Sun, July 13, 2003


Still giving love a bad name



By LIISA LADOUCEUR, TORONTO SUN

I have a confession to make. Back in 1984, I bought a Bon Jovi record.

It was a 7-inch single version of Runaway, the band's first hit, purchased for a few bucks in the music department of my local Zellers. At the time, singer Jon Bon Jovi was the most rock 'n' roll guy I'd ever seen, a more dangerous version of my then-musical fixation, Rick Springfield.

And with much better hair.

It was the last Bon Jovi I owned -- having soon after discovered the allure of new wave and post-punk -- but I've managed to hear everything they've done since. Because the New Jersey rockers haven't stopped pumping out the hits.

You Give Love A Bad Name. Bad Medicine. Blaze Of Glory. It's My Life. They're possibly the only '80s hard rock act to survive the alt-rock movement, selling almost as many copies of 2000's Crush as their early discs. How can that be? Didn't Nirvana kill off the kind of earnest rock cliches Bon Jovi epitomizes? Hasn't a string of power-love ballads destroyed their cred yet?

Actually, no. Bon Jovi is still selling out concerts, like their upcoming Molson Amphitheatre gig, still getting radio airplay. Because they have something most 20-year-old, cheezy '80s rock bands do not: Jon Bon Jovi

At 41, he's still a rock star. Still looks good in tight pants, still has great hair (fashionably styled) and an enthusiastic demeanour that actually makes it look like he's on the way up, not out. He's even developed a respectable acting career, from a recurring guest role on TV's Ally McBeal to starring in John Carpenter's horror flick Vampiros Muertos. (Hmm, maybe he's actually immortal!)

Now, I know not all 5 million Bon Jovi records sold in Canada have gone to women. The band wouldn't get to play the Super Bowl pre-game show if guys didn't like them, too.

But I'll bet most of the boys at the Amphitheatre will be holding on to their girlfriends' purses, or hoisting them up on their shoulders.

Guitarist Richie Sambora is cool enough, and they do write tunes for working-class, average Joes, but their rock factor still hovers at wussy Matchbox Twenty levels. (If you actually do believe they rock, I sentence you to repeated listenings of the last Queens of the Stone Age record.) I mean, there's a tune on the new album Bounce called You Had Me From Hello. It doesn't get sappier than that.

Fortunately, Bon Jovi knows their place in the universe. Allowing Conan O'Brien's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to poop all over their image shows that they get the joke.

And as long as Jon keeps playing up his photogenic, charming self, they'll be the ones with the last laugh.