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The veteran rockers channel cultural change and private tragedies in a return to their roots
By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music
"I couldn't find a title for this album," says Jon Bon Jovi. "So when a friend said 'What about "The Circle?," I was like, 'That's it!' Because it is a continuum.
"If we never made another record, if I never sing another note with this band, I still will have spent more time in the band than out of it. When Alec left (bassist Alec John Such left the band in 1994), we never got a replacement, and we never could--with Bon Jovi, you can't get in, and it's even harder to get out."
If his metaphor reminds you of "The Sopranos," consider the stranglehold that Bon Jovi and his bandmates--guitarist Richie Sambora, David Bryan on keyboards, and drummer Tico Torres--have maintained on the pop music audience. Over twenty-five years, they have sold over 120 million records, played to 34 million fans in fifty countries, and scored seven #1 singles. As time goes on, Bon Jovi somehow just gets bigger and bigger; the band's tour behind its last album, "Lost Highway," was ranked as 2008's top-selling tour around the world. (The tour was chronicled in the documentary "When We Were Beautiful," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and recently aired on Showtime.)
The years preceding the release of "The Circle," Bon Jovi's eleventh album, have been a bit of a rollercoaster. The singer's own time has largely focused on his philanthropic work: He is a Habitat for Humanity ambassador, dedicated to creating affordable, low-income housing, and offering services to help tenants across the country hold on to their homes. For the past five years, he has been a co-owner of the Philadelphia Soul franchise in the Arena Football League, but this summer the league suspended operations.
Bon Jovi's right hand and co-writer Sambora (the two were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year) has had the roughest patch. A 2007 divorce from his wife, Heather Locklear, was quickly followed by the death of his father, and he ultimately checked into rehab for alcohol abuse. Most surprisingly, keyboardist Bryan has emerged as a successful musical theater composer. Following an Off-Broadway hit with the campy "Toxic Avenger," his show about the early days of rock 'n' roll, titled "Memphis," recently opened to solid reviews.
In typical, outsize Bon Jovi fashion, the launch of "The Circle" came with the announcement of a massive global tour, including 20 nights at London's 02 Arena and a series of shows opening the New Meadowlands Stadium in the band's native New Jersey. On the phone from London, Jon Bon Jovi admitted to a bittersweet feeling about heading back on the road for the better part of the next two years.
"Yeah, it scares me a little bit," he said. "But then I find myself back in a hotel room somewhere and think, well, this is sort of what I do for a living."
MSN Music: There usually seems to be a certain mood you're trying to capture on each Bon Jovi album. What was in the air around this one?
Jon Bon Jovi: Well, let me tell you what happened. I went in to do "Lost Highway" and I said to the label, "I want to go to Nashville and do this country record." And after LA (Antonio "LA" Reid, chairman and CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group) was through breaking into tears from all the money this was going to cost him in lost sales, he said, "When you're done, will you do a greatest hits record?" And I said, fair enough, that's a deal. So I was actually supposed to be talking to you now about two new songs on a greatest hits set.
So what happened?
I started to write in September, when the world was a very different place. It was the last days of the Bush administration, the war was on page 12 instead of page one, the stock market was at 14,000. We were writing boy-girl songs and Richie rehab songs, and neither of us was excited about any of it.
And then in October, the whole world changes. The first African-American president is elected, the stock market falls, the news about the Ponzi schemes comes out. So I started writing more songs, but not down-the-middle pop songs. I wrote "Bullet" after the story about Jennifer Hudson's family and the murders came out, trying to write from the point of view of a news reporter. The President gets elected, so we write "Happy Now."
I went back to LA and told him, "I've got good news and bad news--I think I'm making a record here." And he said, "Don't worry, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that when an artist says it's the right time to put something out, you don't hold it up." So here we are again -- who knew?
You just announced a tour with dates that go into 2011. How does that news go over in your household?
Well, nobody's happy. The most pure truth comes from the youngest member. Jake is 7, and when we told him, he was like, "I need a little alone time." But if I'm aware of one thing, it's to not go back to the "Slippery/New Jersey" days -- don't work ourselves to the bone and get cranky.
It's a big tour, but it's paced well, there are big breaks in it. We put up this residence at the O2 in London, where Michael Jackson was going to play, and we'll stay here for five weeks, sleep in the same bed, the families can come, and it's civilized. So, yeah, we're booked into 2011, but we're really only doing 135 shows.
You have said that "The Circle" is a big return to form for Richie and his guitar playing.
This is really a Richie record, he's all over it. You know, it takes time for me to look back at any record and see what was going on. With "Lost Highway," I knew we had to keep Richie busy. He was going through hell with his dad dying and the divorce. On the "Have a Nice Day" tour, he fell and broke his arm, but he actually played really well with a busted-up arm. So he thought, "Hey, these pain pills really work, it'll be nice when I can have a drink again," until he fell down that slope hiding from the pain of his dad and Heather and everything. So "Lost Highway" was really a me record -- I had to really take control of that one.
When you're that close, you're with somebody every day, you don't see that they fell off the cliff. It took a long time for me to realize that he just wasn't the same guy, that he was really off his game. Now he's totally sober, he got it together. When I said "Let's meet at 11 o'clock to write," he'd be there at quarter till, with three song ideas. I'd be like, "Christ, could you go back to bed?"
What did you take away from the time you spent in Nashville working on "Lost Highway"?
There are so many elements of what Nashville is that rock 'n' roll isn't. Multiple-act bills, touring all year round with days off to come home -- there's a camaraderie in that town that I loved. And it's a cliché, but every kid that pumps gas happens to be a great songwriter, and they all share everything. You just don't have that anywhere else.
We had a day pass. It's not like we were really part of that community, but it sure was nice to go there and learn from that, and then go back to what we do and hopefully evolve and get even better at it.
What makes the new album different from other Bon Jovi albums?
More than any other album, thematically it stays on the same subject -- the world around us, the president, the economy. There's only one boy-girl song on there, and I love that about it.
I wrote "Work for the Working Man" after I saw a "60 Minutes" report about a DHL factory closing in Ohio. Watching able-bodied people being devastated when a factory closes up -- and it's not just the people who work at the factory, but the whole town that's affected by that closing. And it's not just in our country, either. When I talk about these songs in England, Japan, Germany, they say, "Yeah, I get it." They're going through the same things. It's a universal experience now.
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Alan Light is the former editor-in-chief of Spin, Vibe and Tracks magazines and a former senior writer at Rolling Stone. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ and Entertainment Weekly. His book "The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys" was published in 2006. Alan is a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music writing.
