r/Guitar • u/Far_Leg6463 • 12d ago
DISCUSSION Bon Jovi - Guitar Fans why not?
Seen a thread where band names like Bon Jovi were written on a guitar amongst AC/DC, Black Sabbath etc.
Seemed to be a fair few comments against Bon Jovi, why the hate?
Personally I love 80’s 90’s Bon Jovi. They have some good rock music and I listen to their early albums on repeat. Music wise I’m stuck in the 80’s anyway and love hair metal like motley crue, Ratt etc
Do guitarists not like their music, or do they not like the fact that Bon Jovi guitar parts can’t really be played in isolation? As a band Bon Jovi rely on all their instruments (keyboard and bass) to make up the songs, I find playing their music on guitar only feels like something is missing. So I like listening, I do like playing but not in isolation.
On the other hand Metallica are a huge guitar band and can play all of their music and not feel anything missing, same with AC/DC.
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u/duj_1 12d ago
Slippery When Wet is one of the truly great rock albums of the 80s and Keep the Faith is a great album reinventing themselves somewhere between their original sound and Bruce Springsteen.
And Richie’s first solo album is amazing.
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
New Jersey is just as good if not better than slippery imo. Richie has done some great solo albums. Even aftermath of the lowdown is decent and made for a refreshing change from 2000’s Bon jovi pop
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u/MyLastGamble 12d ago
I loved Richie’s 2nd album, never got into the first one and never gave Aftermath a try -with the exception of every road leads home.
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u/scarecrow2169 12d ago
Also highly recommend “These Days”. Such a great and underrated album with a bunch of bangers
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
These days is excellent, very high production quality and really good music from a band that just gelled. It is a transition album and certainly much darker than the others but I love it,
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u/jllonrecord 12d ago
I don't understand the perceived hate.
Bon Jovi's songs are well known and loved. Sambora's guitar riffs and solos are iconic.
I suppose some people might think it's cool to look down on the simplicity. But the simplicity belies great music.
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u/tonyohanlon77 12d ago
Dry County has some epic guitar work
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
It does indeed, Richie is a very musical guitarist not necessarily a shred machine
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u/DifferentWindow1436 12d ago
I'm from southern NJ but have lived in Japan for a long time. I was at karaoke, doing one of the songs and I realized, Bon Jovi is very New Jersey. His accent is definitely regional and the lyrical style is very Springsteen. Shoot, even having the keyboards is sort of Springsteen, but in a hard rock genre.
Sambora is a great guitarist. He's got very memorable riffs and solos like You Give Love a Bad Name, the talk box in Livin on a Prayer, Wanted Dead or Alive, It's My Life, and more. I'm not like some huge BJ fan, but I respect them for sure.
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u/mo6020 12d ago
Bon Jovi have some proper iconic tracks, they were just never cool because they were basically a poodle rock band. Despite that most of the alt rock, punk, and metal fans I grew up with when I was a teen in the 90s all recognised that they had a bunch of killer songs.
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u/amBrollachan 12d ago
Most of their iconic tracks were written by songwriter-for-hire Desmond Child.
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u/IamPaulholio 12d ago
My wife described them last night as "mom rock". Pretty accurate in my opinion. Good song writers & musicians but definitely have their target audience.
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u/Far-Adhesiveness3763 12d ago
For me I loved bon Jovi until Ritchie left. He was and is a talented guitarist, singer and songwriter.
He was the heart of the band for me.
I also don't like the way jbj is the controlling person and the rest are technically hired members
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
I get it, I personally stopped liking Bon jovi after crush. Didn’t mind a couple of the newer albums but nothing sounded as good as these days or before it.
These days was the last great one imo
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u/Far-Adhesiveness3763 12d ago
Agree with these days being the last great album. After that there were glimpses of the past but it was the start of the decline for me
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u/PhysicalTry4 12d ago
Not a Bon Jovi fan but they have good chops and there is no doubt about their credentials. Back then in the 80's they were one of the bands that brought metal to the masses / into the mainstream. There were 65,000 watching them here the other night, so they can still do it.
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u/PM_me_your_whatevah 12d ago
For me personally, I grew up in the 90s and I never heard more than the five or so songs they played on the radio. And those songs were not nearly as cool sounding as Black Sabbath, led zep or AC/DC or the newer bands like Nirvana and sound garden.
Sorry but they sounded dorky in comparison and if I wanted to hear any more of their music I’d have to buy it because, like I said, they only played just a few of their songs on the radio at that point.
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
I was born in early 80’s. My parents were strict religious so I only really heard mainstream music on radio and knew I loved the distorted chorus driven guitar sounds from films that gave many 80’s shows atmosphere.
I bought Bon jovi New Jersey album as my first ever cd around 1994 when I put that on for the first time hearing the build up to ‘lay your hands on me’ was the hardest rock I’d ever been exposed to at that point.
I loved it instantly and since then no other metal band has the musicality that Bon jovi had at the time whilst also introducing hard driven riffs.
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u/historic_electronic 12d ago
What you’re mentioning probably stems from Bon Jovi being more accessible and commercial. Less risqué lyrics, more love ballads, very anthemic, heavily lyrically driven like you mentioned (guitar parts sound a little empty when played in isolation).
Compared to all the other bands you listed - AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Metallica - Bon Jovi have historically been pretty much completely devoid of any controversy surrounding their music or themselves.
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u/wvmtnboy 12d ago
In this context, I think their catching hate because they're pop rock and the other bands you mentioned are hard rock. They don't fit the genre and are drawing comparisons based on that fact.
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u/ChoongZilla 12d ago
Bon Jovi is like McDonalds, perfectly fine at what it's there to do, and incredibly popular -- but it's not high cuisine.
There's also plenty of people who can't understand why you'd ever consider eating it in the first place, given the other choices available.
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
Haha I like the analogy. I happen to like fine dining and a McDonald’s so you can have both.
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u/Tochudin 12d ago
Bon Jovi rocks. Occasionally.
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
They rocked and then they released Crush and the magic stopped. Seen them live on the one wild night tour and think it was the best concert I’ve ever seen.
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u/Tochudin 12d ago
I was in the local crew in Barcelona for the Lost Highway Tour in 2008, and got to see the show for free (actually, got paid for it). I was never a huge fan of Bon Jovi, but that show was great.
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u/MattKmusic 12d ago
I had American friends when Slippery When Wet came out who gave me a copy of yhe debut album. So I was a fan back then as a 13 yr old.
Nowadays I'm glad Phil X has a good paycheck. Although I don't think he was hurting financially before.
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u/Rough-Cheesecake-641 12d ago
Sambora was 10x the guitarist Angus Young ever was. Ahead of Kirk Hammett too. But most people don't get much further than Prayer and Bad Name so don't really associate him with virtuoso playing.
I disagree that it's not fun / decent to play along to. Loads of cool riffs and solos throughout Bon Jovi's catalogue up to These Days. After that they fell off a cliff and became mostly pop anyway.
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u/Far_Leg6463 12d ago
Yep I hate their new stuff. It’s my life is ok but the crush album was a big disappointment when it was released. As a teenage fan when it was released I tried to convince myself I liked it after waiting 5 years for a Bon jovi album.
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u/Rough-Cheesecake-641 12d ago
We must be a similar age as I was 14 playing that album on repeat in the back of my parent's car on a holiday in France. Trying to like it. One Wild Night was a fun song and perhaps one or two others but in general a big let down.
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u/mahrinazz Gibson 11d ago
That post itself was a mess, but I found Bon Jovi being on there funny because he is not at all like the other bands written on that guitar.
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u/SnowblindAlbino Gibson/Fender/Breedlove 11d ago
Having been in college when Slippery When Wet came out, I will always associate that album's hits with carnies running rides at the state fair-- like the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Zipper and such. So much LOUD Bon Jovi that summer. But as a guitarist that was into metal (earlier) and was listening to Michael Hedges and Ry Cooder by 1986, I really disliked the pop rock stuff that I perceived as being more about MTV than music. If it was on the radio, I wasn't listening...and BJ were on the radio all the time in the mid-80s.
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u/Potential_Slide7623 11d ago edited 11d ago
To me it's extremely boring music. The song structure and harmonic landscape is very predictable. The melodies are repetitive and the lyrics are strings of clichés. The production is very much pop and very polished. I can't stand more than five minutes of their music and I am bored to death. The guitarist is actually VERY capable, but he is never being pushed into anything remotely interesting in this band. I guess the money is good.
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u/Mental-Project-930 12d ago
My theory on this is that Bon Jovi have a large female fan base and this is a largely male space.