After 30 Years, Jon Never....
 

... learned how to play the leads to any of his own songs!!!

With the exception of Runaway, I'm surprised Jon never learned any of the leads. Wanted Dead Or Alive is his national anthem and he never learned how to hit that lead.

Question to all the guitar players... Why?

Are there any songs that Jon could handle?

I'm not sure what you mean. Jon pretty frequently played lead on Bad Name the last few years.

I honestly don't know why he chooses the solos that he plays.

I don't remember him ever playing Bad Name, but I've seen him play Runaway and the outro solo to Sleep (I think is mostly ad lib). Neither are the hardest, but not the easiest either.

He has a unique style which has gotten so much better over the last couple years. Much like Bruce, it is painful to watch, but if you close your eyes, I think it sounds pretty good... certainly better than he looks.

I doubt he could play Wanted. I bet he could play Prayer though.

He could do his own version of the Prayer solo, I think! His tone is dreadful though.

Bad Name started on his Kings of Suburbia thing and I'm pretty sure he did the solo on the night of the tour after Richie left but before Phil got there.

No there just wasn't a solo. It was loud power chords with no filler. I was at the Calgary show and was like: "... wut..?"

That's horrible.

My original point remains that he did the solo on his solo shows only I guess.

You dont have a dog and bark yourself.

I see the Prayer solo being more of a solo by numbers solo as oppose to Wanted which is really stylized. I think Jon could hit the important series of notes on Prayer to make it at least recognizable. This is all hypothetical nonsense. It's not like he'll ever play either solo.

Compared to most lead guitarists (and especially Richie), I agree. He doesn't have the tone. However I don't know if it's just because my ears won't believe my eyes, but I think his tone sounds much better than it looks like it should... if that makes sense. He has surprised me a time or two.

He tends to stay on a single string for way too long and often uses one or two fingers to slide up or down the neck, when most other lead players would use three fingers to hammer on/pull off over three strings... weird but I think he sounds okay doing what he's doing... for Jon Bon Jovi. But again, that wouldn't translate well to solos like Wanted,

He doesn't bother to learn the lead parts because 99% of the time, he didn't come up with the lead parts.

Playing lead isn't as easy as it looks or sounds. Even Prayer is actually pretty hard to nail. The ascending run at the end is something that even Richie can't seem to get right any more. None of the cover bands get it either.

Bad Name is also hard to play right. It has harmonics, octaves, tapping etc. Anyone can "play lead", but very few sound good doing it. And it's not about tone, it's about skill.

Ice