Bon Jovi (4 page)

Tico Torres,
One Wild Night
tour, Europe, Summer 2001.
Guido Karp

Bon Jovi: (from left) Alec John Such, David Bryan, Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi, and Tico Torres,
Keep The Faith
tour plane, 1993.
Mark “WEISSGUY” Weiss/www.markweiss.com

DAVID:
I think the touring brought us closer together. Living, coexisting, we really became a family. We spent more hours together than with any other person in our lives—wives, girlfriends, friends, parents. We were there every day for each other. Backstage and onstage, we were a team. Offstage too. We made sure nobody was getting into too much trouble. We covered each other’s backs but some of us were really getting burned out.

TICO:
There was a lot of touring. The touring was almost senseless, to the point where you didn’t know where you were or why you were doing it anymore. It became a machine, which was well oiled, but you forgot why you were out there anymore. We never really sat for a minute and really enjoyed the success. We were part of that machine, which, at one point, was almost the demise of the band.

DAVID:
Some people hold it together. Some people fall apart. Everybody had their own little mess going on. And it was more for some. Some was substances, some was life, and it just got out of hand. It just kept going and going and going and going. There had to be a breaking point. There just had to.

Jon is an insane workaholic. As much as he hates to do it, he loves to do it. Jon began hating something he loved, yet he kept pushing it. He could have said, “No. I don’t want to do more.” You keep grinding because you don’t want it to end. Then you’re exhausted. It got to the point where the only way Jon could sing was if he got a steroid shot. We’d gotten to the point where it was past the fun. And Jon’s the guy, if he’s not having fun … it doesn’t work.

It stopped being fun for Jon probably more than for the rest of us. He wasn’t a star. Then all of a sudden, he’s a star. He had a lot more pressures.

He was a unique situation: You’re the star. The focus; everything lands on you. But that’s Jon’s world. He’s a complicated dude. Jon became introverted all of a sudden.

TICO:
It was almost over. The band was completely overworked.

Contact sheet of unapproved photos taken in Moscow, U.S.S.R., February 1989.
Mark “WEISSGUY” Weiss/www.markweiss.com (all)

Lost Highway
tour, XCEL Energy Center, St. Paul, MN, March, 2008.
Phil Griffin

RICHIE:
Management came to us and said, “Do you wanna do another seventy shows?” And we went, “We gotta stop, man.” That decision was a crucial point in the band’s career.

We were just a mess—emotionally, physically. Life had changed drastically from three years prior. And in that three years’ window, we were in the cocoon of a tour. Trying to fit back into life after that was the tricky part, I think.

Everybody was going through growing pains.

JON:
Every other hour of every single day was spent together. We vacationed together. We didn’t have houses so we’d live in hotels together. It will drain you ‘cause, in a weird way, it’s a sexless marriage. And it’s family, but it’s not. So you get to that crossroads and you burn out like we did.

TICO:
On the last day of the
New Jersey
tour, we did two stadium shows in Guadalajara, Mexico. One was a matinee! Then we each got on different planes and flew home—and didn’t talk for months and months and months.

RICHIE:
I never really believed it was over. Something in my spirit inherently knew this wasn’t the end for us.

I think that everybody interpreted the fame and fortune on different levels and at different speeds. We didn’t understand what was happening but what I did know was this wasn’t over. I never doubted that.

There was a lot that needed to be straightened out. There was business stuff that needed to be straightened out. There was the emotional thing that needed to be straightened out. There were ill feelings against each other because management would be talking to Jonny and telling him one thing, then selling me something else.

Jon was figuring out his own stuff … I always knew that we’d come to grips somehow … I didn’t know when or how, but I knew that.…

DAVID:
The band just went dormant. I got a nasty parasite from South America. It ate out my stomach lining, my intestines, and attacked my nerve endings. It was in my bloodstream; I was poisoned. I was 145 pounds, and I was really ill in the hospital for two weeks, then bedridden at home for a month … So my plight was a little different. The guys were all worrying about the band. I wasn’t really worried about a job. I was worried about trying to stay alive.

RICHIE:
You had five guys off on their own tangents. Jon and I did solo records.

Me doing that solo album, grabbing the guys, keeping that little piece of us employed was my effort to keep that part of the band together.

DAVID:
Finally, Jon sat us down in a band meeting. He said, “I’m putting it all back together.” He told us he was firing Doc, our manager. “I’m going to guide this vision,” he said. “I believe we can do it.” First, he hired a shrink.

TICO:
It was Jon’s idea. He found out about this guy and sought him out. I don’t know how he did it. To me, it was a sign of brilliance to be able to call somebody who could help us.

JON:
Lou Cox had no connection to the band. He came in and got us to speak better than anyone else could have because he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

DAVID:
I said, “I don’t need no fucking shrink. That’s for sick people. There’s nothing wrong with me; there’s something wrong with you.” But everybody said, “Nothing wrong with me; something’s wrong with you.”

Lou Cox was a great thing. He got us to communicate. As much as you thought you were fucked up, everybody was. He really helped you to learn to say the things that you couldn’t say before, but in a safe place. That kept us connected. It really helped us to just be honest enough to go on and move forward. It was the end of the beginning and the start of the new.

TICO:
Lou Cox helped us a lot, as a group, to be able to deal with each other. He was a saving grace. That was our big secret for years and years.

DAVID:
Keep The Faith
represented what we’d survived. All of us said, “We’re in this together. We are controlling our own destiny. Good or bad, we’re gonna do it.” We believed in Jon and his vision.

JON:
By 1992, I can honestly say the drama was over. Everybody understood the future.

Reviewing CD artwork for
One Wild Night: Live 1984–2001
, Los Angeles, CA, March 19, 2001.
Sam Erickson

THE VISION

Promotional portrait session, backstage, The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, MI, July 7, 2009.
Phil Griffin

JON:
My wife says about anything I dare to do: “Will. You just will it to happen.” I just kick and kick and kick … until it happens.

It’s the rebellion in you that says, “I can, I will, and it’s just a matter of when.”

Whatever you want, you can do. Whatever you need to do, you’ll get it done. That silly blind faith has pulled me through my life, no matter what it was …

RICHIE:
I don’t think critics care about the human side of what this organization represents.

JON:
When you are that commercially successful, as we’ve been for as long as we’ve been, people want to hit you in the nose. That’s just human nature.

DAVID:
You’re always fighting. When you actually make it to the top, you go, “OK, I did it.” But in the back of your mind you’re asking yourself, “Can I do it again?” That’s Jon’s world. Can you do it again? I said to Jon, “You’re the kind of guy that has a chip on his shoulder. You have a battery on your shoulder, like that commercial. Knock it off. Knock this battery off my shoulder. I dare ya.”

JON:
We didn’t become who we are today because we were lucky. We became this big because we’re fucking pounding and pounding and punching and punching and punching—still.

DAVID:
I’m not a shrink, but Jon’s the kind of guy who uses that as one of his motivators. That’s one of my motivators. I think for all of us in the band, it’s our motivation. Everybody said, “You can’t.” I think if the critics said, “Wow, they’re great,” maybe we wouldn’t fight as hard. Jon’s the kind of guy who just has to prove himself every day. That’s his deal with the devil. He has to prove everybody wrong.

JON:
To tell you the honest-to-God truth, if we had had everybody patting us on the back for the last twenty years I’d have gotten fat and old and lazy; it would had been a lot easier than keeping the chip on your shoulder and going, “Gotta fight, gotta fight.” But that’s sort of motivational. I find it to be the reason you wake up in the morning.

Lost Highway
tour, hotel suite on day off, Marbella, Spain, June 2008.
Phil Griffin

RICHIE:
Jon saddles himself with lots of responsibility. He loves that, thrives on it. That’s basically where he comes from, I think. I’ve never seen anybody do it better than him. And it’s not luck. It comes from thinking about it. It’s the result of lots of trial and error in his mind. He’s more intense than I am—for sure.

TICO:
Each of us is a cogwheel in the clock. It’s Jon’s band and he’s the leader. And he’s a good leader and he’s strong, but he’s a multitasker and there are certain things that get by him as a human being. It’s only natural.

Sanctuary Sound II, Middletown, NJ, April 2009.
Phil Griffin (2009)

TICO:
Even though Jon wears the managerial hat, there’s always somebody helping him. It’s the same with the band. You could lean on the other guys. We’ve leaned on each other when we’ve had physical ailments, when we had issues with family, divorce, illness. You have to lean on each other.

DAVID:
I’m around to tell jokes. I help Jon to get some levity in his world. I always said Jon was born with a horseshoe jammed in his ass and I’m holding on to it tight. Every once in a while I get a little shit on me. Who cares? Brush it off. We’re still going. That guy made a deal with the devil. Definitely the devil. Well, maybe. There’s good in evil.

JON:
The truth of the matter is, like a football team, somebody has to be the quarterback. The quarterback can’t win without a line to protect him. It’s a team effort. It’s the Henry Ford theory of management. Somebody’s name has to be on the top and be the ultimate decision maker. True, it isn’t a democracy but it is a team effort.

Hell’s Kitchen, New York, NY, December 8, 1999.
Olaf Heine

Hell’s Kitchen, New York, NY, December 8, 1999.
Olaf Heine

The Shoe Inn, Middletown, NJ, December 10, 1999.
Olaf Heine