New Studio Album - Forever

You know, I think every Bon Jovi album has been calculated in some way. That was the whole point on a major label back then. There would be some guy from the label that would insist on making the album more commericial and making sure that the album had a hit single. Why do you think Desmond Child was brought in for Slippery? Of course it was calculated. Every record has been, not just keep the faith. Recording Who Says with Jennifer Nettles to cross over into country, leading to a full on country cross over album. Absolutely calculated. It's part and parcel of being in a successful band on many ways.

True, and if I had to personally make a list, I would say 1. KTF, 2. SWW, 3. Lost Highway as most calculated beforehand. With KTF there was a tremendous effort to change with the music landscape that was kind of forced upon, but also they all endogenously grew within that process of push and pull and producing it. SWW was conscious effort in bringing Desmond and writing more uplifting compared to Fahrenheit, but also one must acknowledge sheer talent that emancipated finally through some of those songs. LH was capitalizing wholly on Who Says.

Before, I would say that Crush is really calculated, but after hearing that Say It Isn't So was planned as first single, and IML was probably not in the mix until very late, I've changed my mind. That record by hailmary brought Jovi into 2000's relevancy, and that hailmary is IML and not the record as a whole.

I would say New Jersey was the most calculated as they knew before hand what worked with Slippery. With Keep The Faith I don't think they had any clue what was gonna work. Luckily Jon still had star quality at that point and could get them through the grunge era.

I can agree if we define "calculation" a bit differently. Or just agree on definition, then it's like that. But in terms of "ease" or "intuition" of doing something, I would say New Jersey is the "easiest" album of their career. You had a recipe, just more of the same please. While with KTF, it was completely uncharted territory and it took everything that band had in it to have a chance to succeed. It doesn't mean that KTF is necessarily better than NJ album. But on NJ, Jon and Richie could just meet and write intuitively and the zeitgeist of the times was this: their sound was THE signature sound of those years. With KTF, complete opposite.

So I applaud Jon (and band) for doing that makover. Not because it's better or better suited to my taste (which it is), but because it was enormous challenge, and without success there, future of the band would be much more bleak. While with The Circle or WAN, you can make whatever and the future doesn't really change.

I actually think Shanks has even less input than Rock would've had for Keep The Faith, so it's jon's show more than ever now. Shanks is just a yes man buddy. Plus Rock had a lot more to work with than Shanks who is just basically propping up jon's corpse at this point.

But why would you think that Rock had low input levels for KTF? I'm sorry if I'm kind of boring with this topic, it's just my area of interest I guess.

In my eyes, and yes it's always a lot of speculation, especially in Jovi camp where lots of stuff is controlled and/or not leaked out, but Rock did have heavy inprint on final sound of KTF. But he didn't co-write anything, he wasn't a band member, he wasn't introducing loops and drum machine patterns to Jon before the band is introduced (so that crafting is easier), he was producing in classical sense, reacting on the material that Jon brought on acoustic guitar and/or piano, and made band work really hard to get that new sound. 7 months of work, transforming their sound and never working with the band again after that, with rumours of strained relationships and challenging process of crafting those songs.

Shanks on the other hand, IMO again, became an insider, part of the core, one of us, co-songwriter, both in lyrics and in making of songs, which is fine, but it is in direct conflict with his producing duties, at least as I understand producing duties. It's not forbidden of course, but when you're insiderman, you transcend that normal principal-agent problem (band hires a producer) and you become a pal, a support guy, band member in the end (literally). It's much easier then to become both a yesman, as well as excuse for Jon's falling inspiration or rising laziness.

In any world possible, both is due to Jon's wishes. But one is hiring an outsider professional who does his job (Rock on KTF, and even Shanks on HAND), and other is relying on your "producer" to be whatever needed (basically, a backbone of the band's sound) for next 7 records.

Yeah, especially for a band like Bon Jovi. I can look at every album and draw a line to the reflection on what was popular. The difference in the heyday was that SWW and NJ helped to define a genre and time in music. KTF and TD, despite how obvious they were, could transcend the influences in some sense with a Bon Jovi stamp.

Post 2000 - and I guess views will differ on opinion - I feel that every album became so obvious and signpost the influences/trends all over the place. HAND and LH are the worst offenders for me. So calculated and much more so than KTF in my opinion.

I agree Bob's sound is all over KTF, but Shanks sound is all over modern Bon Jovi too. Where did you hear about a strained relationship? Genuine question. I though they had a good relationship beyond the fact that at that time Bob Rock's thing was being an antagonistic foil to bands he produced.

Didn't Jon take Rock's band to Europe as support during the KTF tour? He also said the following about the band and Jon:

“They were fantastic. I just love them. Right from Slippery, they were these guys from New Jersey that came in and shook up Vancouver, Bruce Fairbairn and my life. We were just hoping it would go Gold. We were like ‘God, if it goes Gold we’ll at least get to do another album’ and, of course, it did what it did and New Jersey did what it did. They’re the hardest working guys. They’re the nicest guys and in terms of commitment to his career and his band, Jon is second to no one. I can’t comment on what they do today except it seems that he always seems to redefine what it is so that he can keep doing it. It’s amazing what he does.”

Aloha !

Half of New Jersey is just Slippery When Wet rewritten but with a little more of everything.

Lay Your Hands On Me = Crowdpumper with an instrumental intro like Let It Rock
Bad Medicine = Easy singalong like Prayer & Bad Name
Born To Be My Baby = I'd Die For You
Blood On Blood = Song about the past like Wild in the Streets
I'll Be There For You = Acoustic ballad with an acoustic intro like Wanted Dead Or Alive

The songs the band played the least of Slippery were replaced by other ideas and those were subsequently ignored the following tours as well.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I've read it here like a decade ago, and it remains blurry (as any rumour) but I didn't mean in a sense that their relationsip has remained strained, more in the sense that Jon and band were exhausted from the production process and willingly went other directions. But I'm now half-remembering, I can't pinpoint exactly what I read obviously, can't find the source. I mean, it goes to Jon's account, that he never again challenged himself so much as those days, picking instead same producer album after album with comfort being more important than success (not conscious decision obviously)