[eeyore]

The latest installment of old Jovi interviews.

From Rocking in Russia: A comprehensive Guide to The Moscow Music Peace Festival
Collector’s Issue (March 1990)

Jon Bon Jovi
“This Really Is A ‘Travelin’ Band!’”

Jon Bon Jovi worked his butt off in Russia. There wasn’t one time where I didn’t see him either giving an interview, taking a picture, showing a video crew around, checking the stage or greeting people. By the time we left the ground in Russia he was exhausted, minutes after take off he was upholstered to his seat, completely knocked out.
I don’t really think he knew what he was exactly in for. He was expecting a lot to do but nowhere near what he was handed everyday. By the time he made it to catering, they were closed and Spanky, he wardrobe gal hunted down a sandwich for him everynight without fail. He friend Obie brought along a ton of junk food in fear of Russia not being able to supply any and good thing too as that must have been what Jon had survived on. It probably took him a few hours every morning to get over the sugar coma he got himself into the night before!
Rumor has it that only two weeks after he’s been home the kids and many adults in Russia already consider him a hero. We’ve been told that the album is being played on Russian radio all the time and the videos are extremely popular as well, the older generation is a fan of “I’ll be there for you” and Jon is practically packed and ready to head back.
“Russia is like the Wizard of Oz,” Jon states. “Everything is just grey, not even black and white. You hear rumors of all the women being huge with moustaches, and it’s true however Miss Siberia was looking good enough to book a return visit.”

What amazed you most about your trip to Russia?
Just that we were able to take rock and roll across borders that politicians were afraid to cross. We went there and headlined this huge event, we’re releasing an album there. From now on it’s going to be old news for whoever goes to Russia, it’s going to be a regular stop for bands on tour from now on. Every band in rock and roll will now hate us.
Alex from Gorky Park said that everything we did surprised him, as a Russian citizen he thought the stuff we pulled off could have never been done in his country.

Cool. Was it planned in advance that we’d bypass customs and land at such an obscure airport?
Yes

Was there a plan to make things really easy on us? How?
Stas Namin, he pulls a lot of weight in Russia, especially the music industry there.

How did you two meet?
He was over Dennis Berardi’s house in New Jersey with Gorky Park trying to get the band a record and management deal in America. They asked us to write and get involved.

Is that when you came up with the idea?
We had already agreed to do a show for the Foundation and when this thing happened with the Gorky’s, they started throwing around the idea of going to Russia. Then they threw around the idea of doing this show in Russia. Originally we had planned on the Bon Jovi tour as starting in Seoul during the Olympics and ending this past August in Russia. And that would have been the beginning and end of the tour. But when we agreed to do this show for the Foundation one thing led to another and the whole show was put together.

Has ‘New Jersey’ been released there yet?
It was released when we were there.

Have you heard anything as far as record sales go yet?
Oh no, we’ll never hear anything about it. They just the plates and that was the end of it. For $9,600 they got the first western record ever.

For $9,600 bucks the Russians own ‘New Jersey’ free and clear?
Yep. I’ve got a copy and every single letter on it is in Russian. It was just something else we wanted to do, it was something else that we could say that we did first and that was to release the record officially in Russia.

Do they have the videos too?
Stas brought their version of MTV all of our videos, so they play them a lot, so I hear.

What did you think of the place?
It was ahh…nice people, they were warm people but they need to catch up on technology. You’ve got to remember how much we take America for granted. But it was nice, I’ll go there more.

Did you notice a difference in the kids?
I did the first day but not the second. On the first day they stood there in awe, flabbergasted by this thing. They never had any idea of what to expect because they’ve never seen a show like this. When you’ve got somebody like Ozzy for instance, Ozzy they’ve known for 20 years and me they’ve only known for one. When he walked out on stage he didn’t go over like a storm and I thought about it and he said it best: “They’ve known me for 20 years and now I’m immortal to them. To be a regular person, a mortal they were shocked: The second day they went crazy for him. But the first day they just stared at him like ‘wow, it’s really him, the guy we’ve seen in the pictures for all these years!’
The second day the kids were a lot better. After they saw it on the television that night, there was one channel that carried it all the time.
Then seeing it in the newspapers all the next day so the word got out. I think a lot of the same kids were there both days and the second day it seemed as though they were a lot more comfortable, it could have been Akron, Ohio.

Do we have a final number on attendance?
I have no idea, I’ve heard somewhere around 70 and 90 thousand each day.

Did you notice the military seated in every section, or were there a lot of people wearing green?
I keep hearing different rumors about that. I heard that even thought it looked like everything was wonderful and beautiful and open and free, it just happened to be a lot easier to get a ticket if you were in the military. Or it was real easy to get a ticket if you agreed to wear your uniform. Those are rumors mind you, but that’s what I hear.

Where did you get the idea and the nerve to run through the middle of crowd at the beginning of your set?
I was back in the video truck during the Scorpions set and there was this one camera angle that the directors had out there that was right down the middle aisle. And when I saw it my eyes lit up and my head exploded and I knew that was how I was going to enter the stage. I just walked out there when the lights went down, nobody even noticed me. I had a coat on and a hat and didn’t stop for nothing.

You really caught the kids off guard.
The second time, I didn’t. The first night they were confused. They thought some soldier was getting up onstage. The second day you’ll see a big difference if you get a chance to see them both on television. They knew it was going to happen again because it was on the news that night when they got home. They second day they were trying to jump over the guards to get into the walkway up to the stage, that was great.

You’ve mentioned before about returning to Russia, this time you played for free what are you going to do the next time around being that their economic situation is so bad?
Until their money is hard currency I really don’t see things getting much better, payment wise but they do their trading with the western world in natural resources. Russia has a lot of oil and caviar, diamonds, they’re a pretty self-sufficient country if they had the technology. This whole Communism rap about closing doors and being self-sufficient only looked good on paper. But it just never really worked out because while the rest of us were inventing VCR’s they couldn’t get past the blender.

Was the stuff about the clouds really true?
Yes, they did that during the Olympics but I don’t think Doc paid money for them to do it, knowing Doc.

Did things go over as well as you expected?
I think it went over good. Not as big as I had hoped or anticipated because in my home town we couldn’t get Pay Per View and I think that was the case for a lot of places around the country. So when they put it on MTV and FOX then I think a lot of people will get to see what we did.

Do we have any numbers of how many people saw the Pay Per View Special, how much money was raised?
All money from everything goes to the charity but I don’t know how many people have seen it yet. Sebastian was telling that he heard that it was the biggest Pay Per View they’ve ever had. Doc goes back to Russia a couple more times this year before we know the outcome of the show financially. It’s supposed to be a 50/50 spilt for Russia’s centers and ours.

Besides a lot of great memories and doings did you get to bring anything else home to remember Russia by?
The coolest thing I got was that I was able to keep my military outfit that I traded for a couple pairs of sweat pants, jeans and some cassettes. That’s what I wore when I snuck through the crowd. I thought for sure that they were going to take it from me going to take it from me going through customs to the states. I kept thinking of ways to get it in but they didn’t even stop u! I had 40 big cans of caviar, paintings, you name it, I looked like a traveling sales man…geez, maybe I’ll try that when I’m traveling from now on..if it worked once…*

[Shaun]

hehe

i wonder if he still has the military outfit