Bon Jovi: C/D

There was a French show on the television, and the guests of the fifty-odd-year-old French TV show host were Bob Geldof and Jon Bon Jovi. He'd ask them questions which a person to their side would translate, and they'd answer in English. Bon Jovi claimed, unconvincingly, that he'd always been a big Boomtown Rats fan when he was growing up in New Jersey. Geldof didn't say a whole lot.

Then Bon Jovi sang "I Don't Like Mondays," which seemed, in a small hotel room in Sweden at three in the morning, like proof positive that you can't kill surrealism.

What this says about their Classic or Dud status I don't know but this incident has been haunting me for years.

Andy is 100% OTM.

Oh yea...to answer the question Bon Jovi sucks and Mr. Jon's acting sucks as well.

Didn't most of the original heavy rock bands use keyboards?

Hmmm...that's all I can say.

as a listener i INFINITELY prefer gnr (or indeed limp bizkit), but then i h8 ballads (ie i guess i am not of the jel persuasion on this thread)

Incidentally Bon Jovi are dud for the unbearable whingeing nostalgia of "These Days" alone, though I still quite like "Livin' On A Prayer" in a silly way. Someone at my school used to have the piss taken relentlessly out of her for liking BJ and, even though the pisstakers were mostly Oasis fans, I took their side. And *that* says something!

I will grant you the spectacular Vegas-cheese ballad stupidity of the song, but isn't there something about the way Mr. Jon sings it that makes you want to grab his ball-hairs and set them on fire?

I reserve that reaction for "I'll Be There For You". That is one of the worst songs ever written.

bon jovi is also classic for helping break cinderella and skid row - 'slave to the grind' is one of my top 5 records of the late '80s/early '90s hard rock boom.

not true, he's the new love interest on 'ally mcbeal' ...

SILENCE, FOOL. ;-)

No, things are fine, thanks for asking. But music that fills me with hate will always provoke open loathing. ;-)

Nah, gotta disagree. Poison by a country mile here. "Don't want NOTHIN' but a GOOD TIME!"

That said, both bands must be fed to sea serpents at the earliest available opportunity.

has he had like an underrecognized influence on 00s-10s country or did he just steal shamelessly from some 70s/80s sound, cuz i'm listening to the new chris stapleton and like 25%-33% of the time i feel like i'm almost hearing 'wanted dead or alive' or 'blaze of glory'

They had a country #1 in the mid-00s.

New album coming soon, apparently.
First one without Richie Sambora, apparently.

For some reason I've found it hard to avoid this news today, and it's like "christ, this is going to suck", not to mention I'm surprised that Bon Jovi are still, well, making music in 2016.

the last one didn't have sambora either

as a listener i INFINITELY prefer gnr (or indeed limp bizkit), but then i h8 ballads (ie i guess i am not of the jel persuasion on this thread)

― mark s, Sunday, 10 February 2002 01:00 (14 years ago)

Finally something we agree on :)

well what's jon going to do, work in a body shop?

not to mention all the other people in bon jovi inc.

Marvelous songwriter imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNsgOhIcqNQ

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0sD9kuHi5g/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODLS8IAYs6g

my friends and i were huge into these guys in fifth grade, we had never seen anything like them, such hair, such passion

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/bon-jovi-2020-album-title-1203316056/

The vocal here is shockingly bad. Unless it's something exceptional due to an issue with a monitor or illness (comments suggest otherwise), dude definitely needs to take a break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcsRkmomFTI

I actually saw them in 2010 when my sister wanted to go and while his voice was definitely not what it used to be, he was in tune, sustained notes well, and adjusted the range and keys of songs to fit his aging voice. This is something else.

If it's just that his vocal range has narrowed, he wouldn't sound so bad if he didn't slur the words.

Total dud. I've always despised these guys. The worst of several worlds.

Then you may get some enjoyment from that video!

"Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi on a helicopter."

Nothing else this guy does is more important to him than money, I think he would tour until he is 90 if he can.

Worst living musician.

I can't imagine the money will keep flowing if he doesn't do something to fix whatever's going on there. xp

As long as thousands upon thousands of late Gen-Xers are still alive to drunkenly shout along with "Living On A Prayer" this dude will still be packing 'em in stadiums.

I was never remotely a fan, but jeez, singing like that to people who likely paid three figures for a ticket is flat-out insulting. I don’t know if it’s physical — some form of vocal cord strain? — but as with Phil Collins’s recent haplessness, I keep thinking of Daltrey: starting around 1973, his life has revolved around keeping his voice in shape. No, he doesn’t sound like he did in the ‘70s, but his range is largely intact, and he’s got more control and power than the much-younger Bon Jovi and the somewhat-younger Collins combined. Some musicians come to a point in their careers where they realize they can’t do this forever, and they better do what they can to sustain what abilities they have. It’s baffling that Jon either didn’t give a shit in the past or doesn’t give a shit now.

Also, Alfred otm.

He sucks because he stays average. Average is his lodestar.

That clip is pretty hard to listen to, but have you ever suffered through live footage of Vince Neil?

Vince sounds like Jackie Wilson compared to Bon Jovi. He slurs the shit out of everything, is constantly gasping for air, and has no vocal presence whatsoever…but at the very least (and I mean very least) works the crowd, and can at least hit the pitches.

got roped into a remarkably faithful Bon Jovi cover band show tonite. Slippery was big when I was in jr high and I’m not going to front and pretend I didn’t love it (and “Runaway”—the fuckin best). but holy hell these dudes had so many Hits. that 90s shit is like Christian Rock if it were like good

totally! ‘Bed of Roses’ is like washed-up Neil Diamond, i love all that shit so much. i get off the bus around 94 after “always” but the hit-train was pretty much non-stop until then

y’all,,, I’m going to need you lay your hands on me

whoa oh oh oh oh

Bon Jovi credited Alec John Such for bringing the band together. https://t.co/fKqiAoG0Xi

— NPR (@NPR) June 6, 2022

RIP to this soul patch king.

yeah RIP :(

The one thing I remember about him from the Rolling Stone Bon Jovi cover story is that he had some sort of plan to become successful selling chicken meat in a bold new format, which I guess he never pursued.

Wasn't sure which thread to post this on, but a decent piece on aging singers, and the various ways they deal with changes in (and damage to) their voice:

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/rock-singers-vocal-changes/

When I saw the Who back in May, I was pretty surprised to hear Daltrey hitting notes that he hadn't been able to hit in 1989 (though he had a stretch of crapulence, most apparent in 2006-2012 or so).

A classic fuckin' dud if ever there were one. They represented a lot of what was wrong with rock music in the 80s and 90s.

Two Bon Jovi threads reactivating at once made me think someone had died.

Such a dud. I grew up on the east coast, and remember when they broke out, and no joke, I heard them so much and they just gave me such a headache I stopped with the radio for a while. And that was me as, like, a 12-year old boy. Not for me.

Daltrey had throat/node surgery that has helped immensely. He also (maybe learned on ILX?) seems to be using the occasional scream sample to make sure he doesn't blow out his voice, but I saw him on a rare solo gig and he sounded pretty good with no noticeable sweetening. (For a time I'm convinced I was one of a very small handful of people that had seen Pete solo, and Roger solo, but never the Who!)

You know who else seems to be doing a lot better? Axl. The first I noticed it was when I saw a clip of him in AC/DC, which is really hard to sing/scream, and he sounded OK. I wouldn't say he sounds great these days, but he's no disaster. I saw some clips of the nostalgia fest at Wrigley Field last week, with Def Leppard, Poison, Motley Crue and Joan Jett, and everyone seemed ... fine. Even Vince Neil, who sounded bad but nowhere near as bad as I've heard him. Maybe because he wasn't singing half the time, lol.

Yeah, Daltrey's surgery made a massive difference -- he sounds FAR better on 2019's WHO than on 2006's Endless Wire. He does use samples live for the screams in "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Love Reign O'er Me," but he's doing...something during those samples. Some kind of scream, but not one that could stand on its own without the sample. Definitely no autotune live, though (but a little bit on WHO).

I saw Joan Jett in 2015 (opening for the Who) and she sounded perfect. Great band, her voice was as powerful as ever, and it was an all-killer/no-filler set.

Someone I'm curious about is Brian Johnson. I only saw AC/DC once, in 1996, but he (understandably) had a little trouble with the highest notes. I would hope his voice has held up somewhat (though obviously the members of AC/DC didn't think it has, since they replaced him).

The saddest one I ever saw was Lou Gramm, way back in 1999.

Stevie Nicks is another one whose voice is nowhere near as supple as it once was, though it's so distinctive it doesn't matter. Peter Gabriel and Sting both sounded pretty good the last I saw them. McCartney is finally, finally starting to fade a little. Mick Jagger, sounding OK! I once saw Crosby Stills and Nash in the very early '90s, iirc, and I remember them sounding pretty bad. A lot of these acts inevitably fade, but many of them are smart/rich enough to get the voice training they need to carry on.

I'm a little surprised AC/DC didn't tour this summer. Maybe they have a farewell tour planned, assuming any of them are up for it? It's telling that Brian, Cliff and Phil came off the sidelines for the last album. Is that the first AC/DC album they've never toured behind?

I think it is, but it came out in late 2020, and no one was touring (or even planning tours) then. If Phil's in the lineup, I'll go see them.

McCartney is apparently letting backing vocalists do some of the heavier lifting. And Jagger does sound pretty good, but then, live Jagger and studio Jagger were always two very different things. For one, live Jagger didn't always (or often) attempt the higher notes, and there are some songs -- "Rip This Joint" springs to mind -- that they played live in a lower key when the songs were new.

keeper of the flame here: maybe start a new thread about throat surgeries if you are all determined to talk about anyone ~but~ bon jovi lol

If you can't talk about bad singing in the Bon Jovi thread ...

;)

>:(

"Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi on a helicopter."

your hate only makes me stronger

Did I mention that at the early peak of the pandemic, somewhere around April 2020, when we were more or less sticking around home, I spent one Saturday morning on the front steps with one of my kids blasting "Bad Medicine"? That and "Disco Frog," from the Muppets disco record. Was it for the people out for a sad masked walk? Was it for the joggers or dog walkers? No, it was 100% for me.

lol

Keep: Keep the Faith (song not album), which made my mum a fan for a while.

Though the idea that it stunted their US career, much like Freedom! '90 ostensibly did for GM, suggests that going all Happy Mondays was unwelcome stateside for huge selling late 80s acts (we have to therefore conclude Mysterious Ways is more... Soup Dragons mayb)