One fan's desperate call for help...

Aloha !

Yeah...This sounds made up from the various quotes Richie's been spouting off the past 20 years. Further on, the drinking age going up had little to do with Richie's career going nowhere, as it'd been going nowhere long before that happened. By the time it was '84, he was already a fulltime member of Jon's band and had a record company backing them up when touring on their own and as a support act for other bands.

Richie's first studio work was with Shark Frenzy, Bruce Foster's band. They had a local following and played weekly gigs, and decided to record some of their stuff in 1978. Besides some local people buying their music, it went nowhere and the band disbanded.

Richie joined Mercy and got some local gigs, but again nothing came to fruitation. Richie joined Duke Williams and the Extremes, but did no record sessions with them. A few years later Richie joined Message, Dean Fasano's band, a band Alec was part of as well. Again, they recorded some stuff in 1980, but it did nothing as they lacked the funds to actually tour their own record.

In the meantime, Jon was in a cover band himself in the late seventies called the Lechers, then joined David Bryan's Atlantic City Expressway, which was another coverband, and then went on to form Jon Bon Jovi and the Wild Ones. Once getting time in the studio he formed a band as "Jon Bon Jovi & The Rest". They recorded the original demo for Runaway and when Jon found work cleaning the studio he'd re-record Runaway professionally with a bunch of other studio musicians, this being called The All Star Review.

Once out of the studio, he needed a new line up to tour his new songs, and although Dave Sabo, his neighbour, was up to play lead guitar, Richie replaced Sabo who went out to form Skid Row. Yes, some other guitarists had auditioned before Sabo, but those were just that; auditions. By the time Jon had gotten serious, Sabo was already part of the band.

If Richie really had been doing so much session work back then, surely some of it would've found its way online by now. But the truth is, there isn't anything out there. Nothing. All this solo gigs and session work talk sounds nice, but it's just that; talk. All studio work Richie did back then was paid for by the band that he was in, he wasn't hired to play on other people's records.

All band members but Tico were barely getting by and would it not have been for Jon Bon Jovi's Runaway, Richie would've wished he graduated with a proper degree in something as it's become quite clear by now that apart from playing guitar, the guy has no skills in anything whatsoever. So as for the graduation speech; use Richie as to why you need a degree. Unless you get lucky, you're nowhere without one.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Not all session work has to do with studio albums. If he were a member of the musician's union, Richie also would have had the opportunity to play on things like commercial jingles and through musical agencies. And back then, session musicians rarely got formal credit -- Tico says he's played on about twenty albums that don't include any session musician's name, never mind his.

Richie could easily have gone back to college if Bon Jovi had failed (much to his parents' delight, no doubt). Tico would very likely have been recruited by another band if the first BJ album had failed. And the guitarist who Richie eventually replaced was not unreasonable in EXPECTING Runaway to fail. It's a gamble, like I said: all you can do is study the odds, keep an eye on the big picture, hold on to your trump cards as long as you can, avoid bluffing, manage the money that you do have, and place the smartest bets possible. That way, you can end up making your own luck instead of -- well, living on a prayer!

Yes. Free exposure is not not exactly a bad thing for a musician.