Songwriting 1982 - 1985

I read a comment under a Youtube video the other day, that The Hardest Part Is The Night was written by Jon in 1982 before Bon Jovi. A demo version of that song should also exist in the bootleg world.

Since the recording process of both Slippery and New Jersey is documented pretty well, there's only very few stuff about the first album and as far as I'm concerned almost nothing about Fahrenheit.
What we know about that album: Recorded allegedly from January - March 1985 and released on March 27, 1985.
I think it's a pretty short period for writing, recording and producing an album when the first tour ended November 5, 1984 and the next tour started with headlining shows on April 20, 1985. So when was this Japanese tour booked and when went tickets on sale? Although the Japanese were much more excited about Bon Jovi back then than other parts of the world it somehow seems strange if headlining shows were booked without a new record being released yet.
Back to the songwriting. Does anybody around here know of Fahrenheit demos being around? I think we all agree, that the first album was mostly a Jon solo record with some cooperations with Richie. But Fahrenheit lists only 3 songs as being written by Jon alone. So I was suprised about that quote that a demo of Hardest Part exist from Jon prior to Bon Jovi.
So what do you guys know and think?

I'd like to read that comment, but then again there's also a lot of BS being posted underneath Youtube videos.

Jon stated the song was about his time at the Powerstation Studios where he worked through the nights to be able to get some demos done and recorded. I highly doubt that this song was written at that time as well.
When it comes to demo recordings there actually isn't anything around besides "We Rule The Night" which made it's way onto the box set. I remember a comment by one of the band members that they were so afraid of someone stealing their tapes that they "literally had to carry 'em with us from and to the studio". I'm pretty sure this was around the Fahrenheit era. This might be the reason why others didn't really get their hands on any of the demo batches since I guess that the leaked one's from the other albums of that decade where usually passed around by some third-party people. Furthermore, given the very short amount of time they had for that album ("you have your whole life to write the first one and then six weeks for the second one"), I don't think there was much of a demoing process anyway. A statement which Jon made in an MTV interview in '89 suits this thought of mine:
"...people have heard of us, quick, let's get another album in their face straight away. And instead of taking our time and thinking it out and letting the songs breathe we really, really rushed!"
There are two song titles that we know of which were "Afraid of the Night" (I presume this was the pre-Hardest Part Is The Night track or its working title) and "Danger Zone". Jon talked about these two in an interview he gave to MTV in early '85, but a recording of those has yet to surface.

The comment is right here:
User romeokid69: "The only member going through a divorce ANYWHERE near this time was Tico and the divorce happened right after the first album came out and Tico had been both playing clubs and arenas at that point so your story really holds no water. Again, I used to have the demo Jon recorded in 1982. It is still out there available in bootleg form."

and

"My point was directed more toward Frank DeAngelis who obviously doesn't know the history of the early songs. Most of the songs from the first 2 albums were written between 1981-82......I was just making mention of the fact that this song was not written in 1984-85 as he is claiming."

Supposedly, for Fahrenheit the band tried to go into a heavier direction since the first record didn't sell enough. So they tried to lure sweaty dudes to the shows. Hence Richie got to contribute more riffs.

However, The Hardest Part doesn't sound like Richie just tacked a heavy riff onto an already finished song. That songs riff is just three chords; I doubt you'd even get credit for that (especially since the progression in the verse uses these chords as well - they must've been in place before if the song was already around). And, as we know, both Richie and David got a writing credit for that track.

That makes me think....how/ why are the first two Jovi records so heavy? When you listen to The Powerstation Years it's all Southside Johnny wannabe music. If you listen to Richie's solo bands, they're more Journey than Ozzy Osbourne. Yet you listen to some stuff on the first two records and it's borderline power metal. How did this crazy change come about actually? I mean really - moving from the Powerstation years crap to some of the stuff on Fahrenheit is like post 2000 Bon Jovi doing a Slayer type record and I am not even exaggerating...

I guess for the same reason that they did an introspective record filled with doubts in the mid 90s.

But that was more part of an evolution...it came slowly...there were hints of it on Keep The Faith Already. To me - going from the stuff that we know they were recording before....i.e. Jon's tv appearences, The Message, The Rest, Powerstation Years, Frankie and the Knockouts, Scandal etc etc... to the first two records is like KABOOM!!!!! The only hint of metal in pre-Jovi days is Phantom's Opera (Alec's band or whatever it was called) but surely that was marginal...

Am I going to get skewered for saying this? I imagine it's possible they were "encouraged" to aim for a certain type of sound to be marketed for a certain type of audience and get on MTV and radio at the time. I think they went with their heavier stuff to try to establish themselves with contemporaries in the vein of Motley Crue and Whitesnake.

That's exactly what I was going to say...record company pressure.

I remember Jon saying that he wrote ''Silent Night'' in late 1984 early 1985 in Philly while sharing an apartment with Tico, while they were miserable and broke and that he wrote this song because of the divorces some band members where going trough(or something like that).

I'm not sure but I think he said this right before performing this live at Hammersmith Odeon 1990.