Originally Posted by Captain_jovi

It could either lead to a more artistic period where he's backed into a corner and admits sales aren't there so why bother trying to be popular or it could lead to him just retiring early if he can't tour and can't sell albums.

It's more complicated then just kicking out Shanks and bringing back Sambora because we're talking about it in the context of record sales. Bringing back Richie won't lead to that as much as we all want it to. It'll lead to some fans coming back but if the pop culture world cared enough about the band when Richie was in it there wouldn't have been a huge slump from 2008 to 2013 album wise. Bringing him back won't fix it, Jon wanting to make a change for the better will.