September 20, 2002

Interview

You give rock a good name
by Chris Campling
Clean living pin-up rocker Jon Bon Jovi says that, even with sales of 95 million albums, he's still livin' on a prayer



A small group of young women is gathered around the hotel entrance. They are dressed in leather and denim, with the name of their fave band stitched on the backs of their jackets or stretched across their chests. And they are waiting. Specifically, they are waiting for a glimpse, maybe a picture, of Jon Bon Jovi as he dashes from hotel door to limo and away.
This is terrific. This is the echt rock’n’roll Beatlemania experience, albeit on a limited scale. The object of all their patient adulation, though, is not as impressed. But then, he’s used to it — it happens all over the world. It’s a part of the business of being Jon Bon Jovi.

We may as well get the yucky stuff over first. Yes, he is very good-looking. He is taller than expected. He is broad of shoulder, bright blue of eye and gleaming white of tooth. He can hear the word “forty”, which is what he is, without flinching. He exercises because he likes it, although the side benefit is that he can get through up to three hours on stage (90 minutes of show, 90 minutes of encores) without flagging. He is dressed in a black T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He looks like a film star, which he is some of the time anyway. And when he talks, he sounds like a film star, to these ears anyway. He sounds like Joey Tribbiani out of Friends, actually.

Only he doesn’t say “Hey!” at all. Or shrug and pop his eyes for comic emphasis. He does smile a lot, though, and push his hair back off his forehead. And from the bottom of his tracksuit poke ankles discreetly tattooed. And suddenly he’s back to being a rock star again.

Today he’s had a run in the park and done a soundcheck for the gig he and the rest of the Jovis are doing that night at the Shepherds Bush Empire. And now he’s talking to The Times of London (it’s his favourite English paper). It’s a pretty full day for a 40-year-old, even one as fit as . . . Hang on, let’s backtrack here. Since when have Bon Jovi downsized from stadiums to venues which could fit into said stadiums’ toilets? Or is it just Bon Jovi wanting to get more intimate with their public, the way megastars do when they think they have lost the common touch? Neither. “We enjoy playing stadiums, and also smaller venues.”

And this way they can do both, sort of. The Empire gig is to be beamed direct to 11 cinemas full of Bon Jovials so they can enjoy the experience at second hand. It’s kind of a new thing — “I don’t know if anyone else has done it”. It’s also kind of a one-off: the next full-scale Bon Jovi tour doesn’t take place until next year, “January to June, six months away from home”.

One of the sofas in the room is stacked with presents for home from this little jaunt, all bought from Harvey Nicks, just over the road from his hotel. He grins at them. “What have you got for me this time, Daddy?” he mimics in a little-girl voice.

In the meantime, the Empire gig is a break in the round of interviews and press conferences, of all the palaver that goes on around selling a new album and the new single off that album. “When I’m onstage I can relax,” he says. “No phones ringing, no meetings, just the band.”

And the chance to see the audience for a change? “It’s not that,” he says. “You can always see ’em. And hear ’em. In Europe they all know the words to the verses. In the States they only know the choruses.”

You would think, though, that Bon Jovi are hardly the sort of band that would have to sell itself all over again with every release. Wouldn’t the phrase “New Bon Jovi Album Available Now” be enough? “No. We’re not complacent,” their leader says. “You don’t sell 95 million records by being complacent.”

To this end the band have introduced another wrinkle — the personalised fan club number. Buy Bounce, the new album (see review, page 12), and on the lyric booklet there’s a number. Get on the internet, enter the number and you’re a member of American XS. “It’s like giving the people access to the band in a way they didn’t have before,” Bon Jovi says. “They get information about concerts, albums, what we’re doing and where. And it’s free, they get it straight from the band, without other people selling it to them.”

Public-spirited it may be but, of course, it’s also good for Bon Jovi business. To which end no sinew is left unstrained, no aspect of global marketing left unconsidered. He puts himself down as “an analogue guy in a digital world”, but that’s unlikely. OK, he had to ask another bloke in to help him log my daughter’s name on to American XS, but he would probably have worked it out for himself in the end.

As for the album, it was largely composed after September 11, so guess what it’s about, even though only one of the songs refers to it specifically. “We wanted to write a record about that day — and about the other 364 days of the year.”

Bon Jovi lives in New Jersey — was he anywhere near when the aircraft went into the twin towers? “The smoke blew over our house,” he says. “We could see the towers fall from the beach.”

And? “We were shocked, like the world was shocked. Then we wanted to know what we could do, and what we can do is sing. Benefit concerts don’t change things, but . . . it was just something we could do.”

And what should America do now? He’s a staunch Democrat and he feels his man, Al Gore, would have handled things differently. “He was educated in foreign policy, a career politician. Do I think we’re going to war? Perhaps. Do I think we should? Depends on the facts. We, and The Times of London, need the facts.”

Anyway, that was last September 11. On the first anniversary he was playing a gig in Japan. As Woody Allen said after the attack, it happens, you grieve, you get on with your life.

For Bon Jovi, that means Bon Jovi. The acting, which most recently saw him playing nine episodes of the now-doomed Ally McBeal (“I left before they killed it,” he says, sternly), is treading water, even though there’s a script on his desk as we speak. “Unless it’s Gone with the Wind,” he says, “I’m going to be doing my day job for a while.”

In fact, one of the reasons the Ally McBeal thing happened — “I don’t like doing television” — was because it was filmed on the West Coast.

“That way I could be with Richie ’s guitarist, who lives there, and work on the album.”

Two bits of business in one. Hey!



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