- He's a rock legend known
around very impressive halls
such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
the Songwriters Hall of Fame,
and true to his roots,
the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
There you go Anthony.
That's for you.
He's sold over 130 million records worldwide.
His new album is called "2020",
and it is much, much better
than the actual year it's named after, obviously,
because it's a low bar, right? (laughs)
(audience chuckles)
It's a bad year.
Give it up for Jon Bon Jovi, y'all.
(upbeat music)
(audience applaud)
Hello!
- Hey.
- Oh my gosh.
I'm first of all, so excited that you're on my show.
I can't believe my life.
Okay, so be honest.
And when I say be honest,
I mean lying is totally okay.
How did I do with your song? (laughs)
Did you hear it?
- It was awesome.
I noticed that you had to change the key.
It was in a girl key.
- I know I'm a first soprano man.
I always have to raise everything
because I can't go low.
I can go high. (laughs)
- Yeah. (chuckles)
God bless you for it.
But yeah, it was cool.
Thank you for doing that.
- Oh my gosh, no.
We're all such big fans.
So where were you in life
when you wrote "It's my life,"
and what does it mean to you?
- For me, it was Frankie.
Like there's a lyric
and it says like, "Frankie said I did it my way."
That was from new Jersey's most famous son, Frank Sinatra.
And I had just come home
from doing a film in Malta and Rome called "U-571."
It was a world war II picture with Matthew McConaughey
and we'd come home and we're making the Crush record
and we got together to write that
and I had to fight very hard for that lyric.
And Richie said to me, "What is Frankie?
"And why does it matter?"
And I says, "Well, because much like Frank
"I'm going to make movies when I want,
"records when I want,
"and this is how I'm feeling."
And I won the argument simply because I had
to sing the song every night.
And that's what it stood for it for me.
But the magic was is guys
like Anthony and people around the world,
they said, "No Frankie is me.
"Frankie's my best friend.
"Frankie's my brother."
And that's the magic
of a great song is people make it their own.
- Yeah the message yeah that you can get.
That's the most interesting thing
I think performing shows and meeting fans afterwards
and everything everybody has their own kind
of take on a song that you had a completely different idea
about why you wrote it.
And I think that's
what's so magical about music.
But what what's one
of your songs you do not look forward to singing on tour?
'Cause I have a couple of my own. (chuckles)
- Well, it's not that I don't look forward
to singing any one of them.
Some of 'em are easier than others.
Some of 'em are, you know,
selfishly the one that you want to do.
But you know I mean,
there's some that I wrote or co-wrote depending
on which song it was
that are ridiculously high
and youth speaks to that.
You know, when you're 25, it's one thing.
(laughs) And you're like, ah.
- I mean I just did one and I'm like...
Literally the thing I said after I sang it was,
"How does he do this song like every night?"
Like all these songs and that rasp.
I would sound like Janis Joplin in like 36 hours.
It wouldn't last long.
(man laughs)
But like I said, your catalog is incredible.
So it's an honor to get to even sing one of 'em.
What do you call rock music?
- It's hard to really define.
I mean, rock music was influenced by the blues
and rockabilly and some of the lyrics were country.
So it became its own thing from the blues.
But I guess it's an energy and it's a spirit.
That's probably at the core of it all.
- I always find this interesting.
Somebody with a catalog like yours,
like what was the first song you wrote?
And is it horrible?
(all laugh)
- Sure it was horrible.
Of course it was, yeah.
Every little kid who was strums a guitar.
Yeah, but that's the idea, isn't it?
You're supposed to emulate those who came
before you and then you eventually find your own voice
and eventually you want to play it
for somebody whether it's your friends or your family.
But like I've been telling a lot of folks recently
write a song and I don't care if you make a living out
of this write it for you because it's
the closest thing you'll ever know to immortality.
Even if you write it in your bedroom
and it never gets published,
that's not the point.
The point is is you created it
and it'll be yours forever.
- Ah, that's so beautiful.
I've never thought of it like that.
The immortality of it.
Is it true that your first industry job,
'cause we all had tons of jobs before this obviously,
but were you a runner in a recording studio?
- Amongst other things yeah.
But by that time, which was very, very early on
I had just graduated high school.
But by that point I was only playing original music.
And so it was difficult to keep an original band together.
And so I had an opportunity through a distant cousin
to work in a recording studio that he owned.
And so I was the gopher.
Yeah.
- That's actually awesome though to have an in at a studio.
God, I can't imagine like
I mean my first job was in a movie theater
and I was a waitress.
Like I would've loved
like one of my first jobs to be able to do that.
- I worked in a shoe store,
in a fast food joint you know, an auto body shop,
and sold newspaper subscriptions door to door.
You were just asking a music business job.
But yeah, yeah I had odd jobs.
I was just, you know, like yourself.
I got a record deal when I was 21 years old
and I've been with the same label ever since.
- Oh wow.
- So, you know, I was fortunate enough
to have been very young.
- Let me talk about your album though
because it's interesting you called it "2020".
So did writing about the year help you through it?
'Cause this has been a rough year.
Mind you I hope it's progressive at some point.
I hope we progress and we learn from it
and we don't just sit in it.
But I mean, is that kind of as an artist I know we write
about stuff that we're going through,
is that kind of why you ended up writing?
- Early on when we recorded this record
the title meant something completely different.
It was about clear vision
and then as the songs started to take shape
and they became more and more topical
I thought, okay, I am just witness to history.
And if I could pretend to be just the narrator,
just the voyeur.
Don't take sides.
Even on the pointed songs,
I could start a conversation.
And so it is a very topical song.
It addresses COVID, it addresses gun violence,
soldiers with PTSD, Colin Kaepernick,
the current administration.
I mean, it's really a lot that happened
to all of us in the last year,
but I don't think that it's a down record.
I think it's a rather upbeat record
and songs like "Do What You Can," are very optimistic.
- I think it's the greatest song
in the world when it's a conversation starter.
Like as a writer, I feel like if it starts a conversation
I'm like, "Oh, I did something good there."
Like, you know, it, wasn't just
a selfish thing to get it out of me
or be the vessel for.
But there was one song on the album that came
about because of this picture.
What's the story there?
'Cause that I love you for this.
Like you're so rad. (laughs)
I love it you're just in the back doing dishes.
- Well that is one of the JBJ soul kitchens.
We have three of them.
We're a community restaurant
where an inmate population and a paying customer come
and that's what make our world go around.
But the basis of it is volunteerism.
And because of COVID,
we couldn't have any volunteers
in that position for example washing dishes.
Dorothea took that photograph.
I wanted to post it on the social media,
looking for the day of the week and
the time of the day that we would be open
to feed that in-need population.
What I responded with was
if you can't do what you do, you do what you can.
The next day when I woke up,
I went, "Well, there's a big old Bon Jovi song title."
So I wrote it
and it's about the COVID crisis,
but it really addresses
that all of us can be that difference
that we want to see.
And if you can't do what you do, IE sing,
do what you can, which was to make a difference
in somebody's life that day by serving them food.
- Man, it seems so simple,
but if we all thought that way
(audience claps)
we'd be a lot further than we are right now.
So with your JBJ Soul Foundation
you started a food bank as well, right?
So how's that going?
- Yeah.
So like I said, we have the three restaurants
and we were feeding that in-need population
but in the place where we spent our summers
we realized that the need was really dire.
And so we opened a food bank
and we were the supplier
of seven food pantries with their foods
and Dorothea and I conceptualized that.
And within three weeks
we had gotten the food, found this space,
and we're providing the food to seven pantries.
So I think we fed around 25,000 people
over the course of the summer
on Eastern long Island.
- Wow.
Well what a way to actually make a difference
and not just sit around your house.
I mean, goals right there. (chuckles)
Well it is so lovely to see you.
I'm such a big fan.
We all here at the show
and everybody here is freaking out.
I even see this woman with her hand on her chest.
And so Jon Bon Jovi's his new album is called "2020".
Go buy it.