I'm fully aware of the history but it seems that your version needs to be updated. It's true that that's what Jon said for years, up until at least the Alice Tully show in 2009, when he was still saying that if the "responsible" people had been more confident in the band's abilities, they would have told the band to enjoy it and go home and sleep for a year, but instead they were pushed to keep going.

But fast forward to 2017 and these last interviews, and Jon admitted that he had blamed the managers and the label for years, but in fact, he was the one who ran them into the ground because he was afraid that if they didn't keep going they'd lose it all; and people would think they were just a fluke. That confirmed Michael Francis' statement in "Star Man" when he said that Doc asked Jon numerous times if he wanted to take a break, but Jon said no, they had to keep going. Lonn Friend said something very similar about how they were supposed to stop after Moscow, but Jon saw the $ signs going up, up, up and wouldn't agree to stop.

Jon said, then, that he fired Doc because Doc had nearly killed them by pushing them too hard. Some fans say he fired Doc because of the drug issue. But, later, Jon told one of the biographers, Mick Wall, I think, that the reason he fired Doc was because he could do everything Doc was doing; so why should he give him the 20% when he could keep it for himself.

I may not have been following the band as long as you have but I've read just about everything I can get my hands on. I love Jon, but he lies like a rug. I don't buy anything he says, without checking it against what else he's said first, because he rewrites history to present the side of the story he wants to present, at that moment, with total disregard for anything he may have said prior to that. And sometimes you need a score card just to keep up. Like him saying, when The Circle came out, that it was the most Jon and Richie album since SWW, but now, because it suits his purposes better to downplay Richie's involvement, he's saying that Richie wasn't all that involved in the last 3 or 4 records prior to THINFS. Any way you slice it, that would include The Circle.

Sometimes it's because he realizes something different later on, like when he initially said that everything he wrote for Young Guns was script-based but he realized later that it was really about him.

Sometimes he's just protecting himself or the brand like when he said initially that Alec "just decided he didn't want to do this anymore and being in a rock band is not a life sentence". Then years later, when nobody cared any longer, he admitted that he had fired him because he wasn't doing his part on stage, or he couldn't play the bass parts, or because he talked out of school about band business, depending on which story you want to believe.

Jon had enough sense to change things to make them go the way he wanted them to go. Have they been successful? You betcha. Would they have been just as successful under a different management structure? Maybe not; but then again, they might have been even more successful and creative, and functioning better than they are now. We have know way of knowing.