No Richie on current leg of the tour

Richie has to have a large wound, that's for sure.

All great points. I really think his "famous face" line is about Heather and people thinking he's talking about Jon is a stretch. The line was written prior to the debacle and he's even said the song is about his divorce.

That's all you can come up with? And you are the one talking about 'adult children'. Fair enough, no need to bother much.

Haha, there are three new pages of bitching over a comment Richie made two years ago.

At least Richie is talking about his departure. Jon would keep us in the dark forever if it meant his character was brought into question. Bounce was rubbish. Hopefully someday he will talk about all the albums and what he honestly thinks of them.

It seems a lot of people here are genuinely hurt that Richie isn't this perfect role model guitar playing genius that they grew up imagining he was, it's very tedious reading.

This still doesn't add up because he recorded the album and then started the tour.
Surely if he was that determined to do his own thing he wouldn't have even done the album. He should have stood up for himself at that point not finally grow balls part way through a tour!

Aloha !

He is alive, yeah, but kicking ass? He didn't play a single song without ****ing up somewhere! He didn't even get the chords right to Prayer! Do yourself a favor and shut up until you're actually capable of detecting the mistakes and sloppiness yourself, as opposed to judging others for pointing out things you obviously didn't hear or see yourself.

Although I kind of agree with your rant about deeming what's normal or not or what kind of relationship he should have, I don't really think that's the issue here. Most great music that was made while said artists were off their socks, were also done by artists who'd eventually lose it because the drugs/alcohol gained control over their creative output. Some died, but for the ones who lived, it'd eventually stop. Just look at Aerosmith; 4 great albums, then there was too much drugs followed by 10 years of pointless album releases. The same goes for Clapton, who's filled a decade with average albums and poor concerts.

Richie's been playing intoxicated for a long, long time. People seem to think he was sober most of the time before 2005, but it's just not true. He just never took too much to be able to play anymore, which is clearly what he's doing now. It's either alcohol, or he's off his tits because of (prescription) drugs.

Another thing the womanizer in me fails to understand though is this; If I were to play in a band with a girl I'd want to impress, I'd work very, very hard on getting the songs right and not look like a fool. I remember having written a song for a girl and then playing it for her in the TV room, feeling like a fool when I messed up. I swore that'd never happen again, yet Richie's doing it night after night. I don't get it.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I think Richie's too old school of a macho to actually realize Ori might notice him ****ing up all the time. To him it's probably the much bigger proof of him being alpha as **** that he gets to do whatever he wants and get away with it, because that shows that he's important.

What do you mean by you don't think that's the issue? To make it clear - my issue is that Richie's sloppy playing is one thing that is obvious, that we can discuss. The choices he makes in his personal life we can comment on, but obnoxious judgement calls based on some set of values that somebody takes for granted because they've been engraved in their brains since they were kids...well...those make me go on a rant. A 'healthy' relationship does not make a better player just like a ****ed up relationship does not necessarily lead to more creative writing. As you point out, Richie's 'abuse' problems have been long documented. Yet you watch him high as a mother****in' kite in some of those 1989 gigs, looking like a psychopath, but kicking' the shit out of that guitar. You see him be a human wreck at the peak of his alcohol abuse (unplugged probably). Yet in between his playing has been up and down. Even his Australian stint had some unbelievable performances. Now he is all shit. So whatever theory you may have about it - saying 'if only he was sober and had a proper stable relationship and wasn't such an adult child' is just BOLLOCKS. The same Richie gave us the genius of Stranger in This Town, of Keep The Faith...Dry County...These Days...you name it. The same adult child Richie gives us this. To be fair - Undiscovered Soul is my least favourite of all band related solo records, and that was written when he was in a perfectly stable relationship. In fact, all throughout his marriage his playing was dull and his tone deteriorated. Yet somehow some people think him dating Orianthi negatively affects his playing. Just WTF?!

P.S.: If I don't make much sense, it's because this point is so silly, it properly makes me angry and I lose my ability to properly articulate my points. Apologies.

As about the womaniser in you, I can't comment on that. I'm completely dysfunctional in that regard. For the last two years I've been like Jon Bon Bon in that Sex and the City episode he's in. Once I 'scored', I couldn't care less what she thinks about me or my guitar or anything else I do etc etc

I am not one for discussing Richie's personal life because I simply don't care about it. However, we debate things here that are not based on fact but interpretation. Even something that I see as fact (Richie's awful playing) is questioned by someone with a different interpretation. We all go off what we see, so whoever is childish enough to chat about his marriage and personal life is entitiled to do so, no matter their reason.

Of course, you are entitled to your hilarious response on the last pages, which I agree with for the most part.

I especially agree with Undiscovered Soul, a stable Richie wrote what to me always came across like a love letter to his wife (most the album I mean).

It sounds to me like the choice that was presented to him was to tour or leave the band that he had committed nearly all his adult life to. I think that would be a difficult choice for anyone to make. Maybe he thought at the time that agreeing to the tour was preferable to losing his place in the band, and that he would be able to see it through to the finish. But since life has a way of taking some curious turns, something could have happened at home or with the band after the tour was started that made leaving when he did his only option, whether it meant forfeiting his place in the band or not.

Another possibility is that after he agreed to go ahead with the tour, they continued to add dates, as has happened with Jovi tours in the past, and extended the tour beyond the dates he agreed to.

Any number of things could have happened. But at least we know now that it was never as simple as "Richie should have said that he didn't want to tour (or do a new album/tour) before the tour/album ever started." Apparently the decision he faced wasn't whether he wanted to tour or not, but whether he wanted to stay in Bon Jovi or not.

His statement in this article also leads me to believe that when he said that Mick wouldn't tour without Keith he wasn't referring, as some have suggested, to the idea that Jon should have stopped the tour when Richie walked away; but rather that Mick, in Jon's shoes, wouldn't have said (before the tour was arranged), "The band is going on tour with you or without you. You're either a part of that band or you're not."