I might have been a psychologist. It interests me.
— Richie Sambora
The Garden State will never leave me.
Throughout my career as a songwriter, I've had a knack for writing songs that were about me and my life experiences and observations.
You look at your bank account, and you see the currency of love and happiness is more important than the currency of money.
When you're making a record, you try to achieve stylistically what fits on you. Like a good old coat, you know what I mean?
I was the lead singer in a lot of the bands I was in. You have to be comfortable. You gotta get up there and sell the song. You have to get up there and sell the lyric. You gotta be able to feel it.
I know Mick Jagger wouldn't tour without Keith Richards and call it the Rolling Stones.
Rock and roll is a contact sport. I enjoy playing the tunes that really get the people going.
I try to look at most of my solos as a musical piece within the song, not, say, showing off.
We've been around for almost three decades now - there's about three generations of Bon Jovi fans.
I didn't check into rehab. Instead of me heading into a place - I was just drinking too much and I needed to get my life together. I'm still in therapy and stuff like that, but it's good. I'm great. I feel fine.
Going through the grief period of my dad and losing him - that was the worst thing because you know when you get that call. When you are seven, eight years old, you have that almost vision in your mind of what that's going to be like and what your going to feel like and it doesn't prepare you.
I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings on the road with my band, so anytime that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family in a traditional aspect, eating sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and all the trappings of Thanksgiving and then get on a treadmill the next day extra long, I'm happy.
That got me thinking. Bon Jovi kills in Jersey. Just kills. We did Atlantic City this past winter and man, you wouldn't believe the intensity in that crowd. Can I just talk for a minute about how amazingly hot Heather is?
I'm a homebody, really, when it comes down to it.
Songwriting is a give-and-take process, and it can lead to some good, healthy debates.
When you walk out in front of an audience of over 70,000 people, you've got to be on your game. They deserve it.
I will do anything for anybody that asks me to do anything for a kid.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, so I basically learned by a system of making mistakes.
Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.
I always felt there was some kind of nobility centered in my desire and passion for what I do.
I'm on a search for my future ex-wife.
Stand on the stage in front of 15 people or 15,000. Have them look up to you and tell you how wonderful you are, and if you don't think that's a great feeling, okay, then you're unlike me.
Learning about all those different things psychologically - about grief and my own addictions and problems and stuff like that, and really getting an education on it, I think it was part of the process of it, learning about it and trying to lick it.
There are a lot of really good guitar sounds and new kind atmospheres on the new Bon Jovi record. I think people are going to dig it, man. And it rocks hard.
You know, no matter what I am or what I do for a living, I'm still, you know, the husband and the dad and the protector of the house, and I have to be conscientious about that.
You know, when you're an actor, you want to go to Hollywood. When you're a musician, you want to go to Nashville.
The early Bon Jovi stuff I can't stand. I just think we didn't have our stylistic voice. But some people love some of that stuff.
A band is like a marriage, and if you're in a marriage with someone, and you lose yourself in that marriage, the relationship is over, really.
When you're sick on the road, it's the worst. That's when you become the most vulnerable and neurotic. You become scared. If I had a cold or a chest infection, and I had to sing all those high parts, there was stage fright.
I've had a very, very interesting view of the planet over the last 30 years, touring as excessively as I have. And music is the most evocative, transformative, connective force in humanity, man.
As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.
At the end of the day, if you're going to buy a can of Coke, you want the real thing.
Being in America isn't old-hat - it's where we're from - but I get excited to be in other parts of the world like Athens and Croatia, which were quite cool. I'm a sightseer. I go see the sights and museums. I'm into that kind of thing.
There's nothing like a love for our children. I love being a papa, and that's the truth.
I just want to thank everyone for their support. Sometimes friends need the help of their friends to get by.
I love being a dad. I'd have more kids if I could. I'd take a couple more, one or two more before I croak.
I'm all for sharing music, but when people can download a whole record and pay nothing for it and then they share it with 100,000 other people, it's breaking down the whole business.
I'm a lucky guy. I don't take for granted, for one minute, what I do.
I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we're humans and not some kind of bird.
