Seeking the Porpoise Of Life: Aquatic Secrets From . . .Bon Jovi

Seeking the Porpoise Of Life: Aquatic Secrets From . . .Bon Jovi

Toby Goldstein

It’s 1 p.m. Do you know where your Slurpee is?

Never mind that we are 3,000 miles distant from Jon Bon Jovi’s New Jersey roots. Even in Vancouver, B.C. (as in Canada)— a city that’s so clean and fresh-smelling it acts like a rest cure for urban blighted Statesiders—one can probe hard and unearth an "oh thank heaven, it’s 7-11.” And from the bowels of said 7-11 came the Bon Jovi lad’s breakfast drink. Forget about your Miami vices; Jon’s got a Slurpee habit that’s grabbed on tight and won't let go. Well, you didn’t think those cascades of hair got that way by themselves, did’ja?

For their stay in Vancouver, now six weeks down and counting, the band has lived in attractive, but certainly not lavish condo duplexes on a quiet, flower-filled residential street. As he commences the last in a string of midday interviews before racking up 10 or 12 hours at a nearby studio, Jon, along with keyboardist David Rushbaum and guitarist Richie Sambora, are in varying stages of alertness. Rushbaum sticks around long enough to offer a dim view of the local talent he’s watching on MuchMusic, Canada’s MTV clone, but brightens considerably when Howie "Fiscus" Mandel appears in a bizarre video of his—ahem—musical debut. "I Do The Watusi." Then it’s off to the doctor for David, to have an aching limb repaired before his day’s work begins.

Looking far more athletic than they’d like anyone to believe comes naturally, Bonj and Sambora cut fine figures in tank tops, sweatpants (Jon) and jeans (Richie). Quickly denying a rumor that they like getting up early to jog—"We don’t run nowhere"— Jon then points at a stack of barbells heaped near the television and reveals, with mock seriousness, "Those are just there for looks.” See, what’s happened is that Bon Jovi have discovered Vancouver’s own version of flesh bars, especially the female inhabitants thereof.

"And they’re not like the go-go places in Jersey,” he graciously explains, scanning that if we’re not talking Chippendale’s, sorry, guys, but count me out. “These girls”—a deep breath—“take everything off! And they’re ballet dancers and tap dancers, they just make a lot of money doing this. So at the end of the night when these places close they come here, and being that they all have such good muscle tone this is sort of like the gym for them, we put them in the Jolly Jumpers and...” And that’s why the new album’s called Slippery When Wet, right? Oh, never mind.

Despite such alluring extra-curricular activities which are best left to your imagination, Bon Jovi have been productive lads, here in the land of 16-hour sunshiny days, snow-tipped mountains only a half-hour drive from downtown beaches, and if that wasn’t enough, a snazzy world’s fair attracting half the known world. By late May, the group’s third LP was just a few days away from the mixing stage, as Jon happily contrasted work under local production talent Bruce Fairbairn with Lance Quinn, who produced their two previous efforts. And even though temporarily relocating to Vancouver became part of the deal, the band is now completely convinced that it’s been worth the trip (not to mention those go-go girls).

“We played Bruce a bunch of stuff, and he lasted a couple of days, and he liked it and liked us. Then he left, and we all started to think, maybe I didn’t shower today, right? So Bruce comes back and hangs out for a couple more days and he hears more demos and then he left. Okay, I’m really getting a complex, maybe he hates the songs, too. We found out that Bruce gets homesick, so we had to come to Canada ’cause he wouldn’t stay in New York, and here he is.” Obviously, a smart man. I haven’t been here for 24 hours yet and emigration already seems a wise career move.

“We like Bruce,” Jon continues, “and the reason being that he’s let us do what we do naturally. The problem with Lance that we really didn’t notice—because he was the producer and we trusted his word—was that we don’t have to double things on tracks. (Here) we laid basic tracks for 13 songs in four days, and the only reason it took four days is because we cut two of them again. Bruce understood where we were coming from. He saw live videotapes of us because he hadn’t got out to show, but we said, ‘Look, this is what we are live, this is what we are with our new songs, and here’s where we wanna go,’ and he said, ‘OK, fine.’ He's helped put that across, with a great engineer, Bob Rock. Fairbairn was in a band called Prism and Rock was the guitar player and key songwriter in the Payolas, so it’s the attitude that we’re working with guys from other bands as opposed to a guy who grew up on a computer instead of a Stratocaster. It’s not over yet, but so far, so good.”

If Bon Jovi’s first two albums merely dropped hints of the band’s self-identification as a performing unit, Jon sees Slippery When Wet as leaving no doubt of Bon Jovi’s chops as a live act. Although they’ve been relegated to opening act status until now—a fact that Jon is confident will change with the upcoming fall tour—Bon Jovi’s 450 dates over the past two years, playing with everyone from the Scorpions to Kiss to Ratt, has firmed the group’s awareness of what’s right for them. As Jon repeats often, this time, it's back to basics.

“There’s a lot of endings as opposed to fade-outs. The initial keyboards, drum, bass and rhythm guitar are basics, nothing is done over. Guitarwise, there were a couple of solos, but there’s no doubling. We just told Bruce, we want it to be just the way we would be live. I want to capture live on vinyl,” Jon states, imagining the concert situation, “instead of trying to do it the other way around.”

So how did the band psych themselves up to release the energy in a studio, which offers none of a live audience’s high energy feedback? “It’s just a question of not doing a lot of takes of a song, not going in there with, ‘well, in the fifth measure, the downbeat should be pushed.’ I’ve seen records go down like that and I’ve seen just the opposite when somebody goes in and wants to play all the parts himself. That’s wrong, that’s too off-thewall for me.

"Our idea is to go in and turn up the scratch vocals in the headphones. If I scream in your ear, maybe it’ll drive you. Jump around in the studio, let’s not just sit there with the headphones on. Like, Richie stayed in the control room this year so he could hear it on the big speakers. And I was out in the room with the band as opposed to the last two albums, being a booth way over to the side.”

According to the band, their biggest problem in recording Slippery When Wet is an enviable one, an overabundance of material. Dismayed at anything being clipped off the album, Jon is now toying with the idea of placing unused tunes on B-sides or limited edition overseas releases. He admits, with a mixture of frustration and glee, that his latest collaborations with Sambora produced an unexpected bounty. Unable to settle down for a minute in Jon’s place because the phone rings off the hook, after the last tour and a 10-day vacation, the duo settled into Richie’s basement.

“We played each other our songs and then sat down and started writing together. And that was it, just one after another. And for all the stuff we’d written on the road, although it wasn’t a lot, we said, we’ll refer to that on a day when there’s a dry spell. We never got to that. So there’s a notebook of six or seven songs, and I remember lyrical ideas that I thought were really good, and we never even touched them. Honest to God, we had knocked out about 35 tunes in about two months.”

Even before they got into the studio, the songs were already in demand for movie soundtracks. Two of Bon Jovi’s best known tunes, “Only Lonely” and “Runaway” are scheduled to appear in the much-heralded Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett film currently in production, and future projects have also requested to hear new material. Though unable, due to contractual bonds (“it’s like a chain around our necks,” Jon grimaces) to appear on actual soundtrack LPs of other labels, Bon Jovi feels this is the best thing that could have happened to him. “If there’s anything we want to do this year, it’s writing for other people,” he emphasizes.

In fact, in the month between the album’s completion and the startup of the foreign phase of their next tour, Jon and Richie plan to head back to the basement, write more tunes and do demos. Jon’s list of people he’d like to see record one of his songs is comprehensive and eclectic, ranging from Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander to Joe Cocker (for whom Richie once played backup). And perhaps one day, Jon wouldn’t mind co-writing with Little Steven or Holly Knight (co-author of “The Warrior”), although he’s quite content for now to be teamed up with Sambora.

Consequently, you won’t see Bon Jovi following the footsteps of Motley Crue or Twisted Sister and releasing a cover version to better the odds for a hit single from a hard rock band. “I wouldn’t want to do it,” Jon says flatly. “I would rather sell records because somebody said it was a good song that you wrote. Like, I’m the worst guy in the world when somebody says to me, ‘You just won this lead singer poll.’ How about best songwriter? Don’t bother me with this kind of thing because they’re just garbage as opposed to, here’s a Stratocaster, turn it up to 10.

“I like the way Elvis (Costello) did ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’ I thought that was pretty cool. But I’d rather write it.”

Bon Jovi’s desire that his writing be rated, rather than his singing attitude, is directly related to the fact that a lead singer is supposed to be a cute guy, and, let’s be real, people, Jon Bon Jovi is... cute. He’s got a big smile, dreamy eyes, even features, clear skin, a nice bod, and enough blond hair to put him seriously in the running if they ever recast Charlie’s Angels. These are facts that Jon ain’t gonna deny, but he also acknowledges that getting set up in a “teen idol” role can compromise a musician’s career, no matter how’much talent may lurk underneath the good looks. An admirer of Rick Springfield, Jon noted the singer/actor’s inability to completely establish his rock credibility. Therefore, he took steps from day one of Bon Jovi to prevent his being cast as just another pretty face, an unforgivable sin if you’re about to set out on the heavy metal circuit.

“Well, I don't want to go out and get hit by a car, but it’s just the same as the cover song question—I’d rather be known as a songwriter and a singer as opposed to a pinup. I really don’t think we’re that kind of band, and just by looking at our album covers, they’re very played down. The first one we had in sepia tone and the second was behind the broken mirror. It would be really easy for us to look like five women on the cover. I’d probably puke, so that’s not our style. That would bother me a lot.” Yet, at the same time, Bon Jovi have avoided taking the costumy, gimmicky, special-effect approach to performing followed by their management stablemates, Motley Crue. They are, you don’t easily forget, a bunch of guys who still call New Jersey home. Hey, wisecracks Jon, “We glow in the dark, we're proud of that. Chernobyl was a baby (compared to the legendary noxious gases that are belched out of New Jersey’s chemical corridor). I’m 48 years old, haw haw haw.”

Rockers who come from New Jersey learn patience as they wait for success to come a-knockin’ (wearing a gas mask) on their doors. The Bon Jovi boys are contemporaries of the Ratt pack, and a tad younger than the Crue, but they feel that their third time out will bring enough luck to catch them up. After all, Jon grew up haunting the boardwalk clubs around Asbury Park, sneaking underaged into joints in order to jam with Southside Johnny—a man who knows what the waiting game really means—and Bon Jovi is perfectly willing to enjoy the ride up to the peak.

“People think that they should headline, but I’m real glad we waited. If we didn’t wait I know how we would be, it would be like it was handed to us. ’Cause I’ve seen the other bands who have received that, and they did real good, and then their second album did half of what the first one did. Well, our second album did twice what the first one did, and it made us better for it. In Japan we’re doing two nights at Madison Square Garden, and those kind of bands, Motley and Ratt, do 3,000 seaters. It’s just in America where radio hasn’t been too good to us and we're not that kind of image-conscious band.

“Especially the first single—we thought ‘Only Lonely’ was right in the pocket. We liked it and thought radio would like it, and when they didn’t play it, we just sort of turned the other cheek and said, OK, forget about them. Let’s put out what we think works. So if a review said this record’s not as good as the first one, we just shrugged it off because it sold well. And now this year, no regard for radio. Here’s the songs that we wrote and I think you’ll like them. All that matters is going out and touring and making records that we’re going to be able to play when we got to Boise, Idaho and still be happy.

“People say, ‘What kind of band are you?’ Well, we’re not from Hollywood, and we’re not from New York. We’re from New Jersey, so it takes a little longer, but just like a fine wine...”

Sour grapes, perhaps? No way. Bon Jovi runs on Slurpee power and Slurpees are always sweet.