Jon Bon Jovi: ‘There have been days where I thought I was done’

Jon Bon Jovi: ‘I’m only half-joking when I say, lemme just get my feet wet’ (Press)

Until recently, Jon Bon Jovi, the man behind one of the most recognisable voices in rock, didn’t know if he’d ever tour again. Two years on from a crucial but risky surgery to repair one of his vocal cords – after it atrophied catastrophically at the end of his band’s last tour in 2022 – he was still in recovery and unable to promote their 16th studio album, Forever. Suddenly, the title of the record seemed grimly ironic.

“It sucked,” the musician born John Francis Bongiovi Jr tells me plainly. “We were releasing the album along with the docuseries [Thank You, Goodnight], and we were going to do our 40th anniversary celebration and tour. But I had this traumatising throat surgery, and as we released [the album], I started to rehearse with the band and I said, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m just not up to it yet.’” He was especially gutted because he was proud of what they’d made, a “joyful” record that marked his first return to the studio since undergoing surgery. But with a career spanning more than four decades, he knew all too well that without a tour to promote it, “it’s dead”.

So what an extraordinary turnaround it is that the band have just announced a run of stadium shows for 2026. They’ll start with a nine-night residency at Madison Square Garden (“It’s in our backyard, so I can go home at night and sleep in my own bed”) and conclude with three nights at Wembley Stadium. “I’m just tipping my toe in,” Bon Jovi says, his megawatt smile bearing just a hint of smugness at being able to think of these 14 concerts as some kind of underplay. He can’t give much away about what fans should expect: “The only good news I can tell you is there’s nothing in the catalogue I can’t sing.” In fact, he’s so excited at the prospect of getting back on stage that he’s come up with a bunch of alternative setlists. “So if we’re doing multiple nights and I want to play, I don’t know, 45 songs… I’m capable.”

Bon Jovi certainly exudes confidence today. We’re sitting in Studio 3 of northwest London’s RAK Studios, where acts such as The Pogues, Kim Wilde and The Smiths have recorded some of their biggest songs. At 63, he remains every inch the rock star, from the off-duty ensemble of jeans and a smart black jacket to that famous head of hair (“I’m just happy to still have it”). He’s also charming – I overhear him checking how to pronounce my name with his publicist before he walks in, offering a warm handshake and then introducing himself to The Independent’s video crew, who are filming our chat for the Good Vibrations podcast.

He’s obviously comfortable in front of the camera. Outside of the glittering rock career – the Grammy awards, the Top 10 singles, the 130 million records sold – he’s also acted, with a starring role in the 1996 drama The Leading Man and a fan-favourite turn in Sex and the City as photographer Seth, who briefly dates sexpert Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the second season. Still, I wonder if it was difficult for him to be so vulnerable in Thank You, Goodnight, which zooms in on his disappointment in a voice that doesn’t sound the way it did in the Eighties. We see the slump of his shoulders, and then the flinch as he listens back to himself.

“I don’t mind being vulnerable,” he tells me. “I only ever wanted to tell the truth, no matter what phase of our lives we were in. But I didn’t anticipate the surgery and I certainly didn’t anticipate the recovery.” There were a number of occasions where he told the band he was ready to go, only to be met with a chorus of “nos”. That must have been tricky to hear, I say. “It’s tough,” he agrees, “and there have been [other] days when I’ve said I’m done, and they said, ‘No, you’re not. Think of the progress you’ve made since last month and the month before.’”

Bon Jovi at Wembley Stadium ahead of the band’s shows next year (PA)

The whole experience has been humbling, he admits. “But I do also feel like, I have to let my dukes down.” He’s grateful for how supportive the band have been: “That’s just a priceless commitment from them, [and] I can’t thank them enough.” Not only did he have the band, but his family, too, have been vital in getting him through one of the most challenging periods of his career. Like Bon Jovi the band, now a seven-piece thanks to the permanent additions of Everett Bradley (percussion) and John Shanks (rhythm guitar) in 2024, his own family is growing by the day. He became a grandfather for the first time when his son Jake, 23, and Jake’s wife, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, 21, adopted a daughter in August. His eldest son, Jesse, is also expecting a baby any day now with his wife (also called Jesse).

“It’s the next chapter,” he says, smiling. He’s looking forward to Christmas; his family’s traditions are much the same as any other. “We have the tree, the drunken uncle who’s a pain in the ass… the food’s burnt and undercooked, and the sweater doesn’t fit but you put it on anyway.” Only one of the four kids he shares with his wife of 36 years, Dorothea – their youngest son Romeo, 21 – is following in Bon Jovi’s musical footsteps. “The first singles are great,” he says of his son’s band, Lawn. “That’s all I’ve heard.” Romeo isn’t letting his dad have anything to do with it, he adds proudly: “People talk about these nepo babies, blah blah blah, but I’m not in there at all. He’s got his own vision, which I really appreciate.”

‘There’s a priceless commitment [from the band]. I can’t thank them enough’ (Press)

There’s no “plan B” for his son, he says, just as there was no plan B for him when he first set out as a rock musician, aged 16. He and his longtime bandmate, David Bryan, would drive home from gigs at 5am, then get up two hours later to go to high school. Thank You, Goodnight made much of his relentless work ethic, with one friend joking: “Jon quit school ’cause there was recess.” He shares this drive with his hero and fellow New Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen, who famously leapt onstage to join the starstruck teenager after hearing him cover “The Promised Land”. “It was 1979, so I was probably 17… it was pretty incredible because [Bruce] was already ‘him’, obviously, and he was everybody’s hero in New Jersey.”

It’s surprising, in a way, that Bon Jovi only teamed up with Springsteen this year, on the band’s new collaborative album Forever (Legendary Edition). Comprising new versions of songs from the original record, it features two duets with the Boss on “Red, White and Jersey” and “Hollow Man”. There are also appearances from country artists Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson and Jason Isbell, Canadian pop-punk star Avril Lavigne, the husband-and-wife duo The War and Treaty, and the UK’s own Robbie Williams, who was actually Bon Jovi’s first port of call.

“I love Robbie, but I also thought [“We Made It Look Easy”] was the right song for him – I could see him telling that story as the narrator. So when I called him and said I needed a shoulder to lean on, he was the first one to say yes.” I tell him I thought it was moving to hear him singing with Lavigne, who’s been through her own vocal struggles after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2014. “Well, her voice is certainly back,” he grins. He actually texted her just this morning: “They were playing ‘Sk8r Boi’ on the radio, and the girl [in the car] next to me was singing it, so I recorded them and sent it to Avril, ‘Look at the love you get here in London.’”

The Boss and Bon Jovi: with Springsteen performing at the 2024 MusiCares Person of the Year Awards (Invision)

As evidenced by the band’s latest album – all chugging riffs, snarling bass and the triumphant return of the talk box (most memorably used for their 1987 hit “Livin’ on a Prayer”) – they’re sticking to what they’re best at, with fantastic results. “We realised, oh my goodness gracious… in the late Eighties, don’t chase fads and fashions,” Bon Jovi says. “That would (and has been) career suicide for many artists. You can and should evolve as a songwriter, but chasing someone else’s success would be a mistake.”

Like many artists, he believes the industry works in cycles, and that rock is slowly but surely coming back to the fore. He went to see Oasis play one of their reunion shows in New Jersey, telling friends he “needed to smell a rock band, see them play without backup dancers or any of that. Just to see a smelly rock band again was great.” It’ll be him soon, I point out. “I’m only half-joking when I say, lemme just get my feet wet,” he responds, looking quite serious. “If I have both joy in my heart, which I feel, and my health, which I also feel, then it’s gonna be wonderful.” And he’ll have another 80,000 or so shoulders to lean on each night, too.

‘Forever (Legendary Edition)’ is out now; Bon Jovi’s Forever Tour arrives in the UK next year from 28 August to 4 September