by James Abbott

Created on: July 03, 2007

In the wake of the pop-metal explosion that thundered on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980's, it is fair to say that only one band was able to pull itself from the dust and rubble and carry on striding into the brave new grunge' infused decade of the nineties, still coughing from the fall-out. Bon Jovi were that band of sole-survivors'.
The pop-metallers' combined the self-indulgent, crafted sounds of the likes of Survivor, Starship and REO Speedwagon and injected it with an accessibility to the mainstream fan. That accessibility came in the form of front man Jon Bon Jovi, due to his ability to combine an on-stage, flailing, jumping and gyrating persona comparable to those of Axel Rose and Michael Hutchence, whilst delivering lyrics that made the average guy on the street think that they had been written by another average guy on the street.

The first long play offering from the band, the eponymous Bon Jovi, released in 1984, only gave vague nods as to the potential of the group. Notably, Shot To The Heart, is the only track form the that album that gets massive approval from live audiences today. That first album and later, 7800 Fahrenheit (1985), provide little to a Bon Jovi live set today (any offerings from their first two albums satisfies only the hard-core support near the front of the arena).
The wailing choruses and pseudo-butch lyrics about heartbreak and lost loves failed to distinguish the band from peers such as Def Leppard or Skid Row.
The album, Slippery When Wet (1986), delivers three moments where the band's musical and lyrical abilities pluck them from the lower reaches of soft-hair-metal, You Give Love A Bad Name, Livin' On A Prayer and Wanted Dead Or Alive.
In the aftermath of success and sales that followed Slippery When Wet, the band started to believe their own hype and provided, at best, only pedestrian, sing-along tunes for the mainstream fans with the album New Jersey (1988), which it was thought Jon Bon Jovi only wrote so that he might be able to meet Bruce Springsteinimpersonation is the sincerest form of flattery after all.
Then the band had a self-imposed lull as Jon Bon Jovi released the soundtrack to the movie Young Guns II in 1990, entitled Blaze of Glory. The band got back to their old ways releasing Keep the Faith in 1992, the continued offering middle-of-the road, soft-rock ballads and hair-spray rock long after it stopped being acceptable.
Each new album or greatest hits offering (Cross Road, 1994), or greatest hits offering with an acoustic twist (This Left Feels Right, 2003) was just raking over of long-dead ground that doesn't seem to matter though, as Bon Jovi still fill stadiums and arenas in the US and across Europe on a regular basis.
Bon Jovi have recently returned to the number one slot in the US album chart after some nineteen years, with their new album Lost Highway. The album still has that pedestrian, soft-rock agenda that could make you think that the 90s never happened. But still, we shouldn't be surprisedif Bon Jovi were to stop sounding like Springstein, how would we know that it was them?

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