Doesn't work like that.....touring is where Jon makes all of his $$$$'s. The label will get nothing, or very little, from the touring and have no say in when the band go on tour. Unless Jon has signed the shittiest record contract in the history of the world, and he knows better than that...

Pretty sure the post-bb deal is licensing so the record company now have very little say over anything apart from distribution and promotion. Pre-BB they'll have had more say, but as a Universal A&R once said to me "if Jon did a shit in a bucket, someone would buy it." - he had freedom on the record front. And given AEGs hefty involvement I highly doubt Universal had much, if anything, invested in the touring.

1. Your wish, my command: ___At the time Jon put the wheels in motion (aka dragged everybody back into the studio and out on the road), he hadn't lost the Bills yet.___

1a. Wilson's health had just started going downhill by Sept 2011 (when Jon had said he was going to decide what was next after the GH tour ended). But the man was 92 years old; and people knew it was just a matter of time before the team would be up for sale; therefore, Jon knew it was just a matter of time before he would need major bucks if he wanted to play with the big boys.

1b. Jon didn't actually lose the Bills until after the tour was over. Wilson didn't die until March of 2014. But it was near the end of the BWC tour, around Nov 2013, that rumors first broke that Jon was planning to make a bid for the team and that one of the reasons he wouldn't let Richie back in the band was because Phil-X was cheaper. When CBS Sports first broke the story, Jon's PR said "no comment"; then the next day Sunshine provided a carefully worded statement denying both rumors. (But almost a year before that, Jon had ordered that feasibility study I mentioned earlier, so we know that at least one of the rumors was true.) And, iirc, that was when fans first started thinking that maybe the rush on WAN was so Jon could finance the team.

(And for the record: I'm not the one who said that Jon rushed into the studio bc he wanted to buy the Bills. I just provided a possible explanation for why Jon might have suddenly decided that he needed to earn money quicker. In that same post, I'm pretty sure I said that it may NOT have been because of the Bills, but it didn't make sense that it was due to his recording contract either.)



2. Your theory is a theory just like anyone else's; and I'm not disputing it because, much like you, I don't know the details of Jon's contract anymore than I know the details of his bank account. In fact, when we had a similar discussion a couple years ago, I also offered the possibility that perhaps Jon had planned to release a solo album but realized, at the last minute, that he wasn't going to be able to pull it off alone. And since the band's records are basically his solo records (Jon's words, not mine), he pulled them back in to do the solo record he had originally planned on doing; and what we got was WAN.

Alphavictim, I'm glad you mentioned Room At The End Of The World, it's the best song on WAN for me next to That's What The Water Made Me. I love the lyric, "love is like fingerprints, they don't wash away..I left mine all over you, I'll take the blame". The other songs I won't skip are Because We Can, Army of One (yes, I know), I'm With You, What's Left of Me, The Fighter and Pictures Of You. So, while on the surface I feel like it's the album I like the least there are more songs on it that I will listen to vs The Circle.

WAN has emotional ties that remind me of a darker period in my life and a dark period in the band. That tour is the only one I have missed since New Jersey. Probably, if I took 1/2 The Circle and 1/2 WAN, I could make a CD I really like.

Well, it all depends. He could have signed a 100 million deal for 10 albums and 5 tours...

But I don't think he did based on logic. If his tours were built into his contract, he most likely wouldn't have been dropped in 2015 for consecutively coming off of three (even 4) of the biggest tours in the world... Plus I think now, album sales are built into his ticket sales which is part of his new deal with the record company...

But I do think part of his old contract did require him to tour to promote the album and also sell albums during the shows...

Yes, I agree that WAN started off as a solo record and morphed into a band record. I think that was the initial intention or again, Jon wanted to do another Soundtrack. Regardless...

Back to the Bills. Either way you flip it, it still doesn't add up... Lets paint the picture... Jon is working on the Stand Up Guy songs hoping to do the entire soundtrack like he did with Blaze... That didn't work so now he's in the market for other movie scripts. Songs like The Fighter kinda showed the musical direction he was going in with what could have been his 3rd solo album... I think Jon was going for the low budget singer-songwriter Bruce type album...

So now according to your theory, rumors start to fly that the owner of the Bills is on his way out so Jon frantically scraps every idea he had, forces all the guys to give up on all the projects they have been working on, just to turn his bank account from 325M to 345M?

So at this point, if Jon wasn't dropped from his partners yet for "not bringing enough money to the table", how did he know he didn't have enough money in the first place? You don't think Jon had or has a financial team working with him projecting all these numbers? Trust me, if he didn't have enough money to begin with, he wouldn't have started the NFL project in the first place.

And this part is just ridiculous "one of the reasons he wouldn't let Richie back in the band was because Phil-X was cheaper"... I said this... But Jon has never publicly stated this and Richie never publicly stated that he wanted back in the band so now you're just reaching...

I just think that Jon couldn't get anything together. I think the Soundtrack thing ran flat. I think the record company hated the Singer - Songwriter idea. I think Jon might have been looking for the easy way out to fulfill the 2013 album requirement and record company said "no way! We don't another TLFR" "TC came out in 2009 and it's time for a band album"... Jon Bon Jovi doesn't Sell, Bon Jovi Sells... I think Jon's hands were tied and he had to the get the guys back in to fulfill the contract. I think he did as much as he could on his own with Shanks and Falcon with the album itself but obviously the guys were needed to tour.

Yeah, emotional ties can make a huge difference on albums that otherwise are rather bland. I still very much appreciate THINFS very much for the same reason. And maybe that's also why I rate WAN so low since I never found any emotional connection to the songs on there.

That's actually my biggest gripe with albums these days. Up until maybe Bounce or HAND I could say that I liked the albums bar a few songs and if I swapped some bonus tracks in, I'd have a record I enjoyed.

Now it's rather that if I took the best from Burning Bridges and THINFS together, with maybe one or two tracks from WAN, I'd have one album I like from start to finish. Not only does this show that the overall quality has vanished, but also that the last 3 records sound very much alike since you probably couldn't tell any difference if one album was compiled out of those three.

Writing tours into record contracts is unheard of. They are separate business. The labels have little say, if any, on tours, especially for big artists. The only time that this really happens is if a label agrees to put small, up and coming bands out on tour with bigger labelmates as part of the contract.

Are you kidding right now? Of course it is... research "360 Deals" please

Jon could have easily washed his hands after the Burning Bridges album but instead he did a meaningless mini tour to support it... that says everything...