Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, coming to Hulu

The whole "but he's still married to her! What other rock star can claim that?! No one!" thing...

Keith Richards.

Keith ****ing Richards has been married to the same woman for what, 40 years now? Charlie Watts too was married once - until he died. If those two prototypes of rock stars can do it, I wouldn't say it's "unheard of" for a rock star. It's not the norm, but it's generally not, among most demographics. Especially for celebrities.

Bono I think also got married around the same time as Jon did. Kurt Russel has been happily un-married to Goldie Hawn forever, too.

And if "well, he cheated, but still!" counts: Why not cite Gene Simmons, too? Same partner in forever, married at one point (_after_ a leaked sex tape with a less than impressive performance!). What about Ozzy?

Something I noticed when Richie was talking about the night he didn't show up. I need to rewatch it, but Richie said something along the lines of:

He couldn't bring himself to leave the house (so he was at home), and he was having conflicts with the other members of the band, not just Jon (this is new?), and at that point he just felt like they would be better off without him.

Now, to me that sounds a lot like Richie was struggling with some form of depression, which would make a lot of sense I think, after his dad died, his marriage broke down, heather's issues meaning he was essentially dealing with being a single parent, etc. Jon also mentioned that Richie had axieties in another interview. We already knew he was dealing with feeling like he was being replaced in the band he was an integral member of for 30 years. And the comment one year later about the guys knowing exactly why he wasn't there that night tells me that there is more to the story still....

The scene where Jon was breaking down seemed very real and honest. I don't think Jon is that great of an actor to pull it off convincingly if it wasnt.

Sometimes we forget that these rock stars that we grew up idolising are humans with very human issues. The documentary did a good job of showing us that side of both Jon and Richie.

True, you make good points. I guess with Richie it was two trains colliding at that moment. One is his own personal situation, whatever circumstances, habits, challenges it was. And another was Jon (and apparently now, the rest of the band) then, with his tunnel vision of work ethic, buying football club, squeezing everything from the band. They basically had no break since recordings for Crush.

A little less ego on both sides, and little bit more empathy (more on Jon's side), and this would have never happened. But hopefully, happy ending is in place.

I know someone who would fix for Bon Jovi - and other bands - in the 80s and they said Jon was the one who you never saw doing drugs and barely touching drink. I once knew a driver for Gary Barlow who said he was hammered every day, while the same fixer I mention above said he never touched a drop on the road.

No-one will know fully, but for now I will at least listen to the people who go on public record about it. No-one in the documentary, not even Jon's "enemies" say he was doing drugs. This is no denial about drug taking and breaking Jon's nice guy persona. I take drugs to this day and who doesn't like the occasional acid trip, so there is no offense to me if one of my favourite rockstars took them. In fact, a part of me kind of wishes he did. But, the anecdotal nonsense from "I know someone" is just that, nonsense.

We will never know, so probably should stop pretending like we do know.

Back to the documentary as a whole and sticking with enemies, there definitely was a lack of general pushback against Jon/the band. But then I was thinking that this documentary is essentially charting Jon's journey with his voice from 2022. The rest - the history of the band - is not as interesting. The band's history is too one-direction without enough drama to sustain four hours. Even Richie's departure lacks fireworks or something to really hook a casual viewer. Richie says himself many people see him as the hired gun and don't know his input, so why would those people care or understand him leaving.

But Jon's journey is interesting. It is a more intimate portrayal than I thought he would allow. I would have been happy with a 1.5 hour film about his journey with his voice with some pieces of the history thrown in. Yeah, I know the documentary is a mass product and not really fan-centric, but still.

Regarding drugs, I'm pretty convinced Jon was not the type. He was too driven and determined for business side of things to ever go into creative/leasure aspects of hallucinogenics, and I just don't see him as frequent (or any) user of uppers (as other rock stars). So I believe him on that.

On the other hand, he is guilty of cigarettes (really really dumb for an aging vocalist singing out of his natural range) and alcohol. Regarding alcohol, I seem to remember (I may be mistaken) he even admit to 2 bottles of wine after every show on tour (was it LH/WWWB documentary). This is also not optimal for voice, but I'm not judging.

Regardless, I have no moral objection to anything, I just think its reasonable that if he's not a fan of hard use, he is entitled to positive PR about it. Similar to his charity work. It would be very cynical to say that he doesn't use drugs and/or does charity work because it portrays him in good light. No, but because it gives him good light, he uses that good light. That's fair for me

I think the main problem for Jon and his stress is that, similar to what many critics of documentary are saying, he is taking himself far too seriously. It's normal to care for your legacy, your brand, your popularity, output, whatever. But he is "just" a rockstar, have fun man, don't worry so much about this and that. I think he was a miserable sack last 10 years, much more than a working man in South Jersey barely making ends meet or whatever. So he needs to take that joy he is now talking about for himself sake.

The person I know was on part of the New Jersey tour and he and Jon would go to strip clubs and do cocaine reguarly. He just did it more privately. Take it for what it is, but I see no reason why this person would lie and I know who I believe. You can choose to believe whatever you want, of course.

Technically that's incorrect. Bobby was brought in before Richie's issues to fill out the band sound for the HAND tour. They brought in an extra keyboard player too. Does that mean David was going off the rails? Of course not.

I took this to mean that that they knew Richie was unhappy and was going to leave at some point.

I don't believe that for a second. Richie was in good health in 2012, he was on his solo tour in 2012 and was fit healthy and looking sounding great. You could always tell when he was having issues as he would look bloated. You can see it in some of the archive footage in the documentary.

I can believe this, he was 27 or something I suppose. But he didn't make his lifestyle out of it, and I don't believe he pursued it regularly. I don't even think rest of the band did.

And I make no moral ground here, whatever they did, as long as they function, it's good. Richie stopped to function not because he started drinking in 2006, but because he started to heavily drink while taking pain medication for his arm, and then father died, and life happened. I don't blame him, I just wish Jon had more compassion in those years.

We'll never know the full truth. Never. The documentary only brought us marginally closer, if at all. And I don't think anything in the future is gonna change that anymore either.
Most of what really went down, these guys will take to their graves.

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Richie himself said Jon was a massive help to him during the initial years, I guess around 2005 and 2010. Something happened following the 2011 tour. Let's be honest, everything points to WAN as the catalyst.

Either way, the worst thing Jon did was essentially remove Richie as his main guy. You can see this hurts Richie by the way he talks about it in the documentary. Jon himself admits he ignored or didn't see how important it was to Richie. I am 50/50 on blame for all this, but essentially replacing your main creative partner after 30 years is poor form. And then basically rubbing his face in his replacement. I don't think Jon was doing it purposely to Richie, but still.