Bon Jovi (11 page)

Lost Highway
tour, Tico leaving the stage, Punchestown Racecourse, Dublin, Ireland, June 7, 2008.
Phil Griffin

JON:
You’ve got to remember all of these gifts and opportunities came from so much fucking work, every single day. We’re where we are now in our lives and our careers because we worked to get here.

Life on the road is no vacation. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see the world. What I see is hotel rooms, the gym, the restaurant, the bar, the airport. It’s a shame, but I’m never anywhere long enough and you can’t. I see very, very little because you don’t have days off. You’ve got 130 guys and twenty-seven trucks. You can’t keep everyone sitting around so you can sightsee.

I try to grab some pictures on occasion. It’s nice when I look back and see the photos of us in Jakarta, the pictures in India. I’ve been to India three times, but I haven’t really seen anything unless you count doing a photo session in the street.

How psychotic is it to sit in an empty dressing room, then go out onto a stage with seventy thousand screaming maniacs, only to get back in the car where there’s total silence, and then go back to a hotel room and sit there all by yourself? I just got off this massive stage and that’s all there is. Ringing. That’ll fuck you up.

Jon in a local pub, Marbella, Spain, June 2008.
Phil Griffin

RICHIE:
I feel better and younger than I’ve felt in a long, long time now. I’m also more enriched by this life and it feels much fuller to me. I’m much more present, these days. I want to live in the moment onstage every night.

TICO:
Life on the road is not normal. As much as we’re a family, as much as you reach out to the people around you, you’ve still got a sheet of paper slipped under your hotel room door every night that tells you what you’re doing the next day and where and when you have to do it. It’s not a natural way of living. You are eating from room service. You can’t even make your own coffee. They’re the little things I want when I go home. They are the simple things that most people want to get away from. Personally, I want to be able to do those things for myself.

JON:
You know, I go out there like a prizefighter and answer the bell every night. But when I get done with a tour, God, I’m tired. I look in the mirror and say, “Whoa, you’ve aged this year.”

I hope I’m able to just turn it off without breaking down. This dates back twenty years and other guys in my peer group will attest. You’re on the road, the tour ends, and then you go home. You’re a dead man the next day. You’re obviously jetlagged, exhausted from the shows, and your body shuts down. But come nine o’clock, your pulse will rise. Your heartbeat will race. It’s showtime … and there’s no show.

RICHIE:
There isn’t any real come down period. You take a couple a weeks off and you get the kids and you’ve got to go on vacation.

JON:
I go home and introduce myself to my family again. ‘Cause it’s a very selfish place, me doing this. There are four kids at home going, “Where were you?”

RICHIE:
We spend more time together than with our own families sometimes. The challenge is when you get home, trying to be really, really present.

Press and promo day for
Bounce
album, Sterling Sound, New York, NY, July 23, 2002.
Sam Erickson

BEYOND THE BAND

Portrait sessions, The Eleanor, Long Island City, NY, December 2, 2008.
Phil Griffin

Hell’s Kitchen, New York, NY, December 8, 1999.
Olaf Heine

JON:
To me, any artist needs to find fuel wherever he can—reading different books, seeing different movies and plays, whatever it is that inspires you. I absolutely encourage everyone to go and find different circles of friends simply because, when we get together, we’ve got something else to talk about.

The Arena Football League is all about community, family, access, and affordability. Those values define the Philadelphia Soul, the team I co-own; we are one of the premiere teams in the AFL and Arena Bowl XXII Champions.

Giving back to your community isn’t done enough in professional sports. It’s all about me, me, me. From the day we launched the Soul franchise, I had a vision of using the team as a launching pad for helping the Philadelphia community. Everything we do has a charitable angle. Dedication to community service has been the cornerstone of our franchise.

I’d been reading a bunch of American history books. I was staying in Philadelphia and looked out the window of my gilded cage. It was a cold, snowy night and I saw a man sleeping on the steps of city hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our nation. The man was freezing on the street in the dead of winter. I didn’t believe that was what Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and Washington had envisioned.

I called Obie O’Brien, the band’s engineer and my dear friend, up to my room at two
A.M.
I said, “I got an idea.” I gave him a mission: Find the person who will help me fix this. And he found me Sister Mary Scullion.

She’s a Sister of Mercy. She doesn’t wear a habit. She curses and she spits. She calls it as she sees it and she don’t take any guff from anybody.

Sister Mary’s been my mentor, adhering to the age-old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish on his own.

She founded Project H.O.M.E. [Housing, Opportunities for Employment, Medical Care, Education] in Philadelphia and has addressed every component of homelessness, from drug addiction and alcoholism to mental illness. She’s ushered people, literally, from the alleyways, through rehab, and all the way to affordable rentals and permanent housing.

Project H.O.M.E. offers job training and provides services to the community, and it helps rebuild those neighborhoods, bringing pride back to those places. You meet so many people who are so warm, wonderful, loving, caring, hardworking, and determined. Opportunities just didn’t knock on their doors the same way they did for others.

That first time I met Sister Mary she said something that was quite moving but really threw me off. She said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Me?” I think it was just someone like me.

We created a real bond and we’ve done great things together. We’ve been able to expose Sister Mary and Project H.O.M.E. to a broader audience while putting the issue of homelessness in the spotlight.

The Philadelphia Soul Charitable Foundation was founded as the natural extension of the football team’s philanthropic priorities. The Foundation’s mission is to help stem the cycle of poverty that leads to homelessness.

That’s what the Philadelphia Soul Charitable Foundation’s stood for now for three official years, and five years since we launched the team.

We work with partners and organizations to reach our goals. Government dollars are good but it takes private equity and, more importantly, homeowners and others in the neighborhood to rally around the effort. I can easily see the vision. I can help bring these parties together and, hopefully, reform and rebuild communities and neighborhoods.

Every charity is a good charity so long as it’s really getting to the bottom line. But in light of what’s happened in America in the last few years, our dedication to ending poverty and homelessness truly, and unfortunately, placed us ahead of the curve.

So far, we’ve built a total of 140 homes—including some exclusively for veterans—with Project H.O.M.E. We broke ground in Newark, New Jersey, at a site for fifty permanent rentals through a partnership with HELP USA. We’ve expanded beyond the Philadelphia/New Jersey region; we’ve had a hand in building homes now in Louisiana, Detroit, Atlanta, LA, Colorado, Brooklyn, and even South Africa.

Now we’re confident and experienced. I feel a great sense of pride. I’m still learning, mind you. I’m not a novice anymore—just barely above that level. But I can speak on the subject with passion. You learn so much every day. It’s all working right now. We have experience, we have desire, we’re committed, and we’re not getting too big too soon. I feel very proud. If people could only understand how good we feel when we see a family in their new home. I wish everyone could experience that same euphoria we’ve felt.

My music and my philanthropic work are two different worlds. I don’t feel the need to preach about what the Foundation does from the concert stage nor do I feel the need to talk about my music and concerts during a site dedication or groundbreaking. Keep them separate: two different aspects of the same life. And they’re both fulfilling.

I just feel the need to be a more well-rounded person, to stop suffering from LSD—lead singer’s disease: me, me, me, me, me. That’s a shallow existence.

After the first of two Detroit concerts, I went to my room, went to bed, did all the right things. It was exciting to wake up early, put on a nice shirt, shave, and attend a press conference, break ground, dedicate a house we had a hand in building. To me, that’s the greatest thing about the Foundation’s work. You get more out of giving back than you do in receiving. It’s a lot of work but it’s all about the end result, what you believe will be something better.

You can’t always just take; you gotta give. That’s the law of the universe.

I found a cause, a reason, something that was nondenominational. There were no prejudices involved. Doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, young, old, Republican, Democrat. Homelessness is something that can potentially affect anyone. You can relate to it whether you live in Germany, Paris, Tokyo, or Philadelphia.

Sometimes you get so caught up in the day-to-day that you’re not aware beyond your own life. That’s normal. But what is it that motivates and moves you? People just have to find “it” and they’ll get involved and make a difference in the lives of others. That person could be the next community leader. Who knows? We change the world, one person at a time. One state. One city. One neighborhood. One block. One home. One family. One soul at a time.

Nothing wrong with that romantic vision of what the country can and should be.

Philadelphia Soul Conference Champions with co-owner Jon Bon Jovi, backstage pre-show, Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, July 14, 2008.
Phil Griffin

Jon representing Soul Foundation at groundbreaking ceremony, Detroit, MI, July 8, 2008.
Harvey Finkle/www.harveyfinkle.com

Jon representing Soul Foundation at groundbreaking ceremony, Newark, NJ, September 2, 2008.
Pete Byron

Tico Torres, SoHo, New York, NY, December 9, 1999.
Olaf Heine

TICO:
I’ve been an artist since I was five. As an only child, I had a lot of time alone where I would paint and create. Music took grip of me when I was eleven or twelve and I was unstoppable. Art was put off to the side while I played music, which provided more immediate feedback and gratification.