Yeah, rumour has it, as far as I know this has never been confirmed by an official source. It came up before Alec was fired when he said that he wouldn't be playing bass in the studio on These Days as Jon kept telling him he sucked and was a control freak but he would be doing the tour. Obviously it was an ill-advised move to criticise Jon in public and pretty soon the posters were up for the These Days tour with only 4 members of the band. People then saw that Hugh was on the thank you lists of all the other albums and put two and two together.

Someone may correct me here but as I said I have never heard this from an official source. If it was the case why does Jon still show such (public) loyalty to him by saying there will never be another bass player in Bon Jovi. It's not like the guy was some great looking chick magnet to help sell the band image. Why bother pretending he was really on the albums and take him on tour when he was supposedly a live liability and looked about 20 years older than the rest of the band.