If Richie's not gonna be in Bon Jovi, he should be the full time house band on the Craig Ferguson show.

No. I hope that is in Bon Jovi, and also get more solo albums like Aftermath.

See, I don't think Richie is on Because We Can at all. Someone said it is his phrasing, maybe but on such a solo hardly impossible to duplicate. The interesting thing for me is the backing vocals, admittedly I have not listened to the song a lot, but I am sure all the backing vocals are Jon too.

Richie plays and sings on Because We Can.

I have felt this too, and not just BWC. A few others on the album sound like all vocals are done by Jon, and possibly some backing by David. Especially since, shortly before Aftermath was released, Seb mentioned it was possible to replicate the "tone" of someone's voice

Not to say that Richie can't be heard, most strongly for me on "Fighter" WAN and "Into The Echo."

So you stood there in the studio while they were recording the whole thing?

I admit the solo may sound like his phrasing style but, the way it's played... I always thought it was Jon. Still it's just my opinion.

Listen to any song from What About Now with the back channels louder (you can do it in a programme like audacity, or some devices/speakers have a button which does essentially the same thing, usually called expand or something similar) and you can hear Richie incredibly clearly. In many songs it's really loud, the speakers I used in my kitchen have one of these buttons which I leave on for most songs as it just makes the sound a lot fuller, but I have to turn it off when listening to What About Now because the backing is just too loud and you can hear it over the main vocal part.

Even if he is on BWC, it's hardly the same involvement he had on some songs he'd not even been credited on in the past - say, 'Bed of Roses' for instance.

He might have done a day or two of backing vocals but those guitars could be ANYONE.

I watched the footage of What About Now from the gig the other night, which has Phil visible in it for the whole song. He doesn't play ONE SINGLE NOTE. It's just chords throughout. Not sure there's been a Bon Jovi song in the past where the sole function of the band's lead guitarist is to just play simple chords over and over...

So even if Richie did record this album, it's certainly doesn't seem like it was him and Jon at the console like it's been in the past.

Why do everyone try to read so much about Matt's tweet, I'm pretty sure he hitted the gym and started listening Richie's record out of curiosity. It's a nice record to work out. To me is just that, the dude was listening to it and shared it on Twitter as he usualy does.

Cool! I'll try this.