Richie Sambora

Well said. They are way past their prime. I guess Jon never stopped believing that he can have another shot on the "radio". In pursuing that dream, he kept diluting his craft exponentially every cycle. Now the legacy is semi tarnished, his voice is beyond shot, he's surrounded by inept parasites & sounds extremely depressed in every appearance/interview.
If he has any self awareness, he'll bring the 5 guys together to an unfamiliar studio/producer for 2 months & write a proper album devoid of any agendas. Let everyone shine. It can still be amazing but there is zero chance of that happening.

I agree, he keeps saying he doesn't have anything to prove and doesn't care about radio hits anymore, but all his choices in last 15 years prove to the contrary

But jon thinks Legendary is a hit so why would he change anything.

The hard truth is (it hurts to write this down) that Jon Bon Jovi as a songwriter has said everything he had to imo. Years ago. New Jersey to These Days is where he peaked as a rock singer, Blaze Of Glory and Destination Anywhere where he peaked as a songwriter. When The Fighter came out I thought he was going for a solo venture in his later years, maybe inspired by Cash. Unfortunately, Jon seems to be more inclined to trying hard and imitate Springsteen - which he ain't. He's a similar yet very different type of musician. Now his voice is gone, if it comes back after the surgery, good. If it doesn't, he'll keep putting out shitty "Bon Jovi" albums or singles until he can't do it anymore. Or until his wife puts a stop to it Or until he changes his mind about the music he's making nowadays.
Sambora is very much past his prime as well (especially guitar-wise, and it really hurts) but he's still got the spark and something to say imo. His releases are illogically misplaced and far apart from each other for a guy that left BJ a decade ago and the alcohol abuse surely left a mark and it shows but every time he puts a song out he wins me back.

Jon's lost this ability, at least to my taste.

While I do generally agree with you, I don't expect Jon to put out new KTF and TD one after another. However, the production since 2005 is really contrary to my tastes, both in mixing part, as well as approaching and dealing with band chemistry part. And albums have been too frequent for rather lacklustre levels of "inspiration".

With a little bit less production grip of Shanks (such as 2020, and I must, say, Living Proof does seem to have some breathing space if I can already make a little bit of judgement) and less frequency of albums, there would be some very solid songs released still. In reality, its disheartening when Jovi released 12 songs on the album and 2 are great, 2 solid and rest is garbage. It kind of pulls down also excitement and quality of those better ones for me

Another insight was how Jon was desperate to go out with Bryan Adams but Doc McGee was like " nah you're a rock band " ... Jon would have been content in a proper MOR bracket and we see that now he's in the driving seat and his vocal pyrotechnics have deserted him he's content residing in that comfy genre of mehhhh four chorders.

What the diehards have long known is now public knowledge ; Richie was the balls and brought everything that was ever heavy to the table .

only for Richie and Doc Bon Jovi would have ended up sounding like a more polished version of the power station years ...talking in your sleep again blablabla.

I always find the argument that Richie was the one who brought HEAVINESS to the band a bit strange because I think more than anything else any heaviness Bon Jovi have had in their sound was just a product of the times (be it the 80s pop metal sound, the 90s grunge influences on KTF and TD, or the early 2000s alternative sound they tried to emulate on Bounce). Richie brought the guitar into focus and let it shine, yes absolutely, but guitar =/= heaviness and most of his solo stuff really isn’t very heavy either (both on its own and in comparison with the solo stuff Jon put out around the same time), so I don’t really know where people get that idea from.

Sure, Aftermath is heavier than WAN but that’s about the extend of it. Stranger is melodic blues rock, Undiscovered Soul is very soft sounding overall with the exception of Who I Am, and Richie’s new song isn’t exactly heavy either. Not saying that’s a bad thing, I love Richie’s solo stuff, I just don’t get why people see him as this heavy edgy rock guy when his solo stuff clearly says otherwise and he also sees himself as a blues type of player.

Rock music hasn’t really had a particularly popular subgenre driving its sound since the early 2010s (not like the 2000s had emo, pop punk and alternative metal, the 90s had grunge and Britpop and the 80s had pop metal), so Bon Jovi have been stuck with the same pop rock sound for the past decade.


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Richie is a fan of blues music. Jon is a singer/songwriter kinda guy. If Jon wrote a riff, such as In & Out Of Love, it's hardly ever bluesy. Richie's stuff can be very driving, rhythm focused - think Lay Your Hands On Me, which is pure Zep worship, or Homebound Train/Raise Your Hands, which are just a super simple lick but played with balls and distortion.

As he got older and as the times changed, Richie often did more mellow bluesy stuff too. This started on These Days (As My Guitar...; maybe even Prayer 94 or Saturday Night), but stuff as recent as Forever All The Way includes this.

In either case, the guitar does more than just strum basic chords. That's the difference between Legendary and What Do You Got. The pedal point nature of playing licks over changing roots makes for some more interesting harmonic constellations, and for more dissonance as well.

Guitar licks are actually semi prominent in pop music again, especially throwback 2000s vibes with pop punk licks, which at this point typically have some midwestern emo leanings as well, i.e. lots of arpeggios and glissandos. Richie could play that stuff; it's actually pretty close to his style. Of course he doesn't play just like it, but if a producer put him in that context, he'd be fine. Just have him arpeggiate lots of seventh chords and have a strong melody running through, voila.

I concur with the gist of this. I feel that Jon has completely lost the plot musically speaking and is basically finished vocally speaking.

I suspect that part the reason why they went down the rock route more than what you hear in the Power Station demos is because the song that got him the deal (Runaway) was a heavier rockier number