Jon Bon Jovi is a nerd, a perfectionist, someone who can’t sit still even if he wants to, always in control, always in the process of planning a new phase of his life, of his career.
You could guess it by scrolling through the numbers a career built and cemented by world tours of hundreds and hundreds of dates. In the decades in which he dedicated himself to building his success, however, the frontman of the band Bon Jovi always had a nemesis, which is mentioned very little in his documentary: criticism. Bon Jovi have never been taken overly seriously. Either for the attractiveness of the first hairy years, or for the sound that consistently placed them on the commercial side of genres like rock and metal, or for the vast and loyal following of fans. Popularity as the enemy of quality.
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There’s little room for regrets in the Bon Jovi doc
Instead, out of the four 50-odd minute episodes that make up this docuseries, they contain just about ten the more or less direct admission of how much this lack of consideration weighs to a band that has always taken things seriously, working hard behind the scenes to achieve extraordinary results. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that the first moment of relaxation after the storm is a sort of rectification to many years of snobbery.
Many years late the group receives an invitation to the Rock Hall of Fame. Even on that occasion Bon Jovi allows himself only one fleeting jab. After all, it is the last chance to see the original line up reunited, along with Alec John Such (died 2022) and Richie Sambora, guitarist, second vocalist and co-writer of many of the band’s big hits. Sambora left the band in 2013 under difficult circumstances, but he is on stage to collect that award. Obviously Bon Jovi cannot know this, but the relaxing embrace between the band members all gathered on stage smacks of an opportunity that was not wasted.
The fact that Both Such and Sambora being in the documentary says a lot about why Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story works. Director and producer Gotham Chopra, accustomed to making documentaries about great sports stars struggling with the end of their careers, has the greatest luck for someone in his position: to be present, with the camera on, when something really important happens. He must have been a “simple” documentary to tell the band’s 40th anniversary and their return to the scene. Bon Jovi of the present which talks about the work to return to the stage and celebrate the anniversary in top condition, while the documentary reconstructs the entire history of the group.
Thank You, Goodnight works because Bon Jovi doesn’t try to control it
However, it happens that the condition does not exist, Bon Jovi has a voice problem and, for the first time in his career, contemplates the possibility of retirement. Here he shows what he’s made of, because he doesn’t push Chopra away, he doesn’t hide weakness and pain, but he takes it right into the operating room, for vocal cord surgery that could help him or end his career. The answer to how it happened is not in the doc, because it is still an open question. The question that Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story answers very well is What kind of artist and man could he be who sings hyperpositive anthems like “It’s my Life” in his group’s second youth, he gets married in his early twenties at the peak of his career and avoids almost all the extravagance of a rock star, takes long car rides with his “musical godfather” Bruce Springsteen, reflecting on mortality and planning three weeks of rehearsals before returning to tour.
Bon Jovi is obsessed with his group’s musical legacy, the topic he talks about most in the documentary. We can sense all the defects hidden by the qualities described: perfectionist, control freak, determined to take responsibility and act as manager and parent to the other members of the group but ready to claim his leadership in crucial moments. Bon Jovi puts the band and the music first, always. Sambora no: destructive and sharp, he punctuates the entire documentary with the few uncomfortable truths it contains. The fact that Bon Jovi wanted him there to tell his side of the story says a lot about the complex relationship but not without mutual respect between the two.
Sambora’s dramatic farewell – sudden and poisonous – to the group on the eve of the 2013 tour, the need for Bon Jovi to evolve in order to survive are the best passages of a documentary demanding in terms of length, butsincere and compelling enough to deserve viewing beyond the audience of the band’s fans. Sure, Bon Jovi isn’t in the dock, but what’s missing is telling of his stress points. Very little is said about his marriage and the relationship between the wives of the band members and the frontman. Emblematic is the fact that his son, now tour manager of his father’s band, speaks of dad Jon only in work terms, never expressing comments on him being his father.
The silence of one of the sons of a band that spent much of the ’80s on tour or in the recording studio is emblematic. Bon Jovi were on stage making history, bringing American rock to communist Russia, while children were born and raised at home. The answer to the price paid for these choices, ultimately, is contained in Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. The musical legacy of the band comes first and it doesn’t matter how much the music and composition of the band changes over time. As long as you’re able to stand on a stage and defend and live on that legacy, you do it.
