2020: The New Album

Correct. I have the same opinion, I like Burning Bridges more than THINFS, it has a better collection of songs, better produced, and risk more (Teardrop, WDR, WWYDF, Fingerprints, BB).

The standout songs on BB are great but the average songs are really average. Always said that a mixture of BB & THINFS standout songs would be a fantastic album in my opinion.

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Re Bobby: spot on. It’s gotta be Bobby with Shanks’ fantastic production. That guitar sound is phenomenal, it really is crying.

The other day I was actually wondering if there’s a list of Bobby’s solos. I was listening to ‘I don’t wanna live forever’ (it has to be him), then Stay (ummm, same era). Obviously Wild Flower and probably most of Sex Sells era. I’m actually starting to think his style of playing is a big part of why Richie became Samboring...Bobby was with Jon for DA, Sex Sells? then a lot of Bon Jovi soloing became way too simple. Every now and then you can tell it’s Richie, but the majority could be played by an amateur guitarist.

Not taking a knock at Bobby though: he did what he did and was way more ‘Jovi’ than Shanks in a live setting.

I'm glad to see someone else say that. When BB was first released, I suggested that it sounded like Richie's style and some people thought I was way off the mark. If I was, at least I'm in good company.

IIRC, Captain Jovi said it's definitely Bobby doing the backing vocals on Stay, so that would make sense.

Yup. As far as Crush b-sides go Bobby solo'd on Stay, Don't Want To Live Forever, You Can't Lose At Love, Hush. He solo'd on Wildflower but I'd be hardpressed to say he played on anything else band wise. I had an interview with Richie from a guitar magazine from 2003 and I think I remember him saying Bobby played on This Left Feels Right, the heavily distorted part on Wanted but my memory fails me.

You can tell from his tone and phrasing when it's him, but 99.9 percent of the time the solo'ing has been Richie. My theory is there ARE some songs where it's Shanks for the verses and chrouses, Richie for the main riff/intro and the solos. I don't think Bobby has any part to play in why Richie became so watered down in the studio though.

I was checking the multitrack of wildflower and it has 2 guitar solos, none of them sounds like bandiera. About the other songs, I remember that Billy Falcon said that he used to record his own versions of the songs he writes and he said that he recorded the solo for Older on 1997 and showed to Jon, so there might be a chance that the original songs may have Falcon's solo on them

For sure both of those are incorrect. Bobby has flat out admitted he played the solo on Wildflower. There a bunch of parts that are his style (the forced vibrato, the repeating of a single note while slightly bending the string).

No chance Billy has played the solo on any songs he co-wrote. I doubt anything from Billy's recorded demos made it to the albums.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with me 💗

Nice discussion going on here
I have to disagree that BB was put together from older recordings. A few songs are outtakes from earlier sessions but they were newly recorded for BB. I think it was confirmed. Otherwise we would have Richie playing and singing there as well. I doubt they'd take only Jon's vocals from past and then record everything else again.I can imagine that many of the songs hadn't been finished when they started putting BB together. Those might have been just acoustic demos.
Still it's a fresh album. I'd love if they weren't afraid to experiment a bit like that on a normal albums. Just like I Will Drive You Home which made it only as a bonus track.
I've been thinking that THINFS bonus tracks added to BB (and leaving out the crap like Color Me In, We All Fall Down, Life Is Beautiful and Take Back The Night) would make a really good album.

Half agree/half disagree here.
I think that some of the material really was lifted from the past and maybe just had some overdubs on it. On songs like Blind Love, Jon stated that he had recorded it about a decade earlier, forgotten about, then found it and decided to "put it on there". I see a few of these in the same vein as, e.g. Lonely, where Jon wrote a song, made a demo with Shanks and that was it. Bar Saturday Night, they only took older stuff that had no co-writing by Richie, so it's very possible that some demos just were tweaked a bit further. Like on the Box Set where they also probably did a few overdubs on some songs without re-recording everything.
Some stuff might've been done from scratch again, but I'm having a hard time believing that the vocals for WWYDF are from 2015 since I've had a long conversation with a record producer that said that you can't manifacture rasp to that kind of extent. Or Jon did one line a day on that song to get this sound. Which would be a pretty hefty effort for a record he didn't care for and "threw in in a brown paper bag".

I'm completely agreeing about them not risking anything though. Every era had at least something like two or three interesting tracks that were out of the norm, but them sticking to the same damn formula for the album tracks is what makes it forgettable. We have had one decent rocker in the last decade and that was We Don't Run, an outtake thrown onto BB. Some exciting "ambient" sounds like Who Would You Die For, DA-styled I Will Drive You Home, a semi-good, but remotely interesting rocker with All Hail The King, a halfway decent solo on Into The Echo, for once soaring guitars on Teardrop To The Sea, a decent outro solo on an otherwise boring Fingerprints and the only real country rock tune with Put The Boy Back In Cowboy. All of these were B-side/bonus tracks or complete outtakes.
Which probably is why many fans are longing for another box set. The stuff that wasn't deemed "good or fitting enough" is probably the material that's actually musically and sonically interesting.