Exactly Who He Appears To Be

From The Globe and Mail (11/5/2012)

‘Have a nice day,” he has been known to sing. And I do believe he means it.

Jon Bon Jovi is on the phone, calling from Ireland on the morning after Hurricane Sandy did its rude business on the eastern seaboard. The rock star is famously a New Jerseyite, but before I can ask him about how he and his had been affected by the storm, he questions me about Toronto. How is it there? Is everything okay? That kind of thing.

Taken aback by his concern over the city’s well-being, I mumble something about the big winds. We’re fine, I say, speaking for Canada’s biggest metropolis. But, Jon Bon Jovi, what about the Garden State? “Yeah, bad,” he replies. “My wife and kids were actually in Manhattan. But I spoke to them this morning, and everything’s okay. Thanks for asking.”

Bon Jovi is known as the CEO (and main financial beneficiary) of his namesake band and brand. He is wholesome, not a rehabber, and runs a charitable foundation that includes the Soul Kitchen, a community restaurant in Red Bank, N.J., notable for its pay-what-you-can prices.

His hair shines flawlessly and he’s got a mile-wide smile – big enough to eat a banana sideways, perhaps. He has a reputation for being highly disciplined and hard-working. His exploding-chorus guitar rock is as corporate and crowd-pleasing as Coca-Cola. And did we mention the hair?

But in a Billboard magazine cover story on Bon Jovi a year ago, the Saturday Night Live mastermind Lorne Michaels praised something else: the man’s manners, and not just the perfunctory please-and-thank-you niceties. “I just mean a level of respect for all the people you work with,” Michaels said. “I’ve found him in every one of my dealings with him to be completely honest and straightforward. I’ve been around a long time, and it’s not common.”

Riley O’Connor, head of leading music promoter Live Nation Canada, vouches for Bon Jovi’s good nature. “He would be the best neighbour you could ever have,” O’Connor says, “the kind of person you’d invite over for a barbeque on short notice.”

If you can get past the hair-gushing, the rest of the article is a good read.


~ Hath