Originally Posted by Supersonic
(Post 1126365)
Aloha !
Actually, it was Richie's guitarwork on Keep The Faith and Always that made me a fan and want to look for more music out there. I discovered the band because of Destination Anywhere, but became a fan because of Richie. Yes, I loved Jon's vocal delivery as well, but those are pretty much gone nowadays with the odd exception here and there. And now that I'm thinking back, yeah, once I found Stranger In This Town on a local fair and started digging into those songs I realized there was a lot more to Bon Jovi than just the songs.
While you're saying Richie's fingerprints are all over the song, I really disagree. Richie has mastered songs like I'll Be There For You, Keep The Faith and pretty much every guitar orientated song Bon Jovi has released, and without him, the songs are lacking something. I find Phil X a good guitar player, but not for a band who's got as many signature solo's like Bon Jovi has. You can't play Sweet Child O' Mine with an improvised solo, just like you can't play Keep The Faith with an improvised solo. I don't expect to hear a note for note rendition of the studio version, but I do expect to hear Bon Jovi with their signature sound. 1 member's already gone, the other's often barely capable of singing certain songs live, and now there's another member of the band down. Sorry, but that's a little too much for me.
So for me. the issue is that with every song that has a guitar solo in it I'll be thinking "nope, not as good as Richie" or something to that extent. I realize that's approaching things from a guitar players' point of view and I'm quite sure that plenty of fans don't really hear the difference, but down the line, I do, and why I don't care for solo shows of Jon playing songs with friends or whatever he surrounds himself with. Because usually whenever he plays Bon Jovi songs or songs of his own career with a bunch of different musicians they're much worse than what's on the records, no matter what rare song he'll pull out of the bag. If it's second rate; I don't want it.
Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan
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