Jon Bon Jovi - Fame is a liar and a thief

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2:37But my guest today lays genuine claim to the term. He is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor and philanthropist who, along with his band, sold more than 130 million albums and performed in over 50 countries for more than 40 million fans before being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Born and raised in New Jersey, he ran errands at his cousin's recording studio as a teenager and started playing in local clubs at the age of 16. An early hero was local rising star Bruce Springsteen, whom he now counts as a friend. The rock band he fronted was formed in 1983 and released a string of world-dominating hits, including You Give Love a Bad Name, Blaze of Glory and Living on a Prayer.

3:26He is, of course, Jon Bon Jovi. Jon Bon Jovi. I like the English pronunciation. Do you? You can have that for free. Sample it in one of your records. So far then, so rock and roll. But there is another side to his public success. As chairman of his own non-profit foundation since 2006, Jon Bon Jovi has focused on providing food and shelter to those in need. His Soul Kitchen encourages paying customers to make a suggested donation for their meal and to cover the cost for someone in need. After undergoing vocal cord surgery that could have left him unable to sing, Bon Jovi is back with the album Forever, legendary edition, featuring collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Williams, Avril Lavigne, James Bay and many more.

4:15The band's Forever Tour will kick off next year with dates in America and Europe. But Jon Bon Jovi insists that he's not an applause junkie. I do it for the joy and I do it for the art, he says. The rest of it is great because I'm good at it. But if you couldn't do it from a place of joy, what's the motivation? John Bon Jovi, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you, Elizabeth. Good to be here. I'm coming from a place of joy today, having you sitting opposite me. Thank you. Are you a believer in the fact that you are not what you do? You are something deeper entirely. Oh, most definitely. It's not who I am.

4:58Performing, making records is what I do. it's not who I am it's an aspect of it but it's not the one and only aspect of it or who I am I'm intrigued that you started out running errands at your cousin's recording studio what kind of errands? a true gopher, a coffee boy the guy that went for the burgers or the beers or the dry cleaning or whatever else anybody might need I've gone as far to have to go place bets on the horses but I did I did I did I met a second cousin who I barely knew and uh and thank goodness you know he came to see my band and he said to my dad the band stink but the kid's got something going for him and he said when you get out of high school give me a call if there's anything I could ever do and I just basically graduated high school was playing original music and said what can I do and he said you can run errands and so I said yeah okay so for 50 bucks a week it was it was free and then it was 50 bucks a week.

5:58I got to be around the studio. What do you think it is about New Jersey that has had such a creative influence on so many artists? It's a diverse roster when you think about Frank Sinatra to Frankie Valli to the Fugees to, of course, Bruce Springsteen to Southside Johnny and the younger generation that's come after all of us. But being in the shadow of New York City has something to do with it. Considering that my immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents didn't go much further than the New York Harbor. They got off the boat and they were like, whoa, we're not going any further. We're staying right here.

6:42But growing up in the shadow of New York, that was a blessing, never a curse. You had New York media, you had access to theater, to concert venues, to radio stations that were going to be influential, to opportunity. And yet we grew up in the suburbs. You know, I mean, New Jersey is so close to Manhattan. I mean, it's literally through a tunnel or a bridge, depending on how you want to look at it. But where I grew up was 35 minutes away. So that would be considered a London suburb, you know. That's a different state altogether. I almost said a city, but we didn't have cities in New Jersey. We had your equivalent of a village.

7:24So there's that sense of sort of wanting to get somewhere that lies just beyond the horizon, just beyond the tunnel. Yes and no. It wasn't about wanting to go across the bridge because you got there. Because in a weird way, you always felt like you were there. But what I do believe it gave us was a chance to cut your teeth out of the spotlight. You were somewhat in the shadow. You know, you weren't asking to sneak into a club where, as I did at 16 and 17 years old, whereas in Manhattan, there was probably 40 other kinds of guys like you that were older that were trying to vie for those same four slots in the nightclub, if you understand that, right?

8:00So out in the suburbs of New Jersey, along these beach towns, where there was bars next to bars next to bars, there was opportunity. And of course, because of those who paved the way prior, especially Bruce in the rock and roll era. Is it true that you wrote Runaway aged 19 in a bus station? Closer to 20. Okay. 19, maybe closer to 20. 19 and a half. Yeah, because it was definitely 1982. I was taking the bus to and from New Jersey from my parents' house. And you get out at the Greyhound station and a lot of young people my age were hanging around the Greyhound station. You know, they didn't have opportunities like I had been given to walk that 20 blocks up to the studio and back down to the bus station at the end of the day.

8:51Before we get onto your failures, I'd be doing our listeners and myself a disservice if I didn't ask you about Living on a Prayer and also tell you how much that song means to me and so many countless others. And I remember where I was when I first listened to it. And I remember the feeling of infectious, like freedom it gave me. It's had over one billion streams on Spotify. What is it? Two billion? Just in America. Oh my gosh. What is that like when you listen to that song now? What's that like for you? Well, because it was an out-of-body experience, and I will defend my position. I'm one of three writers on it, okay?

9:34Me, Richie, and Des wrote it. And on the day that we walked into this very small room, not dissimilar from this little podcast studio we're in, it was Teenie with an acoustic guitar, an upright piano, and a notebook. None of us had any idea. You know, no great title, no great lyric, no great riff. We were going to write a song together. Okay. When the song was finished, and the song was finished lyrically, the chords were what they were, the melodies were all set in stone. I personally thought, well, it's good. It's good. You know, it's telling a boy-girl story. It's Shakespearean in that it's, you know, boy meets girl.

10:11Boy and girl will persevere if they work hard at it. And it didn't become the magic of what the song was until we went with the band and we developed that bass line. Now that I'm very cognizant of because I was like, no, we need something that pops like Motown. We'd play some Motown stuff like that.

10:35And then we developed that line, you know, with the octopole. And I remember very hard working with me, Richie Des, Bruce Fariburn, the producer, on what was to become that. And then the key change I fell for because I was young. No one in their right mind should be singing high C's, but I did. And that's when the song took on another life. And just to add insult to injury, it wasn't the first single on that album. And it wasn't the first single on that album because You Give Love a Bad Name sounded like it was going to be a radio-friendly hit song. Prayer didn't sound like anything by anybody anywhere.

11:18So I wasn't ready for it. I was surprised. Before we get onto your failures, your mother was both a Marine and a Playboy bunny. Correct. I mean, she must be the only person in the world. Perhaps, right? That'd be a short list. That's so cool. I know. It was pretty cool. and the older I got the more I appreciated it because she did say to me over the course of her life boot camp was not was nothing to her and I thought wow you know it wasn't until I was really much older that I realized what a tough life she had and how that she persevered um and and broke free of you know childhood traumas to go on and make a life of her own you turned up to this podcast recording early, you're an extremely punctual man.

12:06Do you think there's an aspect of that? Was I early? Yeah. I'll go out in the line. Please don't. It just means I get extra time in your company. Do you think there's something, because your dad was a Marine too, that's when your parents met, isn't it? It is. Is there something about that military discipline that you've inherited? Not necessarily. It wasn't a strict military upbringing at all. But I think that you learned about commitment, dedication, perseverance, you know, in, in, in, in of a long career and in a long life at this point, I've had the highest highs and I've had some pretty darn low lows.

12:48So, you know, punctuality is something that I admire because if I'm waiting on somebody, I'm cranky about it too. It's like, I'm here. How come you're not? So I don't know. I don't mind punctuality. You could be forgiven for traffic, but if it's just sheer laziness, then that's arrogance and that's terrible. You can be a rock and roll legend and be punctual. What's wrong with that? It's excellent. If my tickets say we're on at 7.30, you best be in your seat. My favorite kind of rock and roll star. Okay, let's get onto your failures. Your first failure is, and I alluded to it in the introduction, your vocal issues and almost losing your voice yeah tell us this story and and when you first started realizing that there was something awry well in this latest chapter of the saga of this body um probably 2014 in 2013 i had a tumultuous time lost a band member who abruptly quit on us, the band, the crew, the fans.

13:59A couple of business dealings that didn't go the way I'd hoped they would. And we overcame that. And I did 100 shows and persevered. In 2014, the body crashed out from under me and I wasn't even aware. But I know that when I walked by my guitar, not only didn't I touch it, but I gave it the middle finger. I wasn't at all interested. seeing my friend. And by 2015, when I was attempting to go back to work, you know, maybe even a little bit, something just wasn't right. So this was odd for me. This wasn't just, okay, I'll beat the muscle back into shape. There was something wrong, but I couldn't figure it out.

14:482016 we put out a record called this house is not for sale it's very much a statement record there's a chip on my shoulder we we work but again physically i'm not quite right and i don't know why so the tour is very short after that is we're writing what was to become 2020 and then covid happens you're not thinking about touring because there's no such thing and by 2022 when the world is opening up again i'm thinking okay what's the big deal let's go i'm past the the difficulties of you know this house is not for sale and past covert like everyone else i'm dying to get out in the world i do what is to become a 15 show tour and it's just not working anymore and i don't understand it because you know as i in a cliched world you know they said well you know what have you done what excesses of it wasn't that the only thing that's ever been up my nose is my finger

15:49it wasn't working and I willed it and I tried and I tried very hard on a daily basis on a 15 show tour which is practically you don't even bring a change of socks for 15 shows you know it's like that's nothing at the end of the 15th show I remember going into that dressing room in Nashville, Tennessee and saying to my wife, it's pretty good. And she looked at me, she said, it wasn't. People think, oh, what a blow. It really wasn't because she's going to tell me the truth. That day, I remember thinking to myself, well, time for a drink. I don't think I could do this anymore. I don't know why, but I'm okay with walking away from this because there's no way I'm dragging down the legacy.

16:34And that began my journey to what got me here tonight, speaking with you, as I sought out a surgeon who explained to me that one of my vocal cords had literally atrophied. It was dying. And that he could do an implant surgery on the outside of the vocal cords to get them to close properly again, therefore simultaneously closing. And if I worked hard, He promised me nothing other than I would be better than I was that night in Nashville. Had I known that it was going to be a three and a half year recovery, I very well might have said, thank you, good night. But the process and the progress was steady enough that I didn't lose faith.

17:20It was just nowhere near what I thought it would be in the recovery. and then because of this record and my putting it out a year plus ago i thought it's a bitch to let this moment in time slip through my hands again with these last three albums so we reimagined the record and now and only now am i willing to go out on a limb and say yep i could play some shows because i feel fully recovered or close enough to fully recovered that i have faith in the process. Thank you so much for sharing that. When you say an implant, what is that? If you look closely here in the bottom of my throat, there's a scar.

18:08That's where they cut you. It go right through the front. They put two pieces of Gore-Tex, which is plastic, outside of the vocal cords, but in the neck that close the muscles together. Outside, every time you say a word, the muscles push the cords together and they were not firing symmetrically. And talk to me a little bit about the rehabilitation process, because although you started off by saying you are not what you do, your voice is so endemic to who anyone is and your means of expression with the outside world. And I'm imagining there was a period of where you couldn't speak, you couldn't communicate?

18:52It wasn't that extreme, and they told me it was going to be. But I did sound like the godfather for a while. Hey, you come and see me on this day. Even that next day, they said, oh, you're not going to be able to talk, and I was able to talk like that. You certainly couldn't sing, and there was no way you could sing like you sing. So the process was very slow, and then six weeks after the surgery, I could take speech pathology kind of courses, you know, to work with a speech pathologist. Now, let me equate that. If when you're walking down the street and if you had a pebble in one of your shoes, at first when you said, ow, ow, ow, then eventually you would compensate by leaning on the other leg and the other shoe till you got used to that pebble being in the first shoe and you compensate.

19:43Well, I had basically seven or eight years of compensation to unwind. So they had to start from scratch teaching me how to speak then how to ultimately make sound that sounded like singing and to get better and better throughout this process. And it's a constant evolution but I'm confident enough now to know that I can sell a ticket. I wasn't at all willing a year ago. Do you think that the way you sing or speak has changed? I think it's more the way I used to sing and speak now. And they've been able to unwind 90 % of the bad habits that I'm working on the last 10. and how hard was that journey well it's like knowing it you didn't know you had a pebble in your shoe for so long until someone took it out you wouldn't know you had a pebble in your shoe so i didn't know how i was at the end of a sentence going down and at the end of the sentence going down you know i didn't realize that and these these glottal strokes in your vocal cords and when i and i would have to you know i would like kind of wind up to a note to to to to hit the pitch.

21:08I was starting to look like Joe Cocker in that 2022 tour, making the craziest faces and contorting my face, whittling the vocal cord to get to the note that I was trying to reach, and I didn't understand why I couldn't. I do a full-on stadium show four times a week now, two hours, four days a week now, prepping for next summer. What did this whole experience teach you about resilience? I've always been a pretty resilient guy and I've always had a will. You know, my wife had said in the film, which was nice of her to say, he would will it into existence. I would just go and just, you know, plow through that field until I got to the other side.

21:55When I couldn't, because I physically couldn't, that was disheartening. But I didn't want to not do it. I'm not doing this for the applause. I'm not doing it for the money. I'm not doing it for the fame. I've had enough of all of it. But I would like to feel that joy and the resonance. Even if it were only one last time. I don't think this is anywhere near a farewell tour or anything like that. But if it were, you can trust that these few shows that I've announced are going to be joy filled. because this gratitude, humility, opportunity, you know, to go out there and do it again is all heartfelt.

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24:05Oh, a lot. Oh, it has a whole different meaning. The guilty Catholic upbringing in America had a difficult time with my relation to the organized Catholic church the way it was in my youth and upbringing. And I was in and out of Catholic schools a couple of times in grammar school and in high school. So my relationship to it was distant. But as I got older, my relationship to God has only increased dramatically. Dramatically. And my belief in spiritual journey has deepened a hundredfold. I still don't feel the need to go to church with everybody. It's Sunday at 1030 in the morning kind of thing.

24:53But I'm there every day myself. You know what I mean? in my mind or in my heart and on occasion when I go there to the building. Has that informed your philanthropic activities? Not necessarily. I think that came with travel, the world travel, with getting older, getting wiser, being a little more worldly, maybe a little more in service, going through what I did physically, which changed the course of my life mentally. All of those things led me more and more and more to service. These are very, very, very trying times in the world. The quicker and the louder we become aware of it and you hear people like you or I or anyone else saying it will give comfort and ease to those who don't have a microphone because anyone, everyone is going through some kind of anxiety now that we didn't have at a different time in our lives.

25:56Anxiety wasn't a word that I ever heard growing up. It wasn't a word I ever heard 20, 30, 40. No way. No way. Not even at 50. But at 63, boy, do I hear it. Young kids, older kids, grownups, women, men, successful, non-successful. we all realize you know this is a very trying time in the world you really care about people don't you i hope so more and more you should because

26:31maybe it's the access that we have to a whole planet we see everything that goes on the way it does maybe it's this time in my own life i don't know but feeding somebody in a restaurant is no big great lift, but I know it makes an impact. The dignity of it. Absolutely. And I don't need to be a scientist to find the cure. It's a buck that cost me for some food. Let's go. There was a very moving story that I read about you in preparation for this interview about you interrupting the filming of a music video to talk to someone who was standing on the edge of a bridge, possibly about to take their own life and you had a conversation with that person yeah people were walking right by this woman and the lady that was standing us you know could imagine i in this scene on the bridge you know i'm shooting a music video so they're like everyone get out of the way and there's only one pa who's basically holding a little speaker so i could hear timing for the music video.

27:37The lady then said to me, that goes on the wrong side of the banister. So we went over to her on the side of the bridge and I spoke to her and was able to convince her to come back onto the right side of the bridge. Yeah, I wouldn't have ever mentioned it to the world if the police hadn't released the film footage because they had an observation kind of tower viewing the bridge. Well, if you save one person's life, your own life is deeply meaningful. So your second failure is not saying no to grueling touring in the early years and the impact of that. yeah i've come to terms with that because i've done it more than once you know if anything and you should learn from your mistakes so i've burned the band out on more than one occasion guilty as charged you know in retrospect had i really learned from the first time which i claimed to have done it and then didn't realize when i did it the second time um that it was too much for some people to handle.

28:44You know, I have to live with that. But the first time, I think it's because you're young, your nose is to the grindstone, you get to the absolute peak of success. And it's not anything other than, wow, was that fun? I got to do it again. So it burned us out. The real gift would have been had I learned from that mistake fully at that time. The second time I did it was another, oh my goodness gracious, 23 years later. And it was too much for some of the people in the band. Was it too much for you? What does burnout look like? I was having a really good time the second time. I just thought it was actually going swimmingly well.

29:30You know, physically I was feeling incredible. We were having success. We were getting along.

29:39but everyone's journey's different, you know? And I thought everything was peachy and it wasn't, you know? So this I have to live with. And then you go on from there and, you know, you come to realize you're going to continue to make mistakes. It's just how you deal with them on the other side, you know, that you can admit it, face truths. It's not your story. It's the story, you know, you're going to tell this, the story of tonight's interview differently than I will. Yeah. What is a grueling tool for you? Back in those days, it was 240 shows in a year. Back to back, another 240 shows a year later with a new album and five more top 10 singles.

30:25I don't care how young you are, that Superman tattoo is just a tattoo. It's not real. Wow. It was a lot. So of course it made sense that at the end of New Jersey, we were exhausted. But at the end of 2013, when Richie quit and, you know, he's, so I should have realized that that was too much for some people. What's the most challenging thing? As someone who is not a rock and roll star, who hasn't been on that kind of tour ever, what's the most challenging thing about being on tour? Is it the travel? Is it the come down? For some people, it's the not being able to travel. For some people, it's the quiet of home.

31:06Huh. That's not my issue. Oh, that's interesting. Right. Yeah. For some people more like me, I hate the hotel room and the club sandwich and the grueling schedule of the interview and the tour and the blah, blah, blah. For others, it was the quiet of being home. It depends on who you are. Was it ever the performance for you personally? No, no. I never hated the performance. even if I you know in the broken page of the book in that 2022 tour it was painful but I wanted to be there I was trying to break through to that other side I was like trying to break through the stone wall to see light through the other side I thought if I kept doing it it would get better because I had exhausted every other trick and I didn't have any anyone else a doctor or somebody else to say, no, no, no, this ain't going to get better.