Original subtitles

♪ On the street where you live girls talk about their social lives ♪

♪ They're made of lipstick, plastic, and paint ♪

♪ A touch of sable in their eyes ♪

♪ All your life all you've asked ♪

♪ When's your daddy gonna talk to you ♪

♪ Ooh, she's a little runaway ♪

Welcome. I will now announce--

He's one of those fortunate guys

who is so full of himself

and he's got loads of self-confidence that nothing will hold him back.

He's got his debut album out, it's selling extremely well.

- A very big warm welcome to you, Jon. - Thank you.

Nice to see you. How old are you, Jon?

- I'm 22. - Right age.

Okay, so you grew up in New Jersey.

Had you always been into rock music?

Oh, yeah, sure. I think since, uh,

you know, I've always said I was born with sunglasses and a guitar.

You know, I mean, I've been playing since I can remember.

What were your parents' reactions

when you decided you were gonna go into rock and roll music?

They probably thought we were crazy, you know, wondering like,

"Why don't you get a real job, make some money."

This is our high-tech setup.

I've spent the last week or 10 days

going through archiving a lot of cassettes.

Here's what we found.

All this was in boxes.

I wanted to do it because of the 40th,

but if I was 100% healthy,

I probably wouldn't be paying as close attention.

Here's Blaze of Glory, the writing session.

So here's Runaway before there was a band.

This has a song that I was writing for the Tom Cruise movie,

Days of Thunder, and I wrote on it, "not good."

It's validated for me the, uh, body of work is legit,

but more importantly, it got better.

This is cool because it's the first time we ever played there.

That's us walking to the stage.

[♪ "Lay Your Hands On Me" by Bon Jovi plays on video]

Kid's a little excited.

The first time we played Giants Stadium,

you know, it was as big as it got.

[♪ "Lay Your Hands On Me" continues playing]

♪ They say that to be able to free your body ♪

♪ You gotta free your mind ♪

♪ So come on ♪

♪ Check this out ♪

One of the hottest tickets around tonight

was to see the world's hottest rock group.

Bon Jovi records have been selling by the millions,

and his concerts have been selling out.

♪ If you're ready, I'm willing and able ♪

Bon Jovi has been riding high

since their album Slippery When Wet

sold 14 million copies around the world.

♪ For the taking ♪

♪ The rules we've made are meant for breaking ♪

♪ What you get ain't always what you see ♪

♪ But satisfaction is guaranteed ♪

You're knocking down records that've been there for years.

Does that frighten you?

Nobody really knew that it could get this big.

♪ If you want me to lay my hands on you ♪

What does it feel like to know that Bon Jovi

probably is at the moment the number one rock act in America?

We're not, uh, satisfied and we're not done.

We're just hitting stride.

It don't get no better

than this!

One, two, three, four!

It's going great. Kids are rocking, we're rocking.

I mean, you really are earning your reputation

as the hardest-working band, aren't you?

- Absolutely. - ♪ Lay your hands on me ♪

♪ Lay your hands on me ♪

♪ Lay your hands on me ♪

♪ Lay your hands on me ♪

If you're healthy, it's the greatest thing in the whole world.

You know, when you can hit the high notes,

there's not a higher feeling in the world,

you know, there's nothing better than that.

We are in day one

of what will ultimately culminate

in the 40th anniversary of the band.

Technically, it's year 39 and a half.

We're about to start rehearsals

in a place that I dreamt of playing when I was a kid.

That's where we're having pre-production.

That's the Meadowlands Arena. It's not used anymore.

We've just taken it over for the next three weeks to rehearse.

Go out, do some dates,

take the rest of this year to figure out what the 40th is,

and then go out and celebrate that journey.

Oh, hello, Snooky.

- How are you, then? - Good.

- I know, I love this stuff. - That's the stuff.

- I know. - It's the, the vocal magic.

Obie!

It is good to see you before you turn the 6, the big 6-0

and everything just totally turns to rat shit.

You look good for 40, though.

I know. How are you feeling?

I feel great.

How could this be the place where time stood still?

Why wouldn't you play here?

I don't know.

I would play here in a minute.

- It's a good venue. - I love this place.

It's always been so good 'cause they're on top of you.

When I was a young guy,

right around the time where we were just starting out,

and, you know, you always think someday.

And then I remember going to shows at the Meadowlands

and then I remember meeting a very famous agent saying,

"Someday, you know, you're gonna be my agent."

And then saying to that agent, "Someday, I'm gonna headline here

and golly gee, we're gonna put on a show."

You know?

And then, uh, you know, how many times then

of course we went on to play there.

So it's almost like full circle

of the success of the band to go back there.

I think we should fucking book a week

and just say "Fuck you" to everyone else.

Hey, you call it. We'll-we'll sell it.

I could sell it, that's for sure.

We never, in 40 years,

have done three weeks rehearsal.

Maybe we did four days.

We never did this kind of rehearsal.

But in a weird way, we all want that.

We wanna sit in a room and just,

no pressure, no... nothing.

It's like a fuckin' time warp.

What fucking year is this?

Floor monitors in the Meadowlands.

- Ooh, ooh! - Oh, no.

Hey, hey. Shh.

A lot of guys aren't there.

Big changing of the guard.

The stalwarts are the band.

Starting with David Bryan, my keyboard player, dear friend.

David's been with me since we were 16 or 17 years old,

all throughout the band's career.

Same with Tico Torres.

He was a drummer that I never thought in a million years

would ever play with me.

You know, he was the grownup in the band.

He's-he's 10 years older than I am.

Hugh McDonald, the bass player,

actually played on Runaway before there was even a band.

So, you know, although Hugh wasn't a member

of the band for the longest time,

I've known him, he's played with me a bunch.

John Shanks, playing guitar,

is, uh, co-producer of every record

since Have a Nice Day in 2005.

Everett Bradley is playing percussion because truthfully, uh,

he adds a different dimension to the band,

and he was there at a time when I, I needed him

to fill out the sound.

And then Phil X came in a couple of times

during the times when, you know, Richie wasn't up to it.

And then finally, you know, he stayed on

and he's an incredibly talented cat.

So he fills those shoes fully.

So that's the band.

Whoo! Come on.

I used to run around these things like a motherfucker.

So potent, fucker.

One of the best there ever was.

Now the champ is tired.

Unfortunately, the truth is, is I'm all over the place.

You know, I have one foot in and one foot off the ground.

Some days, I wake up

and I, and I can't wait to get back in there and swing.

And others, I-I regret that I'm doing this interview

and that I'm going back on the road.

To me, the greatest goal

is that I truly just have joy in this next run.

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

♪ Tear off your mask, no need to hide ♪

♪ There's a prescription that no doctor can prescribe ♪

I don't need to do this, I want to do this.

So, my drive is much different.

I'm not doing it for success. I'm not doing it for accolades or money.

I just wanted to be good at it.

I wanted to work hard at it.

♪ Love is a beautiful drug ♪

The joy is that oneness with the song,

it's that connection to that place

that takes you off of the stage.

- ♪ ...beautiful drug ♪ - ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

If the other side of it were to come back

and you're too in your head,

it's an anchor around your neck

in every word of every song, every night.

It's sheer torture.

And I know what that is too, and I ain't going back.

♪ The taste, the touch, the stuff of dreams ♪

♪ The paradise that's in between ♪

♪ Honey of another hit ♪

♪ You'd almost bite through your own lip ♪

♪ The thorny rose that makes you bleed ♪

♪ A kind of hurt that makes you scream ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ Love is a beautiful drug ♪

And with every decade comes another life's lesson.

At 25, all I was thinking about was fun, success.

At 30, I got married, I had looked at success differently.

By 40, you start to measure, did you accomplish what you set out to do.

By 50, you start to think about a legacy.

By 60, I think as the Chinese proverb says,

it's basically, "You are the man you were meant to be."

That's good.

So at 60, it's like when I look back,

did I become the man I wanted to be?

President Kennedy sitting in the front seat

being helped out by Secret Service...

We were born into an era

where the American dream was very much alive and well.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade...

We were born when John Kennedy was elected president.

Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

When he talked about sending a man to the moon.

That's affirmative. Program alarm.

They would tell you that anything you wanted to be, you could be.

Just about the only thing that can make a 10-year-old sit still

long enough for you to catch your breath.

That your parents were going to be the ones

to buy their first home in suburbia.

The isolation of the suburbs,

70% of the people in the metropolitan area

own their own homes.

It was just a wonderful little mix of European

first- and second-generation families who came over

and didn't get any farther than New Jersey.

New Jersey is more than meets the eye.

A place to study, a place to learn,

a place to prepare for the future.

And sometimes, New Jersey is a place to dream.

It was very much the privilege

of being born in a certain place,

at a certain time, looking a certain way.

And although all of our families

come from very blue collar working class,

we also had a leg up because we didn't want for things.

Our parents taught us all a work ethic,

but then you-you felt like, we didn't have a care in the world.

You had a roof over your head

and shoes on your feet and food on the table.

That was all part of the American dream.

You can do anything that you wanna do,

and the whole world's out there, man, and it's just waiting for you to take it.

I always say we were like America's greatest export

because it shows the American dream.

It's like five guys from nowhere.

And if you work hard enough and you dream big enough, you can make it.

My dad was a trumpet player.

He would always have big band like Al Hirt and Dizzy Gillespie.

And he taught me trumpet when I was five.

And, uh, I knew I had no career 'cause I stunk.

But I love music. I-I just loved the feeling about it, you know?

And then at seven, I started piano lessons,

I auditioned for piano lessons.

He was a Julliard graduate, Mr. Hack,

I remember he had a Hammond organ, like this one with pedals.

My first impression, I said to my dad, I'm like,

"I don't wanna play the thing with the feet.

"It looks too hard. There's too many things.

It looks hard enough with just your hands."

And then he went to the piano, he started playing that,

and he started playing, like, Brahms and Bach

and Schubert and Mozart.

All this beautiful noise and sound

was coming out of this piece of wood.

And I went, "Whatever that is, I need to do that."

I would've been aware of music on the periphery.

We did not have a musical household.

It wasn't as if my parents ever sat down and said,

"Listen to this."

My mom was a florist,

and she had a little gift shop at one point

and somehow she brought an acoustic guitar home

and the Roy Clark learn-at-home guitar book and record.

That was my Roy Clark Big Note Guitar songbook.

And I was seven, eight years old,

so I had no desire.

I remember throwing it down the basement stairs

and breaking a tuning pick.

And hey, you're makin' music.

But as you hit 12 and 13 years old

and you're listening to the AM radio

and the pop songs, you start liking them,

and you start singing along a little bit.

And that's when I found music in my own way.

♪ I can hear the ocean's roar ♪

♪ I don't think so ♪

That's when a guy named Al Parinello moved in across the street

and he was the hipper, younger version of my parents.

He played guitar in a lounge band.

And then I thought to go down into the basement

and pick up that guitar

because he's the one that had the patience

to show me a couple of chords.

And when I was lazy about it, was also stern enough to say,

"Stop wasting my time.

Learn this or get out of my basement."

But that was exactly what I needed to hear.

An instrument is honest.

If you don't practice, you suck.

You can't lie to it. You can't just go, "Hey, I'm great."

No, you're not great.

If you put in the hours, that's the only thing. It's-it's honest.

You put in the work, you get back the craft

and then when you love it, you keep going forward,

and then figure out songs and then, you know, it grows from there.

And so then I worked hard, got my first calluses,

and, uh, one thing led to another.

And then you understood song structure.

And when you looked at it like a little jigsaw puzzle,

and the verse and the chorus and the bridge, you went,

"Oh, it's like that."

So then around that time,

my very first band was in a talent show.

And, you know, of course we lost.

It was like right around, like, my bar mitzvah.

My father got me a Farfisa Deluxe Combo organ

and a Univox piano.

He would always support my music habit.

So I had great equipment.

It's probably a part of me that needed to be seen

by not people, by and large,

but by those who love you the most.

It wasn't as though I woke up one morning and was the best singer in the school

or on the block or in my house.

That's not saying much,

but I just had a desire and a work ethic

that was always the driving force.

He was just another kid from Jersey

living a pretty routine life on this pretty routine suburban street

in a house Ward and June Cleaver would have loved.

In the town that I grew up in,

the amount of kids that went to college were,

I can't tell you they were even slim.

They were really slim.

And I can remember all the parents were really happy

about their boys being in a band and kept 'em off the streets

and it kept them busy with something.

But when it was time for these boys to graduate,

parents said, "Okay, guys, it's time to grow up."

You worked in the factory or you took up a trade.

But it was something to be proud of, working in the trades.

Uh, my father was a hairdresser, my grandfather was a plumber.

These were considerations for me as a youth,

simply because that's what we knew.

My three best friends joined the service.

Sir, yes, sir!

It wasn't for me because I was already pursuing music.

And we're coming up on beautiful Sayreville High School.

The junior high for two years, you're supposed to go for three.

So I left there to go to a different high school,

'cause I was failing.

So, um, I-I-I bolted from that school and went to Sayreville High School.

I mean, I remember being in some kind of high school class

and the singing teacher saying, "You haven't got it."

Or my dad taking me to a singing lesson once

and the guy basically saying, "I don't think so."

I walked out of both of them saying, "I think so."

- Hey, good to see you. - Hey, bud.

- Everything alright? - Yep.

You know, I have COVID brain fog like everyone else.

Was it '18 or '19 when we were out last?

I, honest to God, would have to look on a calendar.

How was your weekend?

Uh, wonderfully uneventful.

- How 'bout yourself? - Oh, that's wonderful.

Did you get any singing done or--

Uh, no, I didn't, but that's alright.

- Awesome. Awesome. - I have been very ready

and raring to go today.

Excellent.

Mm-hmm.

I like how you took a couple minutes to do your look behinds,

we're pressing up into the molars.

And then on either side of the soft-- hard palate.

I'm gonna guess it was the fall of '19.

We were in South America.

But I do remember at that time saying to myself,

"Maybe it's time to walk away.

Maybe it's time to cool it."

And it's the idea of wanting to achieve excellence

but also knowing the price that you pay to do that,

physically, mentally, emotionally.

Coming to terms with who I am now versus who I once was.

As I got older and the drive to maintain that being

on the stage, you know, it takes more and more.

You're working that one.

No, yeah, it's good. Good, good, good, good, good.

For the New Jersey tour, I started to take,

you know, vocal lessons,

and I just got better and better and better as a singer.

You know, 2008, '10, '13, I was great. I was really enjoying it.

- Hmm, I don't like where it's going. - You got it.

- I got it, though. - No, take your time with it.

Take your time with it, it takes a minute.

Good, rest for a second. Reset your body.

- Yeah. - Let's do that again.

But after '13 is when the problems really started.

Just wasn't up to what I wanted it to be.

And so, you know, the last couple years,

I've just tried so many different things

to get back to what I liked 10 years ago.

And at 50, things change.

And at 60 it's like, "Holy fuck."

Is it tiring? No.

But it's like a workout.

You know, you feel like you did your... time

and on a Monday morning, it's usually got a little bit of spider webs.

This, uh, four-headed laser is aimed here at my cords

and the vagal nerves.

And what it does is it stimulates blood flow,

trying to alleviate as much inflammation any way we can.

There's three different vocal coaches,

there's a couple different lasers,

there's a boatload of vitamins.

If I can't be the very best I can be, I'm out.

I'm not here to drag down the legacy.

I am not here for the "Where Are They Now" tour,

I'm not ever gonna be the fat Elvis,

ain't happening.

But it took voodoo and science

and a lot of hard work

to get it to where I-I figure I can do this.

It's got little cracks just from leaving it out.

Alright, what else you wanna do?

It's the late '70s.

On my bedroom walls were the '70s icons,

Led Zeppelin standing in front of that 747...

...Rolling Stones, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

That was impossible.

♪ Comin' home to you ♪

But 25 minutes south of Sayreville, New Jersey

was this place that was making music.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

The songs that they wrote were from the places in which we came.

The Stone Pony, a landmark in Asbury Park

and the spawning ground for some of the greatest rock and roll.

Southside Johnny and the Jukes.

It's like a disease, you know, it, uh, never leaves you.

A sexually transmitted disease, being from New Jersey.

All across the East Coast an-and in Asbury Park is an amazing event.

Well, Asbury Park was the happening place

because there were a lot of bars with bands.

So when we started playing,

there was a bunch of clubs that we could get into.

So it was a chance for all of us to go and jam

and hone our skills and perform in front of an audience.

And it was really a formative time,

Bruce, Steve Van Zandt, Garry Tallent.

And we just really wanted to find our own voices.

[♪ "Love On The Wrong Side Of Town" by Bruce Springsteen playing]

♪ When I needed you by my side ♪

This concert was as hot as those hot dogs next door.

It's hysteria, it's excitement.

As I got a little older

and with older friends able to go down to Asbury Park,

there wasn't any chance

that you wouldn't run into at least one of them

on any given night.

- All we wanna know... - Yeah?

...is what are you people doing in my town?

- Right on!

Steve Van Zandt and I saw Sam and Dave one time,

and we thought, "That's what we want to do."

And I thought, "My God, what an incredible thing to do

to have all these people in the palm of your hand."

For me, that was the kind of music that was alive.

[♪ playing "This Time It's For Real" by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes]

♪ Baby, don't slow me down ♪

♪ I've come too far to ever turn around ♪

I think that we all learned from The Animals

and the Rolling Stones and Paul Butterfield Blues Band

that white people could play Black music,

along with rock and roll, Jerry Lee Lewis and that kind of stuff.

And I guess we started to influence people by doing what we wanted to do.

And they thought, "Well, if these guys can do it, I can do it too."

I was 16, and the drinking age was 18,

which is really integral to this story,

is at 16 you could sneak in pretending to be 18

and seeing any one of those 10 members of The Asbury Jukes,

seven members of the E Street Band...

...it made the impossible right there.

One of the things that, uh, critics have been saying

about rock and roll in the '70s

is that there's been very little substance.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you Bruce Springsteen

and the E Street Band are substance.

No one wanted to be associated with New Jersey.

I mean, even when I went to make my first record,

they wanted me to say I was a New York-based artist.

[♪ "The Promised Land" by Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band plays]

♪ On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert ♪

♪ I pick up my money and head back into town ♪

It was unusual at the time

for an artist to identify himself with New Jersey

and all of its glories, you know?

I just sort of embraced it as my identity,

the Boardwalk and Asbury Park

and all the street people from the city.

And I said, "Yeah, these are the people I want to write about,

and this is who I want to be and who I am."

Now you could touch the dream, 'cause there it was.

It wasn't those pictures on my wall that you think

I aspire to be, you know, Led Zeppelin.

It was way too big for me to fathom.

Let's go!

But those guys,

who were singing about the highway that was out our window,

that made it incredibly possible.

♪ And I believe in a promised land ♪

By the time I was 17,

I was sneaking into those bars and, and performing

with the Atlantic City Expressway, my first real band.

The bass player's name was Steve Pretti.

He was one of the three guys that joined the Navy.

The guy I went to high school with, by the name of Willie Hercek,

he was really into the whole Asbury sound and taught me a lot about it.

And he was in the Expressway, right at the inception.

His father owned a bar in Perth Amboy,

and Willie told me about David.

David's father owned a surgical supply store

in Perth Amboy and had a van.

I got the gig just because of the equipment, and I had a van.

He had a Hammond organ in the van. He's in the band.

I don't care what he looks like or what he plays, he's in.

And that's when I had a big Hammond organ like this,

a big Hammond, and I had this piano,

I had all this equipment by then.

He could play.

He was, he was the kid who took lessons for real.

He was a far better musician than I was.

I'm like, "Great, where does he live?"

I'm like, "Sayreville." I'm like, "Okay."

It's right across the bridge.

They did a cover band.

They were like Springsteen and Jukes and a couple originals.

And at the time I knew Born to Run and We're Having a Party.

And so Dave fit, you know, we carried that son of a gun B three

down into the bass player's mother's house and set it up.

And between that and the horns and the two loud electric guitars...

it was the sound of a band.

I wasn't into that kind of blue-eyed soul and soul music.

And, uh, it just won my heart over.

I was like, "Wow, five horns, everybody's loud.

There's like 10 people making music."

It was the closest to God-like I think you could ever get.

I was like, "I need to do this."

♪ I know it's been a long time ♪

The Expressways now playing high school dances

and a bar emulating Southside Johnny.

And fortunately, back in Asbury Park,

in the late '70s and early '80s,

there was a place called The Fast Lane.

And that's where David used to do his high school homework.

And when we did the first gig, I was like,

"Wow, he's great. This is great.

"The money's not great.

We got, like, 150 bucks for 10 people."

You had gas, and you had the bar bill.

So there was no money in it,

and that wasn't what any of us were motivated by.

We had to pay a buck a beer.

So I think I ended up being in the hole every night.

But I cheated him out of like 10 bucks

for gas money or something, I was-- Don't tell anybody.

You know, when you're that young and naive,

blind faith is enough to get you by.

Alright! Thank you very much.

I'd like to remind you of the name of the group,

we're the Atlantic City Expressway.

We stole that sign off the highway.

It was him, officer, it was him.

We would play the Fast Lane,

then we would play up and down the Jersey Shore.

There was a lot of clubs you could play.

And that's when, you know, we'd go to get the van

to fill it with gear and drive down to do a show.

I'd get done playing,

I'd get all the equipment and the horn players,

drive back up to Sayreville, drop them off,

go over the bridge, go into Perth Amboy,

drop all the shit off into my father's warehouse,

get my car, get back home at 5:00 in the morning,

and I have to get up at 7:00 for high school.

So I was, uh, just trying to survive.

What was wonderful about my parents and their support of it was,

they said, "We knew you were in a bar until 2:00 in the morning,

"but at least we knew where you were.

"And if we had seen that you were

"not working at this every day, all day,

"we may have had to step in and say,

"'Wait a minute, son, you have to go apply for a trade.'"

Saw them at the Fast Lane, when he was like 17 years old.

And I was very impressed with his stage presence

and you know, all of that.

He really hadn't found himself yet.

If you want anything in this world,

if you want it bad enough,

anything is possible.

I remember we'd have to walk to high school.

I was always talking about things like, "This is our tour jacket."

Not so much, you know, practicing four days a week,

but we need a photo session

and we need to see Southside somewhere.

So all those great memories of what was Asbury

and what was, uh, original music

and what was a community of up-and-coming musicians

as well as those who had already landed record deals.

The pinnacle of all of this was a record deal.

Once Bruce got his record contract,

all of a sudden, we were more respectable.

And then when Born To Run came out,

all of a sudden, everybody wanted to sign somebody from New Jersey.

In 1979, I was singing a song off of

that album called Darkness on the Edge of Town.

And I looked up, and there's Bruce on stage with me.

♪ ...dark cloud rising from the desert floor ♪

♪ I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm ♪

That was the guy, you know?

And he jumps up and sings his song with me.

And I like to play. I like to play, you know?

♪ Blow away the dreams that tear you... ♪

I think that was what--

well, there's some young kid around here from New Jersey

who's making some kind of noise, you know?

That was the first thing I knew about Jon.

He is a hardworking guy, you know, put everything he had into his music.

We did Promised Land.

It was the second verse, I still have a cassette tape of it.

And it was like, "Oh, my God, that's Bruce. He's singing with us."

♪ And I believe in a promised land ♪

So you go to high school the next day, needless to say,

you look at the teacher and you look at the kids and you go...

"I got a story to tell."

And it's a lot better than history class.

Bruce and, and anyone else in that band,

or you know, in that whole clique down there,

was always very, very, very supportive of-of myself

and the groups that I played in.

It made me even more single-mindedly focused

that the impossible was well within reach.

Shortly thereafter, I stopped playing covers.

I stopped being in, in any band

who was gonna rely on playing other people's material.

In our senior year, then Jon, uh, then Jon quit.

By the beginning of 1980,

in my senior year of high school, I quit my own cover band.

But I said, "I'm out. I have to go.

I gotta go figure this out the right way."

He had a vision to know that if you're gonna be in a cover band,

you're gonna play somebody else's music.

And if you're an original band,

you're gonna have cover bands playing your music.

And that's the only road to the future.

I joined someone else's band, wasn't my vision,

wasn't my band, I was just the singer.

I didn't know enough about songwriting

and I certainly hadn't written enough songs yet.

So I would rather make no money and learn the craft

because that was the only way that there'd be longevity.

Songwriting is the hardest thing to do

and the most satisfying.

When you come up with something that you go,

"Oh, yeah, that's it. That's what I was trying to say."

Because you have to have an idea,

and you have to have thought about something, hopefully.

And the deeper you've thought about it,

probably the better your song is to a certain degree, you know?

So going and joining someone's band

was again, a teachable moment.

A, I didn't know how to do it.

And B, you learn what not to do.

Most importantly, don't not be a visionary.

There was no way that I could live and die

on someone else's decisions,

and The Rest didn't last very long.

He had that real desire to prove himself,

'cause we had to, you know?

We weren't from New York or LA or whatever.

He just had that energy, that edge.

He's gonna make it work. He'll find a way.

I like our audiences to come to see us

and to sweat as much as I sweat on the stage.

You know? Or if I can get them to sweat half as much as I do,

I know I've had a successful show.

To me, your heart is, is 80% of the whole thing.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Good evening, welcome down to The Fast Lane.

We'll be here tomorrow night and every Wednesday night.

Come on down, free admission. Drinks are a buck.

- Come down this weekend.

You know, there's two different kind of frontmen.

There's the guys that stand there and just go,

"Here's our next song.

Here's our next song. Thank you."

And there are the guys like him that go,

"Tip your bartenders. How you doing tonight?

"We're gonna get this together. Put your hands together.

We're gonna be there. We're all together. Hands up, clap."

Which was, uh, more of the Jersey school

like, you know, a banter between you and the audience,

and then make the whole thing one.

From '79, '80, I'm playing down in Asbury a lot,

starting with The Expressway into being the singer of The Rest

to now having my own band.

Writing on my own,

Jon Bongiovi and the Wild Ones is born.

It's not easy 'cause there's no money.

There's not even opportunity when you're playing original stuff.

You know, you're writing about cars and girls.

What else was there?

Those of you have, um, seen us before,

I'm very anxious to get down to the new stuff.

- This is something new.

This is by the Wild Ones. This is for the wild ones.

- Yeah! - This one's named after the band.

And this one's called The Wild One.

- Yeah! - And this has gotta be for you.

And at that time, that's when I was a Wild One

and, um, I graduated high school and then I was going to Rutgers.

So once again, I found myself having to go to school again.

David was going to college.

His nice Jewish mother wanted him to be a doctor.

There was no plan B in my life ever.

It was all or nothing.

- Thank you, thank you.

In September of 1980, I call a second cousin of mine

who was a recording engineer, produced the first Talking Heads record,

the first Ramones record, who had seen The Rest perform.

Had told my dad, "The band stinks,

but the kid's got something going for him."

Never met the guy, but obviously curious about my future.

He allowed me to be a gopher at the Power Station.

I would go run to the bank, the dry cleaner,

the food pickup, the OTB, make the horse bets.

Anyone and everyone would've given their right arm

to work at the Power Station.

And so sometimes you had to bring girls, sometimes you had to bring drugs,

sometimes you had to do favors, sometimes you had to do stuff.

And I met Obie there.

He was quite the character, to say the least.

I was working at the Power Station.

I was doing projects for Jon's cousin, Tony Bongiovi.

They gave me the opportunity

to-to record on weekends and nights.

So we would go in at, like, 4:00 in the morning

till 10:00 in the morning and start doing original songs.

He played songs for me that he was working on.

And he was so energetic about it.

You know, there are people sometimes when they walk in the room,

you go, "That's somebody."

The Power Station was the epicenter of record making.

I watched through the window the Rolling Stones.

I saw Queen and Bowie doing Under Pressure.

To see Kiss, to see Diana Ross.

You know, Stevie Tyler would let me sit in the studio

one night, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning

and I was the only guy in there watching him singing.

And that's one of your idols, you know,

watching Aerosmith working on a record.

He just wasn't the cleanup guy. He asked questions.

He saw how a console worked.

He saw how the engineers worked.

He saw how producers worked. He took it all in.

And when he was done working at the studio all day,

he was writing, sleeping, you know, on the floor.

I had a, I don't know

if I had a vision or I was just more faithful than everyone else,

but that really played into it.

We're going there, I'm doing this.

Who wants to come?

So the purpose of doing that,

so your tongue doesn't get tight

and then it restricts everything else

that covers the larynx.

It's like if you ran a marathon,

would you... walk it off

or would you lay down and go to bed?

The answer is you'd walk it off.

So if you just take 10 or 15 minutes,

do some cool-down exercises like that,

it makes tomorrow morning a pleasant experience.

So everybody feels physically tired, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah. - Yes.

It's okay, man.

You are not alone, my brother.

- Okay. - I think this is gonna take us a minute...

- Gotta check. - ...to get back into this.

- Oh, yeah. - You were standing this whole time.

- Did you sleep last night? - Like a motherfucker.

I think it's a hunt. I think the hunt of getting alright is draining.

Day one.

It's also stress.

You know me, I wanna sing.

I wanna sing. I wanna sing. I just wanna make sure...

- That everybody's tight. - Yes.

If I'm gonna be tired, I want to just know that,

you know, I'm not pushing myself that hard.

Well, in as much as you're aware

that it is what you have been defined by for so long.

But I'm not gonna get any bigger.

So for me, now it's just maintaining it at a level

that I'm A, having joy,

and B, I'm good at.

But holy fuck have I worked, I've never worked so hard.

You know, you realize how easily it came to you...

and then it changes as you get older.

You gotta work so much harder.

It's not definitive that I'm gonna do a 40th.

It's all a byproduct of for what?

So this is day 13 of rehearsals,

the last day...

of rehearsing.

It's been great.

We've never rehearsed 13 days for any tour, ever.

One observation.

This show was absolutely sitting at about 2:40.

We could cut down.

I could cut down a easy 20 minutes

and still give them way more than they ever thought.

That's too long, right?

It doesn't have to be that right now.

It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

It's been a number of years

since I was doing those three-kind-of-hour shows.

It takes a lot of physical and vocal strength.

We certainly have the catalog of music.

My aspiration is to get back to that.

I mean, I just turned 60,

Jon and I just turned 60

so we're definitely not young, but I feel like I'm 18.

You know, it's like eternal. And then you look on stage

and we all know we have each other's backs.

We're together. We're a unit.

Good.

You know, you're not up there alone.

One other crazy observation,

we could end the set with Prayer

and have Medicine be just more raucous

at the very end of the night.

- You know? Um... - I'll switch 'em.

It was that, to me was where I thought there might have been a lull,

but they're both so easy to sing.

And then, the potential of doing This House, Prayer,

and then Love's the Only Rule, Medicine,

then they're like, show-stopping, fun, upbeat,

bit of a boom, boom, you know?

Okay, let's warm up a bit.

That first week, we started working songs

and working songs, and everything was tired

'cause it was-- Jon was going through his challenges

and he had to figure it out for himself.

Second week is a little less exhausting.

Third week was like, "Okay, I'm good."

I don't need adulation. That's not what fuels me.

It's changed with time, you know,

and a better understanding of who you are,

why you did things, and why you continue to do things,

when you get to a level that is much deeper

than girls and guitars.

You know, we're still standing.

We're one of the biggest bands in the world. It keeps happening.

And I'm fortunate because that's a blessing to me,

is that you get to keep doing what you love to do

and you don't have to either fizzle out or retire.

It's really so joyful to do what you're made to do and love.

Forty years doing anything is reason to pause

and to acknowledge and to celebrate,

to look around at those who helped you along the way.

And there are hundreds of them

that all helped tell this story today.

You know, I'm just the ringleader in that circus.

Rock and roll has not been a parent's favorite thing since Elvis,

but, uh, remind your parents that they were kids

when Elvis and The Beatles were, uh, big,

you know, current stars.

When you guys all grow up and your kids look at you

and they go, "Who was that Bon Jovi band?

You know, those old guys with long hair?"

- We can all have a laugh over this...

...and, you know, they have to, they have to understand

that, that rock and roll is, is our way of, uh, of letting out

a lot of excess energy, you know?

As a kid, I was taking the New Jersey Transit bus

into New York City.

And I was observant.

There was a lot of kids workin' the street.

You know, New York was pretty rough and tumble back then,

and there was a lot of streetwalkers.

So, Runaway was an observation.

That was just one of, you know, a bunch of songs I had written

or co-written at that time.

And I didn't have a band.

We had done, uh, Runaway in the studio with, uh...

♪ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da ♪

You know, I came up with that.

Jon went back in and, and recorded it.

I recorded it at the Power Station

with a bunch of cats, as we call them.

The first demo I got of Jon's was a good song.

I mean, Jon's great talent is these big, powerful,

pop rock choruses that just demand to be sung

by, you know, 20,000 people in an arena.

And then took that and shopped that around to the record companies.

It was Jon, it wasn't-- there wasn't a band, it just was him.

Sent Runaway out to anyone and everyone.

To managers, labels, production companies.

I-I think it was 11 record companies then, and everybody said no.

Nobody returns a phone call.

Nobody answers a letter. Nothing.

So it was just this kid knocking on doors with no luck.

I finally said, "Listen, I've gotta see

"if I'm way off the mark here

and should consider another, you know, form of work."

And at that time, my frustration,

a light bulb moment happened, and I said,

"Who's the loneliest man in the music business?"

Rock 104.

The DJ.

Because he's probably in a dark room

talking into a microphone, preaching the gospel of music,

telling you to listen to this band and this song.

And there was a new radio station in New York City.

WAPP.

WAPP.

WAPP is the Apple's, New York's newest FM.

Rock on the summer.

It was so new they didn't have a receptionist.

And fortunately for me,

a young guy by the name of John Lastman

and a guy named Chip Hobart, who was the DJ on the air.

This is Chip Hobart at 4 o'clock.

He says, "Well, you're in luck,

because we want to do a homegrown record of local talent."

I played him Runaway, and he said, "That's a hit song."

And I said, "I know!"

And of course APP is gonna promote themselves.

So they started playing hometown heroes from New York.

But the miracle of miracles happened.

Doubleday, the book publisher,

they owned eight radio stations in some big markets.

They started playing Runaway on all eight stations.

And all of a sudden, from getting turned down by every record company,

we were the most requested song

'cause everybody's calling up, "Who's this Bon Jo-- What is this? What is this?

We want to hear this, we want to hear this."

So now all those same record guys

that had that cassette on their desk

went looking for it.

And lo and behold...

it was me.

♪ On the street where you live ♪

♪ Girls talk about their social lives ♪

So, they'd come and see what was ultimately,

you know, the band.

I had the band together for what was meant to be three weeks

of let me promote this

so I can make $100, $200 a night, now

as an original band.

♪ Living in another world ♪

♪ Trying to get your message through ♪

It was meant to be three weeks, not 40 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to greet some gentlemen

who are from New Jersey.

Their tours I'm sure will take them all over the world

before this year is up, please greet Bon Jovi.

♪ Ooh, she's a little runaway ♪

♪ Daddy's girl learned fast ♪

♪ All those things she couldn't say ♪

♪ Ooh, she's a little runaway ♪

I'd asked Dave who was still going to school...

And I says, "Well, here's what I want to do.

You know, I wanna get the band together and this is gonna be like the band."

And he says, "Okay." He quit school.

I said, "Listen, I love pre-med,

but I'll give this, like, a year."

It looks like it's way more fun than being a doctor.

I asked Alec John Such who sang his ass off

and was in a cover band that was making $3,000 a night.

I had seen Alec play in Phantom's Opera,

which was a huge club band in Jersey.

Told Dave about him and he agreed.

Alec was a great bass player, really cool-looking dude.

He had, he had the shit on his chin,

smoked these little brown menthol cigarettes,

and you just looked at Al and you go, "That motherfucking guy's cool."

I asked Tico Torres,

who was in a band called Frankie and The Knockouts

who had a record deal.

He was married, he had a house, he was on the road.

I did own a house.

And, uh, eventually, i-it destroyed that marriage.

But I don't think I should have been married at that time anyway.

♪ She's a little runaway ♪

I used to go see him play.

I was in awe of Tico Torres as a drummer.

I initially met Jon, the first time I heard from him was Alec.

And I knew him since I was 15.

I lost my virginity at his house for God's sake.

I remember I'd seen Tico, like, two days before and he said...

"Yeah, we'll jam together." You know?

And so, he-- Jon said, Jon said, "You know, get him down."

I called him, I said, "Tico, remember you said

we're gonna jam together? We're gonna."

John came over and played me his tape of Runaway

and we had a little jam session.

I said, "This kid's a star."

I mean, he had an aura about him.

I saw him and I says, "Look at this guy go."

And I'm looking like this, I'm playing the drums, going,

"This kid's got something," you know, the chicks loved his butt.

I says, "Alright, I'm gonna hang with this."

He was the best drummer I ever saw or played with in my life.

And still is.

I was looking at him like,

"He's the baddest motherfucker in the land."

We're allowed to curse, aren't we?

Let me jump in the middle.

You guys gather around like a football huddle.

How did you meet Richie to begin with?

Richie was in the audience one night at a show

- while the other four of us were playing. - Yeah.

And he came up to me and says, "I want to be your lead guitar player."

- What, are you crazy? - Uh, no.

This is now how to ingratiate yourself to people

and say, "I'm gonna be the lead guitarist."

Dick, it worked.

- Right.

Alec, who was also in an original band with Richie, said,

"You gotta see this guy. There's something about this guy."

Alec had called me up and said,

"I'm playing with this new band, you know,

"Jon Bongiovi and the Wild Ones.

Come down and see the band." So I said, "Yeah, sure."

And after hearing him play

and talking a bit, you know,

we found we were really on the same track, you know?

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The rest is history.

He walked in and says, "I'm your new guitar player."

That's what I did. I was very cocky.

We immediately hit it off.

I knew that this guy was incredibly talented.

He could play, he could sing, he could write,

and I thought he would be an incredible complement.

There was a combination of,

it was all of us playing together that clicked.

But Jon and Richie, their vocal styles together

made its own style.

You know, you could say, there's-there's Simon and Garfunkel,

there's, uh, Lennon, McCartney,

certain voices just go together.

And that had a magic to it.

♪ You need someone to make it last ♪

The energy of the band, undeniable,

like a freight train coming at you.

But Jon and Richie singing together, magic.

The song Runaway that really started it all.

It triggered the whole thing.

But that was basically because of, of that hometown record.

We would've won that national contest.

But I pulled out because fortunately by then

I had so much interest from a couple of labels

that we didn't need it.

And we signed with PolyGram, thank God he had the vision.

And I just was like, I said,

"You charge the hill, I'm behind you charging with you."

I had laid down months into years of groundwork,

you know, trying to get that major label

and making the contact.

When it broke nationally,

it was by a guy named Jon Bongiovi.

There was no band, there was no manager,

there wasn't anything at the time.

Now, if somebody ran up to you in a bar and said,

"What's your name," you'd say?

Jon Bon Jovi.

It was someone at the record company

who had suggested in the way that Van Halen,

Bon Jovi, two words, could work.

Van Halen had Jump,

the first time a guitar band had a keyboard song.

Number one song and they broke up, which is not what you do.

That left a big hole in the world

for, like, here we had a keyboard song,

we had a great-looking frontman

who could sing his ass off and entertain.

We had the guitar-slinging guy who could do it.

There was like a little bit of a hole there.

And then we just came right in.

- Show 'em! - Look, it's my favorite band!

- Oh, nice work. - Cute kid, huh?

Look at that.

Where's the video?

And so we made that first record...

and the adventure began.

Richie Sambora IV, take one.

I'm excited for this.

I'm-- Hey, I'm excited.

Are we telling the truth or are we gonna lie?

What are we gonna do? Let's-let's-let's figure it out.

♪ She's a little runaway ♪

♪ No one heard a single word you said ♪

♪ They should have seen it in your eyes ♪

♪ What was going around your head ♪

♪ Ooh, she's a little runaway ♪

♪ Daddy's girl learned fast ♪

♪ All those things she couldn't say ♪

♪ Ooh, she's a little runaway ♪

♪ Daddy's girl learned fast ♪

♪ Now she works the night away ♪