends with the guy ... I admired his music but I was not going to try to imitate that because when you think about it, in '83 when our first record was being recorded, it was Boy George and Cindi Lauper and chances are, I woulda had to sound or look like that to get on the radio ... that was not happening for me.

By '86 when I had knocked on every radio station's door begging them to play my records, I delivered a record called 'Slippery When Wet' which was a phenomenon, it was that one record the the luckiest guy in the business gets to have, my 'Born In The USA', my 'Like A Virgin', my 'Thriller' ... that was the one that almost killed us, you know, by the end of the New Jersey tour we were delirious, but then we were not afraid to take chances either. We took it back into my control, fired the machine, got rid of everybody that was making any rotten suggestions that I did not feel was right, and I thought, if it fails - fine - but at least I can go to bed at night with the satisfaction that I made the decision for it to fail. I was not going to play up to anybody in order to help my career ... and we just said, if it's not going to work in America, let's go to Asia and wait it America turns around again ... and that is what we really had to do in order to survive.

Molly: The five months that you spent on the film set in England ... it can be very lonely for an actor cause they only shoot, what 2 minutes of it a day ... was that good to get away in your caravan, by yourself with your guitar ...

Jon: It was the only time in my life that I was ever alone ... you know, being under my father's roof through my first two albums, because you know and I know, but most people watching TV don't know - you do not make any money ... I did not have any money ... I did not have a place to live, I had a girlfriend, she lived with her parents. By the end of the second record, I had an apartment and we lived together ... by the time the third came everything exploded ... I had a band from the time I was 20 and that just gelled into being a kid, so I was never alone ... wherever I went in the world it was with the band, whenever I went home, it was either with my parents and then my girlfriend, who later became my wife. I never had a chance to sit alone and that trailer became a good friend to me because all the downtime on film you are forced to sit around and stare at the walls ... I took a guitar and started writing about it and that became very inspirational ...

Molly: After the 1st solo album, you did take some time off and go travelling in America ... in a way, that's another way of being alone isn't it?

Jon: Yeah, you know I didn't take any of the band with me, but you know, there was a story on the 'Blaze Of Glory' video, and my wife said, what you need to do is be alone - don't be afraid to be alone ... and we were four albums in at that point and we were shooting the 'Blaze Of Glory' video out there in Utah, and I bought a bike out there, and we're on the bike and I am yelling back to her: hey babe look! We are finally by ourselves and we were out riding the bike and it was something out of a bad movie ... as if the camera were to widen and there was 50 people behind me, 'People' magazine, ET, everybody's filmin' it. She's going, yeah, you, me and 50 of your closest friends ... it took me a long time to come down and realise - you're right, I don't need this machine around me, this isn't what it's about ... get back to basics again and eventually I weened myself off it ...

Molly: The album's out and having its success - that always then demands performance somewhere along the line - what next?

Jon: I don't have a schedule, which is good. I am going to continue to do some promotion for the record - I have done eight shows with another band who are great musicians but the thing that tears me away from touring is two-fold: one is performing without the guys is difficult - it's fun and exciting but it's difficult. As a fan, to come and see me play and a couple songs in you are going to look and go, where is Richie? Where is Tico? And you know, just as a fan, you know Jagger for instance, did a solo tour down in Australia ... after a couple of songs in, people go, where is Keith??

Molly: I remember when Freddie Mercury came down and did a solo tour - he was pretty independent but suddenly he need Brian around him, he needed Roger, you know?

Jon: Yeah, there is good and bad parts about playing with the same guys for years and years, but from a fan perspective, it's nice to see and you want to see the band and I have been on the road with every album, every summer and it would be nice to say home for a minute ...

Molly: On the way here, to do this interview, there were some Australian fans who had won a competition to come over here and they were just blown out that they were given the time ... you gave them the time ... and you don't seem to find that hard ... you don't seem to have changed in all the time I have known you ...

Jon: No, I feel they flew here five or six hours just to say hi for a couple of minutes, it is the least I could do ...

Molly: Apart from that, you never seem to change ... you always seem to be ...

Jon: I don't think a day goes by that I am not grateful to have the opportunity to do what it is that I do ... I know I have been lucky and blessed and a lot of it has to do with that, and I think that is part of the magic, why we survived, cause we had that kind of relationship, you know. Even when we were down, people pulled for us and that ... Because people thought that these were nice enough guys, these people did not steal money or lie to us or this or that, so we had relationships with people and I think the fans feel that kinda thing ...