Bon Jovi comes to Cleveland to celebrate band’s 40th anniversary year with new exhibit at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2024)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Bon Jovi’s 16th studio album, released on Friday, is called “Forever.”

Judging by the hyped crowd of fans that acquired tickets for a Q&A session with the group at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday afternoon, “Bon Jovi: Forever” isn’t just an album title for a band they love. It’s a way of life.

Bon Jovi, original members keyboardist David Bryan and drummer Tico Torres, longtime bassist Hugh McDonald, guitarist Phil X, percussionist and backing vocalist Everett Bradley and guitarist, co-producer John Shanks sat down with Jason Hanley, the Rock Hall’s vice president of education and business engagement, for an hour-plus long chat in the museum’s cozy Foster Theater.

The 2018 inductees arrived in Cleveland having just played a short six-song set at JBJ’s Nasvhille, the singer’s bar, the first time they had played together for quite a while.

Earlier on the red carpet before the chat and immediately after the band walked through the Rock Hall’s “Bon Jovi Forever,” the namesake lead singer seemed a bit tired from more than two months of promoting the documentary and the album. But he gained energy in front of the crowd of fans and Rock Hall members.

“It was beautiful, incredible. I didn’t know they had so much of our stuff. Now I know where it all is,” Bon Jovi said. “... the original lyrics of so many hits and some of the clothes that we had that I’m embarrassed by. They really outdid themselves.”

Though the man and the band have been in reflection mode while shooting the documentary and opening their storage for the Rock Hall, Bon Jovi said he’s not approaching the 40th celebration as putting a bow on the end of era.

“It’s just a continuation, really. I think this marks the first 40 years is how we’re looking at it,” he said.

“In the words of Bon Jovi, we’re halfway there,” joked Bryan, standing behind the singer.

Among the subjects touched on with Bon Jovi, who said he is “well on the road to recovery” from his vocal surgery, was the band’s induction and lengthy history with the city of Cleveland and the old-school ways young bands would build audiences. This included shouting out ex-WMMS DJ Kid Leo, for whom the band did a lunchtime concert early in their career.

“You could get support regionally or locally. Going out with Donnie Iris and doing shows when there were bands like the Michael Stanley Band. And so we came up in that period of time,” he said.

He noted that MTV’s rise was a big boon to the band getting a national following, though added, “we also figured out, don’t let record companies convince you they know how to make a video because we fell for that a bunch.”

“If you want to torture us, just show ‘Runaway,’ ” Bon Jovi said.

“Yeah, that would be hell, just us sitting here watching ‘Runaway’ over and over,” Bryan said.

The newer band members, particularly Bradley, X and Shanks, talked of finding their place and figuring out how to add their sound to an already established and world-famous band, with Shanks also praising the Torres and McDonald rhythm section and X, who grew up a fan of the band, talking of respectfully playing former guitarist Richie Sambora’s parts they way they were recorded.

“You can’t stray. You can’t play any different notes you have to play those melodies. Everybody expects that every night. I would expect that every night. So that’s what I put out there,” the guitarist said.

Bon Jovi also talked about the induction ceremony experience, which he described as “a very special night.”

“I’m so glad that in our year, the induction was in Cleveland,” he said to cheers, before telling the story of asking the band’s longtime friend Howard Stern to induct them in a clandestine meeting in the back seat of Stern’s car, without telling Stern that the ceremony was in Cleveland,

“He thought he had to get out his passport to come to Cleveland,” Bon Jovi said, drawing laughs.

“But I’m so, so, so happy and I know that other artists may not know or agree with that sentiment, because you think ‘oh, I wanted to do it in L.A. or I want to do it in New York.’ But no. I wanted to do it here,” he said.

The exhibit

On Sunday, the new “Bon Jovi Forever” exhibit will officially open and fans of the man and the band will have plenty to absorb.

The concept for the exhibit came from the Bon Jovi camp, which contacted the museum in late 2023 with the idea of involving the Rock Hall in the band’s 40th anniversary celebration. The idea was to use the occasion to also mark the release of its latest album, “Forever” and the new and revealing documentary, “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story,” streaming now on Hulu.

“I got to see an early screener of the documentary so that we could kind of align the exhibit with it and sort of follow the same story,” says Andy Leach, senior director of Museum & Archival Collections at the Rock Hall. He says Bon Jovi also opened up their own very organized and carefully catalogued archives for the museum to peruse, and to pick and choose how best to tell the story of the band while coinciding with the flow of the documentary.

“What’s great is they had this amazing database that they put together with images and you can see all the artifacts,” said Leach. “We were able to just sort of put things in our shopping cart. Some of these (artifacts) have never been seen before, and many of them haven’t been seen for decades since they were used onstage or in recording. So we have instruments, clothing, handwritten lyrics, photos and footage, so it’s kind of an immersive experience.”

The “Bon Jovi Forever” showcase is on the Rock Hall’s sixth floor, but there are exhibits to enjoy before you climb the spiral staircase to the main exhibit area.

The 1988 Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail motorcycle Bon Jovi rode in the 1990 video for his Top 15 solo track, “Miracle,” from the “Young Guns II” soundtrack, is located on the fourth floor. On the fifth floor, you can check out the Takamine acoustic guitar that has been the singer’s preferred stage instrument since 1994.

Revealing just how current the exhibit is and the depth of the Bon Jovi organization’s involvement, fans can see the denim jacket Bon Jovi wears on the cover of “Forever,” which was released on Friday. (The album, the band’s 16th studio recording, is available on all streaming platforms and, naturally, at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s store).

Once you ascend the stairs, the exhibit covers four decades of band history on four walls in chronological order. It begins with Bon Jovi’s early days in his very first high school band Raze, which only performed once, and covers his stint as part of the 10-piece “teen rock group” Atlantic City Expressway, which in 1978, was confident enough to have shiny satin tour jackets commissioned from Chess King. There’s also one of Bon Jovi’s first Stratocasters and some song lyrics written on the back of a performance contract.

There are also plenty of reproductions of handwritten song lyrics on display, including “You Give Love a Bad Name,” Livin’ On A Prayer,” “Lay Your Hands On Me” with many lines scratched out, and “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” along with the silver and black jacket Bon Jovi wore in the accompanying video for the quadruple platinum-selling hit song.

There are gold lame´ suits inspired by Elvis and a long-way-from-Jersey Dolce & Gabbana jacket that will remind the band’s fashionistas fans just how silly the ’80s were, and how far the Jersey boys have come.

There are denim jackets emblazoned with logos, too, snakeskin boots from the “Livin’ On A Prayer” video, and the torn T-shirt that model Angela Chidnese wore on the original cover of of the Japan-only release of “Slippery When Wet.”

For gearheads, there are also several instruments featured, including Richie Sambora’s famous double-neck Ovation acoustic guitar from the “Wanted Dead Or Alive” video and which he used on the acoustic duet at the 1989 MTV Video Awards that many credit as jumpstarting the channel’s innovative “unplugged” series.