And, once more, Bon Jovi are NOT nominated for the RnR Hall of Fame

What's the band's legacy? A decade doing hard rock that was the mainstream, a decade doing their own thing and not caring too much about market and another decade desperately following every single time the biggest music trend on the market.

It's like Jon said on WWB: if we chosed other path we would not be as commercially successful as we are. So, it's just de consequences of Jon's decision and him and everybody else needs to deal and accept this.

And I kinda like it, because it just validates what we've been discussing on boards since 2000: they have been producing very poor music compared to their 80s and 90s catalog since Crush.

It's more than just influences. It's a mark on music history. Bon Jovi were the biggest hair band of that genre who maximized that style of music. They didn't follow the LA scene and came out of Jersey. Bon Jovi was like Quiet Riot meets Bruce Springsteen. Most people don't realize how similar Jon and Bruce really are but if you go back and listen to early Bruce albums (pre Born In The USA), you could totally hear Jon in those songs...

Kip Winger was modeled after Bon Jovi from the band being named after him to the look, design,and structure of the band. Jon even put bands like the Skids and Cinderella on the map...

You can't lump Mötley Crüe & Ratt, with Poison either. Poison was the Winger of LA music scene...

Def Leppard aren't in either... I just don't think Hair Metal is considered serious music and that's why they aren't in.

Once the people who grew up during the 80's are the ones making the decisions, then Bon Jovi will get in. Until then, they'll just sit on the fence and wait.

Every time the question of the band's influence comes up, I refer back to the article from Kerrang! magazine in 2006, when they named them the 11th most influential band of the previous 25 years:

In 1959 Elvis Presley released a groundbreaking compliation album called "50 000 000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong". In 2004 - the year of the 20th anniversary of their recording career - Bon Jovi went 50 million better with "100 000 000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong". That statistic speaks volumes about their phenomenal success over the years.

Bon Jovi had a profound effect on the course of rock music when their 1986 album Slippery When Wet went through the roof. Prior to that, it was a rare occurence for any rock band to penetrate the top 40 but Bon Jovi changed all that with a string of platinum-coated hooks and lead singer Jon Bon Jovi's poster boy looks. Their music reached a massive cross section of people and was, for many, a gateway into the wider rock world.

Bon Jovi were unshamedly commercial, and they certainly weren't metal, which meant a large proportion of Kerrang!'s readership objected to their coverage in the mag. It's worth pointing out that K! also met resistance when first covering Nirvana, and, while Jon and co. never had Nirvana's impact, they certainly helped mould the shape of rock in the 80's and its assimilation as a mainstream force.

When grunge killed off the hair bands of that era, BonJovi survived by reinventing themselves whilst retaining their sincerity and warmth. During a routine day of interviews around Christmas '94, Jon spirited Kerrang! writer Steve Beebee away from the assembled press pack and took him for a drive around his hometown of Rumson, New Jersey. They ended up at the singer's palatial pad, where Beebee was introduced to Jon's wife Dorothea and given a guided tour. "I particularly remember the 'trophy room' - its huge walls covered in presentation gold discs, it was too vast to take in," the journalist recalls. "It was a special day and an experience I will never equal even if I'm still writing for Kerrang! in my 90's".

In more recent years, the paths of Kerrang! and Bon Jovi have diverged somewhat. They no longer sit so comfortably in a pure rock setting but their commercial success proceeds unabated and they will no doubt continue to fill stadia until the day they decide to hang up their cowboy boots and put their steel horses to pasture.

I've also lost count of the number of reviews I've read of albums from different bands where the reviewer describes the songs as having "Bon Jovi-worthy choruses" or something like that. Although they're far from the first stadium rock band, I do think that to an awful lot of people they are synonymous with that commercial rock sound. They're virtually shorthand for it - like Guns N Roses or Aerosmith are with sleaze rock, or Queen is with multi-part harmonies.

Of course, there's undoubtedly loads of other eligible bands that are equally deserving of induction, so I'm not necessarily saying that Bon Jovi not being nominated is wrong, just that their impact on rock history tends to be underrated.

And every time the question of the Bon Jovi's influence comes up, I refer back to the introduction to an interview I conducted with Richie for High Voltage magazine in 1993:

I am a Bon Jovi fan...I know that's a terrible thing for a "serious" rock writer to say.

According to my esteemed colleagues, Bon Jovi are the godfathers of that plauge known as corporate rock: the band who built their evil empire on good looks, tight clothes, thousand-watt smiles, big hair, videos and the hormones of female teens. But the truth is, I didn't know anything about that...

(I)n the spring of 1987...I bought Slippery When Wet because I heard Wanted Dead Or Alive on the radio and liked it, not because I thought anyone was cute...I didn't have (MTV) back then, so the "image thing" was never a factor... Instead, I predicted that Slippery would be rock's answer to (Michael Jackson's) Thriller, and the rest is rock history...

Though Slippery When Wet sold at the rate of 100,000 copies a week and Richie won a couple of guitar magazine's reader's polls, their success was still condemned as yet another triumph of sex appeal over talent. But Bon Jovi has done a lot to give rock a good name...most important, exposing hard rock and metal to an audience who thought they feared it. Can you imagine Poison, Slaughter, Whitesnake, Guns N Roses and especially Metallica getting a shot a multiplatinum status if Slippery When Wet hadn't done what it did? The fact is, Bon Jovi may be more influential than some bands would want to admit.

I also refer back to a HOF judge who has written books and done a radio show about Bruce Springsteen, is married to one of Springsteen's managers, and has publicly vowed that he would do all he can to keep Bon Jovi out of the Hall -- so much for their "artistic integrity" and "legacy" arguments.

couldnt care less really. The band have sold millions of records, played 1000s of gigs and been around more than 30 years.

Been inducted into this thing is no big deal.

This is from a few months ago, but it's an interesting article written by a former member of the nominating committee.

http://observer.com/2015/06/rock-and...nce-yet-again/

As long as Deep Purple is not in the RnR HoF yet, the RnR HoF is not a credible organization.