The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday, February 7, 2002
Thanks Mary Beth Jahn for the transcript!
JL: Alright, my next guest, big-time rock
star and also been in terrific movies like U-571, currently catch him Monday
nights on Ally McBeal, please welcome Jon Bon Jovi!
<crowd cheers, Jon walks onto the stage, raises his arms to the crowd, Jay
Leno walks over and they shake hands>
JB: (says into Jay’s ear as they’re shaking hands) You were fearless!
<Jay goes back behind his desk, Jon walks to the first chair next to the desk
and brushes it off>
JL: Hey, you want... (offers Jon a blue paper that apparently has some kind of
animal sprinklings or something on it)
JB: (wrinkles nose and waves Jay off) No! (laughs)
JL: How you been, buddy?
JB: Good! You’re psycho... rubbing heads with that cat (referring to the lynx
the exotic animal trainer had on in the segment before Jon)! (fingers the lapel
of his leather jacket) This is one of your last guests!
JL: Really? There you go!
JB: I’m from Jersey, I’m not afraid of any snake. <Jay laughs> You
know, that was wacked, man!
JL: You should have come out here when the animals were here!
JB: I took care of them afterwards! <crowd laughs> That’s the poop!
JL: Got bit in the finger...
JB: I saw that! Bush babies bite, I’m telling you, those bupkins (???) are
bad, you got to be careful!
JL: Bush babies bite, always remember that. How you been, everything good?
JB: I’m good, I’m really good!
JL: Still riding, still doing the bike thing?
JB: Well, I gotta say, I’m gonna get outed here on national television, cause
my bike is in semi-retirement.
JL: Oh come on, what are you, an old married man, come on!
JB: Any married man...
JL: What, you got a station wagon, a minivan?
JB: No, my bike, I loaned it to Harley, which I know you’re a big Harley
aficionado, but it’s going on tour with Elvis’ bike <crowd cheers>.
It’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a year, so I put it in the Hall and
Harley’s taking it out for their hundredth anniversary. So I’m doing
without, you know.
JL: So you walk?
JB: No, I just walk around the house going vroom, vroom, vroom! <makes
motorcycle-revving motions with his hands and laughs>
JL: Now, did you ever get tickets, were you like a crazy man on a bike or what?
JB: Not so much that I was getting tickets, you get stopped a lot and you take
off the helmet and they go “oh, that rock star guy.” I could get away with
murder pretty much in Jersey.
JL: Yeah? Hey, you could do it in LA!
JB: Well, LA, I don’t know, there’s a lot more celebrities there.
JL: Did you ride as a kid?
JB: Yeah, I’ve been riding since I was a little kid, I mean, I got my first
bike when I was 13, I had to earn it, up at my grandfather’s house, riding it
around the house and learned to ride then, and we used to live in Sayreville,
New Jersey, it was...<crowd cheers>
JB:...oh yeah, all of you all are from Sayreville, right? <crowd laughs>
But it was a great place to grow up. It was clay pits, so we learned motocross
back there, in the dirt. Now it’s, of course, you know neighborhoods.
JL: Right. Did you ever take any trips, like, cross-country?
JB: Couple times, those are my Kerouac years. You know, those are the best
experience – anyone who ever rode a bike, get on it and go cross-country, go
find, in search of Route 66. It was life, you know. But whoever’s leading the
pack decides where you pull in, my friend Obie, who you’ve met here before,
we’re riding in and he sees the Flintstones Museum, and he goes, “we’re
going there!” So, you know, I’ve got pictures of me like in Barney
Rubble’s car going (holds right hand up and waves and gives a thumb-up sign).
<crowd laughs> Cool!
JL: Where is that, Arizona? Because that’s the site of the actual Flintstones
excavations, you know, over 5,000 years ago.
JB: Yeah, it’s hard now to get the cast out there, you know, they don’t want
to work there anymore. <laughs> But, um, going cross country, you find all
things that I don’t get to see. You know, we’re flying to big cities,
playing arenas, stadiums, whatever, but you don’t get out to the Flintstones
Museum.
JL: Yeah, how often though, you know, the caverns, the big guy with the big
bowling ball, I mean, all that.
JB: Right, right, right, right, right. I’ve been there, I’ve been there,
see, you’ve been there, too.
JL: So now you’re doing the acting thing, now. Is it more fun than rock and
roll? It doesn’t seem like it would be.
JB: Well, first of all, it’s like this game of golf, which I also am not
really fond of. You go there, and people play golf when it’s still dark out.
Why do they do that? You know, like they show up and they want to be there at
dawn to hit the ball off the tee and chase it. I don’t need any more stress in
my life! Same thing with acting – they wake me up at 5 o’clock in the
morning! If this was the band, we’d be going to bed, now I got to get up at 5!
JL: Right, right, yeah, yeah!
JB: You show up, you shoot a scene, before I’m, the first scene is already
done already and then the sun comes up, I’m like what the hell, it’s like a
bunch of vampires, you know? <crowd laughs> And Calista, like, I think she
lives there, I think it’s just the Truman Show for her because she just goes
to work every day all day, twelve hours a day and she keeps saying “bye” and
“hi” and she’s always there! I show up, I get to leave, and this poor
kid...
JL: But it’s a lot of work, it’s not like, with music you play for a couple
hours and then, whee! trash the hotel. <crowd laughs>
JL: You can’trash your trailer, you have to come back to it tomorrow.
JB: That’s true, you know, it’s a lot of work. They work very, very hard
there on this TV stuff. But, I’ve been pretty fearless, you know, you go from
music to movies, movies to television, I mean, I had no desire to do TV
whatsoever – when David Kelley gives you a call, it’s like the Godfather
calling, you know, so you jump at the chance...
JL: Right.
JB:... I walk into the set the first day after being asked to do this role for a
while, and I’m thinking, you know, this is all right, David Kelley’s a
pretty hot, cool guy, he’s got three TV shows, I hear he’s married to
Michelle Pfeiffer, I’m expecting I’m going to walk on the set, there’s
David Kelley, big hug, kiss, you know, come on over, meet my wife, kind of
thing, I’m like all excited, I want to talk about Grease 2. No. I get on the
set, you hear this voice from above, this <pulls his fist to his mouth to
simulate a loudspeaker> “This is David Kelley, I created you.” And you
go, yeah, you’re God. And so you start doing your schtick, but these people
are wacky. All these people have been together for five years, they’re eight
episodes in before I even show up, it was a little intimidating.
JL: You’re the new guy.
JB: Yeah, you know, that dancing baby thing, it’s real, he’s got his own
dressing room, he’s a midget! <crowd laughs>
JL: Now the character you play, you play what, is it a contractor?
JB: Yeah, but, you know what I’m turning into? You know that, you remember
that character Schneider, with Bonnie...
JL: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
JB:... I’m just always there but I don’t do anything, you know! They handed
me a wrench, I didn’t know if it was a wrench or a plier, I’m under the sink
fixing the sink, the other day I said there’s no chance in hell I’d be ever
fixing the sink!
JL: Now, are you a mechanical guy at all?
JB: No... if the light bulb’s...
JL: You’re from Jersey, you’re a Jersey guy, come on, Jersey guys can fix
stuff!
JB: I’m a rock and roll star, you know! <Jon laughs> If the lightbulb
goes dead, I throw out the light! You know!
JL: Really?
JB: Completely useless! I have more people that work at my house than AT&T.
JL: Really?
JB: Oh, people here all the time!
JL: Now, I would have guessed Jersey guy, roll up the sleeves, yo, put some new
JB: I play a great one on TV, but...
JL: Yeah, but no, don’t fix anything at all?
JB: No! I wouldn’t know how to work, you know, anything. I could make coffee
in the morning and...
JL: Was your dad handy?
JB: No. <crowd laughs>
JL: No? So, this is, so the whole family is just pretty much useless, I guess.
JB: Pretty much.
JL: Yeah, yeah, thank God you can sing.
JB: I was telling, here’s a good story. I was going out, I went last weekend
to, you know the Cub Scouts? The Cub Scout... do you have any sons? You have any
sons?
JL: No, I don’t have any sons, but I know the Cub Scouts.
JB: They have a Pinewood Derby. It’s a six-inch block of wood.
JL: Sure, I know that.
JB: A big deal.
JL: I was a Cub Scout.
JB: So was I. Thirty-five years ago, thirty-four years ago, I was a Cub Scout,
and they give a block of wood and they say “make a car out of this piece of
wood.” Well, I am haunting my father to this day because he didn’t help me
make this car, so now it’s my son’s turn. Well, I’ll be damned if I’m
not going to go and you know, fly my plane all the way back to Jersey, make this
car, I’m there, you know, I’m hanging with my son, we built the coolest car
ever. But I actually helped. My son did more than I did and he’s six, but, you
know... <crowd laughs> ... we had a hell of a time and I got to say I did
something handy and we’re taking a picture together and you know, he’s got
his arm around his dad, and I’ve got my two hands up showing my wife I
didn’t cut myself, look, you know, it’s like I still got all my fingers. So
that’s about as handy as I’m able to get.
JL: Do you still have your car?
JB: Oh, yeah, because of you I bought a Viper.
JL: No, no, but I mean, your small one, the one that you made?
JB: Mine? No, no, no, no, mine’s still, I showed up at the race, the paint was
wet, my hands were blue, I’m giving my father hell over this Christmas about
it.
JL: See, my brother was a carpenter, he could make his car look like a real car
that was actually, you know, if you put it on a table, you’d think, oh, that
was a real car. Mine, three of the wheels were on the same side, you know, you
know what I’m saying, it’s not good, I wasn’t very handy.
JB: That was as handy as I’ve ever been.
JL: So you bought the Viper? I told you you’d like it.
JB: I did, I love that car, lookit, we sound like a commercial – can we get
free Vipers, anyone? <Jon, Jay, crowd laughs>
JL: But you gotta get tickets in that. Have you been stopped out here with that
one?
JB: No, but I do like driving around LA with like the plates from home and
driving into the lot and all, I really dig that car. It’s got a great stereo,
it’s all about the stereo, air conditioning and heating and it hasn’t broken
down out here.
JL: A rock star with out-of-state plates! You won’t get in trouble!
JB: No, no! <laughs>
JL: Well, thanks, you did some great stuff there with 9/11, I know you didn’t
want to admit it, but it was great because I know where you live in Jersey,
there were an awful lot of people there that were affected, firemen and all.
JB: I was there, I was home that morning, Richie and I were about to start
writing and he was sleeping and you really didn’t know how to react when
you’re caught up in it and 163 families in my county were affected, you know
kids in my kids’ school and firemen that worked in the city, you know that go
to school with my kids, um, and as the smoke was wafting over my home and the
other two planes were in the air, I mean, you really, it went through your mind,
do you run to the school, is this Armageddon, you start thinking the worst...
JL: Yeah.
JB: But fortunately, you know, it wasn’t, as tragic as it was. I delayed the
start of Ally by a month and David Kelley, of course, understood, because I said
I have to stay home to do whatever, whatever I could, so we did the telethon,
which happened to be next door to a place where I was a gofer in a recording
studio 20 years ago. You dreamt about writing the songs and 20 years later,
you’re performing those songs for such an important night, you know, and you
walked out and saw that same playground, it really had a different meaning, you
know. But God bless all those firemen and policemen and the folks who lost...
JL: Yup. Well, you too, good work, you’re a good man. Thank you, Jon! It’s
good knowing you, a pleasure to have you! <crowd cheers> Be right back
with Pete Yorn after this!