No Richie on current leg of the tour

My thoughts exactly, get them in a room and bang there bloody heads together then drop off the radar for three or four years get some good classic BON JOVI from the heart soulfull material under their belts (not some mass produced "good enough" to fill the album rubbish) , everyone will be a winner in the long term, Richie should be given a lot more input than he has been given for a long time (50/50 for me), Jon will get to have the BIGGEST tours in the world again with his wing man with him, and hence selling mots more tickets, and we the fans (YES THE FANS Jon and Richie, you know the ones who maintain your million dollar yachts,helicopters and palacial houses), will get to see an enlightened, remotivated and fingers crossed a BON JOVI that we all KNEW and loved!!!!!

This is a tough one - I don't think Jon intended to hint at alcohol problems, and may have been misquoted or taken out of context, but he did make a comment about it being the same situation as before, or "we've been through this before", which most people read as being about RS and alcohol etc.
But as I said, that's not really JBJ's fault, or at least isn't anything more than a careless response.
EDIT: Jon was intending to just talk about Phil X helping out again!
No biggie.

When he said that, he meant about the situation of Richie not being there and Phil taking over. He didn't mean the alcohol problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fhSOcLkMGQ#t=03m00s

Yes, exactly, that's what I was intending to say

I know we don't know. If we knew, I might not be pissed off but as it stands, I am - there's a great big ****ing void in the band. Phil's covering pretty well but he's not used to these big stages and just hasn't got the charisma Richie has.

What stood out to me most is when Richie plays the Dry County solo, the crowd are usually cheering when he lets rip, but there was nothing like that with Phil.

That's what I meant as well. He was referring to Richie being MIA, not the alcohol.

Are you suggesting that there might be an equally, very real, possibility that Richie just may have meant "f***in' great" like he used it at 0:15 here? I mean, that's the way I 'heard' it when I saw the tweet; but hey...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AzJy...ayer_embedded#!

Firstly, let me apologise for my sloppy post - ranted during a crap day at work! Sorry for "look at what you read" - that makes no sense!

Anyway...I think it's fine to be pissed off at not knowing. The communication has been piss poor, and this era of social media 24/7 has only made matters worse.
And you're bang on about Phil covering.
But I just don't think it's fair for people to assume Richie has just buggered off and is living the dream and not caring about the situation. My hunch tells me he's got lots to say but it restricted - perhaps legally - to what he can actually announce publically.
I might be way off. I'm also not saying it's Jon - maybe it's a legal thing, maybe it's in the hands of lawyers or record company management suits.
Maybe it's another scenario where the record label or management types have interfered, spread different messages and caused a rift (remember the Doc issue of trying to divide JBJ from the rest of the band, especially RS?).

Who knows. But as a fan I'm willing to give everyone in the band the benefit of the doubt until I know for sure.

Dave has a musical in production in London, a musical that was on a National tour, a musical on it's way to Broadway, a musical being made into a movie and is writing the music to yet another musical. I am pretty sure he could stay busy if he wanted and has more of an excuse than Richie to step away if he chose.

I don't think ANYONE was excited to have Bon Jovi back out this close to the last tour, not the fans, not the band, basically no one but Jon. But it is an integrity thing they signed on so they need to do what they agreed to.

I will NEVER trust Richie will be anywhere again. Luckily he is ****ing great making clothes and teaching his daughter to drive.