i'm going to make movies when i want records when i feel like it and i'm going to do it my way it's my life i'm making the decisions now and i'm going to make them the way i want to make them apple music essentials bon jovi a journey through the artist's most important songs one amazing place to start and i'm glad that you agree is right at the start self-titled album
and you've just released your first project and you're a superstar in new jersey and soon to become a superstar in america run away with such a moment i mean it talk about laying it out right from the beginning it's that classic ambitious new jersey blood what's your what's your prevailing memory of recording runaway runaway i had an instinct i felt good about it i do remember uh
you know doing it with the guys and being fortunate enough to to assemble that crew guys that i knew that made records that was the ban because i didn't have a band having an original band stay together in 1982 there was no way to pay him and there wasn't enough places to play so you you played when you could with the guys that you could get but then i had this opportunity over the
weekend to make that song but that one prevailed you know that that there you go i'd written the first of many hits you know characters characters play a real role in not just your music but in the music made from a working-class environment the desire to tell stories based around people the everyday people that you see do you remember their faces are these
real people are these real stories that you witnessed some of them are in amalgam you know because in a situation where you collaborated on a song living on a prayer would be a great example tommy and gina were names that were fictionalized but the three of us created that song out of nowhere on that day in the room and each of us brought something unique
and somehow you know we picked those two names i knew the couple i was referencing i knew why i was thinking about that you know and and my i don't know my my great addition to the to the idea was we need a story and the story should tell you know this classic tale of these two it's rare you remember the first time you heard a song i remember the first time that i heard living on a prayer
i was in auckland obviously living with my mom she was you know pretty freshly divorced from my dad's single mom so i'm immersed in music and culture at this point i'm just living my life through the tv and there you are with the band man just moving around that stage with that mic stand just like it's an extension of your arms and i just remember thinking oh my god like
this is the biggest band on the planet yeah yeah yeah everything changed with our third album everybody involved in that album uh and in every in any aspect of that album everybody's lives changed whether it was the producer the engineer the band uh you know it was just it was life-changing living on a prayer is one of those songs that um unless you go on to have a to take
advantage of the opportunity it provides you it could be a it could be an anchor around your ankles you didn't seem to miss a beat as soon as that success was at your front doorstep you ran 100 miles an hour into it and embraced every single part of it all i wanted to do was prove that we could do it again within a year we wrote new jersey and we're back on
on the road and then that album yielded another five top ten singles and so we did prove it again but we were burned out we were dead men walking by the end of that tour i want to get straight into a song like bad medicine which to me is just a blues song that you turned into a modern 80s stadium filling radio smash i can still picture it because on this album we were
in tico's garage uh which is hysterical because we're still being a garage band in our fourth album it had great high energy and it is what it is it's just a it's a big old bon jovi chorus why at the back end of the chorus did you hold that chord as a sort of back end chorus reprise almost weirdest arrangement decision ever but ultimately kind of is at the core of the
success of that song i think otherwise it could have been considered a little too standard what what i believe that we we thought was the way you would build a song like that live as you you'd hold on a certain chord and then come back in you certainly wouldn't think like that today when everybody's talking about a three-minute edit for a song all they want is you know the chorus and get it
over with but we were thinking about how are we going to play it live you don't even have to be a fan of bon jovi but what you have to 100 acknowledge aside from the fact that there's a live band when they're near second to none in their peer group that they sure know how to open a song you've always come in with the big opener where were you when you wrote always how
did that song come to live its life it's the only non-married song you've ever had a hit with it doesn't have a partner it's it's a single song on the greatest test i i wrote always for a film i was given a script called romeo's bleeding and so i wrote that song and the song was on a dat on a shelf in my basement studio and an anr guy by the name of john kalodner
came as we were writing songs uh for the these days record and he says if he got anything else and i was going through all these dots of songs and he heard always and he said that song's a smash you know and i said really okay if you think so we recorded that in my first studio in new jersey and uh and yeah lord knows always was a monster hit for us where does it hold
its place in your setlist these days when we when we do play that song which isn't often did you say when you do play it which isn't often yeah not every night no no because if you think about i'll be there for you was a number one song better roses was a monster always john it's always we could do this this bit here this bit that bit where you go double time at the oh
oh my god i'm going to ask you where were you when you had the inspiration to do this bit right here here it is thank you very much i'm proud of the song yeah i'm happy to have written it well obviously not because you might play it every night what's wrong with you you're out of your mind are we going to find ourselves right now in a song called it's my life
and this is just an out of control moment where i feel like you really stepped into your 3.0 on this one this was kind of like okay we know bon jovi have their place in the hall of fame but they're not done and by no means done how important is this song and the overall jigsaw puzzle of bon jovi it's a big deal i mean 20 years ago uh it would have been a perfect time for
the industry to say goodbye to a band you know at that time you're 16 years into it and they can say you've had your time god bless you move on when i said like frankie said i did it my way yes it's about frank sinatra frank sinatra having just passed you know new jersey's most famous export and i had just been making a lot of movies and in that case i'd come home
from making u571 matthew mcconaughey and harvey keitel and and came back to america i came back and said i'm going to make movies when i want records when i feel like it and i'm going to do it my way and i fought hard for that lyric because i remember richie saying who's frankie and why does anyone care and i said it's frank sinatra [Laughter] and it's and it's me you know i said this is who i
you know this is where i'm channeling it was exactly how i was feeling it's my life i'm making the decisions now and i'm going to make them the way i want to make them the beautiful thing about it is when you write a song from such a pure place my ego is taken out of it because everybody anybody says no that's me i'm taking control of my life you know it was like the second birth of
the band as the band has progressed throughout your journey and you went from being this band that was only focused on live but as you've moved forward i feel like your perspective has widened so much more you talk about a tour like this house is not for sale and what the song represents to the essentials and what it means to the great american songbook
i feel like you now want to leave a legacy behind that covers the entire spectrum you know and a lot of that had to do with just having been here so long when you get a record deal of 21 and now we're having a conversation and i'm 58 if i hadn't grown as a man what kind of man would i be but i have to tell the stories of where you're at now and with this house is not for sale
there was a there was a a cluster of people who may have said oh that's the end you know uh richie's quit the band he's walked out they should hang it up well that wouldn't be fair to tico or to dave or to me or to hugh why you know it was a sin that the guy walked out on us but why should i stop doing what i do and so the house is represented in the song it says this house
meaning the band it will not be compromised and it will go on and it's beat up and it looks tired but you know what it's still standing and that statement record for us was a big deal and it was a number one album and you know and and we were very proud to go out and work that record you know you said it took you some time to you know over the course of this year
as well as should and should do for the artistic spirit to absorb where we stand and where we sit as people these you know this year and you called the album 2020 so clearly you came to a conclusion it's a powerful title um you adopted it because you wanted it to be a stamp a timestamp on where we're at when did you realize that you had that you'd collected your thoughts enough to be
able to call the album 2020 and make it as definitive as that it was prematurely called 2020 in march of 2019 [Laughter] wow what i thought was the album was really just the first batch of songs and as events of the last year plus have unfolded i continued the writing process and that's when 2020 became not a bumper sticker but a moment in time where i am bearing witness
to history and the band are you know are making a statement record american reckoning is a statement in itself so while i make a statement record i am just bearing witness to history i'm making sure not to take sides because if i were to voice my opinions that would be such an assumption that i think that my opinion is better than someone who disagrees with my opinions i know
what my opinions are but that wasn't the soapbox that i was going to get up on i'm very clear in the messaging but what i'm saying is as witness to history i'm starting a conversation and i put myself out there writing songs like american reckoning and lower the flag but i find it to be the most fulfilling thing i could have done artistically at this time was to speak
up and speak out your music reflected the optimism and the insatiable thirst for experience that america put on posters all around the world and have bon jovi on it it was it represented what was possible it was reagan it was capitalism it was stadiums and arenas and money and fame and success when you think about the ride you've been on up to this point where you've made your most
overt observant album about what it is to be a human in america now how do you feel about your journey from the beginning to now blessed i'm absolutely blessed wouldn't have changed anything the good the bad and the indifferent because it's what got me here you know someone asked me today what would the 30 year old like to you know talk about with the 58 year old
and you know the the idea was is i would have hoped that i could have become the guy i am today when i was 30. i'm a little more beat up as a result but i've earned this gray hair and i'm proud of it i'm proud of the the punches i had to take because we're still here and and delivering on that promise that we were going to work hard and uh and so for me i wouldn't change a step