Bon Jovi

Sayreville to Mercury

Jon Bon Jovi, born John Francis Bongiovi, started performing in New Jersey at 13. On 9 January 1980 he was playing the Fast Lane, a venue in Asbury Park, with his band Atlantic City Expressway, and Bruce Springsteen was in the audience. Later that year a cousin helped him get a job at the Power Station studio in New York, where in downtime he recorded a song called Runaway with session musicians, among them E Street Band keyboardist Roy Bittan. Record companies turned it down, but a radio DJ encouraged him to enter a contest for unsigned bands, which he won, and by the summer of 1983 it was a radio hit.

In March 1983 Jon called keyboardist David Bryan, who called bassist Alec John Such and drummer Tico Torres. Guitarist Richie Sambora joined after Such and Torres recommended him. Mercury signed them, and the debut, Bon Jovi, came out in January 1984. Runaway reached number 39 on the Hot 100 and the album number 43. 7800 Fahrenheit followed in 1985, reaching number 37, and the band toured with Ratt and played Monsters of Rock at Castle Donington.

Slippery When Wet

For the third album the band changed approach. Professional songwriter Desmond Child joined Jon and Sambora in the basement of Sambora's mother's house, and together they wrote You Give Love a Bad Name and Livin' on a Prayer. Jon chose the producer Bruce Fairbairn after hearing his work on Black 'n Blue's Without Love. The band wrote 30 songs, tried them out on local teenagers, and recorded Slippery When Wet at Little Mountain Sound in Vancouver between January and July 1986. It came out in August 1986.

Both of those songs reached number one on the Hot 100, and Wanted Dead or Alive reached number seven. The album spent eight weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and was Billboard's top-selling album of 1987. The band had begun as support for 38 Special and were headlining soon after the first video debuted. Not everyone was won over: Rolling Stone's Jimmy Guterman called the band a "smudgy Xerox of Quiet Riot". Jon later called the record "our Thriller" and "our defining record".

New Jersey and the road

The band began New Jersey in May 1988, again in Vancouver with Fairbairn. Jon said they felt pressure because they did not have the amazing song, and the sessions produced Bad Medicine, a number one on the Hot 100. The album topped the Billboard 200 for four weeks and produced five Top 10 singles. It was also the first American album officially released in the Soviet Union, and in August 1989 the band headlined the Moscow Music Peace Festival. Jon told Classic Rock that the tour, which ran from October 1988 to February 1990, almost killed them. When it ended, the members went home with no clear plans.

Second act

After a meeting in St Thomas in October 1991 the band returned to Vancouver with producer Bob Rock and made Keep the Faith (1992), their last studio album with all five original members. Cross Road, a 1994 greatest-hits album, added the new song Always. Such's time in the band ended that year, and Hugh McDonald, who had played bass on Runaway, unofficially replaced him. These Days (1995) went to number one in the UK, where it stayed for four weeks. Crush (2000) and its single It's My Life reached a younger audience. Who Says You Can't Go Home, from Have a Nice Day, became the first single by a rock band to reach number one on the country chart.

Sambora left the band in 2013. This House Is Not for Sale (2016) reached number one on the Billboard 200. The band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, inducted by Howard Stern. Their latest studio album, Forever, was released on 7 June 2024, the same year as the four-part documentary Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. The Rock Hall counts more than 130 million albums sold.