There are essentially 3 eras to Bon Jovi

1) The party band years of SWW & NJ

2) The golden years (imo) of KTF & TD

3) Post TD Where they're "trying" to recapture the sucess of the party band.

I discovered BJ in the 90's and the first thing I heard was My Guitar Lies Bleedin'. It floored me in so many ways, it was so deep and moody, epic sounding, great musicianship. So my love of them primarily comes from the "serious" anthems they've done between 92-96

However goin back on myself and discovering the SWW & NJ I found the other side to them, when they were just big hair and fun. I can enjoy this to a degree but even so I still love the songs where you can see the potential for whats to come later. Prayer, Bad Name, Wanted are all classic classic songs that of course invented the BJ signature but they also had a depth that the rest of the album for the most part doesn't have. I still think they're good songs but I dont connect to it in the same way.

I appreciate the commercial sucess they had with it and understand why people who grew up with them in that era love that the most, its what you identify with. But for me Bon Jovi always epitomised the "mega stars" of rock, even in the 90's.

You see in Europe, and the UK espeically they were still super-stars back around 92-96 where you could quite easily say at the time one of the biggest bands on the plannet. This was the time of Always mania and the Crossroads phenomenom. I think there was some survey where people were asked around then what they had in the CD colleciton and it was a shocklingly high % of people in the country that had Crossroads, well that and Eric Claptons Unplugged that was of similar scale back then. I know they went through a resurresction in the US somewhat with Crush in 2000 but still wasn't on near the scale that they were at in Europe in the 90's

Maybe cause KTF and TD wern't as sucessful in the US SWW is still heralded as high as it is over there. It truly is a classic rock album and very comercially sucesfull but as for DEFINING Bon jovi I think its only a scrap of the surfcae of what they are about, or capable of.

The modern era of trying to artificially recapture that success works like 20% of the time and its cool but the rest just leaves me sad feeling like that heartfelt song writing of the 90's has made way to 3.5 minute "hit writing", but doing so in a way that makes them still relevent.

It's a double edged sword, if they didnt then they would be able to continue touring on the scale they do, and maybe would have to change to a smaller label and such...the big boys wont fund even the super-stars for very long these days if the hits aren;t coming in. But at the same time we kind of lose some of the integrity that was built up with the 90's work.

We'll see what the future holds, but I think that SWW will never be topped in terms of sales or popularity, maybe because its always the compared to it lol

David