San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
American narrator
On his new album ‘2020,’ Jon Bon Jovi crafts stories about the fractured state of the nation
Jon Bon Jovi and the band he has proudly led since 1983 achieved perhaps their biggest blaze of glory as 2018 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But the New Jersey-bred singer, songwriter and guitarist isn’t about to rest on his laurels, especially not when the nation is beset with constant social and political unrest, widespread economic woes and the life-changing COVID-19 pandemic, which has struck two of his bandmates and his 18-year-old son, Jacob. That is why the Grammy- and Golden Globe-winning troubadour rolled up his sleeves, literally and figuratively, and set out to lend a helping hand. “Hopefully you do something to make the lives of others a little better,” said Bon Jovi, who backs up his words with both dollars and elbow grease. On April 20, as the pandemic intensified, rather than postpone his band’s 2020 concert trek — as many other music acts have done with their tours — he canceled it. “I was very aware, in light of what was coming down, that people were in need of disposable income for groceries, or paying the rent, or credit card bills,” Bon Jovi said. “With no foreseeable tour in the future, I thought it best to refund everyone’s tickets.”
“Hopefully you do something to make the lives of others a little better.”
Jon Bon Jovi
On May 13 — two days before the originally planned release date of his band’s heartfelt new album, “2020” — he and his wife of 31 years, Dorothea, launched the JBJ Soul Kitchen Food Bank to service food pantries and hunger-relief organizations on the East End of Long Island, N.Y.
The food bank is the latest chapter in the couple’s 14-year-old Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, a nonprofit that operates community restaurants in three New Jersey cities. It has also helped fund more than 700 units of affordable housing in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
This spring, Bon Jovi spent time washing dishes at the JBJ Soul Kitchen restaurant in Red Bank, N.J. His wife posted a photo on Instagram of him wearing an apron and scrubbing away at a sink, with the words: “If you can’t do what you do ... do what you can!”
‘Part of being an adult’
His volunteer kitchen tenure inspired “Do What You Can.” It is one of two stirring new songs he wrote this year and recorded with his socially distanced band in June for “2020,” whose release date was pushed back from May to last Friday. “Do What You Can” is surely the first song by any rock superstar to be inspired by their experience washing dishes, during a pandemic, at a restaurant that operates on a “pay what you can” basis.
“This is just a part of my own journey,” he said, speaking by phone recently while driving from New York to New Jersey.
“During the course of that journey, my wife and I became much more aware of the world around us. So, when we started the foundation some 14 or 15 years ago, the foundation found its focus in homeless and hunger issues. We’ve continued on that path with the kitchens and food bank. But that’s just part of being an adult — and part of the difference between being 21 and 58.”
Bon Jovi was 21 in 1983, the year he and his band signed their album deal with Mercury Records. The group’s debut album came out in early 1984. Thanks to its hit single “Runaway,” and heavy MTV airplay for the song’s video, fame and fortune soon beckoned. Charitable foundations and helping those in need were not among Bon Jovi’s primary goals at that time.
“You have a pretty much single-minded focus when you start in a rock band,” he said. “And that’s to make music, get better at your craft and play for people. Social obligation wasn’t first and foremost on my list then. I was very conscious of things, but — where I grew up and at the time that I grew up — there wasn’t a lot of conflict.
“It was just a lot of hardworking, blue-collar people and a middle-class upbringing for me and the guys in the band, and that helped to shape us. As you travel and see the world and its injustices, and as you get older and live and learn, one would hope you grow. In that growth, hopefully you do something to make the lives of others a little better.”
The world and its injustices are recurring themes on “2020.” It is Bon Jovi’s follow-up to 2016’s “This House Is Not for Sale,” the band’s first album without guitarist Richie Sambora, who abruptly quit in 2013.
Named, in part, to acknowledge this tumultuous election year, “2020” is the band’s 15th studio album. By far the group’s most serious-minded work to date — or what its leader calls a “statement record” — the album finds him unabashedly wearing his heart on his sleeve. If “2020’s” lofty goals sometimes feel slightly beyond his reach, his creative stretching is impressive. And the album’s best new songs offer a winning combination of grit, heart and craftsmanship.
Socially conscious songs
“I think the title is allencompassing,” Bon Jovi said of “2020.”
“It’s what you want it to be, a date in your calendar, an election, or a clear vision. Like any other piece of art, it should be in the eye of the beholder.”
From any vantage point, “2020” features the most topical and socially conscious songs Bon Jovi’s leader has written. The sobering subjects he addresses reflect the current fractured state of the nation, although he stresses that “2020” is not a political album.
“With this record, as a songwriter, it gave me purpose,” Bon Jovi said. “So, I wrote a topical record with some observations about what I’ve witnessed over the last year.”
But purpose can carry risks, at least commercially speaking, for a band leader whose group has sold more than 130 million albums worldwide since the 1980s.
Bon Jovi built his group’s reputation with such fistpumping arena-rock songs as “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Bad Medicine,” “Livin’ on a Prayer” and the ballad “Wanted Dead or Alive.” An album like “2020,” with its introspective songs about current events, is probably not what many fans expected — at least from anyone not named Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp.
But Bon Jovi leaves no doubt that he welcomed the opportunity to go out on a limb. The unmistakably earnest songs on “2020” explore the tragedies of gun violence (“Lower the Flag”) and the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by a former U.S. Marine (“Unbroken”). There is also a moody, slow-building song about the country’s hyperpolarization (“Blood in the Water”), a swamp-rockstyled cry for solidarity during troubled times (“Brothers in Arms”), and a tender, unapologetically sentimental celebration of family (“Story of Love”).
When the planned May release of “2020” was pushed back to this week, Bon Jovi decided to add two new songs to reflect recent events that took place after the original album had been completed. To make them fit, he jettisoned two numbers, “Shine” and “Luv Can.” He replaced them with “American Reckoning,” inspired by the death of George Floyd, and “Do What You Can,” his pandemic-themed call to arms.
“I think those two songs made the album better,” Bon Jovi said. “That’s simply because if I was going to write a topical record in this day and age, and not include a song about George Floyd and COVID, I’d be remiss.”
A witness to history
“American Reckoning” decries the police actions that led to Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis. Witness the song’s seething second verse: God damn those eight long minutes / Laying face down in cuffs on the ground / Bystanders pleaded for mercy / As one cop shoved a kid in the crowd / When did a judge and a jury / Become a badge and a knee?
Those sentiments, and the pained tone in which Bon Jovi delivers them, recall fellow New Jersey singer-songwriter Springsteen’s controversial 2001 song “American Skin (41 Shots).” It was based on the 1999 New York police shooting of Amadou Diallo, a young Guinean immigrant.
The lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “Lower the Flag” are equally frank about gun violence, as he sings: Maybe we start to die on the day that we’re born / You believe what you want to believe / But we deserve to live life in between. This is followed by him reciting the names of 13 American cities that suffered fatal mass shootings, from El Paso and Orlando to Las Vegas and Gilroy.
Still, Bon Jovi stresses that he is an observer, not a pontificator. If the sentiments expressed on “2020” ruffle some feathers, that is not his intent.
“I’m just a witness to history,” he said.
“I’m not taking any sides. I’m just being the narrator. I think I’m just an observer, in the same way a responsible reporter would be. You try not to show bias, you’re just reporting the facts. If you report it without bias, it’s up to the reader — or listener — to determine what they think of that piece. I was very conscious of that with ‘Lower the Flag,’ ‘American Reckoning,’ and with all the lyrical content on the record.”
Many music fans embrace musicians who write and perform impassioned songs about the world we live in and the issues that unite and separate us. Many other fans maintain that musicians should simply entertain their audiences, no more, no less.
“I think it’s up to the individual artists to utilize their soapbox as they see fit,” said Bon Jovi, who in previous presidential elections campaigned on behalf of Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry.
“Who’s going to tell that — ‘just entertain’ — to Bob Dylan?” he continued. “Where would the world be if he didn’t write the songs he wrote? It’s the same with Woody Guthrie. So, I think we are all part of this great American experience and experiment, and people are absolutely entitled to their opinions.
“I don’t choose to utilize my microphone on the stage to tell you who to vote for. But if you came to a rally, and I was there, it’s evident that I was there. If you come to a Bon Jovi show, I won’t stand up there and pontificate for an hour. If I chose to, it would be my prerogative. But I don’t. I choose not to do that when I’m there to entertain you and sing the songs I’ve sang for my whole life.
“I don’t use the stage to say, ‘Vote for me,’ or ‘Vote for Joe.’ That’s not what I set out to do.”
Trump card?
Asked if he will he campaign for Joe Biden, Bon Jovi demurred.
“There isn’t any campaigning these days, is there?” he said. “It’s taken on a different form.”
When his interviewer jokingly asks if he feels slighted that President Donald Trump does not appear to be a Bon Jovi fan — given the absence of the band’s songs at Trump’s campaign rallies — the response is fast and sharp.
“Now, what makes you think he isn’t?” said Bon Jovi, who supported Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s now-abandoned 2020 presidential campaign. Is Trump a Bon Jovi fan? “I’m not going to tell you,” he replied. “I’ve been friends with Democrats and Republicans. I’m from New Jersey, and I was friendly with Chris Christie (the state’s former Republican governor), and now I’m friendly with Phil Murphy (the state’s current Democratic governor).”
Bon Jovi is also friendly with some other famous musicians, including a few who have inspired him over the years. Whether consciously or not, parts of several songs on “2020” sound like loving homages to some of them.
The opening bars of “Let It Rain” evoke any number of quintessential Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band songs, while “Story of Love” suggests Cat Stevens in his 1970s prime. The tremulous guitar motif and high-throttle vocal delivery on “Brothers in Arms” sound like a reverent tip of the hat to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou.” And the opening line of “Brothers in Arms” (“Ever since I was a young boy”) echo “Born on the Bayou’s” opening line (“Now when I was just a little boy”).
“OK, so there’s my palette. The things you mention are all people I’ve obviously admired for years,” Bon Jovi said.
“When ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’ came out (in 1986), it didn’t sound like anything else. It started that path of just being Bon Jovi. We were always on our own path to try to be true to who we were and create our own way. The ultimate goal for any artist is to take your influences, throw them in a pot, stir them up, and make your own sound . ... My greatest lyrical heroes were Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. That’s pretty far from ‘Livin’ On a Prayer.’
“For me, it’s important to evolve and to continue to write, and to say new things and do new things. We’re not just playing yesterday’s songs.”
“With this record, as a songwriter, it gave me purpose. So, I wrote a topical record with some observations about what I’ve witnessed over the last year.”
Jon Bon Jovi