Prefabricated, not very rock-oriented: Bon Jovi, always questioned, always on top

If there is anything that Jon Bon Jovi has wanted in this life, it is to succeed.

In a cover report for

Rolling Stone

magazine in 1987, Derek Shulman, vice president of Polygram, the record company that signed the group, points out what most seduced him to put the singer an advantageous contract on the table: “I felt that I had an appetite for incredible for being a star.

He projected a burning desire to be huge.”

The day Richie Sambora met Bon Jovi, he said: “This guy is going to be very big.

“This is my place.”

They were together for 30 years, until the guitarist left the group in 2013.

When

Rolling Stone

dedicated its coveted cover to Bon Jovi, they had just released their third album,

Slippery When Wet

(1986), the best-selling up to that date and still their most popular work today, with FM rock classics like

You Give Love a Bad Name

or

Livin' On a Prayer

.

To choose the songs for this album, Bon Jovi organized a meeting with about a hundred teenagers.

He played the 30 songs that he had recorded and kept the ten most rated by the kids.

In the music industry, Bon Jovi has always stood out as a great strategist, an essential characteristic to succeed like a beast.

40 years have passed since the New Jersey band's first work and they are still there, at the top.

The group is preparing a new tour, where Richie Sambora may return.

In addition, next Friday, February 2, Jon Bon Jovi (he alone) receives the 2024 Person of the Year award in Los Angeles at the ceremony prior to the Grammy Awards (Sunday the 4th).

And all this, with a voice so fragile in recent times that some specialists do not understand how so much is exposed.

Jon Bon Jovi leading the group at a concert in 1984 in Japan.

Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music (Getty Images)

“It is a rare case, indeed,” says César Martín, director of Popular 1

magazine ,

the dean of rock in Spain (he turned 50 in 2023).

“She has had a bad voice for many years, but not only that: she enters the songs at the wrong time and you can see her suffering on stage.

In any case, he has always been more of an

entertainer

than a professional singer in the style of Bruce Dickinson or Ronnie James Dio.

At first, Jon overcame these vocal shortcomings with the impetus of youth.

Not now.

On the other hand, he has every right to continue acting.

And I don't think he does it for the money, but because he enjoys touring.

And he fills stadiums.”

The aesthetics of Jon Bon Jovi (New Jersey, USA, 61 years old) are so relevant that many specialists and followers believe that his stylistic decisions have been able to determine the group's trajectory, for better and for worse.

In the eighties his bouffant hair was synonymous with good rock songs;

His haircut coincided with his musical decline.

Pablo Mayoral, co-host of the radio program and podcast

Corsarios del metal:

“In the nineties, classic heavy metal hardened.

Judas Priest release

Painkiller

and Iron Maiden

Fear of the Dark:

both are very aggressive works.

And in that context, Bon Jovi is out of the game for the heavy metal fan.”

Bon Jovi's history will always involve questioning his rock pedigree.

The group began in the eighties within a scene that was called

hair metal

or

glam metal

: musicians with voluminous, combed hair, colorful clothing and rock songs adorned with sparkling choruses.

Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison, Dokken, Quiet Riot… and Bon Jovi.

“Bon Jovi's first four albums (until

New Jersey,

1988) are fantastic.

And, above all, they had great songs, which is the basis of any genre, it doesn't matter if you do

thrash metal,

pop or punk," says the director of

Popular 1.

The MTV music network, which was born in 1981, functioned as gigantic speaker for these bands: the videos of the songs rotated non-stop.

In his book

Fargo Rock City

, the American writer Chuck Klosterman defends Bon Jovi like this: “We may remember Bon Jovi as the least risky of all those metal bands, and certainly the most stereotypically commercial, but they were true songwriters who simply pulled the strings. heart strings instead of the brain.”

Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora in Detroit, 1986. Icon and Image (Getty Images)

Jon Bon Jovi loved Van Halen, an older group that all the boys with bobbed hair noticed, but also Bruce Springsteen.

That's why his ambition expanded.

Mayoral: “There was a lot of saturation within

hair metal

and bad groups began to come out that covered up the good ones.

In the nineties this genre was beginning to be outdated.

Bon Jovi commercialized his sound, lost the heavy and rock fans, but was rewarded with another type of audience.

He makes the leap to the

mainstream,

a place where all types of audiences can fit.

These are people who one day go to see U2, another Madonna or Coldplay or Bon Jovi.

It's about living the experience of a massive show regardless of who is on stage.”

César Martín remembers that when they interviewed Bon Jovi during the nineties he always disowned the hard rock scene, “where he came from.”

“It was inevitable to compare them with Gun N' Roses, who published their debut

[Appetite for Destruction]

in 1987 and were a band that projected risk, danger and rock and roll.

Clearly Bon Jovi were losing,” points out the person in charge of

Popular 1

.

There is some controversy about the birth of the group.

John Francis Bongiovi Jr., a working-class boy from New Jersey, began working as a teenager in his cousin Toni Bongiovi's recording studio: the Power Station, in New York.

There he created his first songs, with musicians who passed by in the studio and with the help of his cousin.

The song

Runaway

came from those sessions.

He programmed it with a New York DJ and it was a success.

That's when the record deal arrived and the band began to form.

“In that sense I think it is a prefabricated group.

For example, it's not like Metallica or other big bands, who were friends since they were little.

“Here he builds around Jon Bon Jovi after writing the hit

Runaway,”

says Mayoral.

After the success of this first album, the vocalist's cousin sued them because he claimed that he had contributed considerably to the sound of the album.

Before going to trial, the group reached a financial agreement with Toni Bongiovi.

Jon Bon Jovi in ​​September 2019 at Rock In Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

MAURO PIMENTEL (AFP via Getty Images)

Jon Bon Jovi has always cultivated a good guy image, participating in numerous charitable causes.

During the hard weeks of the pandemic he went into the kitchen of a restaurant, put on an apron and cooked for days for people without resources.

He is a close friend of Al Gore, former US vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and has participated in Democratic Party campaigns in support of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and in recent times for Joe Biden.

“And he has been with the same partner for 40 years [Dorothea Hurley], something absolutely unusual in rock,” emphasizes César Martín.

Pedro Armas is the president of the largest Bon Jovi fan club in Spain.

Some 30,000 fans follow the information on Spain Bon Jovi's social networks.

They regularly organize parties with performances by tribute groups.

Pedro is a 32-year-old from Tenerife who got hooked on those from New Jersey after listening to

It's My Life

.

“I still consider them a rock group on the same level as Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe or Aerosmith.

Until 2010 at least.

It's true that since then they have focused more on pop-rock.

I'm looking forward to confirmation that Sambora returns to the band, because she is almost 50% of the group,” he says.

70% of Spain Bon Jovi members are women.

One of them is Sara Abad, 27 years old: “Why do women like them more?

I hadn't thought about it.

Maybe because of the theme of the lyrics, some of which are romantic.

And for the ballads, which are very beautiful.

I think Bon Jovi has been able to adapt a lot to different eras, although I like the first one better.”

Without voice, without hair, without relevant albums for years.

It doesn't matter if the winner is on stage: thousands of followers will continue to fill the stadiums.