Richie interview
20 years of Bon Jovi: Richie Sambora discusses the band's past, present, and future
by Jeff Royer
Fly Magazine photo by Jon Villella
"Here I am, I'm sitting in Scotland right now, and there's 40-some thousand people in the sold-out stadium waiting for me to go on-stage," shouts Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora over a drone of music and cheers.
"A week from now, we're playing Hyde Park, and the ticket count is now 82,000. It's actually staggering to go out there and have that kind of mass come back to you and sing your songs, and to know that you meant something to their lives ..."
It's a day in the life of Bon Jovi, who, after some 20 years of rocking the planet New Jersey-style, has become one of the largest and most successful rock and roll bands in history.
Over 2,000 shows in 47 countries to well over 31 million people; the numbers truly are staggering. Even more impressive is the fact that Bon Jovi is about to break the 100 million mark in album sales. That's enough to make even Sambora's head spin.
"There's only a handful of bands that have ever done that, so it's really, really, actually very prestigious," Sambora exclaims during a recent interview with Fly Magazine. "I think that it means a lot. It means a lot to our fans to be a part of that and also for me, definitely. There's only a handful of us that have done that in musical, rock and roll history."
After spending two decades of his life with a guitar slung over his shoulder, after all the tours, all the albums, all the radio hits and MTV videos, Sambora admits that he has difficulty wrapping his head around everything Bon Jovi has achieved.
That list of accomplishments has only grown since the band's picture-perfect comeback in 2000. With the release of the Crush album, followed by Bounce in 2002, Bon Jovi has been able to breathe new life into its career, which, despite the band's dominance in the 1980s with classic albums like Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, had seemed to be sputtering since 1995.
But, as Sambora is quick to point out, Bon Jovi was never quite out of the picture. "Honestly, in certain sectors, I think in America, it might be considered a comeback, but everywhere else it's just a continuation," he says. "We've been doing stadiums all over the world now since 1990, for God's sake, so for us this is kind of like just a continuation of a great success story.
"Even though it would seem like we were out of the mainstream [in the mid-'90s], our records were doing a 'quiet' two million in America," he chuckles. "Our Greatest Hits had just come out, and that record sold 16 million records worldwide. So, the perception in America has been on and off, but throughout the rest of the world it's been pretty much on the whole way through."
Any doubt from America's perspective was quickly erased after Crush's lead-off single, "It's My Life," erupted on a global scale in 2000. "It's a great song that everybody related to. I think that that's one thing that Jon and I always had a great talent for, was writing songs that people relate to," Sambora states. "That song just hit a big nerve. I think it hit everybody from 6 to 60. That song had relevance no matter what you were.
"All the sudden, I started seeing teenagers, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, throngs of them show up at our shows. So that particular song and that particular record really spanned the globe in that wide, wide world of sports kind of way," he laughs. "It also became the sports theme for football teams and basketball teams and boxers. It was the national soccer song for the whole of Europe that year. It really took on a life of its own. It was on commercials, it was all throughout the world. It really was a wild thing."
Few of Bon Jovi's peers from the 1980s have been able to keep their motors running into the new millennium, a fact that Sambora attributes to their unsuccessful attempts at "updating" their sound. While Bon Jovi's music has definitely evolved over the years, Sambora has been careful not to get caught up in the trappings of whatever style of music is ruling the charts at any given time.
"I think one of the keys to our longevity is mainly that we're not afraid to be ourselves," he explains, "and I think if we weren't ourselves, people would call it bullshit. We know, like everybody, there's going to be a lot of people who like us and there's going to be a lot of people who don't like us. But you gotta be yourself. If you're not yourself as an artist and you're trying to be somebody else - fans are not stupid. People are not stupid. They know."
Now, with a 20-year legacy under his belt, a free pass to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a beautiful family waiting for him at home (including wife Heather Locklear), nobody would blame Sambora if he decided to hang up the guitar and enjoy a nice, long retirement.
It's a notion he dismisses without a moment's thought. "If the Stones are a benchmark, I'll be around for a little while longer, because they've got 20 years on me," Sambora laughs. "The thing is, look, we're doing this because we're still having fun at it. It's still a gas to us. We're like, 'Wait a minute. You're kidding me. I'm walking out in front of a stadium tonight? This is great!' We're having a blast.
"It's very, very important to us to have fun. To have our personal lives not be good would tear this band apart, no matter what. Because it's not about the money anymore," he says frankly. "After 100 million records and 31 zillion people and 20 years of touring, we're not working because we're hurting. Nobody blew their fortunes, everybody's pretty much intact. So it's all about playing for the people at this point."
Sambora says he and Jon are currently at work on an acoustic album, which could be released as early as this fall. While no final decisions have been made at this point, the record is shaping up to be a mix of live performances (augmented by a Japanese orchestra) and new material. "We're really good at doing that acoustic stuff," Sambora says, "but right now we're really in stadium concert mode, more or less. So it's big, big shows and just playing our asses off. "We're on such a high level right now. The band is playing so well. It's like, we walk out on stage in front of 40- or 50,000, and sometimes 70- and 80,000 people in the audience, and we're able to rock the house, and it's just been great reviews and all that kind of stuff," he continues. "No one takes this for granted. Every time we walk out in front of the stadium stage, you can't take it for granted. And honestly, our fans are among the best fans in the world." Bon Jovi will bring the Goo Goo Dolls and Sheryl Crow along for a show at Veterans Stadium, Philly, on July 26. -ed.
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07-16-2003, 02:18 AM
