Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet ('86) vs. New Jersey ('88) Part 1

<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody, Welcome back to the Shirtley You Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious Podcast, Season two, Episode one. I'm Jack Dah.
<v Speaker 1>I am so glad to be back. We've been gone
<v Speaker 1>too long. We're comparing Slippery when Wet versus New Jersey
<v Speaker 1>bon Jovi's Two Bigs South.
<v Speaker 2>You say that and I get chills. I'm just I'm
<v Speaker 2>so excited about this. I'm ready to let it rock.
<v Speaker 2>I'm ready to let it go because you can't stop a.
<v Speaker 1>Fire burning out of control. No, and I'm just I'm
<v Speaker 1>hoping we're still wanted dead or.
<v Speaker 2>We did take two steel horses to this location tonight
<v Speaker 2>to pods.
<v Speaker 1>So all right, Jason. Before we jump in, I want
<v Speaker 1>to say thanks to our executive producer for this episode,
<v Speaker 1>mister Jonathan Tweety. He entered in, gave us a Patreon subscription,
<v Speaker 1>and he is the executive producer of our bon Jovie episode.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks Jonathan, we really appreciate you. If you would like
<v Speaker 2>to be a Patreon and become an exclusive producer, go
<v Speaker 2>to our Patreon page, click subscribe.
<v Speaker 1>And it's that easy that you just didn't subscribe. Now
<v Speaker 1>pick your amount you can. You can be an executive
<v Speaker 1>producer for as little as five dollars a month. We
<v Speaker 1>start sending out prizes after that, so be sure and
<v Speaker 1>take advantage of that while it lasts. But anything that
<v Speaker 1>you can do to help out, we truly appreciate. And
<v Speaker 1>if you can't do that, tell a friend, tell five friends,
<v Speaker 1>tell ten friends, and we'll forgive you for not giving
<v Speaker 1>us a five dollars a month. There's this place I
<v Speaker 1>like to go. It's called the nineteen eighties. Let's do it,
<v Speaker 1>let's go, let's see eighties.
<v Speaker 2>All right, so listen, dee, this is a massive battle
<v Speaker 2>for me personally. Okay, okay, So there are a few
<v Speaker 2>pillar albums in my life, right, So Thriller's one yes,
<v Speaker 2>Hysteria is one yes, Slippery w and Wet and New Jersey.
<v Speaker 2>That rounds out my big four pillars. Now, I've had
<v Speaker 2>love affairs with fifty one, fifty and nineteen eighty four,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, so these others, but these are my
<v Speaker 2>four pillars. So today we're going to start the comparison
<v Speaker 2>between two of my all time favorite albums.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, I've mentioned it before. One of the songs
<v Speaker 1>on one of these albums is the reason that I
<v Speaker 1>started playing guitar, which is a huge, huge thing in
<v Speaker 1>my life. So that's a big deal. We're excited about this. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is pretty awesome. This is amazing, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of interesting. It took a long time for
<v Speaker 1>bon Jovi to get critical acclaim. You know, they were
<v Speaker 1>always a popular band, and because they were a popular band,
<v Speaker 1>there were haters out there and a lot of them
<v Speaker 1>more critics. And to those folks, I just got to say,
<v Speaker 1>screw you, man. You guys are missing out. Yeah. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's enjoyable to listen to this music. It's also
<v Speaker 1>enjoyable to bang your head to this music. This is
<v Speaker 1>just kick butt, good, top down, turn it up music. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 1>these guys have it all. They've got.
<v Speaker 2>They had looks, they had ability, they had great timing,
<v Speaker 2>and they had great songs.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean, we are going to have so much fun.
<v Speaker 2>You want me to do my checklist. Let's run down
<v Speaker 2>the checklist. Checklist before we dive in. Let's make sure
<v Speaker 2>I've got everything I need. Okay, we got we got
<v Speaker 2>the talk box YEP, we've got six pack in the radio,
<v Speaker 2>We've got lipstick, plastic and paint, and we're gonna dance
<v Speaker 2>the tango with a broomstick in our hand.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, okay, you ready, let's let it rock. Bon Jovi
<v Speaker 1>slippery win way. Okay, So we've got to start at
<v Speaker 1>the big and I'm not sure which beginning we start at,
<v Speaker 1>but might as well start with John. His name is
<v Speaker 1>the band name after all, right for sure. So interestingly,
<v Speaker 1>bon Jovi is spelled differently than you might expect. It's
<v Speaker 1>it is a complete word bo in gio v I
<v Speaker 1>bon g o v. Because they're Italian.
<v Speaker 2>Definitely got some Italian in there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And he was born to a couple of marines,
<v Speaker 1>a man and a woman who met in the marine corps,
<v Speaker 1>and then his mom went on to become a playboy bunny,
<v Speaker 1>not in the magazines, but in the clubs, the Playboy restaurant.
<v Speaker 1>She walked around with the little tuft tail and the
<v Speaker 1>ears on and would wait on people like Dean Martin
<v Speaker 1>and Frank Sinatra.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, baby, no baby, Yeah yeah, I did a Google searched.
<v Speaker 2>You can see her, and she's wearing her little little
<v Speaker 2>ears and her little cottontail.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, so she looked good. She looked like a
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixties playboy money yeah wow.
<v Speaker 2>So former marine Yeah, God bless America.
<v Speaker 1>Yes. So when they got married, he was going to
<v Speaker 1>do the standard. You know, I'm going to go become
<v Speaker 1>a plumber. And she was like, you know, why don't
<v Speaker 1>you become a hairdresser because I spend a lot of
<v Speaker 1>money on my hair and it'd be nice if you
<v Speaker 1>could do it. And he was like, okay, if you
<v Speaker 1>want me to do that, I'll do that. And so
<v Speaker 1>he became a hairdresser, which is probably why John has
<v Speaker 1>some of the best hair over all. Right. So he
<v Speaker 1>at some point they decide, listen, you got to learn
<v Speaker 1>a musical instrument, and so at seven years old he
<v Speaker 1>started playing the guitar. They took him to the guitar lessons.
<v Speaker 1>He started playing the guitar, and he said that it
<v Speaker 1>was like at the guitar shop and the old man
<v Speaker 1>had a pipe and would nod off and it was done.
<v Speaker 1>No no, no, no, no no, And you know, he
<v Speaker 1>was just not interested at seven. And after a few
<v Speaker 1>weeks of lessons, he was told to clean up, and
<v Speaker 1>so his way of cleaning up was to chunk the
<v Speaker 1>guitar down into the basement just to hear it clang.
<v Speaker 1>And so it took several years till he was thirteen
<v Speaker 1>before he picked the guitar back up again. And as
<v Speaker 1>it happened, a gentleman moved across the street who was
<v Speaker 1>like a session musician, but his name was Al Paranello. Well,
<v Speaker 1>just so that you know, bon Jovi, it has special
<v Speaker 1>little pins that are like in the shape of the
<v Speaker 1>Superman logo that if you go long enough with the
<v Speaker 1>band like crew or band member whatever. It's a very
<v Speaker 1>honorary thing and it takes a lot of time to
<v Speaker 1>get it. And John when Al died, he took his
<v Speaker 1>off and put it in the casket with Al. That's
<v Speaker 1>how important it was he was to him. And so
<v Speaker 1>he started taking lessons from him, and instead of the scales,
<v Speaker 1>he's like, I'm gonna teach you how to play House
<v Speaker 1>of the Rising Sun, which I loved because that was
<v Speaker 1>like the first song my dad taught me how to
<v Speaker 1>play on the guitar. I'm sure it's the first song
<v Speaker 1>for a whole lot of folks, right, And so he
<v Speaker 1>teaches shows him how to play it. He says, come
<v Speaker 1>back next week. Comes back the next week, he still
<v Speaker 1>know how to play it. He's like, okay, well come
<v Speaker 1>back next week. I need you to know it. Comes
<v Speaker 1>back the next week, he still doesn't know it. He says, listen,
<v Speaker 1>I don't have time to around with you. Okay, I
<v Speaker 1>got kids. If you're going to do this, do it.
<v Speaker 1>If not, don't waste my time. Come back here next
<v Speaker 1>week and you don't know what we're done. And John
<v Speaker 1>was like, that was the exact kick in the butt
<v Speaker 1>that I needed. And I worked the entire week and
<v Speaker 1>made sure that I knew it by the time I
<v Speaker 1>went back. So while he's trying to make it in
<v Speaker 1>high school and trying to put these you know, trying
<v Speaker 1>to do something with these bands, he'll go and play
<v Speaker 1>at clubs during the week and play until the wee
<v Speaker 1>hours of the morning, and then come to school the
<v Speaker 1>next day, you know, play all three go to school
<v Speaker 1>at eight and one night, while he's playing, a guy
<v Speaker 1>in the back named Bruce Springsteen decides to come and
<v Speaker 1>join him on stage. How cool is that if you're
<v Speaker 1>a high school kid, seventeen year old kid and the
<v Speaker 1>boss says, hey, can I come up and with you?
<v Speaker 1>Uh duh? Yeah? Yeah? And he was one of John's idols,
<v Speaker 1>I mean yeah.
<v Speaker 2>John talks about how it was it was Bruce Springsteen,
<v Speaker 2>it was Southside Johnny it was Jay GAW's band. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>those guys were who he looked up to musically. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and hey, Bruce Wingstein, my idol. You want to play
<v Speaker 2>with me?
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, let's go. Yeah. And he had a couple of
<v Speaker 1>buddies who also took guitar lessons from this guy. And
<v Speaker 1>one of those buddies name was Dave skid Row. You
<v Speaker 1>got it, yep.
<v Speaker 2>We talked about him last, Paul Ye. Dave and John
<v Speaker 2>were good buddies. Later on, John got a job at
<v Speaker 2>the radio station and he was being a gopher and
<v Speaker 2>he would sleep floors and he would go get dry
<v Speaker 2>cleaning and this and that. So he brought his buddy
<v Speaker 2>Dave Sabo up to the to the place and Dave's like,
<v Speaker 2>that's Ozzy Osbourne right there, right Jagger, that's mc jagger.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. He's like, duh, why would you not want to
<v Speaker 1>work here? You know? Right? Yeah. So that guy that
<v Speaker 1>owned the radio station was a second cousin of John's.
<v Speaker 1>His name was Tony bun Jovi, and the radio station
<v Speaker 1>was called the Power Station, and it was a place
<v Speaker 1>where obviously a lot of big names were coming. A
<v Speaker 1>Sting has an album called fifty seventh and ninth, which
<v Speaker 1>is named after the intersection that he would cross walking
<v Speaker 1>to that studio. All right, yeah, so he's working for
<v Speaker 1>his cousin as a gopher in this station, goes to
<v Speaker 1>get coffee, goes to make bets for people, doing whatever
<v Speaker 1>he can during the day, and then he had a
<v Speaker 1>long bus ride. He would spend his bus ride writing songs,
<v Speaker 1>and then he would get home at night and play practice. Right,
<v Speaker 1>and at some point he puts together a song. He
<v Speaker 1>puts together several songs, but he's really excited about this
<v Speaker 1>song called Runaway, Runaway. But now a lot of people
<v Speaker 1>think this is his first professional recording, but it's not
<v Speaker 1>breaking on. Let's go, I would get this tray question.
<v Speaker 1>His first professional recording actually occurred a couple of years earlier,
<v Speaker 1>when a small movie called Star Wars was recording a
<v Speaker 1>Christmas album and they were recording a song called R
<v Speaker 1>two D two we Wish you a Merry Christmas, and
<v Speaker 1>Tony at the recording station says, hey, my cousin over here,
<v Speaker 1>he'd be good to sing that song for you, And
<v Speaker 1>so John bon Jovi's first professional record is on Christmas
<v Speaker 1>and the Stars, the Star Wars Christmas album, and here is.
<v Speaker 1>Here's a sample of John bon Jovi singing R two
<v Speaker 1>D two we wish you a merry Christmas. You know
<v Speaker 1>lesson we don't go back to the Winter Stars. We
<v Speaker 1>know that unity's big. That is so freaking awesome. Man,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know that I would say awesome. It's a
<v Speaker 1>little it's a little strange. It doesn't sound like the
<v Speaker 1>Bonjob we know and love, but it is pretty crazy
<v Speaker 1>to hear that. Are you ready for this? Yes? I
<v Speaker 1>have this album. Oh my god, I have this album.
<v Speaker 1>You own it.
<v Speaker 2>I own this album, this record like you had the
<v Speaker 2>Open Well. I was a Star Wars freak, Yes, so
<v Speaker 2>I had everything I can get my hands on Star Wars. Wise,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't become a Bonjob freak until later. It just
<v Speaker 2>happened that world's collided and I looked on.
<v Speaker 1>Like, hey, I got this record. Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 2>There's another song on I think called what do you
<v Speaker 2>Buy a Wookie When He's already got a comb.
<v Speaker 1>Or something like that. That was like my favorite song
<v Speaker 1>growing up. So it's fantastic. That is fantastic. So it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't the runaway hit that Runaway became, and neither was
<v Speaker 1>Runaway when it first came out. He was very excited
<v Speaker 1>about it. He was singular focused. He had he knew
<v Speaker 1>what he wanted, and that was what he was pursuing
<v Speaker 1>with all of his effort. And so he was sending
<v Speaker 1>out this demo of Runaway to all of these radio
<v Speaker 1>stations and wasn't getting any where. And he thinks to himself,
<v Speaker 1>you know who's the loneliest guy in the music industry.
<v Speaker 1>It's the DJ right right, because he's just there in
<v Speaker 1>a room by himself, talking to a microphone, pretending he's
<v Speaker 1>talking to the world. And so he goes to this
<v Speaker 1>station called WAAP the Apple and he walks in and
<v Speaker 1>it's a very new station and they don't even have
<v Speaker 1>a receptionist yet. And so he walks in and the
<v Speaker 1>DJ's in the booth like talking to the microphone, looking
<v Speaker 1>at him, like what the heck, what are you doing here?
<v Speaker 1>He's like, I just you know, I've got this music.
<v Speaker 1>I was wondering if you would listen to it and
<v Speaker 1>maybe play it on the radio. And so the guy
<v Speaker 1>listens to Runaway and he's kind of impressed, and he
<v Speaker 1>shows it to the station director and the station director's
<v Speaker 1>kind of impressed. And not only do they want to
<v Speaker 1>play it on the radio, but they want to put
<v Speaker 1>it on an LP that they're making of local, homegrown
<v Speaker 1>music that then happens to get distributed because they're a
<v Speaker 1>chain radio station. It distributed to all of these sister
<v Speaker 1>radio stations around the country. I heard John when he
<v Speaker 1>talked about this. He went to the DJ.
<v Speaker 2>First of all, he had the hustle and the drive
<v Speaker 2>and the ambition and the guts to go up to
<v Speaker 2>this guy and say, look, play this. It's really good.
<v Speaker 2>When he said, he said, listen, if you'll play this
<v Speaker 2>three and a half minutes from now, you'll realize standing
<v Speaker 2>in front of you is.
<v Speaker 1>A rock star.
<v Speaker 2>And you know what, he was right, Yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>I can say that and that wouldn't be true, but
<v Speaker 2>when he said it, it was true.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Absolutely. And when it started to get the airplay,
<v Speaker 1>suddenly all of those record companies that he had been
<v Speaker 1>getting getting turned down by were now giving him calls.
<v Speaker 1>Ended up going with the record label Mercury, and they said,
<v Speaker 1>all right, we need to we need to put together
<v Speaker 1>this song, we need to put together an album. And
<v Speaker 1>so he puts together a band that's supposed to be
<v Speaker 1>together for three weeks, right, when Runaway comes out. He
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have a band, he doesn't have management, he doesn't
<v Speaker 1>have a record label. He's just a guy with a
<v Speaker 1>great song. You know. He didn't play all the music himself.
<v Speaker 1>He did have some guys playing the music for him,
<v Speaker 1>but it wasn't his band. But here's who it was.
<v Speaker 1>The guitarist was Tim Pierce, who played with Rick Springfield
<v Speaker 1>and several other huge names. Wow. The keyboardist was Roy Britton,
<v Speaker 1>who was a member of the East Street Band with
<v Speaker 1>Bruce Springsteen and several I mean they call him the Professor.
<v Speaker 1>He's a big name. The bassist was Hugh McDonald who
<v Speaker 1>is now the bassist for Bon Jovie. I mean, he
<v Speaker 1>had a top notch crew on that first first single
<v Speaker 1>recording that he had, but they weren't his band. He
<v Speaker 1>needed to have a band, and so he called up
<v Speaker 1>Dave Brian. David Brian was born David Brian Roschbaum. He
<v Speaker 1>got tired of spelling out his last name, so he
<v Speaker 1>changed He shorted it down to David Brian. He was
<v Speaker 1>a keyboardist for John before Runaway became a big hit.
<v Speaker 1>They were in a band together called the Atlantic City
<v Speaker 1>Expressway that was one of about three bands that John had.
<v Speaker 1>There was one called Rais, there was one called The Rest.
<v Speaker 1>When John gets this record deal, he calls up David
<v Speaker 1>Brian and he's like, hey, I need a band. Come
<v Speaker 1>be my keyboardist. And Dave's like, okay, well, I'm pre
<v Speaker 1>med at Rutgers University and I've got a four point
<v Speaker 1>zero and I realized that I wanted to be in
<v Speaker 1>the music industry, but I just got into Juilliard. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>sure I'll go. I'll go tour the country with you
<v Speaker 1>and make next to nothing. Sure, let's give this rock
<v Speaker 1>band thing a dry. He did bet on himself, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and it ended up working out. So David Bryan calls
<v Speaker 1>Alec john Such, who's a bass player, says hey, we're
<v Speaker 1>putting this band together. Come be a part of it.
<v Speaker 1>Alec john Such had been in a band called Phantom's
<v Speaker 1>Opera with Tico Torres, and Tiko Torres is older than
<v Speaker 1>the rest of the guys, and so when he gets
<v Speaker 1>the call and listens to John bon Jovi's song, he's thinking,
<v Speaker 1>I think this is it. I think I'm finally going
<v Speaker 1>to make it. And his wife's like, no, we have
<v Speaker 1>a house, we have things that need to be taken
<v Speaker 1>care of. And he's like, I just I believe that
<v Speaker 1>this is going to be great. And she says, I
<v Speaker 1>believe I'm going to leave you yea, And that's where
<v Speaker 1>she went. Wonder how she feels.
<v Speaker 2>That she feels pretty sad about that decision.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, So Tico Torres not only had he played with
<v Speaker 1>the marvel Attes, and not only had he played with
<v Speaker 1>Chuck Berry, but when Kiss got rid of Peter Chris,
<v Speaker 1>they he was one of the guys on the shortlist
<v Speaker 1>to be the drummer for me. He went out an
<v Speaker 1>audition for him. Wow, just didn't make it. So Tico's in,
<v Speaker 1>Alec john Such is in, Dave Bryan is in, and
<v Speaker 1>their guitarist is, as you mentioned, Dave Sabo from skid Row. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>although yet yes right, And so Dave Sabo was never
<v Speaker 1>really like a member of the band per se.
<v Speaker 2>It was just just kind of helped out with the
<v Speaker 2>touring of Runaway, right. And so Alec John Sutch had
<v Speaker 2>also been in a band with this guy called Richie Sambora.
<v Speaker 1>He had been around, I mean, he had his own
<v Speaker 1>independent record label. He had played with several big names.
<v Speaker 1>He had signed a couple of different times. His bands
<v Speaker 1>had signed a couple of different times, just hadn't gotten
<v Speaker 1>there yet, like it was just not quite there. Then
<v Speaker 1>he did this tour as the opening act for Joe
<v Speaker 1>Cocker and then eighty two when Kiss and as Freely
<v Speaker 1>part Ways. Yes, he goes in auditions for Kiss to
<v Speaker 1>be their guitarist. So weird, right, Yeah, he's pretty close. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>two of the guys from bon Jovi tried to replace
<v Speaker 1>two of the guys from Kiss and we're not successful,
<v Speaker 1>Thank goodness for that. Yeah, And so Richie Sambor comes back.
<v Speaker 1>Alec John Sutch is like, hey man, you got to
<v Speaker 1>come listen to this band that I'm playing with. They're phenomenal.
<v Speaker 1>And Richie's like okay. He goes and he sees them
<v Speaker 1>and he said it was magic. And after the show
<v Speaker 1>he goes up to John he says, Hi, I'm your
<v Speaker 1>new guitarist.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I heard him talking about this, he said when
<v Speaker 2>he watched John run around the stage, He's like, yep,
<v Speaker 2>that kid's star.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And so John was like, okay, you know, let's
<v Speaker 1>see you know what you can do or whatever. And
<v Speaker 1>so he's like, come out, you know, we'll play together.
<v Speaker 1>She hired you know these five songs, right, know these
<v Speaker 1>five songs. And so he Richie comes to the studio
<v Speaker 1>or wherever it is they're practicing. He gets there on
<v Speaker 1>time late, He works with the band while John is arriving.
<v Speaker 1>And when John gets there, they're already tight and play
<v Speaker 1>for him, and he's like, well, get sure in, I
<v Speaker 1>guess you're in. Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 2>Just the incredible opportunity and the timeliness of this. And
<v Speaker 2>John bon Jovi and Richie Simbur are a songwriting duo
<v Speaker 2>that gave us these great songs.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>Doc McGee comes to him and says, do you have management?
<v Speaker 1>No, I don't. As a reminder, doc McGee is the
<v Speaker 1>guy who managed Motley Crue.
<v Speaker 2>Molly Crue Kissed the Scorpions.
<v Speaker 1>Right, But but bon Jovi was pretty early on in this.
<v Speaker 1>He early he had Motley Crue. He had Motley Crue
<v Speaker 1>and that was about it. At that point, he's on
<v Speaker 1>his way up with Motley Crue.
<v Speaker 2>So Motley Cruz happening, and he goes to bon Jovi
<v Speaker 2>and he says, I want to image you guys, and
<v Speaker 2>I want to make you the biggest band in the world.
<v Speaker 1>Right, And so this just just to kind of lay
<v Speaker 1>the foundation for another story that might get told. Also
<v Speaker 1>around this time, about January of nineteen eighty two, Doc
<v Speaker 1>McGee meets a guy named Steve Kaylish in the Kayaneman
<v Speaker 1>Islands who is known as the last Gentleman Smuggler. We'll
<v Speaker 1>get into all that maybe later on, but for now,
<v Speaker 1>it's just a seed, a little teaser, if you will.
<v Speaker 1>And so they go into the studio to record their
<v Speaker 1>first album, which obviously must include Runaway. They named the
<v Speaker 1>album bon Jovi, which you know they're they're doing the
<v Speaker 1>full Van Halen, right, let's name the let's name the
<v Speaker 1>band after me, and let's go ahead and name the
<v Speaker 1>first album after me too, Yep, And it does. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Runaway cracks the top forty thirty nine, I think is
<v Speaker 1>as high as a guy. That would be a crack.
<v Speaker 1>That's a crack. That is a tiny little crack in
<v Speaker 1>the top forty. And so they're touring, opening up for
<v Speaker 1>other bands, and they after a while they do a
<v Speaker 1>second album called seventy eight hundred Degrees Fahrenheit. They really
<v Speaker 1>don't know who they are at this point. And if
<v Speaker 1>you've watched any of the videos that they have for
<v Speaker 1>any of these songs, they're so cringey. I think they
<v Speaker 1>might be more cringey than those deaf Leopard by Romania videos. Watch.
<v Speaker 2>I watched one the other day. I think it was
<v Speaker 2>it was one of the songs on seventy eight hundred.
<v Speaker 2>I think it was Only Lonely a pre terminator. Linda
<v Speaker 2>Hamilton is the girl that he's in love with in
<v Speaker 2>the video.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my word, how about that. That's crazy. So when
<v Speaker 1>they get done touring, they realize we're paying more money
<v Speaker 1>to our crew than we are to ourselves.
<v Speaker 2>The only guy in the band who had his own
<v Speaker 2>house was Tico Torres, right, everybody else lived with mom
<v Speaker 2>and dad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm a rock star. And they come on a
<v Speaker 1>TV I'm living to my mom's basement. Yeah, they go
<v Speaker 1>back and live with mom and dad and so Richie
<v Speaker 1>Sambora's parents worked during the day, both of them, and
<v Speaker 1>so John would come over to his house in the morning.
<v Speaker 1>They would go down to the and they start working
<v Speaker 1>on songs, and John gives him this idea for a
<v Speaker 1>song that kind of has this relationship to touring, similar
<v Speaker 1>to a cowboy writing into town, taking your money, taking
<v Speaker 1>your women, and getting out of town before you know
<v Speaker 1>what's happened and gives him the layout and Richie Sambora
<v Speaker 1>walks this little line down the guitar neck and John's like,
<v Speaker 1>that's it, man, that is exactly what it needs to be.
<v Speaker 1>And that was going to be the original name, or
<v Speaker 1>that was the original name of Slippery when Wet. They
<v Speaker 1>were going to call the album Wanted Dead or Alive.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's a cool name. Oh yeah.
<v Speaker 2>They actually took publicity pictures where they all kind of
<v Speaker 2>grew their beards out and they had they looked like
<v Speaker 2>young guys. I mean, that's they look like the poster
<v Speaker 2>of young guys. But calling the album Wanted Dead or Alive,
<v Speaker 2>I don't think would have been a hindrance at all.
<v Speaker 1>I mean. Now, so he and Richie are writing songs
<v Speaker 1>together and Richie's parents' basement, and they decide they want
<v Speaker 1>to recruit somebody to help them write hits because we're
<v Speaker 1>about to do album number three and if album three
<v Speaker 1>doesn't make them, it's going to break them, Yeah, because
<v Speaker 1>if you don't hit it on album three, the record
<v Speaker 1>company is going to be done with you. And so
<v Speaker 1>they recruit this gentleman named Desmond Child. So Desmond Child
<v Speaker 1>at the time that they say, come write some songs
<v Speaker 1>with us. What's he got on his list?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So he came up with the song I Was
<v Speaker 2>Made for Loving You, which Kiss did, which was for
<v Speaker 2>Kiss fans.
<v Speaker 1>They know this.
<v Speaker 2>It's like the disco Kiss. Yeah, he introduced disco to Kiss.
<v Speaker 2>But it was a successful song. But the song that
<v Speaker 2>John really liked, John and Richie liked that to want
<v Speaker 2>to work with Desmond was a song called Heaven's on
<v Speaker 2>Fire by Kiss.
<v Speaker 1>So Desmond Child drives out to New Jersey, driving to
<v Speaker 1>Richie sam Bori's house, sees this wooden plank house out
<v Speaker 1>next to a swamp. You can see the smokestacks from
<v Speaker 1>the factory down the road. And he's like, what am
<v Speaker 1>I getting myself into? A rock star lives here? Yeah? Right,
<v Speaker 1>And so he goes down to the basement and they
<v Speaker 1>started talking and he says, you know, I really think
<v Speaker 1>a great name for a song would be you give
<v Speaker 1>Love a Bad Name? And John goes shot through the
<v Speaker 1>heart and You're to blame. And then John, Richie and
<v Speaker 1>Desmond all at the same time go you give Love
<v Speaker 1>a Bad Name? And it was magic. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>John stole that shot through the Heart. That was a
<v Speaker 2>song from his first album Yeah, called Shot through the Heart.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So they said down and in this writing session
<v Speaker 2>with Desmond Child, they write you give Love a bad Name.
<v Speaker 1>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>They also write a song called without Love I Die
<v Speaker 2>for You. Oh, and they also wrote this little song
<v Speaker 2>you might have heard called living on a Prayer.
<v Speaker 1>I think is that on Slippery One? I think? Okay
<v Speaker 1>it is.
<v Speaker 2>So anyway, Desmond Child comes. They write four songs that
<v Speaker 2>make the album, and so they start working on songs.
<v Speaker 2>One of the songs I know, John and Rishie wrote
<v Speaker 2>in the Basement You talked About One and Dead Are Alive.
<v Speaker 2>They also wrote the song never Say Goodbye. So they're
<v Speaker 2>gathering songs and the record company says, well, it's time
<v Speaker 2>to record the album. We want you away from New York, right,
<v Speaker 2>So we're going to fly you to Vancouver.
<v Speaker 1>Right. Well, they they both Richie and John both really
<v Speaker 1>liked the album lover Boy by Lover Boy, and John
<v Speaker 1>also really liked the album Without Love, which was by
<v Speaker 1>a heavy metal band called Black and Blue. And so
<v Speaker 1>they said, this is our guy, this is our producer.
<v Speaker 1>So he says, I want you guys to come up
<v Speaker 1>here to me in Canada and we're going to record
<v Speaker 1>up here. You got the World's Fair going on over there.
<v Speaker 1>You've got this place called the Number five Orange Strip Club.
<v Speaker 1>So they get up there, they start laying down tracks
<v Speaker 1>and they go, you know, they get done at ten
<v Speaker 1>or eleven at night, and they're like, oh, this is early, fairly,
<v Speaker 1>let's go to the strip club. And so they go
<v Speaker 1>with Doc McGee and they're all at the strip club
<v Speaker 1>and this woman literally, Now, of course, why wouldn't we
<v Speaker 1>on our very first episode of season two, why wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>we start talking about strippers. Why wouldn't we we have to,
<v Speaker 1>I mean stripper music. We Okay, So this woman comes
<v Speaker 1>sliding from the ceiling, comes sliding down a pole, then
<v Speaker 1>goes and gets in the shower, soaps herself up, and
<v Speaker 1>Doc McGee goes, you know, I always thought a good
<v Speaker 1>name for a song or an album would be slippery
<v Speaker 1>when wet and their tongues are hanging out of their
<v Speaker 1>mouths and they're going, yeah, that sounds great, Yeah, whatever
<v Speaker 1>you say, yeah sounds good. That is that's how they
<v Speaker 1>got the name of the album. Yeah, that's where slippery
<v Speaker 1>when it came from. YEP, and for most Folks who
<v Speaker 1>have seen the album cover, you would think, oh, this
<v Speaker 1>is a road sign kind of thing. Well, that's not
<v Speaker 1>the original album cover. Let's talk about the original album. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So after they had completed the songs, which we'll get
<v Speaker 2>to here in a second, they came out with an
<v Speaker 2>album cover where they went to the Jersey shore. They
<v Speaker 2>gathered up some great looking girls. They took some pictures
<v Speaker 2>to it with your boy, Mark Weiss, Yes, Mark Wis.
<v Speaker 1>Mark Weis whose wedding was where John bon Jovi's parents
<v Speaker 1>discovered Sebastian Bach.
<v Speaker 2>Go back and listen to our Skid Versus Doctor Feel
<v Speaker 2>Good episode.
<v Speaker 1>There you go.
<v Speaker 2>So they gathered up and they found this one girl.
<v Speaker 2>Her name was Angela, and they liked Angela because she
<v Speaker 2>was particularly busty. They gave her a Slippery when Wet shirt.
<v Speaker 2>They cut it up.
<v Speaker 1>They took a close up of her.
<v Speaker 2>It's a you know, it's a it's a nineteen eighties
<v Speaker 2>metal cover. She's you know, wet, wet and bursting at
<v Speaker 2>the seams.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. They put a pink.
<v Speaker 2>Trim around the edge of border that was supposed to
<v Speaker 2>be like matching her lipstick. They called the album Slippery
<v Speaker 2>When a Wet yeap, and when the record company saw it,
<v Speaker 2>they're like, we cant this is another album you gave us.
<v Speaker 2>We can't sell in Walmart. What are you doing to
<v Speaker 2>us here? And John saw it, It's like pink, Why
<v Speaker 2>is this pink crap on here? I'm a serious rocker.
<v Speaker 2>I like the girl, but I can't have the pink.
<v Speaker 2>So they grabbed these at the last second and they
<v Speaker 2>pulled like they had printed like forty thousand of these.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well they and they got issued in Japan. They yes,
<v Speaker 1>you can actually buy these on eBay right and it's
<v Speaker 1>just fyi. Bon Jovi was a hit in Japan long
<v Speaker 1>before they were a hit in the United States, so
<v Speaker 1>it's way to go Japan, and you guys were on
<v Speaker 1>the ball. So John says, look, this is I'm not
<v Speaker 1>having this. Pull this right now.
<v Speaker 2>And so they go over to Mark Weise's house and
<v Speaker 2>they're like, we got to come up with an album
<v Speaker 2>cover right now. So they stretch out a garbage bag,
<v Speaker 2>a black garbage bag laid on a table, spray it down,
<v Speaker 2>and John writes with his finger slippery when Wet snapped
<v Speaker 2>a couple of pictures, and that's the album cover you
<v Speaker 2>see today brilliant.
<v Speaker 1>It works too. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So before we jump into the album, the producer of
<v Speaker 2>this album, as you mentioned, was Bruce Fairbern. He had
<v Speaker 2>this little engineer that was an up and coming guy.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, might have heard of him. His name is Bob Rock.
<v Speaker 2>He produced Doctor Feel Good Yep. He then produced Metallica's
<v Speaker 2>Black album.
<v Speaker 1>Right which he got because of Doctor fiel Good, which
<v Speaker 1>he got because of Doctor Feel Good. We're hoping to
<v Speaker 1>cover that later this year. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, he is a major, major producer. They just
<v Speaker 2>caught him right before he broke big. So before we
<v Speaker 2>dive into the songs, I have a really cool story
<v Speaker 2>for you, okay. So they have thirty or so demo songs.
<v Speaker 2>They had gone to Vancouver. They had demoed all these
<v Speaker 2>songs that they had written in Richie's mother's basement. Right
<v Speaker 2>around the corner from their studio was a little pizza place.
<v Speaker 2>So they would go down to the pizza place and
<v Speaker 2>there's all these teenagers would hang out there, and they thought,
<v Speaker 2>you know what this if this is our audience, why
<v Speaker 2>don't we ask them what they think? So they invited
<v Speaker 2>this crew of teenagers back to the studio and they
<v Speaker 2>played the demos for them, and the teenagers would make comments,
<v Speaker 2>you know, hey, this is not too bad, and I
<v Speaker 2>kind of like this one, and this is pretty good,
<v Speaker 2>and there are songs.
<v Speaker 1>Actually I think what they said was it doesn't suck,
<v Speaker 1>this doesn't suck, which.
<v Speaker 2>Sounds like our teenagers, right right, right. But John is
<v Speaker 2>very clear and very public that some of the song
<v Speaker 2>songs that made Slippery and Wet would not have been
<v Speaker 2>there if it hadn't been for what they called the
<v Speaker 2>Pizza Parlor Jury.
<v Speaker 1>One of those songs never say Goodbye, Living on a Prayer,
<v Speaker 1>Living on a Prayer, Doc McGee said, but for the
<v Speaker 1>Pizza Parlor Jury, living on a Prayer probably would not
<v Speaker 1>have been on Slippery.
<v Speaker 2>We'll talk about that here in a second. John was
<v Speaker 2>not as big a fan of this song.
<v Speaker 1>No, I know. All right, we ready to dive in.
<v Speaker 1>Let's dive into this album. We got to start listening
<v Speaker 1>to the music right now.
<v Speaker 3>Next week, aliphanger, Oh hang around, come back next week
<v Speaker 3>we will dive in track by track Slippery when we.
<v Speaker 1>Love it, come back and see us. Tell your friends,
<v Speaker 1>subscribe Patreon, Patreon, subscribe, five star review. Love you guys,
<v Speaker 1>See you soon,