Jon Bon Jovi's message to Scottish fans ahead of the band's Edinburgh gig this week
The legendary front man wants to ‘be among friends’ in Scotland now that he’s back to full health
Jon Bon Jovi has a message for Scotland ahead of the band’s gig at Murrayfield on Friday.
“JBJ here. Looking very much forward to coming back to Edinburgh, been far too long since 2011, but I'm coming back happy and healthy and looking forward to spending some time with you. Thank you very much.
“You know, I'm asked, how much longer do I want to do this? Who knows? But we're going to make the most of every day that we get up there and out there to do it. ”
The founder and front man of one of the most successful rock bands in history, with over 130 million albums sold and dozens of hits like Livin on a Prayer and You Give Love A Bad Name and live shows in more than 50 countries since its formation in 1983 is sitting in a recording studio in London. He’s taken the time to do an exclusive Scottish interview with The Scotsman to coincide with the announcement of the short tour that kicks off in New York in July and plays Edinburgh, Dublin and London.
Bon Jovi at 63 is tour-fit in black shirt and jeans, thick grey hair neatly styled and lightly-tanned face splitting into a smile that reveals a crescent of perfect white teeth.
Energetic is the word and Bon Jovi can’t wait to get on the road after his recovery from vocal surgery in 2022 took longer than he would have liked. Last year was a big year with the release of the Grammy Award-winning band’s 16th studio album, Forever, and the 2024 Hulu docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, and Bon Jovi is raring to go.
Ahead of visiting Scotland, he wants to thank his Scottish fans.
“Thank you for waiting. I heard there's great excitement, so it'll be fun to get there. It's going to be a very short tour and I just wanted to get my feet wet again so we're going to do a residency in New York then over here and play a couple of shows, because I feel finally in great health. And if I have that same joy, along with this good health, then we'll come back. “
Why did Bon Jovi choose Edinburgh as one of the dates on this tour, the first time they’ve played here since 2011?
“We haven't played there in too long, first and foremost. And it's a great town and I thought it would be a good place to go and spend a week before the first show,” he says, Edinburgh being the first date before Dublin then Wembley Stadium in London.
“I just wanted to go where I knew I could count on friends, shoulders to lean on, because it's been a while. But I'm excited. Usually I come in and do the show and sit in a hotel. But as it's the first show, I'll have the opportunity to acclimate. So it'll be fun.”
What’s on his Scottish bucket list so far?
“I'm sure it's gonna be the odd restaurant and… nothing out of the ordinary… I'm not going to start gardening a week before the tour.”
Which is when I recommend he walk up Arthur’s Seat, our extinct volcano…
“That sounds like the kind of thing I would do,” he says.
And there’s the seaside. He could hit Portobello prom (I may have exaggerated the similarities with New Jersey’s Asbury Park)...
“I like that too. See? You've given me two things to do already.”
There’s more. His hometown of Perth Amboy was founded by Scots in the 17th century.
“Is that true? Nice. I love that.”
So maybe he could find a tartan?
“I'm sure I will. Yeah, right, exactly what I want.”
It was while in recovery that Bon Jovi took inspiration from The Beatles’ With a Little Help from My Friends, a band favourite, and collaborated with various artists to re-record songs from Forever, re-releasing the album as Forever (Legendary Edition).
The star-studded ‘Friends’ singing rock anthems and ballads with Bon Jovi include Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Williams, Avril Lavigne, Jelly Roll, Joe Elliott (of Def Leppard), Lainey Wilson and Jason Isbell.
“We released Forever in June of 2024 to coincide with our 40th anniversary, the docuseries was coming out and I was going back on the road but I realised I really wasn't up to the task and it was going to be a shame for me, emotionally, to not let the record have its due.
“It had charted so high everywhere but now if you don't support it with ticket sales and/or television, the record's OVER the next day and I was disappointed by that.
“So because this was a joyous record I considered With A Little Help From My Friends and the first guy I asked was Robbie Williams as he was the appropriate guy for that song, We Made It Look Easy and he said, ‘absolutely, I'm here for you’. That made it easier to call number 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and then we wrote a new song to accompany the joy of the album, and here we are to re-release it to say I'm healthy and we want to do some shows.”
The new song is Red White and Jersey, celebrating Bon Jovi’s love of his home state New Jersey, the video for which also features the Nashville bridge where he helped a woman in crisis during filming for another album track.
“The truth is you would have done the same thing. I'm no superhero. I was just there when it was happening and fortunately for me she knew who I was, so she allowed me to get closer and eventually talk to her.”
Collaboration, says Bon Jovi, made for a better album.
“In a number of cases people took a great song and made it bettererer.” He laughs. “That's a new word I've made up, betterer.”
A kiddie word, but it’s true.
“I love it. Yeah. And if I have all the exuberance of youth again, hooray for me. Whether it was Lainey Wilson or The War and Treaty, they took a really good song and took it to church. I love that because this was a joyful album and meant to be spirited and looking back on a wonderful first 40 years saying thank you to so many that were there and here we are going forward.”
“So Lainey made I Wrote You a Song a better song, took the harmony and made it the melody, made it two characters singing to each other instead of the narrator singing to the girl. I just love what she did with it.”
It was the same with Bruce Springsteen, who supported Bon Jovi during his recovery after surgery, with the track Hollow Man.
“I first met him in 1978/9 and we got closer as the years went on. Now I consider him a very dear friend. This was the first time we've ever recorded together, although we've sung together many times live. He did a great job.
Does Bon Jovi think their similar working class backgrounds is key to their work ethic and long careers?
“I think that is part of it, from whence we came. And realising the dream then wanting to continue dreaming.”
“I couldn't have written Hollow Man 30 years ago. I didn't have the life experience. And I couldn't have written You Give Love a Bad Name now. When I was 25, that's who we were and the songs we were singing. And the connection those songs have with people, we still do them justice when we play them. You revisit. It's two different men, different points in the journey. Hollow Man told the story of who and what I am and where I was when I started writing the record.”
So Bon Jovi is the Hollow Man?
“Yeah. I was post surgery and literally sitting there looking to God saying, give me the theme, the song, the lyric, the tale to tell. I'm here, I'm an empty vessel. I'm here to be that conduit. ‘What do you sing when the song's been sung?’ ‘Who do you fight when your war is won?’ I am the Hollow Man, just fill me up with something Lord.
So he has a faith?
“Oh sure. It's only gotten bigger and deeper as I've gotten older. Yeah.”
Also close to his heart is the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation that he set up with his wife Dorothea Hurley in 2006, growing out of his philanthropic involvement with the Philadelphia Soul Arena Football team.
“One day I saw a homeless man sleeping on a grate outside of City Hall in Philadelphia and I said we focus on homelessness. Doesn't matter if you're black, white, young, old, rich, poor, this can affect you. Most people survive paycheck to paycheck. Take away a couple and they're like, uh-oh.
“A nun who is an expert in the field taught me everything I know about the cause. We realised we could build a house and now there's nearly a thousand units of affordable housing. Then the economic downturn of 2008 happened and [his wife] Dorothea conceptualised the Soul Kitchen, restaurants that are community kitchens, no prices on the menu, farm to table food, no government subsidies so no one tells us what to do.”
Using a pay-it-forward model, the Kitchens provide meals for those who can afford to pay for and those who can't volunteer time in exchange, with food pantries and medical help added on as the numbers expand.
“Now we're in the planning stages of a fifth Kitchen. Because, like Dorothea says, we're never going to go out of business, which is unfortunate, because the need is there.”
Does his charity work find its way into Bon Jovi’s songs?
“Tons. There was a song on 2020 called Do What You Can In The Face of COVID. Can’t sing, you work at Soul Kitchen, feeding people. On This House Is Not For Sale [2016] there’s a line off the manifesto of Soul Kitchen. ‘Come up to our house, we'll make you feel at home and we'll feed you, throw an arm around you and give you someone to talk to.’ So absolutely the songs are influenced by that.”
How is his voice after surgery, has it got a new sound to it?
“My hope was to make it sound like the old sound,” he says and laughs. “And I do have the range and consistency again. It works every day. Knock on wood. [He knocks on the coffee table]. I never anticipated the recovery being three and a half years though. Although I didn't lose faith, I had no idea how long it was going to take. I wished it had gotten better a lot sooner. But until it was right I wasn't going to go out live. What's the point?”
Was he ever scared that his voice wouldn’t come back?
“No. I didn't lose faith. It was just that progress was slow. It was never not steady. I was disappointed, but, you know, if it was meant for me not to sing on the big stage again, I was okay with that. I really was. My legacy sort of speaks for itself. The catalogue speaks for itself. And I have no desire, and no other motivation to go out, unless it's joy and in good health.”
But surely being on stage is a huge part of who he is, doesn’t he just love it?
“I go kicking and screaming,” he smiles. “You can see my nail marks in the driveway on every tour of my whole life. Until I get to that first hotel I'm bitching and moaning the whole way. When I get on the stage THEN I love it.
Does this reluctance span back to a childhood of ‘I don’t want to go to school’ or later ‘I don’t want to practise my guitar?’
He laughs. “I think all the above. That’s probably all applicable.”
Why does he think Bon Jovi have such longevity?
“Ultimately, it comes down to the songs. We keep making contemporary records that chart high so it's a catalogue of music. And people have memories with us. People came on it in the beginning and got off at the third album and others got on and took it to the 10th and kids are going to hear it on the 18th album for the first time."
There’s also the communal joy of singing along to anthemic songs in a big crowd.
“There's a resonance. Music creates a sound wave, people accepted that wave, and it moved them in a way that made them come back.
“Our job as writers was to tell a story applicable to who we were, then people gravitated to that in their time of life. That is the goal. If it comes from that pure place, it'll meet its audience.
What would Bon Jovi say has been his biggest challenge?
“Over 40 years you have peaks and valleys. Health and mental health and bandmates that leave, bandmates departed, trends and music that comes and goes. So it's been a journey, but I don't think I would change anything, even this terrible surgery, because you're gonna gain wisdom and knowledge in every experience, and it's just how you deal with it.
“I'm still youthful enough to be spry and go on stage and all that good stuff, but the sixties are the decade of having had enough life experience to have wisdom.
So what’s the most rock and roll thing he’s done?
“I've lived all the cliches. I'm an '80s survivor.” He laughs. “And still here to tell the tales. Everything has just been a big evolution, and that's what I love.
Bon Jovi has more than one house but where’s home?
“New Jersey with my wife. [High school sweetheart Dorothea to whom he’s been married for 36 years, with four grown up children and two grandchildren.] That's the place that's home, where people come back to. You have houses, but where's home? My license says New Jersey.”
After the 2026 tour what’s next for Bon Jovi after the tour? Will he write another album?
“I could. I will. I've written a couple of things. Just a collection of songs at this point. I need to live more life to see where I'm going, what I want to write about next.
“Forever was a joyous record, 2020 was topical because of COVID and addresses that and the George Floyd violence in Minnesota, guns in Orlando and soldiers with PTSD. This House Is Not For Sale, was a statement record. There wasn't a lot of joy in the ‘chip on our shoulder’ kind of reinvention in the post-Richie years, so I wanted joy on Forever. Where it’s going from here? Who knows.”
Bon Jovi’s new album Forever (Legendary Edition) is available now. Their Forever Tour will visit Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on 28 August, Dublin’s Croke Park on 30 August and London’s Wembley Stadium on 4, 6 and 9 September. Visit bonjovi.com.
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