Beat- 03.2001
It's about your place in the sun. For Jon
Bon Jovi it's always been his home in New Jersey. Not the ritziest or glitziest
of towns and a long way from the kind of gilded splendour he could enjoy in
Hollywood or any of America's alternative artificial meccas for the ridiculously
rich. New Jersey has its problems; street crime, a struggling bottom end of the
community. Money isn't always so easy to come by.
Face it, rock 'n' roll gunslingers like Bon Jovi are rich - beyond anybody's
wildest dreams. He's paid some in human sweat and a life full of roadmarks on
the global map but it's his life. And what a life. If you woke up one morning
and were told 'Okay, the deal is this. You're going to be a phenomenally
successful rock star. You're going to sell 92 million records worldwide, your
third album Slippery When Wet [that delivered the twin US No 1 anthems You Give
Love A Bad Name and Livin' On A Prayer] will sell more than 13 million copies in
the US alone and top the album charts for 15 weeks and the associated 130-date
Tour Without End will gross $US28.4 million' would you say 'No'?. Probably not;
not even if you knew that you'd have to wear really bad hair for at least five
of the 18 years that mark Bon Jovi's dominance of stadium rock.
Jon Bon Jovi is in Mexico wrapping up production of his latest film, John
Carpenter's Vampires: Los Muertos, in which he stars as a vampire hunter:
"It's sort of like a western in that instead of cowboys and indians it's
vampires and vampire hunters. It's alright. God-willing it'll be a good
movie," he says. "As an experience this one rates high on the list
though because everybody - performers, directors, producers, the crew - made an
energised concerted effort to make the best film that they could, particularly
with the budget they had to make it.
"U-571 [his last feature film] was an $US80 million movie, this is a $US10
million movie so you have to work harder to get the results and you don't have a
lot of the creature comforts you get on those big, big movies. That said, it's
still a lot of money."
And money is one of the reasons we're talking. Bon Jovi are playing just one
Australian show in Melbourne on March 24 to raise funds to help flood, drought
and bushfire victims in rural Australia. The 60,000 State Emergency Service
(SES) volunteers who help the victims of such disasters will receive half the
profits and the remainder will go to volunteer fire brigades.
It is the latest in a long line of projects the band and Bon Jovi himself have
done to help out communities of people in trouble. In New Jersey, he played at
one of three benefits in 1990 for eight-year-old Tishna Rollo, daughter of
producer/engineer, John Rollo, who was battling Wilms Tumor disease, and more
recently with Sambora played a Jon Bon Bovi & Friends (including Southside
Johnny and Bruce Springsteen) benefit for the family of slain Long Beach police
department sergeant Patrick King.
"You do what you can when you can," he says. "There's a number of
things we've been involved in worldwide. When there was an earthquake in Japan I
gave all the money from a stadium show to the earthquake fund. Now this
universal appeal for the flood relief - I get that. Having had experience of the
mudslides in California where they just devastate people's lives but still come
on a yearly basis and there's nothing many of these people can do. Your
insurance covers X, Y and Z but you need volunteers to help out in such
situations. And they and their organisations need financing.
"Back in New Jersey we have a similar situation. The volunteers are always
the last ones to get that truck that will help them get there in time. God
forbid that you would ever need them but you would wish if you did that they had
the best material, equipment, vehicles, whatever. And people demand that and
they have a right to know that those organisations are there, ready to help,
should a situation arise."
It's about your place in the sun - and having a sense of your community.
"You know, I've never lost that," Bon Jovi says. "I still live
there so I see what's going on. I was recently presented with a plaque by the
Food Bank in New Jersey for 10 years of giving them money and buying stuff as
people needed it. But I didn't look for the plaque - you don't do such things to
get recognition. I was more amazed that they would care to do such a thing. I
only accepted the plaque because we could sell a lot of tickets to this dinner
and that would fund the Food Bank for the next six months. To think that there
are hungry people in my town bothers me. As I've become older and, maybe, more
politically motivated I've realised that the politics of politics is keeping me
out of it so I look to the social aspects where I can do the most good and be
more of a citizen."
It's something that comes with age and a changing view of your individual world;
the one you are wrapped in. When you see it for what it really is your values
and responsibilities do change.
"Most certainly, they do," he says. " As I've travelled the world
I've been fortunate enough to receive the support of so many people. When I've
come to Australia your people have given me a lot so to come there and do this
show is no big deal. The world is one big stopover to me. It's not like people
in New Jersey don't think about tragedies in other places in the world because
they don't see them. I, fortunately, do, so the opportunity to give back to
those people is easy for me.
"We are a global community these days. Generations to come will embrace
that more and more. When you or I grew up we maybe didn't think about places as
far away as New Jersey is from Australia. But kids today have access to the Net
or they've seen the Olympics in Australia - they understand where that place is
and it isn't far away, really. Globalisation will become second nature as a
concept in the very short-term future."
Even the success of Crush doesn't seem so strange to Bon Jovi, simply because he
never doubted it. He laughs when told some people thought the album would flop
because the band were the last survivors of a species thought to be nearing
extinction - the stadium rocker.
"I was naive enough not to think that five years away from the marketplace
should be measured in dog years not human years - and that's like being away 35
years. I just thought this is my 10th album, you know what it is; you can like
it or you can dislike it but you know what it was.
"It was a little scary writing a song such as Just Older because
rock'n'roll is supposed to appeal to the young and be done by the young and be
of the eternally young. I just said 'Look, I'm not old, just older. Wiser,
better, whatever you want to call it and a lot of people have related to those
lyrics. That's great. I don't want to behave like I'm an 18-year-old either but
you gain responsibility as you go through life and you want to accept that
responsibility. I don't try to compete with the Backstreet Boys or other such
bands. There's no need to."