Bon Jovi "Fan Album": Burning Bridges- Out 21 Aug

Fingerprints is a pleasant surprise. Has a classical orchestral vibe to it. The guitar solo blew my mind, do we know who is playing it for sure? I don't think it's Richie though.

Someone should ask shanks, doesnt sound like richie style to me...

I took the day off work today like i always do with a bon jovi release day and had it on repeat all day . Listened to it sober and now pretty drunk and still loving it. this is the best emotionaly since crush for me love all heaps except saturday nite and im your man . The outro to fingerprints epic . Who would you die for fave . BB fun love for sale type traditional BJ . Teardrops amazing . Blind love beautiful . Im blabbing on now but its been a friggin great Bon Jovi day for me !! long live BJ

I sure do hope it's not shanks, then I will have to apologize to him :P

Phil confirmed that it wasn't him, doesn't look like it's Bobby, and Shanks said he played the guitars on this record. Pretty sure that it was Shanks.

Did shanks actually say that hes responsible for all the guitar work on this?.

Yes.

I want to add in that, I think so many people are enjoying this album based on low expectations. If you look at the past facts....

- What About Now was not the album of choice for most fans so I think a lot of us feared that it would just get worse. Like a downward slope.

- Jon's voice just continues to decline with each tour. His age is also starting to question weather he's still got it.

- Obviously the departure of Richie created a big question mark.

- Beautiful Day and Reunion didn't paint a positive picture as far a direction. Even though we knew what they were all about, we had nothing else recent to compare anything else to.

- Musically, it's been the same for the past 15 years so I think we all just expected "another one of the same" Again, that downward slope.

- Same with the song writing. I mean Jon's statement about getting inspiration from the newspaper didn't help.

Now that we have this album, it kinda puts all the above to rest. However, my new fear is that the bar has been raised for this upcoming 2016 album. Maybe the fan album is supposed to be more diverse whereas this upcoming album will contain more safe, political, live your life, radio friendly music.

I never thought I'd say this but I'm hoping that Shanks is now the unofficial studio member who has more say with the bands direction. Maybe Shanks was more of a puppet to Jon and Richie as a producer but now that Richie is gone and he is actively taking on that role, he might have more say. Right now, neither Jon nor Richie have a freaking clue musically, as far as direction.

One positive thing I could note is, that Chinese Love Song. And the reason is, Jon actually sounds decent and so does the production. Whatever is going on in that studio seems to be working.

Im more than happy with Shanks .

Maybe the question should have been did you play all the guitars, cause yes im sure he recorded all the drums, bass, keyboard too, its technically correct, ��