Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 3, 1993 TAG: 9304030109
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BETTY WEBB COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BON JOVI MAKES MUSIC FOR THE EXCITEMENT OF IT
For a superstar, Jon Bon Jovi is surprisingly polite. After having problems reaching this interviewer, he persevered, and on the fourth try, finally got through - and tendered profuse apologies."You learn a few things after going through what I did the past few years," Bon Jovi said. "You become a lot more introspective."
What Bon Jovi is referring to, of course, is the temporary breakup of his multimillion-platinum-selling-album band, his 1989 marriage to Dorothea Hurley, his current papa-to-be status and the two cross-country motorcycle trips that gave him such a new lease on life.
"I'd had five consecutive No. 1 albums over the course of seven or eight years and had achieved anything and everything you could ever dream of," he said matter-of-factly. "Yet I was feeling less than fulfilled, that I was just part of a huge machine. It was just `Oh, another No. 1 this,' another `sold out' that. Not that it was becoming secondhand or old hat, but a lot of the excitement was gone."
And make no mistake about it, Jon Bon Jovi is in it for the excitement. The singer/songwriter doesn't talk about "art" or "truth" or "beauty" - what he talks about is the sheer adrenalin rush he gets from being onstage in front of a million screaming fans. He loves it, loves it, loves it.
Not that he doesn't work hard to keep his material fresh and relevant. "But before I was at the place where I could only write `road' songs," he said. "Songs about another night on the stage, songs another night in the hotel, songs about another plane ride, yadda yadda yadda."
While "Keep the Faith," Bon Jovi's latest album, isn't exactly as soul-searching as, say, Leonard Cohen's latest offering, "Faith" does dig a lot deeper into Jon Bon Jovi's soul than "Runaway" or "Wanted Dead Or Alive."
Typical of this new insight is "Fear."
"The emotions in `Fear' are the kind I was never able to see or admit to prior to my walking away from what I loved," he explained. "I've always had a feeling that life was based on one of two things - love or fear. Fear runs some people's lives because they're in this place where they have to do a lot of things they hate just to pay off their credit cards. But once in a while, they've gotta say `no' to the fear and do really something for themselves and act out of love for a change."
As liberating as his years away from the band turned out to be, Bon Jovi admits they were trying.
"Whenever the other guys were playing other gigs, I'd fly in to see them," he said. "When Richie [Sambora] was in Phoenix, I was sitting up in the light booth watching him sing the Bon Jovi songs. I felt that I had died and everybody was carrying on without me. Looking down at that stage, I felt like the ghost of me, like Jim Morrison or something. I fully expected one of the guys down there to say something like, `When Jon was alive . . . ' "
Not one to brood, Bon Jovi climbed out of the booth and ran down to the stage to join his other band mates, and to the delight of the crowd - and the band - they played a few songs together.