Nice one! Last show tonight and hopefully the last one without Richie

Clearly bootleg. I wonder if that was bought from a normal bootlegger, or someone selling them to purposely try and stir up trouble.

I think people love the drama or they are just pulling at all straws.

If Richie was out, they would put out a statement, not via a t-shirt.

Matt himself said that it's a bootleg t shirt. Surprised that someone actually bought that, to be honest.

Then again, after the tweets that some people were putting about resemblances of Phil X and Richie, it shouldn't surprise me at all.

My little sister bought a bootleg N'Sync shirt after a show in 2000. It took her months before she realized it said N'YNC. Obviously we noticed that night but didn't have the heart to tell a 10 year old she got swindled. It happens.

New Interview with Jon. Covers more the Richie issue

Q: So what’s the deal with Richie not being on this tour?

A: Well. All I can tell you, without lying, is 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, I get a phone call in Calgary that Richie will not be able to perform for personal reasons and he won’t be coming. So we went to the show and I had two choices. Pack up the trucks or play. And we’ve been through this before so we played and had a replacement for him the next night. We’re very supportive of whatever he’s going through but I have yet to speak to him. That’s all I can say because I just don’t know any more.

Q: And the replacement was able to work up the whole set that quickly?

A: I’ve been through this before when he was in rehab. So I’ve got a guy that was ready to go in a day. We played last night and people loved it. Got a great review and the kid saved the day. Richie’s still the guitar player in the band until the day he says he’s not. We’ll always support him and whatever he’s going through.

Q: You seem to have a great relationship.

A: I believe we do. Yeah. Don’t believe what you read on TMZ.

Q: But I thought everything on TMZ was true.

A: Yeah. So did I until they started writing about me (laughs).

http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/...se-we-can.html

Hmmm...interesting.

Feel free to tell me I'm being unduly morbid (because the mysterious nature of this Richie thing has been perplexing to me), but the sentence that actually jumped out at me was the one where Jon says Richie is the guitar player in Bon Jovi until the day he says he's not.

On the surface, this sounds reassuring. Jon has no designs to fire Richie. Richie has a job.

But then Jon floats the idea out there by adding 'until the day he says he's not.'

I don't recall any statement like this being made during Richie's stint in rehab in 2011. Yes, Jon said the band was supportive and that Richie was, and would remain, a member of Bon Jovi. But I don't recall Jon verbally giving Richie an 'out', by implying that if Richie wanted to leave, it was his choice.

Even if it's true that Jon has no idea why Richie has left this leg of the tour, adding the 'until he says he's not' to the comment to me suggests that the idea of Richie not coming back has crossed his own mind. Either that, or he knows that Richie isn't coming back, and is floating the idea so that fans can have time to mentally 'chew on' the thought of a Sambora-less Bon Jovi.

Again, I could just be exceedingly morbid and reading too much into what could well be a statement of support on Jon's part and nothing more. I guess at least a part of the answer will come if/when Richie rejoins the tour on the next leg.

What a strange turn of events. Yah, that line jumped out on me too. It's like he's saying "I don't know what's going on, it's totally possible he may want out of the band"

This was pretty interesting I thought:

"A: Well, from “Runaway” to the new record. I’d be hard pressed to be playing anything from the second album because I never thought much of it but from “Slippery,” “New Jersey,” “Keep the Faith.” I haven’t done anything off of “Bounce” in a while, which in all honesty was one of those records where I would have said, “Man, I think this record’s great, start to finish.” To tell you the truth, I’ve gotta go back and listen again to hear why I’m not doing some of those songs."

Another take from my increasingly anxious frame of mind about this whole thing. Fair warning, I was an English major in college and analyzed writing for four years, so my apologies if this is too overwrought LOL:

Q: You seem to have a great relationship.

A: I believe we do. Yeah. Don’t believe what you read on TMZ.

My reading between the lines: Jon, of course, can only speak for himself, but he puts it out there that *he* believes they have a great relationship (with perhaps a silent challenge to Richie: 'What do /you/ think?'). His 'yeah' sounds like he's trying to convince himself that he has the correct perception. Since the TMZ article is so anti-Jon, of course he doesn't want fans to believe it and he's also repeating the same 'talking point' ("Don't believe what you read on TMZ") from the first time he beat down 'Jon and Richie are fighting' rumors.

Q: But I thought everything on TMZ was true.

A: Yeah. So did I until they started writing about me (laughs).

My reading between the lines: Clearly, Jon doesn't recognize the portrayal of himself that TMZ alleges. But that doesn't mean that Richie didn't experience something along the lines of what the TMZ story posits, even if it's not the full truth. Of course, Jon can't speak to Richie's truth; only Richie can do that. Most people are blind to their worst traits, or don't think they are /as bad/ as others might experience them: I remember that in an interview recently, Jon was accused of being 'a dictator' in the band and he said, 'How do you know I'm not a benevolent dictator?' It's easy to think he was joking around with this statement (and at the time, I thought it a clever answer that might account for the band's longevity) but it's also a possibility that, even if he's the boss to the extent that he seems to be, that any negative connotations of 'dictator' are squashed in his own mind because he sees himself as 'benevolent.'

The question remains: How does Richie see him?

EDIT: I should add, for all the times that Jon and Richie seem very close, and for all the times that Jon has called Richie "brother" and "my dear friend" and "my best friend" and so on, there is something like verbal tip-toeing going on here; it's as if Jon is being forced by Richie's absence to clarify his own take on the relationship ('This is the Richie I thought I knew') versus the (stranger?) (mystery?) Richie may have become since he left the tour. I suspect Jon's questioning his perceptions on some level, questioning if he really /knew/ Richie in the way he always thought he did. So far, Richie hasn't answered one way or another.