discography - All Bon Jovi

Radio Saved My Life Tonight I wrote on the piano And it was at a very difficult time, as are several songs that are gonna come out here for the first time on this box, where I was looking inward and questioning what it was that was going to motivate me to make another record. It wasn't a question of making another record with the band or not, it was just to make another record. The innocence of my youth was now gone. It was after New Jersey when the burn out settled in - and again, in retrospect, it wasn't anyone's fault. It was the power-that-be doing what they do to help ensure that you're gonna be in the marketplace. You know, touring and recording and touring and working and doing interviews and touring and more touring - I was really burned out. So I wrote the Young GUns record and I look back on that record and I realize that Billy The Kid was the subject matter but it was my spirit in that body. With songs like Radio Saves My Life Tonight I realized the purity of writing a song - being moved when you heard a song on the radio. And you realize that a song marks memories for people and breakup songs and makeup songs - you know, "where was I at this time and place when I heard it for the first time?" And so now, now that it's 20 years on - this book is still being written but I realize that there's a lot of songs that have influenced people who have grown up and gone on to do things that I would have never imagined those songs would have influenced. people that have grown up with us and continue - now a next generation - to grow up with us.

TAKING IT BACK / STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN

I think once we got the idea that what would make the band stronger as a unit was to rely on what it was that got us into this in first place, which was our love of music and our friendship. And in 92, as we were about to begin the recording of Keep The Faith, music had changed, it was a new landscape in music - all our peers, everything that record companies were signing that were similar in style to us was now being put out to pasture by movement in Seattle and the commercial birth of rap music. We knew it was gonna be us against the machine the same way it was us against the world seven, eight years prior just before the recording of our first record. With Keep The Faith, we knew that we had to take control of our own destiny and songs like Starting All Over Again and Taking It Back were sung from the point of view of that chip's back on my shoulder and I'm ready to launch into phase two of the band's career.

SOMEDAY I'LL BE SATURDAY NIGHT(DEMO)

Whenever we write a song, 95% of every song we've ever written has been written on two acoustic guitars or sitting at the piano... it's very, very rare that we've ever gone into a room with a drum machine or with a drummer and pounded something out, riffing from the get-go. And our songwriting process is based on the song title... and then chords come because of that... and then the lyrics are filled in. But we write them right then and there. So if you're playing on a guitar and it's an interesting title like Someday I'll Be Saturday Night, it's not as in-your-face and obvious a title as You Give Love A Bad Name - oh, this is fun, this is how it should go and you bang through it. With Saturday Night, we knew that there was a hidden optimism in it but there was a dark shadow hanging over it. Richie, myself and Desmond (Child) wrote that on a vacation in Mystique, an island in the Caribbean and we worked very hard on it but when it was done, we thought it was a little too melancholy. So we went back in and with the band, started getting behind what we were doing musically - not so much lyrically because we knew the chorus was there - so by strumming, as opposed to just writing and playing those music chords, it took on another life and we tweaked the lyrics and rewrote the lyric and brought it up to the way you know it from the Cross Road record.

MISS FOURTH OF JULY

Fourth of July I wrote in Malibu. I used to have a house in Malibu, California and I stuck a piano in one of the bedrooms and I'd close the door. And in what I called the Grey Period in my life - 91, 92 - post Young Guns. I didn't know what the future held. I was really concerned that the innocence that I had when I picked up a guitar as a teenager was gone, and gone forever. Suddenly you became this head of a corporation, and a boss and a tool for the machine to go on. You more often than not would burn yourself out to please somebody... I sat at the piano at that whole period and wrote songs like this and Bed of Roses... There's a lot of my hurt in that innocence that was lost... "I used to live/I've learned to cry." We were listening as a band for the first time to the whole box and Richie said, "You know this is my favorite that we never did." And I heard it and I thought, you know, I really like it, too. It sorta hurts to hear it because I know what the lyric means. But I remember thinking, "boy it'd be great to hear Don Henley sing this!" - it'd be just perfect. So, you know I really do like the song. It's just, it hurts too much sometimes.

OPEN ALL NIGHT / THESE ARMS ARE OPEN ALL NIGHT

LOVE that title! Loved it so much - you know, wanted to use it over and over again 'til we got it right. The reason we put them on here, even after having released the song on Bounce, was we wanted to show you that vulnerability. I wanted to show you why you take a title and you beat the heck out of it until it's something that you wanted to share. But I like to show you, for all you aspiring songwriters, it's OK - try something... try it again... try it again... until you get it right.

LAST MAN STANDING

Last Man Standing is an important song that'll be included on the new album. The song was influenced by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. And Johnny Cash had just passed away and I thought how many of the greats are still around, and still viable, and still doing it? And is this breed of the originals gonna be lost forever? And are we gonna just be limited to what these radio stations that have playlists of twenty songs are giving us or forcefeeding us and the video channels are forcefeeding us and is the next Dylan gonna ever be able to come along? And so in my mind's eye I had this picture of a carnival huckster sitting outside the tent singing. "Come see a living, breathing spectacle only seen right here..." and taking you into the tent so if you came in you'd see this guy covered in spider webs and they'd wind him up and one more time he'd really play and really sing and really write you a song.

GARAGELAND

Richie and I wrote Garageland in New York City in my apartment. We were writing for Crush. We'd talk about where we came from and where we were going to. And it was an early song written for Crush but because the subject matter had been written before in a number of songs over the years, it didn't make it. But when I hear it now, I go, "gee, this could have made it". It really was just about us and where we came from. but it was more important with Crush to talk about where we were going to. A lot of the garage bands are coming back which is exciting to me. When I hear bands that are really singing and playing and are making music that they want to sing and are reminiscent of the influences that I had as a kid, I get it. If you'd asked me two years ago what was my advice, I'd say sing a song, learn an instrument, write about what you know - don't worry about how many sit-ups can you do and how flat your belly is. The video era, as The Buggles once said, killed the radio star - they killed the imagination. But I think that there's a return to it again which is exciting to me because there's an opportunity for a band to grow as a band. Go out there on the road and become one - where each of the members of the band is as important as the next. And that's what Garageland was about. Longevity is virtually impossible these days. For a band to have three records before they have any real success the way we did? But I do believe that there's an opportunity that some of these bands are gonna shine.

ONLY IN MY DREAMS (Tico on Vocals)

One of those kinda 6/8 feels I write a lot - at least one per record, even if they don't make it. I wrote this one and when we went in to do it, I wanted Tico to sing it. His natural voice is Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong. He's a stylist. I fought hard in the mixing of the box set to have Tico sing this song because I think he means it from his belly. He took my words - and it's always great to hear your words interpreted by someone else, and in this case, it was T. T always says, "You know I love you - I've been staring at your ass for twenty years." Tico pulled this one off. People hear it and they go, "Who is that?!" That's really Tico. That's as good as he sings.

SYMPATHY

Sympathy was an outtake from Keep THe Faith and when we went to Vancouver, on the wall of the studio was a big projector screen. On a constant loop, must have been 8 or 10 feet high, 8 or 10 feet long, was a concert tape of Rolling Stones. And just watching them, even with sound off, you couldn't help but get the Jagger Swagger and Keith doing his thing so we sat down and knocked this one out, I think as an homage to what that film was on the wall.

Four Letter Word is about spousal abuse. I wrote this, first alone - and so the demo version of it is that. The second version, with horns and the girls and the lyric changes, was co-written with Dave and Richie. I liked the idea that it had and R& B feel to it. I think that a lot of that had to do with my spending time with Southside Johnny and going on the road with him and playing guitar for a few dates... and just getting back to the pure fun of what it was I liked about music. Ten years prior to that, why I wanted to grow up and be Southside Johnny. And I wrote this originally, even though it was in my mind that I could see John signing it, and then we put it away and dug it up again as a band. And we re-worked it, re-recorded, tried to make it fit but it's a little too R&B. And it was a little too important to us to have our own identifiable sound. Even though it had an interesting lyric - was more than a boy/girl song - it deal more with issues, social issues and what was going on in the world.

This is the song that you've all wanted me to play live... people ask me why didn't this make Slippery? Well, this was the same era that I didn't think that Livin' On A Prayer was a hit. I never claimed to a good A&R guy. But Edge Of A Broken Heart was an outtake of Slippery. It ended up on a soundtrack for a little movie called Disorderlies and it starred a very early rap band called The Fat Boys. i know you guys like it so we found the masters and we put it on this box just for you. It was absolutely appropriate for the Slippery record - coulda, shoulda, woulda been on Slippery had cooler minds prevailed. Here's my formal apology.

Outlaws of Love. I don't remember writing this song! I don't remember it at all! This and We Rule The Night and some of these that had dust on top of their dust...you know, I'm amazed and amused that our vaults are that deep and that we forget. Our vaults have been very deep for a long time. I've been asked time and time again, why don't you ever use these songs on the next album, the next album, the next album...well, it's because we write enough and we're capable of writing a lot of songs for any given project. With songs like We Rule The Night, Outlaws of Love and these earlier things, we forgot'em! We didn't even know they existed. And that's some of the fun is that we're finding gems that we didn't know that we had. you know, objectively speaking, I didn't necessarily want to include them even on this - it doesn't mean I like them! But they are a part of our history and for what they were and at the time that they were written, we obviously liked them enough to record them. But it's a part of that growing period and who we were, where we were going that got us to where we are today. So Outlaws I think was a precursor to things like Wanted Dead or Alive and Stick To Your Guns when we had that infatuation with the cowboy aspect of, you know, riding into a town, stealing the money, meeting the girls, drinking the booze and leaving - all the things I would say in my youth that were funny and fun. But really, you did feel a bit like a cowboy or a gypsy or a circus act - probably a little of all the above. Just look at some of the pictures of us in the 80's - it really was a circus act. now I can look back on them and say 'that was a part of my youth' - it's OK. It's really good to show that. It's like baby pictures. Those are mine.

"THE MOVIE TRACKS"
GOOD GUYS DON'T ALWAYS WEAR WHITE / REAL LIFE / GOTTA HAVE A REASON / THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY / ALWAYS

Unbeknownst to you folks, Gotta Have A Reason is a song that we wrote with Michael Kamen, who is a great orchestrator. He did musical scores. He asked us to write a song for The Three Musketeers. And we were on the road and Danny Kortchar, who co-produced Young Guns, did a track of it without the band 'cause we were in the Far East somewhere. I didn't like the way it turned out so we scrapped it - we pulled it from the movie. Remember, Always was in fact writeen for Romeo Is Bleeding. Didn't like it so we pulled it; put it on the shelf. That one was one of the few, if only, times I pulled song back and it was our biggest single ever. Real Life was recorded in a day, maybe two, maybe two in New York City. Ir was the last time we worked with Bruce Fairbairn before he passed away. I was going off to do U-571 and we were amassing songs for what was to become Crush. So at the time i had given Bruce the thirty tracks that i had written and Richie gave him the songs he had written and we had picked this one for ???? that starred Matthew McConaughey and I was just off to Italy to go and be in a film with Matthew... and that was it. And when we came back, the day I came back, I got the news that Bruce had passed away. And we had to find ourselves another producer and start from scratch. So this was the last chance that we ever had to work with Bruce who obviously changed our lives, made our lives, producing Slippery When Wet and New Jersey. And he's still sorely missed in the camp. He was a great man, a great producer. Just wonderful producer. Good Guys Don't Always Wear White was for a movie called The Cowboy Way. Wayne Isham shot the video - I remember that. And Andy Johns produced it. They wanted something loud and fast and upbeat. i like the lyrical content of this but we really went after a WHO kind of a musical approach to it. Tico playing his best Keith Moon all over the kit. A lot of energy - you know, fun song, fun song. I remember more about the recording the video than I did of the song until I heard it for the box. I like the lyrical content. There's another movie song caled The One That Got Away that was a Kevin Costner movie and he did it with Robin Wright Penn. Message In A Bottle. And we wrote a song for it and it didn't get picked up. They didn't take it but it was called The One That Got Away. But oftentimes, we'll write a song for a film. I think because of experience I had with Young Guns, I find it quite easy to do, fun to do. And if you're involved at the right stage of a film, it really can be a great asset to a film to have a good song in it. It really takes a scene in a movie to the next level.

The Fire Inside fits along the lines of Taking It Back and Starting All Over Again. I wrote this one and we kept the original, original, original demo. Just an acoustic guitar and vocal. It's something that coulda, shoulda, woulda made the record - that was probably meant for Keep The Faith as well. That was kind of that bitterness that I had towards the music business, because I realized it was called the music business, after the New Jersey record, around the time of Young Guns, but how it had changed my life so but not necessarily always for the better. I was just tired of being angry and needed to move on so this wasn't included. But I like the lyric.

Richie and I wrote it after Kurt Cobain died. I admired the guy a lot. I thought that he had a great voice, he had a unique sound. He really had something to say lyricaly and it seemed he was really troubled by the music business. But unlike us, where we were able to get help and figure it out, unfortunately Kurt Cobain obviously didn't have smeone to help him through the hard part. Oftentimes you see a band implode. A few rare times you see a band get over that hump and go on and really have any success. When he died, what bothered me the most is that he'd left a daughter who was the same age as my own and I thought my god, I'm so grateful that we were able to get help and to talk to somebody and figure out what it was that was bothering us about the music business. I wanted that to be given to Kurt Cobain and to his wife and daughter. So we wrote it in the form of a song but it's a letter to her, to his little daughter, Frances, that said "I'm sorry you didn't get to know your dad - I bet he's sorry he didn't got to know you too." We just wanted to tell you it's lonely at the top. It's not everything everyone thinks it is.

IF I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOUR LOVE (Richie on vocals)
MEMPHIS LIVES IN ME (David on vocals)

What we wanted to do with this was also share a taste of what Richie's obvious influences to me and the band are with a song that didn't make one of his solo records. it's just him emoting the way he does. He moves me everytime I hear him play and sing like this. It's great song but I feel that way about everything on his solo records. I think he did a great job with it and we wanted to include it so you guys don't forget he made a couple of great solo records. And when we talk about about Dave and his delving into musical theatre, this is a song from a play that Dave wrote the music for. It's called Memphis. This is a song from that play that he sings. And when I heard him singing it I thought this is great Elton John song that Elton never wrote. So we wanted Dave to include a song on the record too. So that you get a feel for what it is that Dave does, what it is that Richie does when we're not working. What it is that Tico does when he sings a song. We wanted you to get a little feel for each of us individually and why collectivily it works. So we included a couple of those solo tracks for your listening pleasure...

Flesh & Bone is one of those songs that me, Dave and Richie wrote. We also wrote things like Ordinary People together and a couple of others. But they weren't right for where we were going with These Days. I remember that it wasn't enough of our sound and where we were going - and it was, perhaps, a little too dark lyrically, even for These Days. And stylistically, it just wasn't us. And I think the one thing we try to do as artistsin our writing is to not do something that's someone else's. We have to write songs that are just ours. Flesh & Bone and Ordinary People were better exercises than they were contenders for the record. So you still see the underlying threads of optimism in Ordinary People, for instance, but it sounded too much like what was on the radio. So, best left shared here, now.