Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_jovi
Can anyone piece together how Phil wound up playing on What Do You Got? I know Phil's connection with Howard Benson runs really deep and he's his session player (or was I guess?) of choice. I did a deep dive of Phil's twitter and Jon and Phil didn't talk in between him recording Levon/his involvement with Aldo Nova and 2011 which seems to indicate Jon wasn't involved in Phil's involvement on the BJ song.
Maybe the label asked for some changes and the band couldn't be arsed? I know Jon wasn't fond of it being a single choice.
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I'm not sure if Jon and Phil had talked inbetween, but as far as Phil's story goes since that recent interview, he had been hired and on hold to fill in for Richie on tour since the start of The Circle I think.
Now, What Do You Got? dropped at the end of August (27th) and usually, the band takes that month off to be with their families. I think that Jon originally wanted This Is Love, This Is Life to be the single (he talked so fondly about This Ain't Love in a Japanese interview for the Circle and how he pulled it to keep it for the GH record) and the record company ultimately had different plans. If we take into consideration that the later-leaked version of WDYG was the initial one, the record company might've asked for a more radio friendly edit and the band was on vacation. So Jon just might've told Benson to get some additional parts done by Phil X since that's his session player of choice and that's the one who had been put on standby for the Jovi tour anyway.
Usually, Jon likes to have control of everything, but on the One Wild Night album, he also just nodded off the single edit that Richie and Obie had created without his involvement.